Barack Obama is to nominate an African American federal prosecutor from Brooklyn, who made her name prosecuting police brutality, as the country’s next attorney general.
The White House said Obama would formally announce the nomination of Loretta Lynch, currently the US attorney for the eastern district of New York, as his replacement for Eric Holder on Saturday.
Obama is expected to emphasise her experience with banking and terrorism cases in her current role, in which she oversees all federal and civil investigations and cases in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.
Her supervision of the the high-profile prosecution of a New York police officer who sexually assaulted at Haitian immigrant in 1997 would also be portrayed as an asset.
The treatment of Abner Louima at the hands of the NYPD became a national symbol of police brutality and Lynch’s involvement in the experience could inform the justice department’s approach to dozens of civil rights investigations into police abuse, including in Ferguson, Missouri, the scene of riots earlier this summer.
Her nomination will need the approval of the Senate, where Democrats currently enjoy a majority. That changes in January, when the Republicans take control after the midterm elections earlier this week.
If nominated by the president and approved by the Senate, Lynch would become the first African American woman to take the top job in the justice department. Holder, who announced his retirement in September, was the first African American to hold the post.
“Ms Lynch is a strong, independent prosecutor who has twice led one of the most important US attorney’s offices in the country,” the White House said in a brief statement released late on Friday afternoon. “She will succeed Eric Holder, whose tenure has been marked by historic gains in the areas of criminal justice reform and civil rights enforcement.”
Lynch, 55, a Harvard-educated attorney, from Greensboro, North Carolina, recently spent time in Africa, as special counsel to the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
In her current role, Lynch has been at the centre of major justice department investigations into Citigroup and HSBC, will resulted in billion-dollar payouts by the banks. In April, her office indicted Republican US representative Michael Grimm for fraud.
