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With the 2024 presidential election set to be decided in less than two weeks, speculation regarding the potential cabinet picks for both major party candidates is rife. One of the important roles the election victor will choose is who will serve as the United States Attorney General.

While neither former President Donald J. Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris has publicly stated who they prefer for the role, presidential transition documents and conversations among lawmakers on Capitol Hill have given some idea of who Trump is considering. Among the names being circulated are at least three sitting United States senators, a former acting Attorney General, a conservative legal expert, the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a U.S. District Court judge. Here they are, in no particular order:

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM!?

One name that was floated even before the 2024 election cycle kicked off in earnest is U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). While the pick would likely rankle conservatives and MAGA loyalists alike, Graham does have extensive legal experience and has been a close ally of Trump—even during the 2024 Republican primary.

Before his election to public office, Graham served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps with the U.S. Air Force—eventually becoming the military service branch’s top prosecutor in Europe. After leaving active duty, Graham worked in private practice as an attorney for several years before being elected to the South Carolina State House of Representatives and, subsequently, the U.S. Congress.

From 2019 until 2021, Graham served as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is currently its ranking member. The South Carolina Republican—known for being a bipartisan lawmaker—made waves for his unusually vocal criticism of Democrats over their treatment of Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Graham would represent a wet and compromising approach to the Office of the Attorney General, representing almost no change from the public disaster that was Bill Barr. With Trump only being able to serve one more term, it would be a huge waste of time and indeed an unnecessary risk to appoint someone like Graham.

SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY.

Along with Sen. Graham, another member of the upper house of Congress said to be under consideration for Attorney General is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). Like Graham, the senior Senator from Missouri has extensive legal experience in private and government practices.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Hawley worked as a lawyer in private practice from 2008 to 2011 before joining the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty as an attorney. While at the Becket Fund, Hawley served on a legal team that won Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores—a Supreme Court decision that held privately-owned, for-profit companies were exempt from Obamacare’s contraception mandate.

In 2016, Hawley was elected as the Attorney General for the State of Missouri, where he served before defeating incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in 2018. Sen. Hawley serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and has developed a reputation as an aggressive and formidable interrogator of witnesses brought before the body.

SENATOR ERIC SCHMITT. 

Joining Sen. Hawley as a contender for Attorney General is the junior Senator from Missouri, Eric Schmitt. The 49-year-old lawmaker succeeded Hawley as Attorney General for Missouri before being elected to the United States Senate in 2022. Also like Hawley, Schmitt has been an outspoken critic of the Biden-Harris DOJ and its partisan lawfare campaign against President Trump and his allies.

A conservative and populist politician, Schmitt checks a lot of the right boxes for an Attorney General nominee. Additionally, the junior Senator from Missouri has joined Trump on the campaign trail as a confidant, helping with the Republican nominee’s debate preparation ahead of Trump thrashing Joe Biden on CNN in June. Biden’s debate performance was so catastrophic he subsequently quit the presidential race.

As Missouri’s Attorney General, Schmitt worked to invalidate Obamacare. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he sued school districts and municipalities for overstepping their legal authority when implementing mask mandates.

FORMER ACTING AG JEFF CLARK.

One of the most interesting names being circulated is former acting U.S. Attorney General Jeff Clark. The former acting Attorney General in the final days of Trump’s first term in office, Clark has been one of the top targets of the Biden-Harris government’s lawfare campaign against Trump and his allies.

Clark, a well-known and respected administrative lawyer, was appointed Assistant Attorney General during the Trump administration. During this time, he became concerned about potential voter fraud in the November 2020 election. He has drawn the ire of Democrats for simply authoring an unpublished legal memo on the constitutional actions Georgia state lawmakers could take to challenge the 2020 presidential election results due to allegations of voter fraud.

Two years ago, federal law enforcement agents acting on behalf of the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) raided Clark’s home—though the agency has yet to publicly state why the raid was conducted. Perhaps in anticipation of Clark’s possible appointment to Attorney General, Democrats have been pursuing an effort to strip the attorney from practicing law in the District of Columbia.

A documentary drawing attention to the dubious lawfare campaign against Clark was recently released to the public. Fearless Point of Attack: The Jeff Clark Story  features numerous attorneys and others defending Clark, including law professor Robert Destro, who stated, “Jeff is being persecuted, I would argue, because he gave legal advice that he thought was good faith legal advice.”

MIKE DAVIS. 

Conservative legal expert Mike Davis is another name that has begun floating around those close to the Trump campaign. Davis, the founder, and president of the Article III Project (A3P), previously served as Sen. Chuck Grassley‘s (R-IA) chief counsel for judicial nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under Grassley’s chairmanship—and with the aid of Davis—the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed a historic 85 federal judicial nominees put forward by then-President Trump to lifetime appointments. Among them were two United States Supreme Court Justices, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch.

In addition to his work on judicial and legal matters, Davis heads the Internet Accountability Project (IAP), a nonprofit group aimed at holding Big Tech accountable for its partisan political bias and economic distortions. Davis has been an outspoken proponent of religious liberty, and his deep ties to those in the MAGA and America First movements make him a fan favorite.

On social media, Davis has routinely pointed out the hypocrisy and unprecedented lawfare campaign pushed by Democrats through hyperbolic quips about the actions he’d take as “Acting Attorney General.”

JUDGE AILEEN CANNON. 

A somewhat surprising name has also emerged from a leaked document related to Trump’s presidential transition team. The document, titled “Transition Planning: Legal Principals,” lists U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon as a possible choice for Attorney General.

Cannon, nominated by Trump as a federal judge in 2020, gained attention after dismissing a case involving 40 criminal counts against the former president regarding his handling of classified documents post-presidency. Cannon found many issues with the lawfare prosecution, ultimately ruling that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional. Smith was neither appointed by the president nor confirmed by Congress.

The U.S. District Court judge appears second on the attorney general list, following former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton.

FORMER SEC CHAIRMAN JAY CLAYTON.

Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the SEC, is considered a top contender for Attorney General. With extensive experience in several fields of law as a partner with Sullivan & Cromwell, Clayton has an impressive resume—especially regarding legal representation in the U.S. financial sector.

Clayton was one of the first appointments announced by then-President-elect Donald Trump, being tapped for the role of SEC chairman on January 4, 2017. Interestingly, Clayton’s nomination was endorsed by future Trump antagonist, former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. It was Vance’s office that colluded with Mark Pomerantz in its investigation of Trump regarding an alleged 2016 campaign finance violation and business record fraud.

The dubious case would later be prosecuted by Vance’s successor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and is currently pending appeal. Some have speculated that Pomerantz pushed Bragg into the prosecution despite its legally questionable grounding.

Jack Montgomery contributed to this report.


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