Viet D. Dinh (; born February 22, 1968) is a Vietnamese-born American legal scholar who is on the board of Strategic Education. He is also the Chief Legal and Policy Officer of Fox Corporation where he leads all legal, government and regulatory and government affairs. He served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. Previously, Dinh was a partner at two leading law firms, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Bancroft PLLC, the latter of which he founded. Born in Saigon, in former South Vietnam, he was a major contributor to the Patriot Act and is a former member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation.

Early life and education

Dinh was born in Saigon, South Vietnam. He and his family emigrated to the United States in 1978, three years after Vietnam had fully embraced communism. They initially settled in Portland, Oregon, but moved to Fullerton, California, two years later. Dinh joined the restarted debate team at Fullerton Union High School under coaches Gary Reed and Jacqueline Reedy as a senior, who encouraged him to apply to Harvard University.

Dinh graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1990 with a B.A. in government and economics. While at Harvard, he was a member of the Phoenix S.K. Club. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he was a Class Marshal, an Olin Research Fellow in Law and Economics, and Bluebook editor of the Harvard Law Review. He received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude in 1993.

Career

Law

After graduating from law school, Dinh served as a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor during the 1994 Term.

Dinh has served as Associate Special Counsel to the U.S. Senate Whitewater Committee, as Special Counsel to Senator Pete V. Domenici for the Impeachment Trial of President Bill Clinton, and as counsel to the Special Master in re Austrian and German Bank Holocaust Litigation.

He is a member of the District of Columbia and Supreme Court bars.

In late 2003, he was one of a group of prominent U.S. security officials hired by ChoicePoint to advise the company on developing its government homeland security contracts.

In 2006 he joined Kenneth Starr in challenging the constitutionality of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act.

Dinh currently serves on or has served on the boards of the News Corporation, The Orchard Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ; ORCD), Liberty's Promise, the American Judicature Society, the Transition Committee for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools, the ABA Section on Administrative Law, Revlon, LPL Financial, and McAndrews and Forbes Worldwide.

Dinh has taught at Georgetown University Law Center, and became a partner at Kirkland & Ellis in September 2016, when Kirkland hired all of the attorneys at the firm Dinh founded, Bancroft PLLC. Dinh left Kirkland in 2018.

Dinh's representative publications include "Defending Liberty: Terrorism and Human Rights" in the Helsinki Monitor, "Codetermination and Corporate Governance in a Multinational Business Enterprise" in the Journal of Corporation Law, and "Financial Sector Reform and Economic Development in Vietnam" in Law and Policy in International Business. He published The USA Patriot Act: Preserving Life and Liberty in 2008.

In September 2006 Dinh received publicity for representing Tom Perkins, a former Hewlett-Packard director involved in the company's pretexting scandal. The emails between Perkins and Larry Sonsini, a corporate lawyer involved with Board of Directors decisions for many corporations were eventually forwarded to reporters and became public.

Dinh, along with fellow News Corp. board member, fellow lawyer, and Corporation executive Joel Klein, took over the investigation of the News of the World phone hacking affair and related Corporation issues in July, 2011, from News International UK Chief Executive, Rebekah Brooks. Brooks' own possible involvement in the phone hacking scandal made her unable to continue as an impartial investigator. Tom Perkins, also on the News Corp. board, was one who recommended Dinh for the investigation role.

It emerged after he was appointed to the board investigation that Dinh is godfather to one of Lachlan Murdoch's children and a friend of Lachlan since 2003. Further, in 1992, a decade before he met Lachlan, Dinh wrote of his sister, held in a Hong Kong refugee camp, in the New York Times, which led to NBC TV coverage and then to a series of articles in the South China Morning Post. The Post was owned by Rupert Murdoch, and Dinh's articles there were credited with helping free his sister. The personal ties to Murdoch's interests and family were debated as Dinh took the role in the phone-hacking investigation.

Dinh was mentioned as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States in a Republican administration.

Department of Justice

Dinh served as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. He was confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 96 to 1, with the sole No vote coming from Hillary Clinton. As the official responsible for federal legal policy, Dinh worked with issues of illicit drugs, racial profiling in federal law enforcement, exploitation of children, human trafficking, DNA technology, gun violence, and civil and criminal justice procedural reform. Dinh was also involved in the selection and confirmation of 100 district and 23 appellate judges in his role representing the U.S. Department of Justice. After 9/11, Dinh conducted a comprehensive review of DOJ priorities, policies, and practices, and played a key role in developing the USA PATRIOT Act and revising the Attorney General's Guidelines, which govern federal law enforcement activities and national security investigations.

In April 2020, it was announced that Dinh and a handful of other Fox Corp. executives would forgo their salaries for six months as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On August 11, 2023, Fox announced that Dinh would be leaving the company's employ and become an outside advisor.

Personal life

His family was separated in 1975 when his father, Phong Dinh, was being held as a political prisoner in the family's war-ravaged homeland after the fall of Saigon. He escaped in 1978, and remained a fugitive in Vietnam, when his mother, Nga Thu Nguyễn, and his older siblings got on a boat with 85 other people and set out. Their boat docked but Dinh's mother realized that the port police would force them to leave the next morning, so she sneaked back out to the boat alone that night with an axe and damaged the boat so as not to be sent back on it. After Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the crop damage forced his family to relocate to Fullerton.

Articles, interviews, and testimony

  • "The Patriot Act Is Your Friend", Interview with Kim Zetter, Wired News, 2004-02-24
  • "Sacrifices of Security", Interview with Bryant Gumbel, PBS, 2003-07-15
  • "Once Upon a Time in Arkansas", Interview with Peter Boyer, Frontline, PBS, 1988

See also

  • List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 8)
  • George W. Bush Supreme Court candidates

References

  • Profile of Viet D. Dinh at the U.S. Department of Justice
  • Biography of Viet D Dinh at the Institute for Corean-American Studies