The White House on Wednesday nominated a new inspector general for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Robert Feitel is currently a trial attorney for the section of the Department of Justice that assists with potential federal death penalty cases. He would succeed Hubert Bell, who retired on Dec. 31, 2018, after more than 22 years as NRC inspector general and 29 years with the Secret Service.
Feitel’s nomination was referred to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for consideration. As of Friday, a confirmation hearing had not been scheduled. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee would have secondary jurisdiction over the nomination, according to Congress.gov.
If confirmed, Feitel would manage the NRC Inspector General’s Office and its roughly $13 million annual budget. The office performs audits and investigations “to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness within the NRC, and to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in agency programs and operations,” according to the agency. It provides the same services for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the federal health-and-safety watchdog for Department of Energy nuclear sites.
Feitel has worked in the Department of Justice’s Capital Case Section since August 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile. The section’s core mission is to assist the Attorney General’s Review Committee on Capital Cases in determining whether to recommend the death penalty in capital cases. The section also aids U.S. attorneys in investigations and prosecutions of capital cases, among other duties.
The nominee previously spent nearly 12 years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, with a yearlong detail from 2010 to 2011 with the Counterterrorism Unit at the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence. He also spent 10 months on the President’s Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force during the early Obama administration and seven years as assistant general counsel for the FBI.
