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Monday, March 18, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

White House Nominates Five for US Attorney Posts

President Donald Trump on Friday announced the nominations of five new United States attorneys to positions in states across the country.

WASHINGTON (CN) - President Donald Trump on Friday announced the nominations of five new United States attorneys to positions in states across the country.

Two of the nominees Trump announced on Friday, Nicola Hanna of the Central District of California and Kenji Price of the District of Hawaii, are already serving as the top prosecutors in their respective districts in an acting capacity.

Hanna served as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles from 1990 to 1994, focusing on prosecutions of drug trafficking and money laundering organizations. He then became a federal prosecutor in San Diego, where he prosecuted drug cartels.

Hanna then jumped to private practice, working as a partner at the firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, where his practice focused on criminal and regulatory enforcement actions.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed Hanna to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California on Jan. 3, citing his work as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney in California.

Sessions also appointed Price as acting U.S. attorney for the District of Hawaii on Jan. 3, pointing both to Price's work as a federal prosecutor and his service in the Army, where Price earned two Bronze stars. Price worked as a prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, where he prosecuted high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Mexican drug trafficking group led by El Chapo, according to Price's profile on the University of Hawaii at Manoa William Richardson School of Law webpage.

Price left prosecutorial work to become the director of the Hawaii firm Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing, focusing on white-collar criminal defense.

Two of the other Trump nominees announced on Friday, Timothy Garrison and David Joseph, are currently working as prosecutors in the districts they are nominated to lead.

Garrison is a prosecutor in the Western District of Missouri, a job he has held since 2007. While serving in the district, Garrison has focused on drug trafficking, money laundering and murder prosecutions, having come to the job after working as a Marine Corps prosecutor.

Joseph also has a military background, having served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps before becoming a prosecutor in the Western District of Louisiana. Joseph also previously worked in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Professional Liability and Financial Crimes Section and as an associate at the firm Fulbright Jaworski.

Thomas Cullen, whom Trump nominated to serve as a US. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, works at the Virginia firm Woods Rogers. Cullen represented Virginia Republican Del. Terry Kilgore in a public corruption investigation that did not result in charges and has worked on numerous other white-collar criminal defense matters.

Before joining Woods Rogers, Cullen worked as a federal prosecutor in Virginia and North Carolina.

Categories / Government, Law, National

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