President Biden has decided to withdraw his nomination of April Perry as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and instead nominate her for a lifetime appointment as a district court judge. This decision was made after Republican Senator J.D. Vance blocked Perry’s confirmation as U.S. Attorney. Perry will now be nominated to fill the vacancy created by the expected elevation of Judge Nancy Maldonado to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
This move is part of Biden and Senator Dick Durbin’s efforts to confirm judges with lifetime appointments before the November election, as the Democrats could lose control of the Senate. Perry cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 14, 2023, but faced opposition from Vance, who has been mentioned as a possible 2024 running mate for ex-President Donald Trump. 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. 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 under Pasqual’s leadership in 2023, and preparations are underway for the October trial of ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, . 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. 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.
