Jessie Liu speaks at a news conference in 2017. Liu is an experienced federal prosecutor whose office has overseen national security cases and handled many white-collar prosecutions of federal officials. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Legal Trump picks U.S. attorney in D.C. for No. 3 Justice job

President Donald Trump is planning to tap the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jessie Liu, to fill the long-vacant No. 3 position at the Justice Department, the White House announced Tuesday.

The associate attorney general slot has been open for more than a year — since the unexpected resignation of Rachel Brand, who took a top legal job at Walmart.


Liu, 46, is an experienced federal prosecutor whose office has overseen numerous national security cases and handled many white-collar prosecutions of federal officials.

Picking Liu for the No. 3 position could assuage concerns among some senators about Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Rosen, who has no prosecutorial experience.

If confirmed, Liu would, as an Asian-American woman, bring new racial and gender diversity to the Justice Department’s top ranks.

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Attorney General William Barr, who was confirmed last month, said in a statement Tuesday that he recommended Liu for the post and was pleased Trump made the nomination.

“Jessie has distinguished herself as a first-class attorney in private practice, in the Treasury Department, and in five different positions over her career at the Department of Justice,” Barr wrote. “Today she leads more than 300 prosecutors at our nation’s largest U.S. Attorney office, where she has achieved significant accomplishments, including prosecuting several significant False Claims Act cases and implementing the Department’s pilot initiative on sexual harassment in public housing.

“With her record of public service, particularly in civil justice and federal law enforcement matters, it is clear that she will be an outstanding addition to our leadership team at the Department,” Barr added.

When Liu was nominated to be U.S. attorney for D.C. nearly two years ago, many Justice Department veterans were surprised that the nomination followed a meeting with Trump. Presidents rarely, if ever, interview candidates for U.S. attorney jobs.

Moving Liu out of that job could also raise questions about the future of some of the prosecutions brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. As Mueller prepares to wind down his investigation, he has brought prosecutors from the D.C. office onto several cases and appears to be planning to hand them off to those attorneys.

A Texas native who attended Harvard College and Yale Law School, Liu spent four years as line prosecutor in Washington before taking several different jobs at Justice Department headquarters. She was a partner at the law firms Jenner & Block and Morrison & Foerster before taking the U.S. attorney post in September 2017.