U.S. attorney finalists named

Trump will pick from three

WASHINGTON - The two senators from Wisconsin have agreed on a list of finalists for the post of U.S. attorney in the state’s Eastern District, recommending three candidates to President Donald Trump.

The finalists are John Franke, Jonathan Koenig and Matthew Krueger.

Koenig is currently the chief of the appellate division in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Franke is a former Milwaukee County judge and a former assistant U.S. attorney in Wisconsin.

Krueger is an assistant U.S. attorney in the state’s Eastern District.

The president is expected to choose from those names when he nominates a new top federal prosecutor for the Eastern District, which covers 28 Wisconsin counties, including Milwaukee.

The recommendations from Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin mark the resumption of a bipartisan judicial nominating process that broke down last year over a federal appeals court vacancy.

Wisconsin’s U.S. senators have a long tradition of jointly vetting applicants for federal prosecutor and judge from the state through a nominating commission made up of appointees from both parties.

That system broke down in 2016 over the na- tion’s oldest judicial vacancy of its kind — in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. That seat has gone unfilled since 2010.

But Baldwin and Johnson announced earlier this year they had reached agreement to resume a sixmember nominating commission to recommend candidates for federal judge and U.S. attorney.

New presidents pick their own U.S. attorneys, so Wisconsin’s nominating commission has fielded applications this year for the jobs of top federal prosecutor in both the eastern and western districts of the state.

The commission is also reviewing applicants for Wisconsin vacancies in the federal judiciary, including the Seventh Circuit seat that has been a source of partisan acrimony.