The Department of Justice encompasses nearly a hundred U.S. attorney’s offices, employs thousands of prosecutors, and touches basically every dimension of public safety in America, but most people have no idea how any of it actually works.

Today’s guest, Kenneth Polite, does. A native New Orleanian who lost his brother to gun violence on the city’s streets in 2004, Ken spent the next two decades inside DOJ — from assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York to U.S. attorney in New Orleans to assistant attorney general heading the entire criminal division, overseeing 1,400 people across 17 sections and operations in over 70 countries.

In this episode, he talks about what that vantage point actually reveals: how data moves through the department, where it breaks down, and why prosecutors so rarely communicate the full scope of what they do. We also get into consent decrees, the politics of DOJ independence, and why restoring the department’s credibility is going to require more than just a change in administration.

Kenneth Polite is a global co-leader of Sidley’s White Collar Defense and Investigations practice. He previously served as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), where he led over 1,400 attorneys and staff in handling criminal cases, including securities fraud, healthcare fraud, and cybercrime. Kenneth also served as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. Kenneth has extensive experience in government service and compliance, having been the chief compliance officer at a Fortune 500 company. At the DOJ, he oversaw significant changes to corporate compliance policies and enforcement guidelines.

In private practice, Kenneth represents corporations in government enforcement matters and conducts internal investigations, particularly in the energy, financial, healthcare, life sciences, and technology sectors.