Donald Trump has changed the performing U.S. Attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn as their everlasting counterparts await Senate affirmation — after a cadre of Home Republicans final month urged the president to rapidly fill high federal prosecutor jobs with loyalists.
Shortly after Trump began his second time period, the administration named Danielle R. Sassoon to go the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, and John J. Durham to go Brooklyn’s Japanese District of New York.
The roles have been beforehand held by former Deputy U.S. Lawyer Edward Kim and First Assistant Carolyn Pokorny, each of whom took over when Biden-appointed Damian Williams and Breon Peace resigned their posts forward of Trump’s inauguration.
The transfer follows a December letter by a number of GOP Congress members urging Trump to take away all of the holdover U.S. attorneys within the nation’s 94 judicial districts, together with first assistants to the earlier high prosecutors, and hand-pick their interim replacements.
Sources instructed Bloomberg Legislation final month that Trump’s transition workforce was nervous that the interim U.S. attorneys who have been promoted after their Biden-appointed bosses stepped down may nonetheless be loyal to the previous president’s politics.
“The First Assistant is always an ideological protégé of the U.S. Attorney, and thus the transition does not typically result in a change of judicial policy or practice,” the GOP congress members wrote, in accordance with TheHill.com.
Shortly after his election, Trump introduced he’d identify Jay Clayton, his former chairman of the Securities and Trade Fee and frequent {golfing} buddy, to switch Williams, whose workplace initiated a number of high-profile prosecutions — together with the general public corruption case in opposition to Mayor Adams and the intercourse trafficking case in opposition to Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Earlier than his time period on the SEC, Clayton spent 17 years at Sullivan & Cromwell representing banks, hedge funds, main companies, and traders. He’s at present employed there as a senior coverage adviser and counsel.
Trump’s choose for the Brooklyn job is Joseph Nocella, a Nassau County choose who was just lately feted by the Federalist Society. Each should be confirmed by the Senate.
Each Sassoon and Durham are veteran prosecutors.
On this courtroom sketch, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, background middle, is cross examined by U.S. Assistant Lawyer Danielle Sassoon, left, whereas Decide Lewis Kaplan listens, in Manhattan federal courtroom, Oct. 30, 2023, in New York. Members of the jury are seated at proper. (Elizabeth Williams by way of AP)
Sassoon, the previous co-chief of felony appeals on the SDNY, served because the lead prosecutor within the case in opposition to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, resulting in the crypto conman’s conviction at trial in November 2023 and subsequent 23-year sentence.
She additionally prosecuted the case in opposition to Sarah Lawrence School cult chief Lawrence Ray, who was sentenced to a 60-year time period in January 2023 after a jury discovered him responsible of sexually and psychologically abusing classmates and associates of his daughter.
Sassoon, 41, who attended Harvard and Yale in accordance with her DOJ bio web page, clerked for the late staunch conservative Supreme Court docket Justice Antonin Scalia and is a member of the Federalist Society, an influential authorized community for conservatives.
Durham, who sources aware of the workplace mentioned was at one level into account for the Brooklyn high federal prosecutor job, began within the Japanese District’s Lengthy Island workplace in 2005, and has been a key participant within the federal authorities’s MS-13 prosecutions. He turned the Lengthy Island workplace chief final 12 months.
He graduated from the School of the Holy Cross in 1998 and from the College of Connecticut College of Legislation in 2001, and clerked for U.S. District Decide Stephen C. Robinson in Manhattan, in accordance with his DOJ bio.
The White Home didn’t instantly return a message searching for remark.
