Attorney General William Barr appointed one of his deputies to a top position in the federal prosecutor’s office for Washington, D.C.
Michael Sherwin, a career prosecutor from Miami, impressed Barr with his investigation into the deadly December shooting at a naval air station in Pensacola, Florida, according to the Washington Post.
Sherwin, who specializes in national security cases, was one of several Justice Department officials who appeared alongside Barr at a news conference in January, during which the attorney general called the shooting “an act of terrorism.”
Late last year, Sherwin left his role as an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami to become an associate deputy attorney general for national security in Washington.
Current and former prosecutors told the Washington Post it was unusual for an attorney general to select a top deputy for a U.S. attorney.
But the White House announced Monday that President Trump would replace Washington’s interim U.S. Attorney Tim Shea, who is moving to the Drug Enforcement Administration, after a rocky tenure overseeing the final stages of the prosecutions against Trump allies Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. Trump plans to nominate Justin Herdman, the U.S. attorney in Cleveland, to the role in Washington.
As the No. 2 in the Washington office, Sherwin would have led the office through December if Shea’s appointment was not extended and no one else was appointed to the role.
Before he became one of Barr’s top deputies, Sherwin, 48, prosecuted a Chinese woman who had trespassed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and lied to federal investigators about why she was there. A jury convicted the woman, Yujing Zhang, on both counts.
Sherwin indicated that Zhang had sinister motives by filing classified information under seal in the case at least twice, though she was not charged with espionage.
He also prosecuted the case against a Chinese student, Zhao Qianli, who was sentenced to a year in prison for taking photos of a military base in Key West.
Both cases came as the United States was increasingly sounding the alarm on China’s espionage capabilities.
Sherwin’s career has also focused on terrorism-related cases. In 2011, he was asked by a deputy of then-Attorney General Eric Holder to serve in Afghanistan. While there, he assisted Afghan prosecutors in more than 120 criminal trials of suspected terrorists at Bagram Airfield.
