After nearly two years without a permanent leader, the search for the next U.S. attorney in Chicago is officially underway in a dramatically changed landscape that has seen years of political turmoil and a steep drop in productivity.
U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, a Peoria Republican, announced in a news release Tuesday that he is leading the search for potential nominees to give to President Donald Trump, who’s ultimate selection for the plum job would then go through a confirmation process in the U.S. Senate.
A former state and federal prosecutor, LaHood noted that there has been no Senate-confirmed top prosecutor in Chicago since U.S. Attorney John Lausch stepped down in March 2023, and the latest statistics show the once-vaunted office now has “one of the lower indictment rates across the country.”
“The importance of selecting a strong U.S. attorney who will understand the importance of implementing and enforcing our immigration laws, fight to stop rampant and rising criminal activity in Chicago, support our brave men and women in law enforcement, and prevent corruption is now more critical than ever,” LaHood said in the statement.
He added that “ensuring the policies and priorities of the Trump administration” will be implemented in Illinois will have to be a top focus of any candidate.
LaHood said “numerous” applications have been received and the review process “remains ongoing.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago was long considered one of the busiest in the nation, handling everything from terrorism, gang conspiracies and bank robberies to financial fraud and political corruption. The office has more than 300 employees, including about 140 prosecutors.
The office has recently secured convictions in several major public corruption cases, including the trials of former Ald. Edward Burke and former House Speaker Michael Madigan, two Democratic titans whose decades holding the reins of power culminated in separate guilty verdicts over the past year.
But while those high-profile cases have played out, the U.S. attorney’s office’s overall productivity has declined, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic virtually shut down the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in 2020 and parts of 2021.
In the most recent available statistics, the courthouse saw about 40 criminal trials in fiscal year 2024, a drop from more than 80 in 2003, under then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. While the number of prosecutors working in the office has declined only slightly, there has been a mass exodus of veteran litigators, contributing to the large gap in leadership.
The search for a new leader also will play out amid Trump’s rapid and drastic overhaul of the U.S. Justice Department, which included the dramatic resignations earlier this month of several high-ranking officials and prosecutors after the White House pressured prosecutors to drop the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Lausch was nominated by Trump in 2017 and held the post during the early portion of the Biden administration due to a bipartisan call to keep him on as a series of high-profile Illinois political corruption investigations continued to unfold.
Lausch officially stepped down March 11, 2023, days before the “ComEd Four” case alleging a scheme by the utility giant to bribe Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan went to trial.
For the past two years, the office has been overseen by acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual.
Meanwhile, April Perry, a former federal prosecutor, was nominated by President Joe Biden to succeed Lausch as the first woman to ever hold the office. And though Perry was confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2023, she never was confirmed by a full vote in the Senate.
That’s because of a blanket hold put on all U.S. attorney nominees by then-Republican Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, who said he held up final votes on the Senate floor to protest the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal investigations of Trump.
Vance later became Trump’s running mate in the 2024 election and is now the vice president.
Perry’s nomination was eventually pulled and she was instead selected to be a U.S. District judge in Chicago, a role she began last year.
