President Joe Biden intends to end his bid to make April Perry the first woman to serve as Chicago’s top federal prosecutor by instead turning to a priority of his and nominating her for a lifetime role as a district court judge, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
The White House on Wednesday will officially announce Biden’s intention to nominate Perry to be a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois. When Biden makes his nomination, he will have to withdraw his previous nomination of Perry to be U.S. attorney here. For months, the effort to confirm Perry was stalled by Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio who said he was blocking her confirmation to protest the federal prosecution of Donald Trump.
That means the search must begin all over again for a successor to former Chicago U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who left office in March 2023. Given the upcoming presidential election in November — and that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president — a new nominee for one of Illinois’ most powerful posts might not be named until 2025 by the election’s winner.
That could lead to one of the longest vacancies in the history of the office.
The quest by Biden and Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, to confirm judges with lifetime appointments comes as the Senate has limited time left to deal with confirmations before November, where the Democrats could lose the White House and the Senate.
This latest move will also make moot the blockade thrown up by Vance. Perry cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 14, 2023, only to face the buzzsaw of Vance, who has been mentioned as a possible 2024 running mate for ex-President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Senate rules allow any senator to hold up a nominee.
Perry is being lined up to fill the slot created by the expected elevation of U.S. District Judge Nancy Maldonado to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Senate Judiciary Committee on April 18 advanced Maldonado’s nomination to the full Senate. No date has been set for Maldonado’s confirmation vote.
The White House must wait for the vacancy to occur before Perry’s formal nomination can be sent to the Senate. With the Biden administration racing to fill the lifetime appointments, Perry comes with the added advantage of having already gone through the intensive FBI vetting process, which can take months because it checks out nominees for federal prosecutors and judges back to the age of 18.
Diversifying the historically white and male-dominated federal judiciary has been a priority for Biden and Durbin. So it was no surprise when they took a similar approach to nominating a new U.S. attorney — a position that has also been dominated in Chicago by white males.
Vance’s objection to Perry had nothing to do with her gender, and little to do with her background. Rather, Vance blocked Perry’s confirmation to protest Trump’s multiple federal indictments.
The Sun-Times noted last month that Perry’s nomination had already been obstructed by Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” long enough to raise questions about whether she would actually be confirmed as Chicago’s top federal prosecutor.
Since the nomination of Dan Webb for the office in 1981, the average wait from nomination to confirmation has been less than three months, records show. Perry waited more than three times as long for a confirmation vote.
Durbin has said every U.S. attorney since 1975 — whether nominated by a Democrat or Republican — has been confirmed unanimously, bypassing a roll call vote. Meanwhile, records reviewed by the Sun-Times show the office here has been occupied at some point in every calendar year since 1875.
That would change if no nominee is confirmed in 2024.
Acting U.S. Attorney Morris “Sonny” Pasqual, a well-respected veteran prosecutor, has led the office since Lausch’s departure. The feds secured a series of high-profile verdicts under Pasqual’s leadership in 2023, and preparations are underway for the October trial of ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, a Chicago Democrat indicted under Lausch.
Trump nominated Lausch for the job during Trump’s first year in the White House in 2017. He did so in concert with Durbin and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, another Illinois Democrat.
Lausch served five years in the office and was well-regarded in deep-blue Illinois despite his nomination by a Republican president. Durbin and Duckworth even urged Biden to keep Lausch in office after Biden’s inauguration in 2021.
Biden agreed and didn’t announce his intention to nominate Perry until June 2023, after Lausch resigned.
Perry is senior counsel at GE HealthCare. She worked as a federal prosecutor in Chicago from 2004 until 2016. She later served as chief ethics officer for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx from 2017 until her resignation in 2019. She has said Foxx declined to follow her advice during the prosecution of actor Jussie Smollett.