Today, the Justice Department announced that Craig S. Morford, currently the interim U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, will eventually replace Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty as the acting deputy. McNulty announced earlier this year that he’ll be gone by late summer or until the administration names a successor.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, however, has signaled that it won’t confirm any senior Justice Department appointees until it gets the documents and testimony it wants from the White House. So it’s unclear when (if ever) Morford will take McNulty’s place.
Morford has something of a high-profile background — he led the prosecution of former Rep. James Trafficant (D-OH) and the Department’s 2004 internal review of how prosecutors handled the case of three men accused of being part of a terrorist “sleeper cell” in the Detroit area.