WASHINGTON – The Senate inched forward Thursday with its plans to confirm U.S. attorney nominees who have no prosecutorial experience and who have fueled lies about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump, raising concerns that they’ve been tapped for these jobs to go after Trump’s political enemies.
Senators held a procedural vote for beginning debate on a package of more than a dozen of Trump’s nominations to federal attorney posts. Their action starts the clock on up to 30 hours of debate, after which senators will hold more procedural votes and, ultimately, a confirmation vote on the entire package.
U.S. attorney nominees don’t usually face as much public scrutiny as a president’s judicial nominees. Their posts only last as long as a president’s term, versus lifetime appointments, and their work is limited to the state in which their office is based.
But these are powerful roles, as these people decide who to prosecute with the full force of the federal government, and on what grounds. And in the Senate’s batch of nominees, there are some disturbing, if not outright unqualified, people on their way to being confirmed to these posts.
Darin Smith, Trump’s pick for U.S. Attorney for the District of Wyoming, is already the acting attorney in this role. A former Republican state legislator, he took part in the protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — though he said he didn’t enter the building — when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in search of lawmakers to potentially kill to stop them from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
