Attorney General William P. Barr Appoints Timothy Shea Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-william-p-barr-appoints-timothy-shea-interim-us-attorney-district-columbia
Attorney General William P. Barr names Timothy Shea, one of his counselors, as the District’s interim U.S. Attorney
January 30, 2020 at 3:13 PM EST
Attorney General William P. Barr named former federal prosecutor Timothy Shea as the District’s interim U.S. Attorney, a Justice Department spokesman said Thursday.
Shea, 59, currently serves as a counselor to Barr at the Justice Department. He will oversee the nation’s largest U.S. attorney’s office. The 300 prosecutors there handle federal crimes, as well as local violent crimes within the city.
The announcement comes just a day before Jessie K. Liu, the city’s current U.S. Attorney leaves office on Friday.
Liu, 46, has served in the post for a little over two years. The White House announced last month that President Trump planned to nominate her to become the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes.
Prosecutors there have taken to trial former Trump confidante Roger Stone, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig. They are managing a grand jury investigation into former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who is accused of misleading federal investigators about a media disclosure, and are handling a leak case in which they have focused at least some of their questioning on former FBI Director James B. Comey. Both Comey and McCabe have been outspoken critics of President Trump, and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office has faced criticism that it is unfairly targeting the president’s political rivals.
Shea previously served as an assistant prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. According to his LinkedIn page, from 1997 to 1999, he was chief counsel for the Senate’s subcommittee on investigations under then chair Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine). There he investigated public corruption, securities fraud, money laundering, health care fraud, government waste and other fraud and abuse cases.