President Trump is expected to nominate current US Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Jessie Liu, to the third highest spot at the Justice Department.
If she is confirmed, Trump then gets to select the person who replaces Liu and who will preside over several Russia probe-related matters.
As Mueller winds down his Russia investigation, lawyers from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — the office Liu runs — have been assigned to key Mueller cases, including the one against Trump confidant Roger Stone. The office is also generally responsible for handling potential prosecutions if Congress finds a witness in contempt.
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While Mueller’s team has handled the prosecutions for most of the probe, prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — the nation’s largest — appear poised to take over some cases when Mueller is finished. That includes the case against Stone, who has pleaded not guilty to charges he lied to Congress, engaged in witness tampering and obstructed a congressional investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The office is handling other Russia-related cases that do not directly involve Trump or his associates, including a case against the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm indicted in February 2018 and accused of running an expansive social media campaign intended to influence the 2016 presidential election.
It also handled the case of Sam Patten, which was referred to the U.S. attorney’s office by Mueller. Patten pleaded guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent for a Ukrainian political party, admitted his role in a $50,000 donation scheme involving the presidential inauguration and conceded he lied to the Senate intelligence committee during its investigation into Russian election interference.
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Liu, 46, was an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington from 2002 until 2006 and prosecuted violent crimes, drug trafficking and fraud cases. She later served as deputy chief of staff for the Justice Department’s national security division, a counsel to the deputy attorney general and as a deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
Liu also worked as deputy general counsel at the Treasury Department and was a partner at the law firms Morrison & Foerster and Jenner & Block.
As associate attorney general, Liu would primarily be responsible for overseeing the department’s civil litigation.