From Erika Bolstad in Washington D.C. --

The Washington Post is reporting there's a new head of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Unit, which oversaw former Sen. Ted Stevens' flawed prosecution.

The Post reports the position has been offered to Jack Smith, "a career department prosecutor from Brooklyn who in recent years has supervised sensitive investigations of foreign officials at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands."

The former head of the unit, William Welch II, stepped down in October. Welch, along with lawyers who were involved in the day-to-day investigation, remains under investigation for the flawed prosecution. The Republican former senator's indictment was part of a sweeping investigation into corruption in Alaska politics that began unraveling when defense attorneys questioned the way prosecutors and the FBI handled witnesses and evidence in Stevens' case and others.

In Stevens' case, the Justice Department acknowledged that it had failed to share with the former senator's lawyers notes from an interview with the prosecution's key witness. Those notes contradicted the witness's trial testimony and could have been favorable to Stevens at trial.

The U.S. district judge who oversaw Stevens' trial last October, Emmet Sullivan, appointed a special prosecutor to investigate irregularities in the prosecution.

Among the first major moves by Attorney General Eric Holder after he took office last year was to dismiss the indictment against Stevens, effectively clearing him of his 2008 conviction on corruption charges. A jury had found Stevens guilty of lying on financial disclosure forms covering six years in office.

Stevens, who's now 86, was up for re-election at the same time as his trial and lost his seat to Mark Begich, a former mayor of Anchorage. Begich's victory helped Democrats in the Senate gain the 60-vote majority they needed to override Republican objections to legislation -- although they've since lost that advantage.

Holder, himself a product of the public integrity section, said earlier that it was "in the best interest of justice" to abandon its prosecution of the 40-year Senate veteran.