WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris’s team is quietly weighing potential nominees for attorney general, looking to see who could become America’s top federal law enforcement official if she defeats Donald Trump, the federal criminal suspect who threw the Justice Department into chaos during his presidency and as he tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Harris, a former prosecutor herself, is known for a close relationship with Attorney General Merrick Garland, who oversaw the sprawling investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and appointed special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought two criminal cases against Trump.
But Garland has already spent more than 3 1/2 grueling years leading the Justice Department and is slowly climbing the list of longest-serving attorneys general in U.S. history. And Harris has said her potential presidency would not be a continuation of President Joe Biden’s administration.
Many variables are up in the air, including the timeline of a theoretical Garland departure at a critical time for the department, when many longtime employees are tense about what the future of the Justice Department looks like if Trump wins, or falsely declares victory, as he did in 2020. Garland — who oversaw the Justice Department in the wake of the biggest crisis since Watergate, when Trump tried to leverage Justice Department appointments to overturn his election loss — is likely to stay on at least long enough to ensure a smooth transition.
Another key factor is the party makeup of the Senate, which would have to confirm any potential Harris nominee if she takes the White House.
Still, a few names have emerged for the position of 87th attorney general of the United States.
Four sources familiar with the Harris campaign discussions told NBC News that three major names are being considered: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who was on Harris’ shortlist for vice president; former Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who served as the No. 3 official at the Justice Department until earlier this year; and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams.
Another name in the mix is Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., two sources said, though she is less than two years into the six-year term she was elected to in 2022, which would complicate matters given that the Senate is expected to be closely divided in the next session. If Cortez Masto leaves the Senate to become attorney general, Nevada’s Republican governor would then get to choose the state’s senator through the next general election.
Three officials on Harris’ team said potential names for attorney general are being floated, but that the discussions are preliminary as Harris focuses on campaigning and winning the election in 12 days. “The Transition does not make staffing selections ahead of the election and any speculation to the contrary is fiction,” a spokesperson for the Harris transition team told NBC News in a statement. “Instead, we are focused on putting in place the infrastructure necessary to be ready.”
Cooper, a longtime attorney general of North Carolina, is completing his second term as governor of the state and is not eligible to run again this year. Cooper withdrew from consideration to be Harris’ vice presidential nominee last summer, saying the timing was wrong. (Democrats had raised concerns about a state law that would have allowed North Carolina’s far-right lieutenant governor to cover Cooper’s absence while he campaigned across the state.) The governor had been scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention this summer, where he touted Harris’ leadership.
Gupta, who won Senate confirmation on a 51-49 vote as associate attorney general in 2021, is a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during President Barack Obama’s second term.
Despite her close confirmation vote, Gupta has strong relationships across the aisle, having won praise from many conservatives and law enforcement officials, including the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and even the National Fraternal Order of Police, which has thrice endorsed Trump. The head of the national FOP said ahead of Gupta’s departure as DOJ’s No. 3 official that she had “brought people together” and “earned the trust and respect of the FOP and our membership.” Grover Norquist, the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, previously said Gupta was “strongly qualified, effective, principled, and driven by a desire to seek common purpose and consensus.”
Williams has served as the first Black U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — an office jokingly referred to as the “Sovereign District of New York” due to its size and perceived independence from Justice Department headquarters — since 2021. He was confirmed to the job on a unanimous voice vote in theSenate.
Williams has overseen numerous high-profile prosecutions including the conviction of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., on corruption charges; the ongoing prosecution of Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams; and cases against prominent figures like Sean “Diddy” Combs, cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Harris’ campaign includes numerous Justice Department veterans, including Tony West, her brother-in-law who, like Gupta, held the No. 3 position at the Justice Department. In the final days of her campaign, Harris is navigating tricky waters with the Justice Department: presenting a case against Trump to the American people while avoiding making comments that Trump’s defense team could use in a future lawsuit that could further delay or complicate the Justice Department’s election interference case against him, a case Trump has already pushed back until after the 2024 election.
On Tuesday, Harris will deliver her “closing argument” to voters across the country with a speech at the Ellipse, where Trump lied to his supporters about the 2020 election on January 6, 2021, urging them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
Trump has frequently downplayed the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and praised the criminal defendants who carried it out, promising to pardon an unspecified number of them during his first days in office. In a recent filing, Smith’s office said Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 attack, saying the Republican nominee “intentionally incited his supporters” to obstruct the certification of Biden’s victory.
While many of the Jan. 6 defendants have told the court they were “misled” by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and regret being naive enough to fall for them in the first place, Trump has not backed down from the election lies, which his lawyers have insisted were made in good faith and “not unreasonable at the time.”
Harris’ campaign is bracing for the possibility that Trump will once again claim victory regardless of reality, as even some of his allies expect him to do. Trump has set the stage and focused his anger on majority-nonwhite cities in swing states including Detroit and Philadelphia.