President Trump will nominate Jessie Liu, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to become the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, the Washington Post reports. Liu would assume the job of associate attorney general and her principal responsibility would be overseeing the Justice Department’s civil litigation. Liu, 46, was confirmed in August 2017 to head the largest U.S. Attorney’s office, one that often oversees politically sensitive investigations of the executive and legislative branches. It has been more than a year since the last associate attorney general, Rachel Brand, left DOJ, an unusually long period for such a senior position to lack even a nominee. Last month, Trump said he planned to nominate a Transportation Department official, Jeffrey Rosen, to take the job of deputy attorney general held by Rod Rosenstein.
The selections of Rosen and Liu would put in place a new trio of senior officials running the Justice Department, now led by Attorney General William Barr. When President Trump nominated Liu to become U.S. Attorney, some Democrats questioned why he had met with her in person before the nomination, a departure from standard practice. Still, Liu has been seen as a steadying presence at an office whose 300 attorneys have unique federal jurisdiction in the nation’s capital to prosecute local and federal crimes. She reorganized an office where her predecessors were criticized for their handling of a drawn-out public corruption investigation of then-D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, who was never charged but was voted out of office after prosecutors disclosed, in an pre-election news conference, that he was their target. Liu’s highest-profile move came last month, when her office began to prosecute more local defendants for gun and drug crimes in federal rather than local court, as the city struggles with a 40 percent spike in homicides.