Just one day after Republicans secured at least two more years of a Senate majority, Jeff Sessions is out as attorney general. Given President Trump’s public derision of Sessions after he recused himself from the Russia investigation, his departure comes as no surprise. According to his resignation letter, Trump had asked Sessions to step aside, despite reports that chief of staff John Kelly and former White House counsel Don McGahn asked Trump to hold his fire on Sessions until special counsel Robert Mueller released his impending report on possible Russian collusion.
Still, as then-candidate Trump’s first supporter from the Senate and as an acolyte of Trumpian protectionism, Sessions aggressively advanced Trump’s tough-on-crime and immigration agenda. Trump must choose his next attorney general wisely, as the void Sessions leaves behind will inevitably resonate. Here are six suggestions.
Ted Cruz
Just days after Democrats flushed $59 million down the toilet in a failed bid to send Rep. Beto O’Rourke to the Senate and replace Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, what could be more quintessentially Trump than tapping Cruz as his attorney general, presumably setting Cruz up to run for president again in six years and forcing Democrats to undergo a certainly expensive Texas election all over again? Plus, this idea isn’t out of left field. Trump reportedly considered Cruz before choosing Sessions two years ago.
Janice Rogers Brown
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Brown, a former United States circuit judge, is also on Trump’s shortlist for attorney general. Brown has consistently been a firebrand for proponents of limited government, and she would be an excellent choice to not only continue Sessions’ work on crime but also advance the rights of taxpayers and private property owners.
Thomas Homan
Though it was originally former President Barack Obama who appointed Homan as the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation operations, Homan quickly proved himself a hardliner on immigration and cozied up to the Trump administration. It was White House chief of staff John Kelly who prevented Homan from retiring, offering him the top job at ICE. Ultimately, Homan’s nomination stalled in the Senate, but thanks to the midterm election results, Trump will have a much easier time getting his picks through the process. Though Homan has since retired, it’s worth wondering if he would take the top job at the Department of Justice if Trump requested, given the pair’s previously positive working relationship.
Alex Azar
Trump has reportedly floated the idea of Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar as his next attorney general. Though Azar might seem like an unconventional pick for the job and his own spokesmen have already shot down the rumors, Azar has a pugnacious streak that fits the president’s preferred profiles. Although Azar served as president of the American division of Eli Lilly, he’s still been ruthless in slamming the pharmaceutical industry with transparency mandates during his tenure at the HHS. There’s not much indication on how he’d fall when it comes to immigration and cracking down on foreign criminals, but he’d certainly take the healthcare industry to task.
Lindsey Graham
Lindsay Graham 2.0 as attorney general would be a force to be reckoned with. With the South Carolina senator’s somewhat moderate policy positions in conjunction with his new Trumpian approach to politicking, Graham could be a more effective version of Sessions, minus the hardline political baggage and the wrath of Trump.
Bill Weld
Weld is most recently known as the Libertarian Party nominee for vice president in 2016, but before that, he was a wildly successful, two-term Republican governor of Democratic Massachusetts, the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department under former President Ronald Reagan, and a U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Weld became a national star for winning all but two convictions out of well more than 100 public corruption cases. Plus there’s a chance that at least one member of Trump’s inner circle would be on board with bringing Weld into the DOJ again: Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was the person who originally recommended to Reagan that Weld serve as a U.S. attorney.
