For months, President Donald Trump has used unconventional tactics to install loyalists as top federal prosecutors across the country, and battled challenges to their authority. Now, he appears to be conceding defeat.
The Trump administration has signaled in recent days that it may refocus its efforts on trying to eliminate a Senate procedural tool used to block U.S. attorney nominees, rather than continuing to challenge the disqualifications in court. The move comes after New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba resigned from her post following a court ruling upholding her disqualification along with a handful of other U.S. attorneys who have been stripped of their positions by federal judges.
On Friday, Delaware U.S. Attorney Julianne Murray also left her post, citing the Habba ruling.
The administration’s tactics with U.S. attorneys — bypassing the Senate or sidestepping federal judges to keep unvetted prosecutors in place — are a crucial component of Trump’s effort to deploy the Justice Department against his perceived enemies. He has relied on loyalist U.S. attorneys to pursue what critics call baldly political investigations and prosecutions, including those against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
On Thursday, Trump called the so-called “blue slip” process, in which home-state senators can veto judicial or U.S. attorney nominees, a “scam.” It’s his latest attack after Trump has spent months pressuring Senate Republicans to review the practice.
“‘Blue Slips’ are making it impossible to get great Republican Judges and U.S. Attorneys approved to serve in any state where there is even a single Democrat Senator,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “So unfair to Republicans, and not Constitutional.” He directed Senate Majority Leader John Thune “to get something done, ideally the termination of Blue Slips.”
Thune quickly rejected that call, and Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley has indicated no interest in scrapping the practice. Grassley also blamed the administration for failing to advance more U.S. attorney nominees, saying he has been “hamstrung waiting for background investigations and other paperwork from the administration.”
Asked for comment, a White House spokesperson referred to Trump’s public statements.
Earlier in the week, Trump appeared to acknowledge that the court rulings disqualifying his U.S. attorneys will ultimately force them out of their offices, even though many have remained there following the rulings.
Trump-installed federal prosecutors in the Los Angeles area, Nevada and in the Eastern District of Virginia, for example, have continued working in those offices despite being deemed disqualified. Trump, however, seemed to predict that may not continue.
“We have about seven U.S. attorneys who are not going to be able to keep their jobs much longer because of the blue slip,” Trump told reporters Monday.
Next stop: SCOTUS?
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said the administration appears now to have only two options: continue to try to install temporary U.S. attorneys, only to repeatedly have those choices disqualified by courts, or attempt the traditional process of Senate confirmation.
Tobias said he suspects the administration doesn’t want the U.S. attorney gambit to reach the Supreme Court. “I think the last thing they want is to have the Supreme Court say no, right? Because then the game is over.”
That way, he said, “they can continue to do what they’ve been doing, and that is avoiding advice and consent, which is in the Constitution, which they’ve done in more than half the districts, and continue to play games with the system.”
But other legal experts said it wasn’t clear how the Supreme Court might rule. Nina Mendelson, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an expert on acting officials, said she could envision the court leaning either way.
“If [the administration] does appeal, the Supreme Court may, on the one hand, be interested in preserving the Senate’s constitutional function of advice and consent and thus narrowly interpret the President’s authority to appoint acting US Attorneys,” she wrote in an email. “On the other hand, the Supreme Court has, in a series of cases, expressed its concern for presidential control and flexibility, which might prompt it to more generously interpret the President’s power.”
Though the administration can appeal the rulings disqualifying the prosecutors, it hasn’t in two key instances. In the Habba case, the Justice Department has said publicly that it will pursue an appeal, but asked the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals for an extension to decide how it will proceed. New Jersey’s Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, have urged the White House to work with them to select Habba’s replacement.
In the case involving Lindsey Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in late November that it would pursue an “immediate”appeal — but it hasn’t.
Instead, it kept Halligan in place and attempted, but twice failed, to re-indict James. On Thursday, in a sign the White House may be adopting a more traditional approach to installing U.S. attorneys, the administration began seeking Senate confirmation for Halligan by submitting her questionnaire to the Judiciary Committee.
A spokesperson for the committee, however, noted that Halligan doesn’t have blue slips from Virginia’s senators, and “nominees without blue slips don’t have the votes to advance out of committee or get confirmed on the Senate floor.”
The administration is appealing disqualification rulings in the Los Angeles area and Nevada. In the Northern District of New York, a federal judge appears poised to disqualifyJohn Sarcone III, the Trump-aligned U.S. attorney whose office is pursuing a separate investigation of James.
Despite Trump’s griping about having his choices blocked, he is on pace to match the Biden administration for the number of U.S. attorneys confirmed during its first year. To date, Trump has seen 13 U.S. attorneys confirmed by the Senate, up from just two in September, and 18 more are expected to be confirmed next week, bringing the total to 31.
“ATTN WH; SEND MORE NOMS,” Grassley wrote on social media on Thursday.
Legal experts said the uptick in Senate-confirmed top federal prosecutors is a welcome development, even if they aren’t in some of the highest-impact districts.
“That’s promising for the system,” Tobias said.
