MEXICO CITY _ President Donald Trump is expected to nominate a Washington attorney, Christopher Landau, to be the next United States ambassador to Mexico, the White House said in a statement Tuesday.
Trump's planned appointment comes at a time of tense relations between the U.S. and Mexico and nearly a year after the resignation of the previous U.S. ambassador, Roberta Jacobson, who was one of several high-profile State Department officials to step down during the Trump presidency.
Landau, a 55-year-old graduate of Harvard Law School, is a constitutional and appellate attorney who has argued before the Supreme Court. Before entering private practice, he was a law clerk for conservative Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. He is currently a partner at the law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
He is the son of George Landau, a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela.
Christopher Landau does not have diplomatic experience. He was born in Spain and spent part of his childhood in Latin America, according to the White House, which noted that he is fluent in Spanish.
If his nomination is approved, he will be responsible for managing the increasingly fraught relationship between two longtime allies, which has been strained since Trump's election by the president's frequent criticism of Mexico on matters of immigration, trade and security and his persistent push to build a border wall between the two countries.
