CNN: Obama To Tap Loretta Lynch As New Attorney General

This post has been updated.

CNN is reporting that President Barack Obama will nominate Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, to succeed Eric Holder as attorney general.

Lynch would be the first African-American woman to assume the position.

She graduated from Harvard Law School in 1984, according to her official biography from the Justice Department. She joined the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York in 1990 and was appointed as the U.S. attorney by President Bill Clinton in 1999.

She left in 2001 and became a partner at the Hogan & Hartson law firm until she was reappointed to the U.S. attorney position by Obama in 2010. She also served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2005.

According to NPR, one of Lynch’s signature cases is the 1997 sexual assault of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima by New York police. One of the officers involved in the case was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Her office also indicted Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) on fraud charges earlier this year, according to Reuters.

UPDATE: 12:18 p.m. ET

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest did not explicitly deny the CNN report, but said that the president “hasn’t made a decision about who the next attorney general will be.”