Delaware’s acting U.S. attorney resigns amid fight over Trump’s appointees

President Donald Trump’s U.S. attorney in Delaware abruptly resigned Friday amid a growing standoff over the administration’s authority to install loyalists in powerful prosecutorial roles while bypassing Senate confirmation and the courts.

Julianne Murray, a former chair of the Delaware Republican Party whom the Justice Department had appointed as interim U.S. attorney in the state this summer, announced her departure in a statement posted to social media. She said a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit disqualifying Trump’s U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Alina Habba, had made it clear to her she could no longer stay in her role.

Habba resigned from her post on Monday after the court ruled she had been unlawfully appointed through a process that administration officials had also used to keep Murray in her role. The Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit handles appeals arising from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and its rulings extend throughout that jurisdiction.

» READ MORE: Alina Habba steps down as U.S. attorney in New Jersey

“I naively believed that I would be judged on my performance and not politics,” Murray said in her statement. “Unfortunately that was not the case.”

Murray said she will continue to work for the Justice Department in a different capacity but did not indicate what her new job might be. Her former office will now be overseen by her first assistant U.S. attorney, Ben Wallace, who has worked as a prosecutor in the office since 2023.

Murray’s initial appointment in July drew controversy given her lack of prosecutorial experience and the fact that she was still serving as head of the Delaware Republican Party when she was named interim U.S. attorney. She resigned from that role shortly afterward.

Her statement Friday saying she would step down as U.S. attorney used many of the same turns of phrase as the resignation letter she submitted to the state party five months earlier. In both, she said she refused to allow her office “to be used as a political football.”

While the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys are appointed through a political process and are often affiliated with the president’s party, their jobs have traditionally been viewed as largely apolitical. Most come from traditional legal backgrounds, not openly partisan roles.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, his administration has made installing loyalists in these position a priority.

In addition to Murray and Habba, his former personal lawyer, the Justice Department has appointed other controversial allies to U.S. attorney roles on an interim basis. They included Bill Essayli, a former GOP state assemblyman named U.S. attorney in Los Angeles; Sigal Chattah, a former GOP committeewoman in Nevada; and Lindsey Halligan, another former Trump lawyer, in Eastern Virginia.

Federal law limited each of their interim appointments to a period of 120 days and empowered the federal courts to appoint a replacement if there was no Senate-confirmed nominee by that deadline. But when the terms of Murray, Habba and the others expired, the Justice Department sought to keep Trump’s picks in their roles through complex maneuvers that the 3rd Circuit has ruled were illegal.

In Murray’s case, Delaware’s chief U.S. district judge, Colm Connolly, a Trump appointee, began soliciting applications for her replacement weeks before her 120 days were up. The move drew a sharp rebuke from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, another former Trump attorney who now serves in the Justice Department’s No. 2 position.

When Murray’s interim term expired in November, Delaware’s judges declined to reappoint her but did not immediately name a replacement. The Justice Department responded by changing Murray’s title to “acting” U.S. attorney and maintained that the president had the authority to keep her in her job indefinitely.

Within hours of Murray’s resignation, the judges on Friday posted notice that they were appointing Wallace as acting U.S. attorney.

Unlike Habba, Chattah, Essayli, and Halligan, whose appointments federal courts have all ruled to be unlawful, Murray had not drawn a legal challenge questioning her legitimacy. In her statement Friday, she blamed Delaware’s U.S. senators — Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, both Democrats — of sinking her prospects in the job.

Normally, the president must formally nominate his U.S. attorney picks, and they must be approved in a Senate vote. In the case of Murray and the others, their home-state senators — all Democrats — had said they would withhold their support should Trump formally nominate them to the role.

That decision effectively killed any chance of their nominations moving forward under a Senate custom known as the “blue slip,” which allows senators to veto judicial and U.S. attorney nominees for their states.

Trump has railed against the blue slip tradition, saying it interferes with his ability to install his chosen candidates. Sen. Chuck Grassley — the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee — has resisted pressure from the president to abandon the custom, saying it gives senators of both parties an important voice in deciding who will fill powerful law enforcement roles in their states.

Coons and Blunt Rochester said they had concluded Murray “was not the right person” for the job after interviewing her and a number of other potential candidates.

“I look forward to working with the District Court’s appointed U.S. Attorney, Ben Wallace, and remain willing to work with the Trump administration to identify and confirm a mutually agreeable candidate,” Coons said in a statement.

Murray called the blue slip process “highly politicized” and “incredibly flawed,” saying it cost Delaware a U.S. attorney.

“The people that think they have chased me away will soon find out that they are mistaken,” she wrote. “I did not get here by being a shrinking violet.”