United States Attorney General | |
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Appointer | President of the United States with United States Senate advice and consent |
Term length | No fixed term |
Constituting instrument | 28 U.S.C. § 503 |
Formation | September 26, 1789 |
115 rows · President(s) 1: Edmund Randolph: Lawyer, 7th Governor of Virginia. Virginia: September 26, 1789 January 26, 1794 George Washington: 2: William Bradford: Lawyer, judge, ... 2nd term: 77th United States Attorney General (1991–1993) United States Deputy Attorney General (1990–1991)
Most states with term limits specify that an office-holder may serve two consecutive terms. Most states do not specify that the two terms are an absolute limit, so that a former Attorney General may usually run again after a time, usually unspecified, out of office. States with Attorney General term limits Attorney general term limits See also
Feb 25, 2010 · There is no set term of office; the US Attorney general serves at the pleasure of the President. So, up to 8 years (2 Presidental terms), unless they are nominated by …
Nov 09, 2018 · The first is that Whitaker was confirmed by the Senate back in 2004 when he was appointed as the United States Attorney for Iowa, a position that he served in for President George W. Bush’s ...
It’s been two days since President Trump fired former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replaced him, at least temporarily, with Sessions’ former Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker, a move that many found surprising since it went around the normal procedure that would have had Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein taking Sessions’ place as Acting Attorney General until a replacement can be confirmed. Many legal scholars are arguing, though, that Whitaker’s appointment is unconstitutional:
Doug holds a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020.
In May 1990 , Barr was appointed Deputy Attorney General, the official responsible for day-to-day management of the Department. According to media reports, Barr was generally praised for his professional management of the Department.
During his first tenure as AG, media characterized Barr as "a staunch conservative who rarely hesitates to put his hardline views into action". He was described as affable with a dry, self-deprecating wit. The New York Times described the "central theme" of his tenure to be "his contention that violent crime can be reduced only by expanding Federal and state prisons to jail habitual violent offenders". In an effort to prioritize violent crime, Barr reassigned three hundred FBI agents from counterintelligence work to investigations of gang violence. The New York Times called this move "the largest single manpower shift in the bureau's history".
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) financially assists Republicans in their Senate election contests; in the seven years from 2009 to 2016, Barr gave six donations to the NRSC totaling $85,400. In a five-month period from October 2018 to February 2019, Barr donated five times (around $10,000 every month) for a total of $51,000. When Barr started donating more frequently to the NRSC, it was uncertain whether then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions would remain in his job. Barr continued donating even after Sessions resigned, and after Trump nominated Barr for Attorney General. The donations stopped after Barr was confirmed by the Senate as Attorney General. NRSC refunded Barr $30,000 before his confirmation. Previously in 2017, Barr had said he felt "prosecutors who make political contributions are identifying fairly strongly with a political party."
In July 2020, Barr condemned large American tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple, and Hollywood studios, accusing them of "kowtowing" to the Chinese Communist Party for the sake of profits. He said that "Hollywood now regularly censors its own movies to appease the Chinese Communist Party, the world's most powerful violator of human rights."
Barr supports the death penalty, arguing that it reduces crime. He advocated a Bush-backed bill that would have expanded the types of crime that could be punished by execution. In a 1991 op-ed in The New York Times, Barr argued that death row inmates' ability to challenge their sentences should be limited to avoid cases dragging on for years: "This lack of finality devastates the criminal justice system. It diminishes the deterrent effect of state criminal laws, saps state prosecutorial resources and continually reopens the wounds of victims and survivors."
He also advocated the use of Guantanamo Bay to prevent Haitian refugees and HIV infected individuals from claiming asylum in the United States. According to Vox in December 2018, Barr supported an aggressive "law and order" agenda on immigration as Attorney General in the Bush Administration.
Barr was the second of four sons, and his younger brother Stephen Barr is a professor of physics at the University of Delaware. Barr grew up on New York City's Upper West Side. As a child, he attended a Catholic grammar school, Corpus Christi School, and then the non-sectarian Horace Mann School.
The president can fire the attorney general. O bama administration spokesmen are portraying the president as unable to overrule Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to have a special prosecutor determine whether to prosecute CIA interrogators who were cleared by Department of Justice career attorneys back in 2004.
Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, a former governor of and senator from Rhode Island, appointed Newbold Morris as a special assistant attorney general in the Justice Department to investigate corruption.
The attorney general serves at the pleasure of the president, and the president can determine that a prosecution would undermine the national security—a subject on which he has a wider perspective and a greater responsibility than the attorney general—and order that it not go forward.