“The Justice Department has named a veteran prosecutor from Philadelphia as the new leader of its pardon office, which is trying to review more than 9,000 petitions in the final year of the Obama presidency.
“Robert Zauzmer, 55, has worked since 1990 at the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Justice Department leaders said Zauzmer represented a “natural choice” for the pardon job, in part because of his experience training prosecutors all over the country in how to evaluate prisoners’ requests for early release.”