Trump Is Picking Unorthodox US Attorneys Mostly in Blue States

President Donald Trump is tapping US attorney nominees with traditional prosecutorial experience in red states while installing unorthodox loyalists in predominantly Democratic jurisdictions, a Bloomberg Law analysis found.

The approach threatens to undermine the legitimacy of certain federal prosecutions, including instances where Trump is accused of using the Justice Department to punish political enemies, former DOJ officials said.

Appointees who lack previous relevant experience within a prosecutor’s office are generally “not familiar with the principles of federal prosecutions,” said Wendy Olson, partner at Stoel Rives LLP and former US attorney for the District of Idaho.

“This could lead to a lower quality of work from a US attorney’s office,” Olson said.

Ten months into Trump’s second presidential term, 18 of his US attorney nominations have been confirmed, while 26 additional nominations await action in the Senate. Fourteen of those confirmed are in states represented by Republicans in the Senate, and almost all have a typical mix of prior service in offices of US attorneys, district attorneys, and other prosecutors.

Meanwhile, 66 of the 93 US attorneys are serving interim or acting appointments. While several Trump-appointed picks have previous prosecutorial experience, notable appointees in several Democratic-led states bring with them a range of nontraditional resumes, from a previous state GOP chair to former personal attorneys for Trump.

Interactive graphic - Most US Attorney office leaders are unconfirmed

Six of Trump’s appointments are being challenged in court, with hearings scheduled this week on motions to disqualify Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan as the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and Ryan Ellison for the District of New Mexico. Career DOJ officials and others have criticized Halligan for what they see as politicized prosecutions of Trump’s perceived enemies, while Ellison has faced questions from federal judges over his district’s mass arrests of migrants.

Former federal prosecutors and DOJ officials say Trump’s slow pace in putting forth nominees and the willingness to bypass Senate opposition by installing loyalists with little to no prosecutorial experience is fueling a divide between blue and red states.

“When you have people coming in to serve in that acting or interim US attorney role who have no prosecutorial experience, then that could have a detrimental effect on prosecutions,” said Mark Yancey, law professor at the University of South Carolina who previously led the DOJ’s training academy for federal prosecutors. He noted that more experienced attorneys in these offices “understand their jury pool, understand their judges, and understand and have the credibility with their investigative agencies.”

A White House spokesperson deferred questions to the DOJ. A DOJ spokesperson said in an email that the department “will continue to stand behind our U.S. Attorneys who are fulfilling President Trump’s mission to make America safe.”

Trump Loyalists

All six of the US attorney appointments being challenged in courts are in states represented by Democrats in the Senate.

Interactive graphic - US Attorney appointments challenged in blue states

Federal district court judges have explicitly declined to reappoint former Delaware Republican Party Chair Julianne Murray and former US General Services Administration official John A. Sarcone III in the Northern District of New York after their interim appointments expired. US attorney offices in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and New Mexico also all have acting US attorneys without court appointments.

“A presidentially appointed US attorney has more leeway to fulfill the priorities of the attorney general and president,” compared to those that are confirmed by the Senate or appointed by federal judges, said Olson, one of more than 100 former DOJ officials who signed onto a brief opposing Halligan’s federal charges against former FBI Director James Comey.

Halligan, who has a background in insurance law, was nominated by the Trump administration but faces a near-impossible path forward with opposition from Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, who can block the nomination.

The appointment of another Trump personal lawyer, New Jersey US attorney Alina Habba, is before a federal appeals court after a district judge said she was serving unlawfully. The White House withdrew her nomination after New Jersey Sens. Cory Booker (D) and Andy Kim (D) used their “blue slip” authority as home-state senators to block her nomination.

Senate Republicans have so far backed Trump’s nominees with typical prosecutorial backgrounds, including Bart Davis in Idaho and Ron A. Parsons Jr. in South Dakota, both of whom were US attorneys in Trump’s first term.

Still, several districts in red states remain without nominations. This includes the Middle District of Florida, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s home district. The attorney general appointed earlier this year longtime Tampa defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Gregory Kehoe as interim US attorney after his predecessor, Roger Handberg, and more than 70 other US attorneys were fired or resigned at the start of Trump’s term.

Lingering Repercussions

The Trump administration’s approach to installing attorneys perceived as loyal to the president has meant there’s “less buy in from the broader law enforcement community and within the office,” Olson said.

Bloomberg Law previously reported that Bill Essayli, the acting top prosecutor for the Central District of California, has ignored and overruled the recommendations of senior prosecutors and forced lawyers to redo indictment failures before new grand juries, according to multiple lawyers with knowledge of the matters.

While judges have so far declined to toss indictments when disqualifying Essayli and two other federal prosecutors, the situation could be different in offices like the Eastern District of Virginia, where Halligan was the only attorney in the office to sign off on indictments against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The response by courts so far has “been to say that as long as career prosecutors also worked on the cases and/or signed the legal documents, then those cases are still valid,” said Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown and former federal prosecutor.

“Where the interim US attorney was the only person who signed the document, that’s a huge practical problem,” Butler said.