Mary Jo White

Life and career

White was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in McLean, Virginia. She received a B.A. from the College of William & Mary in 1970. She earned an M.A. in psychology in 1971 from The New School for Social Research and a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1974, where she was a Writing & Research Editor of the Columbia Law Review.

White became Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in December 1992, and in March 1993 was appointed by President Bill Clinton as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District. She is noted for having led the prosecution of John Gotti and overseen those of the terrorists responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, chief among them Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef.

After President Bill Clinton's controversial last-day presidential pardons, she was appointed by new Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate Marc Rich's pardon.

For 10 years, she was chair of the litigation department at Debevoise & Plimpton, whose self-proclaimed "core practices" and expertise are focused on the success of Wall Street financial firms. The Huffington Post called her "a well-respected attorney who won high-profile cases against mobsters, terrorists and financial fraudsters over the course of nearly a decade as the U.S. attorney for Manhattan."

It has been asserted in Rolling Stone magazine that, among other duties at Debevoise, White has used her influence and connections to protect certain Wall Street CEOs from prosecution, including a notable case involving the firing of Gary J. Aguirre for investigations into the CEO of Morgan Stanley executive John J. Mack.

In 2013, White, as a lawyer for JSTOR, an original complainant in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz, asked the lead prosecutor to drop the charges after JSTOR changed their position to oppose Swartz's prosecution because of steps Swartz had taken to appease JSTOR.

When White started at the SEC in April 2013, most of the agency's enforcement cases from the 2008-2009 financial crisis were either settled or near completion, freeing up resources for other work. In a shift for the agency, White announced in June 2013 the SEC would start demanding more admissions of misconduct as part of an enforcement settlement. In an October 2013 speech, White announced a new SEC enforcement tactic practiced by neighborhood beat police to root out petty crime. In her speech, White cited a March 1982 Atlantic article, espousing law enforcement's "broken windows" concept that theorizes enforcing small, petty crimes—like smashed windows—can prevent bigger crimes. Focusing enforcement attention to these small crimes avoids breeding an environment of indifference to the rules, White said.

During her tenure, White had to recuse herself from some of the SEC's biggest enforcement cases as a result of her prior work at Debevoise and that of her husband, John W. White, a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. By February 2015 White had recused herself in about 50 cases setting up deadlock situations within the Commission and thus, per a report, compromised the effectiveness of the SEC.

In 2016, Mr. Robot had the first filmed fiction appearance of White in the season 2 premiere.

On November 14, 2016 White announced that she would step down from the SEC after nearly four years service at the end of President Obama's term in January 2017. She earned, in the immediate wake of her announcement, a complimentary overall review of her term as an independent regulator from the Wall Street Journal despite differences the editors had had with her. The editorial contrasted White's service to that of others "in one of history's most ideological Administrations", as it termed the Obama presidency.

Criticism of White's leadership at the SEC

On June 2, 2015, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to White indicating that her "leadership of the Commission has been extremely disappointing" pointing out numerous shortcomings and failures during her tenure. Warren admonished that White failed to finalize certain Dodd–Frank rules, did not curb the use of waivers for companies that violated securities laws, allowed settlements without admission of guilt, and was too frequently recused because of her husband's activities. In return, White argued that the agency had been effective and that Warren had mischaracterized her statements and the accomplishments of the agency. The Massachusetts senator's attack on White generated backlash from the White House, Congress, and Wall Street, with defenders calling her a tough but fair enforcer of the rules.

On October 14, 2016 Senator Warren sent a formal written request to President Obama asking for the immediate dismissal of White as Chair of the SEC because of her refusal to develop public disclosure rules of political contributions made by corporations.

In 2017, White was a member of a National Football League external expert advisory panel on domestic violence, reviewing allegations against Ezekial Elliot. He was suspended for six games.