Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin reportedly is being considered for a Justice Department role under President Joe Biden.
Sherwin, appointed by former Attorney General William Barr in May of last year, has overseen the investigation and prosecution of individuals involved with the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. More than 200 arrests have been made so far.
Biden, whose attorney general nominee Merrick Garland awaits a Feb. 22 Senate confirmation hearing, is expected to nominate a new U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.
DOJ officials, however, have discussed keeping the 49-year-old Sherwin in a different job to continue overseeing the Capitol riot investigation, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
Prosecutors around the country have been asked to apply for assignments lasting as long as nine months to work on the Capitol riot probe under the Washington U.S. attorney's office, according to WSJ.
That indicates the investigation will last well into the new administration.
Barr said one reason he appointed Sherwin to his current post was that he spoke his mind without regard to politics.
One example of that occurred in a December news conference during which Sherwin announced new charges in the decades-long investigation into the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The acting attorney quoted Robert Mueller, whose Russia investigation had been criticized by Barr.
"That was on his own," Barr said of Sherwin's comments. "That's what I like about him. He's just very blunt and direct, he doesn't play games. If you give him an assignment, he says, 'Yep,' and he goes off and he handles it."
Through his years as a prosecutor, Sherwin seems to have kept his politics relatively private.
Sherwin worked for a decade in Miami as a federal prosecutor on drug-cartel, white-collar and national-security cases. Colleagues supported his candidacy for a federal judgeship in 2017, though he was not nominated for the vacancy.
"His biggest problem was he had no political support at all," Miami defense attorney Roy Black said of Sherwin at the time.
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