President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday said he would pick Jay Clayton, the top Wall Street enforcer in the first Trump administration, as the head federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, a critical post for an incoming president who has vowed revenge on those who pursued him in the courts.
Mr. Trump made the announcement on his social media platform Truth Social, where he called Mr. Clayton “a highly respected business leader, counsel and public servant.” Mr. Clayton still must be confirmed by the Senate.
The office of U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is considered one of the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s offices in the nation. It holds sway over some of America’s most powerful businesses and financial institutions, and it has aggressively targeted politicians accused of corruption.
If Mr. Clayton becomes U.S. attorney, he would be in a position of keen interest to Mr. Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies earlier this year in a hush-money case in New York State Supreme Court. Mr. Trump vowed during his campaign to exact revenge against the officials who prosecuted him.
In the past Mr. Trump has called for the prosecution of people like Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney whose office prosecuted him in the hush-money case; Justice Arthur Engoron, the state judge who ordered Mr. Trump to pay $454 million after a civil trial in which he was found liable in a fraud lawsuit; and the state attorney general, Letitia James, whose office brought the case.
Mr. Clayton, an attorney at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, has been one of Mr. Trump’s advisers. And it had been believed he was under consideration for U.S. attorney general before Mr. Trump said Wednesday that he would choose Matt Gaetz, a former Republican congressman and fervent supporter.
Mr. Clayton became chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017. His tenure was marked by a generally pro-business approach, though his office brought some of the first enforcement actions involving crypto assets. His office also brought an enforcement action against Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who has become a top adviser to the president-elect, over his use of what was then Twitter, which Mr. Musk later bought and rebranded as X.
Damian Williams, a longtime Southern District prosecutor, has led the office since being appointed by President Biden in 2021. A spokesman for Mr. Williams declined to comment.
It is not uncommon for incoming presidents to say whom they will choose as new U.S. attorneys, though not necessarily this quickly. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District has a history of working independently of the Justice Department in Washington, earning the office the nickname the “Sovereign District.”
Under Mr. Williams, the office won the conviction in July of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat who later resigned. In September, the office announced a corruption indictment against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, also a Democrat, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Last year, federal prosecutors working for Mr. Williams brought the successful criminal prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried over the multibillion-dollar collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s conviction by a federal jury in Manhattan was one of the Southern District’s signature corporate fraud cases of the past decade.
Mr. Clayton is not a former prosecutor — often seen as a prerequisite to being named as a Southern District U.S. attorney — but he has long wanted the Manhattan post, said Steven Peikin, a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell who served as his co-director of enforcement at the S.E.C.
In fact, toward the end of his tenure at the S.E.C., Mr. Clayton nearly got the job when he emerged as a potential candidate to replace Geoffrey S. Berman, a Trump-appointee who then held the post.
In a surprise move, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, announced in June 2020 that Mr. Berman had resigned as U.S. attorney for the Southern District and Mr. Clayton would replace him. But Mr. Berman denied he had stepped down. He was then fired by President Trump, an action he did not contest after he was assured his deputy, Audrey Strauss, would lead the office.
The affair was worrisome to some Justice Department officials because at the time Mr. Berman’s office was handling cases involving people close to Mr. Trump. The episode raised concerns about possible political interference in criminal investigations.
Mr. Berman, in a statement to The New York Times on Thursday evening, said of Mr. Clayton, “Jay is an exceptional lawyer and will be an excellent United States attorney.”
At the S.E.C., Mr. Clayton confronted the world’s richest man — Mr. Musk, who is now a close confidant of the president-elect. The agency imposed penalties on Mr. Musk in 2018 after he published misleading information on Twitter about a potential buyout of his electric car company, Tesla. The commission reached a settlement in which Mr. Musk stepped aside as chairman of Tesla for three years and paid a fine of $20 million.
Once his term at the commission ended, Mr. Clayton returned to Sullivan & Cromwell, where he advises corporate clients, particularly on matters of regulation and investigations. He also serves on the board of Apollo Global Management, a giant private equity firm and in 2021, joined the advisory board for a digital asset platform called Fireblocks.
The post Trump Chooses Former S.E.C. Chief as Manhattan’s Top Federal Prosecutor appeared first on New York Times.
