The front lines of federal law enforcement are manned by U.S. attorneys. Ninety-three of them preside over 94 offices spread across the United States and its territories, and have wide discretion on what federal cases to bring — or not bring. Traditionally, these officials have enjoyed some level of independence. That is changing. President Donald Trump has rapidly twisted law enforcement agencies into his personal legal task force during the first 100 days of his term, and particularly when it comes to U.S. Attorneys.

So far, Trump has formally submitted eight U.S. attorney nominations to the Senate. Attorney General Pam Bondi has nominated 16 interim U.S. attorneys, utilizing a loophole in federal code to avoid Senate confirmation.

Among the appointees are 2020 election deniers and right-wing conspiracy theorists — and many more seem to have few qualifications besides fealty to Trump.

This approach is “technically legal,” but helps corrode the rule of law, according to Toni Aguilar Rosenthal of the Revolving Door Project, a group that scrutinizes executive branch appointees.

“Trump’s appointment of individuals whose characteristics include sycophancy of the highest order, election denialism, service as his personal attorneys, and more, flies in the face of the very principle of prosecutorial independence,” Rosenthal said. “The installation of these actors via a procedural mechanism that denies the Senate its right to oversee, debate, and ultimately approve (or, not) these candidates is yet another example of this administration’s overt attempts to wield the Justice Department as a retributive weapon against all perceived enemies.”

U.S. attorneys are appointed to four-year terms in just one of three ways under the U.S. Code: by the president with the Senate’s confirmation, by the attorney general, or by a district court in the relevant district when there is a vacancy.

Where there is a U.S. attorney vacancy, an interim attorney must be selected. The attorney general typically starts by naming the interim and, so long as the person has not previously been nominated and rejected by the Senate in a confirmation hearing, that person is eligible to fill the role. An interim U.S. Attorney doesn’t have to undergo a Senate confirmation hearing at all.

Interim attorneys are only allowed to serve for 120 days after being named and, once that period is up, a U.S. district court (in the relevant district) can decide whether the interim should be reappointed or the court can make its own appointment.

Election Deniers And Conspiracy Theorists

Trump nominated Ed Martin to serve as U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. This office is considered the largest attorney’s office in the nation and prosecutes some of the most high-level criminal cases in America. Its location means that it is also directly responsible for prosecuting federal corruption in D.C.

Though elevated to this significant position of power “just minutes” after Trump’s inauguration, Martin does not actually have any experience as a prosecutor. According to a questionnaire he completed for the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has never tried a case to its final verdict. He has, however, defended several Jan. 6 rioters in court and has a long history of right-wing political activism: He was a deputy director of policy for the RNC for a time, served as chief of staff to Missouri’s Republican governor Matt Blunt and ran on the Republican ticket in several of his own failed political campaigns.

His allegiance to Trump has been no secret, either: Martin spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally on the eve of the insurrection at the Capitol, telling Trump’s supporters that “until we have a last breath and go home to the Lord,” they must work to “stop the steal.”

The very next day, when the Capitol was overrun by Trump’s supporters while Congress met to certify the election, Martin was outside of the building on its east flank, sending out tweets like “#DoNotCertify.”

And last September, as Trump was in the waning weeks of his campaign for the White House, Martin went to Trump’s New Jersey golf club to present an award to Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, an Army reservist, accused white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer sentenced to four years in prison for obstructing Congress on Jan. 6. Hale-Cusanelli was one of over 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants Trump pardoned indiscriminately after his inauguration.

In an interview with the Jewish publication Forward last week, Martin apologized and claimed he didn’t know about Hale-Cusanelli’s past and said he didn’t “condone it.” But a little more than a month before, Martin had praised Hale-Cusanelli at Trump’s club, Martin had in fact interviewed the accused Nazi sympathizer on his podcast. Martin suggested Hale-Cusanelli was having a bit of a laugh by posing in photos where he resembled Adolph Hitler.

Feds had “used” Hale-Cusanelli’s phone, Martin said in the July 2 interview, and “leaked a photo” to suggest that “MAGA people are antisemitic.”

“You had like a mustache shaved in such a way that you looked vaguely like Hitler and making jokes about it. Again, you know, not your best moment, but not illegal,” Martin said.

Martin’s political activism hasn’t stopped since he became an interim U.S. attorney, as noted by hundreds of conservative lawyers at the Society for the Rule of Law Institute.

In January, he fired and demoted a swath of federal prosecutors who worked Jan. 6 cases. In February, in a public letter to Elon Musk, as reports emerged about DOGE staffers running roughshod through federal agencies targeted for dismantling by the administration, Martin publicly vowed to use his powers to defend Musk. He would investigate people who have broken the law, he wrote, as well as anyone he thought may have “acted simply unethically” toward Musk or DOGE.

Not long after that, in an official post on X from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. while Trump was fighting with The Associated Press over the news outlet’s use of “Gulf of Mexico,” Martin referred to the attorney’s office as “President Trump’s lawyers,” though they are decidedly not Trump’s personal legal representatives.

A comprehensive ProPublica report published last week encapsulated Martin’s history as a political operative too, citing court records showing emails where Martin was involved in fomenting criticism of a judge online — something that typically runs afoul of ethical rules in the Justice Department’s manual.

ProPublica also reported for the first time last week that Martin has been held in civil contempt for his “willful disregard” of court orders and that he was once found liable for defamation following a yearlong stint leading the conservative advocacy group Eagle Forum. (Courts found he defamed Anne Schlafly Cori, daughter of Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly.)

And as first reported by The Washington Post, Martin did not disclose his over 150 appearances on Russian state media, a fact he was expected to disclose in a “media interview” section of his confirmation questionnaire.

But Martin isn’t the only person serving as a U.S. attorney who has falsely questioned the 2020 election. In Nevada, Sigal Chattah was sworn in as the interim U.S. attorney for the state on April 1. Trump nominated her in March.

Chattah represented a fake elector in Nevada who claimed the 2020 election was rigged against Trump. In 2022, when Chattah was running for Nevada attorney general against Aaron Ford, a leaked text to a blogger showed her saying that Ford, who is Black, should be “hanging from a fucking crane” and that he was “like the leader” of Hamas. She accused him of “making tons of money while the People in Gaza are starving” too, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Chattah claimed she was invoking a curse from her Israeli background, not being racist.

Until recently, Chattah also represented far-right activist Robert Beadles as he sued to overturn a state law known as the Election Worker Protection Act that increased criminal penalties for people who intimidate, abuse or threaten election workers. Chattah argued the law violated the First Amendment. A judge dismissed the lawsuit last April, finding the law posed no imminent threat to Beadles or the state. Beadles appealed and Chattah went to bat for him before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — but she lost there, too, when the appellate court found the claims weren’t credible.

It’s not unusual for some U.S. attorneys to have backgrounds in politics — but several people currently serving under Trump have demonstrated aggressive fealty towards the president. Bilal Essayli, a longtime Trump champion, was sworn in as a U.S. attorney for central California on April 2 by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee after Bondi appointed him to the interim role.

In a post on X last May, after Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels, Essayli gushed over Trump and slammed the verdict as a “shame to our legal system and part of the Democratic Party’s threat to our democracy.”

Trump, Essayli said, would “restore the rule of law and our constitutional principles.”

In February, while serving as an assemblyman for California, Essayli introduced legislation targeting LGBTQ+ students. The bill was intended to stop trans students from playing on sports teams that don’t align with their assigned gender at birth. The bill also applied to bathrooms and locker rooms.

The bill ultimately failed to pass and Essayli seethed online over the defeat, saying it was proof of Democrats’ “war against women and parental rights.”

He’s now the chief federal prosecutor for the largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country outside of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C.

Strategic Alliances And Questionable Qualifications

Trump has taken a particular interest in the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, which oversees not only Wall Street, but happens to be the jurisdiction where Trump faced several civil and criminal trials over the past several years. Though those trials happened at the state and local level, Trump has vowed to take revenge on some of the officials involved in the prosecutions.

The district has been awash in turmoil since the start of Trump’s second term. When acting deputy U.S. attorney general Emil Bove — once Trump’s personal lawyer — directed charges against New York Mayor Adams be dismissed in February, it prompted the Southern District’s then-interim attorney Danielle Sassoon to resign. Sassoon, who is a Republican, said she was “confident” Adams had accepted illegal campaign contributions and bribes. Trump appointed Jay Clayton, the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, as the district’s U.S. attorney on April 16. Clayton does not have any experience as a prosecutor.

Bondi also appointed John Sarcone to be interim U.S. attorney in New York’s Northern District in March. Sarcone has never prosecuted a case, has openly called for former President Joe Biden to be “tried for treason” and has said he wants Hillary Clinton jailed for treason.

Sarcone served on the legal team for Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016 and, once Trump was in office, was named as a regional administrator for the General Services Administration. Sarcone also ran a failed campaign against Letitia James for the New York attorney general role.

Trump picked Alina Habba, his former personal lawyer in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case and White House counselor, for the interim attorney role in New Jersey.

Of the many interim U.S. attorneys nominated so far, Senate Democrats have largely zeroed in on stopping Martin’s ascendancy. Sen. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on April 1 that he intended to put a hold on Martin’s confirmation hearing.

Martin had “demolished the firewalls between the White House and his own office within the Justice Department,” Schiff said.

CBS reported Tuesday that Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is urging Republican lawmakers to hold a confirmation hearing for Martin before his 120 days are up. That deadline is fast approaching. As of April 28, Martin is pushing nearly 100 days in the role already.

Through these appointments, researchers at the Revolving Door Project say the writing is on the wall.

“When the only qualification to be a U.S. attorney is that one is more loyal to Trump than to the rule of law, the inevitable consequence is the corruption of the very basis of the American legal system, and a death knell for the idea that no one is above the law,” Rosenthal said.