David Sullivan wants to be Connecticut’s next U.S. Attorney.
Former federal prosecutor David X. Sullivan is trodding a murky path. Sullivan, the 2020 Republican candidate for Congress in Connecticut’s Fifth District, has let the word go forth that he would like to be the state’s next U.S. Attorney.
How one snags a position that will require a nomination by a Republican president to serve in a state dominated by Democrats can be a mystery. And tricky. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy use a committee that, if recent federal nominations are any indications, gives little weight to courtroom experience beyond the informal arena of small claims contests.
Connecticut’s Republicans remain fractious and without a winning leader as they wander among the ruins. George Logan would have enjoyed outsized influence had he won his second bid for Congress, but he suffered a bruising defeat last month. Logan, an Ansonia Republican, lost by more than 10 times the margin of his 2022 defeat by incumbent Democrat Jahana Hayes. Republicans lost members in both houses of the state legislature.
Eight years ago, then-Greenwich Time reporter Neil Vigdor listed a host of possibilities for the state’s top federal prosecutor to succeed talented inside operator and Lamont lawyer Deidre Daley. The position went to veteran prosecutor John Durham. He would go on to blot his copy by heading a dubious investigation of Robert Mueller’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s hundreds of contacts with Russian influence-peddlers. The effort was so questionable by what was left of normal standards that Durham loyalist Nora Dannehy, now a member of Connecticut’s highest court) walked away from the team.
Linda McMahon, the state party’s most prominent member, stayed busy promoting the campaign of loathsome demagogue Donald Trump. She has been co-chair of the of the shuttered Trump University’s chancellor’s transition committee. The results of those efforts–Gaetz for Attorney General, the horrific Hegseth to Defense, Assad booster Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, medical Luddite Kennedy to lead health policy–cause one to wonder what happened to the moderate Republican who spent $100 million to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. These nominations are stains that will not soon fade. They are not people the 2010 and 2012 Linda McMahon, now Secretary of Education-designate for dismantling, would have supported for vital positions.
Justin Clark, formerly of West Hartford, is said to be on the lucrative inside of the perpetually Blame America First Trump inner circle. The former Al Gore campaign employee is a Trump advisors in what their leader calls “the garbage can of the world.” Clark, who ran Greenwich Republican Tom Foley’s two losing campaigns for governor, was an assistant to the egregious Steve Bannon in 2016 and a key figure in Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, the won he lost by 7 million votes.
Trump is likely to run out of family members and children’s spouses and ex-fiancès before he gets around to filling the U.S. Attorney post in Connecticut. So someone with a law degree and at least a modicum of law enforcement experience may get the job.
Sullivan spent 30 years as a federal prosecutor before retiring to run for Congress four years ago. He is a lawyer with the well-known firm McCarter & English and teaches trial practice at Yale Law School. Sullivan, 65, said in an interview Friday that he “would be the person to enforce our laws fairly.” That would usually be a prerequisite to consideration for the job but these are different and ominous times. A pledge to enforce laws fairly may be disqualifying for the next four years.
Published December 13, 2024.