U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger prepares to leave office while GOP readies candidates for Trump to consider

Three decades ago, Andrew Luger’s biggest worry when he left his federal prosecutor job in Brooklyn to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office in his wife’s native Minneapolis was that he’d be bored here.

Yet during two stints as the state’s top federal prosecutor — first from 2014-17 and now since 2022 — some of the state’s most profound criminal cases have unfolded under his watch. His first term was marked by international terrorism recruitment investigations and the prosecution of Jacob Wetterling’s killer. Luger’s second will be defined by a novel approach in going after street gangs and a still-swelling array of pandemic and health care fraud cases.

“I wanted to take the impact that this office can have with significant cases and bring it to address what was happening in Minnesota, and in Minneapolis in particular, to make a difference,” Luger said in a recent interview in his office. “The idea that we could actually make a difference in a relatively new phenomenon, which is high violent crime in a city that just wasn’t known for that before.”

Luger said he will step down before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in Jan. 20, and he expects many of his Biden-appointed peers to do the same. His resignation will avoid a repeat of 2017 when Luger was stunned via a wave of Friday firings early in Trump’s first term.

Presidential appointees must clear the U.S. Senate. Under Biden, Minnesota’s two Democratic senators organized efforts to recommend U.S. Attorney, U.S. marshal and federal judicial candidates. But with a Republican returning to the White House, that task now shifts to Minnesota’s GOP congressional delegation.

Former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson is leading a committee to find candidates, and a deadline to apply passed on Friday. Other search committee members included attorney David Asp; John Hinderaker, president of the Center of the American Experiment; Allie Howell, trial and appellate counsel at the Upper Midwest Law Center; Tad Jude, a former state court judge who twice ran for office as a Republican in recent cycles; and Ilan Wurman, a University of Minnesota law professor.

Multiple sources told the Minnesota Star Tribune that those being considered to succeed Luger include Erica MacDonald, whom Trump first appointed as U.S. attorney in 2018. Joe Teirab, an ex-federal prosecutor and Republican defeated by Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., in November is also in the mix, as are Minneapolis attorney Ronald Schutz and Maple Grove attorney Ryan Wilson, who narrowly lost his 2022 race for state auditor as a Republican. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, who has led the office’s Feeding Our Future prosecution and its ongoing probe into fraud suspicions at some Minnesota autism centers, is also said to have applied ahead of last week’s deadline.

Sources did not identify a front-runner as the application window closed Friday.

Luger’s focus on violent crime, drug trafficking and fraud is not a radical departure from what might be expected from his Trump-appointed successor.

“Every U.S. Attorney comes in with their own ideas about how to improve service to the community, to the state. I did, and my successor will, and I’ll support those,” Luger said. “But I don’t expect a major shift fighting fentanyl trafficking, child exploitation, gangs, the Feeding Our Future-type frauds. That’s bipartisan.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick, as Luger’s first assistant, will take the reins of the office as Acting U.S. Attorney until the Senate approves Trump’s pick. She could be in that position for a while: Greg Brooker served as an interim U.S. Attorney for 15 months before MacDonald’s 2018 confirmation. When MacDonald left in February 2021, the office was again led on an acting basis for more than a year before Luger’s second confirmation in 2022.

Kirkpatrick will oversee an office that in 2025 will be dominated by lengthy, complex trials. As a continuation of Luger’s violent crime focus, 19 alleged members of the Highs gang are scheduled for a series of trials between March and July on charges that include racketeering.

More than a half-dozen, multi-defendant trials in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud case are scheduled for between February and December of next year, including a Feb. 3 trial involving Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock.

All of that is on top of potential new charges that could stem from an ongoing related FBI investigation into possible Medicaid fraud perpetrated by autism centers in Minnesota.

MacDonald, whom Trump picked to succeed Luger in 2018, emphasized that only the presidentially appointed leader of the U.S. Attorney’s Office will be departing and that “the bread and butter of the work of the office remains the same.”

MacDonald declined to comment when asked about her interest in succeeding Luger. Speaking generally, she anticipated that violent crime would remain a focus of the next administration. She praised Luger’s effectiveness at “communicating with the public on a regular basis about what is going on.”

“Just knowing that the federal authorities are watching can be enough to have a deterrent effect,” MacDonald said.

Though the U.S. Attorney is appointed by the president, MacDonald said that “if done right, it is not a political job.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a longtime friend and an influential figure in advancing Minnesota federal nominees, applauded Luger for laying out a vision at his swearing-in ceremony in 2022.

“A lot of his legacy will be the big cases he handled … but also it’s going to be accountability and trust when we really needed it,” Klobuchar said.

Luger said he began his second term with a much clearer focus due to the sustained spike in violent crime that began in 2020. He knew right away that the office needed a strategy.

“That doesn’t compare to anything we did last time because it was clear the day I started it, and it’s been clear every day I’ve been here that we needed to do this,” Luger said.

Luger prefers to do much of his strategizing over shared meals. During one such occasion with Attorney General Merrick Garland, Luger outlined the rise in shootings and carjackings in Minneapolis. Garland, Luger recalls, responded by asking if Luger considered pursuing racketeering conspiracy cases to tie together a history of shootings and other crimes as part of one big conspiracy case. The strategy had scarcely been deployed against Minneapolis gangs before and was instead long associated with organized crime.

That work led Luger to a fast friendship with Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, a fellow East Coaster who took over the department in 2022 after moving from Newark, N.J. The two led a panel on their work together earlier this month at a federal law enforcement conference that brought together more than 600 personnel from across the country.

In remarks kicking off the conference — which also included joining Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in presenting Luger with a plaque for his service — O’Hara called Luger “a crucial partner” and “a mentor and close friend.”

“People here should know that we here in the state of Minnesota have been fortunate to have a U.S. Attorney that is truly a national treasure,” O’Hara said.

The occasion had a funereal tone, as O’Hara acknowledged Luger’s imminent departure.

“It’s been really an incredible privilege to work with him and to see him be a leader that is astute enough to recognize what the major problem is and pivot quickly to bring federal resources to bear on it,” said Steven Dettelbach, ATF director, in an interview at the conference. Dettelbach has since said he too will resign before an expected Trump firing.

Retirement is off the table, Luger said, though he declined to disclose what might come next.

Luger returned to private practice after his 2017 dismissal, joining Jones Day. In mid-March 2020, he’d returned from an international work trip when he fell sick upon reaching home. His doctor confirmed Luger had COVID-19, which rapidly worsened and required three weeks in intensive care, two of them in a coma.

“I came as close to death as I think was possible,” Luger said. “I’m not an epiphany person, but you come out of a coma that not everybody was convinced you’d come out of, you have to reflect on what it means. I did not immediately say, ‘Boy, I want to be U.S. Attorney again,’ but I knew I wanted to serve, and I knew that I wanted as much meaning in my life going forward.”