Trump’s Inexperienced Federal Prosecutors Are Running Into Trouble In Court

At least a dozen times since the beginning of his second term, President Donald Trump has picked someone who has never prosecuted a case in federal court to lead an office full of federal prosecutors.

U.S. attorneys are the most powerful prosecutorial posts in the country, deciding which criminal investigations to pursue and who must face off against the federal government in court. Trump has repeatedly filled those jobs with people who have never worked as prosecutors before — and many of those people have either been disqualified, reprimanded by judges for inappropriate conduct, or seen their cases fall apart.

“This administration seems to think of U.S. attorneys as messenger boys for the president and his people at the top of the Justice Department, rather than independent actors of substance,” said Dan Richman, a Columbia Law School professor and former federal prosecutor.

People with traditional resumes, he added, may be reluctant to take the job. “I suspect that those with prosecutorial experience value the professional capital they gained by getting it, and will think twice before they burn it up by taking a position where they may have to take positions really at odds with settled expectations of what a U.S. attorney's office should do.”

In recent months, the lack of prosecutorial experience by some Trump-selected U.S. attorneys has had serious consequences.

In May, a trio of judges in Wyoming tossed nine indictments after finding the U.S. attorney, Darin Smith, committed “many known instances of misconduct” by addressing a panel of grand jurors with “inflammatory and inappropriate” commentary. Smith told the prospective grand jurors that the defendants were “bad guys” and “murderers” who “did what you are going to hear about,” according to the judges. They also found that Smith handed out business cards to grand jurors, inviting them to reach out to him.

“Abusing this special position of trust, the U.S. Attorney impaired the grand jury’s integrity as an independent body,” the judges wrote.

In April, a committee of New York state’s appellate court system found that John Sarcone, the embattled federal prosecutor leading the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York, committed professional misconduct. The nature of the misconduct and of the sanctions were not clear.

A spokesperson for DOJ said “prior federal prosecution experience is not the only qualification that makes someone a good U.S. Attorney,” adding that the 12 people identified by POLITICO aren’t a large number of the appointees for the 94 U.S. attorneys offices. “Their experience both inside and outside the government is on par with — if not superior to — those who served in previous administrations.”

Some U.S. attorneys who have never worked in a federal prosecutor’s office have taken steps that would be considered unusual for anyone familiar with the customs and practices of the Justice Department.

In Nevada, Sigal Chattah, who is leading the U.S. attorney’s office as first assistant after a federal judge disqualified her from holding the top job, ordered the last-minute cancellation of a plea deal that had been directed and approved by the supervising attorney in the office’s criminal division. The defendant in that case is seeking to disqualify Chattah from the prosecution, just as she has been disqualified from supervising four other criminal prosecutions. Bloomberg News first reported Chattah’s order.

The U.S. attorney for the middle district of North Carolina, Dan Bishop, is a former Republican lawmaker who voted against certifying that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Bishop is also a special prosecutor tasked with pursuing election fraud, and his early efforts have reportedly included pushing the FBIto revisit inquiries it had already concluded were fruitless.

To be sure, in many offices, particularly larger districts, the U.S. attorneys themselves are not doing the day-to-day work of investigating and prosecuting cases. But it is their judgment that determines whether certain investigative steps are appropriate and whether a case is worth pursuing and, ultimately, charging.

It isn’t unprecedented for a president to choose someone for a U.S. attorney job who has never worked as a prosecutor — President George W. Bush appointed Chris Christie as New Jersey U.S. attorney — but legal experts say doing it with such frequency is unusual and likely reflects Trump’s tendency to value loyalty over professional qualifications. Without having worked as a line prosecutor, “they don't have anything to compare it to,” said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor who is writing a book on the justice system during Trump’s presidency. “It's much harder for them to say why” the office should decline to pursue a case, she said.

Though U.S. attorneys often seek the assessment of the prosecutors working for them, “I think a U.S. attorney is more likely to ignore the advice of career people … if they don't have the experience themselves,” Rocah said.

Three people who lacked prosecutorial experience have since exited their U.S. attorney posts: Lindsey Halligan, Alina Habba and Ed Martin.

Halligan, who served as the interim U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, was disqualified by U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, who also tossed indictments Halligan obtained against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Another federal judge suggested Halligan had likely made procedural missteps during the grand jury process.

Like Halligan, Habba became U.S. attorney after working as one of Trump’s personal lawyers. Habba served in New Jersey, where a federal judge criticized her for the “hasty arrest” and speedy dismissal of charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who was detained following an incident at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. U.S. Magistrate Judge André M. Espinosa said the episode “suggests a worrisome misstep” by Habba’s office.

And Martin, who was U.S. attorney for Washington, is facing disciplinary charges from the D.C. Bar for several steps taken while he led the office, including threatening to withhold funding from Georgetown University’s Law Center and barring his staff from hiring its students in a bid to punish the institution for its DEI practices, which the Bar called a First Amendment violation.

Martin is now the pardon attorney for the Justice Department.