JD Vance made a rare appearance in the White House briefing room a few weeks ago to announce some news: The administration would soon have a new assistant attorney general with a narrow focus.
According to the Ohio Republican, this prosecutor would have “all the authority of a special counsel” and would focus exclusively on fraud investigations. Vance also said this person’s work would be “run out of the White House” instead of the Justice Department, and the prosecutor would report to him and Donald Trump, instead of to the attorney general.
This week, the president chose someone to fill the position. Time magazine reported:
President Donald Trump has nominated a federal prosecutor to a newly created role of fraud investigator after the Trump Administration urged the Justice Department to investigate fraud in Democrat-led states.
If confirmed by the Senate, Colin McDonald would lead a new DOJ unit as ‘first ever Assistant Attorney General for National FRAUD Enforcement,’ Trump announced.
Some conservative outlets started referring to McDonald as the nation’s first “fraud czar,” and it wasn’t long before Team Trump embraced the label.
It’s probably worth clarifying the point of the position. When the White House refers to “fraud” in this context, it’s not talking about con artists fleecing unwitting or unwary consumers, such as the president’s scandal-plagued “Trump University” scam. It’s also not talking about entities such as Trump’s fraudulent charitable foundation, or the Trump Organization itself, which was found to have engaged in systemic fraud.
Rather, when Trump announced plans to nominate McDonald, the president was talking about other people who might’ve committed fraud through federal social insurance programs.
McDonald appears a rather conventional choice. He’s currently serving as the associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department under Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and he has more than a decade of experience as a federal prosecutor.
But one of the most provocative elements of these developments is the org chart.
Over the past half-century or so, an important institutional norm took root: The president nominates the attorney general, while for the sake of the justice system’s integrity and independence, a firewall between the White House and Main Justice was recognized as necessary.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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