Three finalists emerge in search for Minnesota s top federal prosecutor Search narrows to replace Trump appointee Erica MacDonald. March 11, 2021 6:01pm Text size Copy shortlink:
Three finalists have emerged in the search for Minnesota s next U.S. attorney.
Andrew Luger, who held the job from 2014 to 2017, and former assistant federal prosecutors Surya Saxena and Lola Velazquez-Aguilu have all made the shortlist, according to sources familiar with the selection process.
The search committee is being led by Minnesota U.S. Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar, with help from law enforcement officials and prosecutors from around the state. The chosen candidate, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, will succeed Erica MacDonald, a Trump appointee who last month heeded the call from President Joe Biden for U.S. attorneys in almost every state to step down.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis) | Dec 21, 2020 | News | 14
In the months since riots erupted in Minneapolis this summer, state and federal court documents have told a story that largely contradicts the widely disseminated narratives from Republican and Democratic politicians of what happened in that chaotic week.
President Donald Trump blamed the violence in Minneapolis on radical leftists, saying “antifa” led the riots. Gov. Tim Walz warned that Minneapolis and St. Paul were “under assault” by an “organized attempt to destabilize civil society.” Other public officials said waves of out-of-state agitators descended on the Twin Cities and caused the bulk of the violence.
But documents in dozens of state and federal criminal charges, reviewed by the Star Tribune, present a much more complicated narrative of splintered and disorganized crowds with no single goal or affiliation, and in some cases contradictory motives, that vastly outnumbered police and took advantage of a law