As Donald Trump’s Justice Department has unraveled over the course of the president’s second term, DOJ officials have confronted an unusual and unexpected problem: Many qualified people no longer want to work there.
The reluctance is hardly unreasonable. Would-be prosecutors now realize that in 2026, serving in a U.S. Attorney’s Office means working on politicized cases, targeting the White House’s perceived enemies, and in many instances, even looking the other way when Trump’s allies are credibly accused of wrongdoing.
So, as qualified lawyers pursue careers elsewhere, the administration is left with nominees who wouldn’t ordinarily even be considered for such powerful and influential roles. It was against this backdrop that HuffPost reported late Monday:
Senate Republicans voted Monday night to confirm dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees – including three U.S. attorney picks who have no prosecutorial experience and who fueled lies about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump. […]
The package of 49 of Trump’s nominees was confirmed 46-43, in a party-line vote. Eleven senators missed the vote.
Let’s consider the three nominees, one at a time.
Darin Smith, the newly confirmed U.S. Attorney for the District of Wyoming, is a failed Republican congressional candidate who freely admits that he participated in Jan. 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol, though he has said he never entered the building. As his nomination progressed, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in floor remarks, “Smith was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and now Trump wants him to uphold law and order. What hypocrisy. What fakery. How disgusting.”
Smith is a lawyer but has never tried a case in federal or state courts. Republicans confirmed him anyway as part of a bloc of nominees.
Phillip Williams, the newly confirmed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, is on record as having publicly condemned law enforcement for having “hunted down” Jan. 6 rioters, comparing the insurrectionists’ prosecutions to the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s.
Williams has also never tried a criminal case in court. Republicans confirmed him, too.
Dan Bishop, the newly confirmed U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, is a former Republican congressman who lost a state attorney general race in the last election cycle. As my MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones explained in November, Bishop has earned a reputation as an election denier — in the U.S. House, he voted against certifying the 2020 results — who believes in using the courts to go after his political and ideological foes.
More recently, the White House eyed Bishop for a role in which he’d help search for evidence related to Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2024 presidential election.
In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Jeffrey Toobin recently described the trio as “chillingly unqualified,” a concern echoed by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who recently told HuffPost that this batch of nominees is “particularly egregious.”
But when it came time to vote, zero GOP senators balked at this slate. The so-called moderates were among those who supported these nominees.
Toobin’s piece added, “It’s possible to see U.S. attorneys as just another set of midlevel political appointees with a timer on their jobs, but that understates their importance. … U.S. attorneys have almost unlimited discretion to launch criminal investigations.” Watch this space.
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