Since John A. Sarcone III was appointed to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in Albany, he has sparred with the police and with reporters, assailed liberal immigration policies and claimed that an undocumented man had tried to kill him.
Now, his interim tenure is in jeopardy. In a rare move, the judges of the Northern District of New York have declined to appoint Mr. Sarcone to lead the office permanently.
The judges did not offer a rationale for declining to appoint Mr. Sarcone, whom President Trump named in March to serve as interim U.S. attorney for 120 days.
The announcement could mean the end of Mr. Sarcone’s fractious tenure in Albany, though Mr. Trump could reappoint him on an interim basis. (Mr. Trump has not formally nominated Mr. Sarcone for Senate confirmation.) Last week, Mr. Sarcone told the television station WNYT that his tenure had been extended by the district’s judges. Hours later, the judges issued a statement saying they had not made any such decision.
By Monday, they had decided — but not in his favor. The move came as federal judges, including some appointed by Republicans, have strongly resisted the policies of Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, with a sharp focus on how federal prosecutors have handled immigration cases.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
On June 17, Mr. Sarcone called the Albany County sheriff’s personal phone number and said he had been attacked outside a hotel by “a maniac with a knife who was speaking in a foreign language,” Mr. Sarcone recounted in a Fox News interview.
The sheriff, Mr. Sarcone said in the interview, told him that the man, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, could be charged only with menacing. But Mr. Sarcone insisted to him that the man had “threatened my life.”
The man, Saul Morales-Garcia, 40, was arrested and charged with attempted murder. But after reviewing surveillance footage of the incident, the Albany County district attorney dropped the attempted-murder charge. Mr. Morales-Garcia later pleaded guilty to second-degree menacing, according to the Albany Times Union.
Video released by local investigators shows Mr. Morales-Garcia appearing to yell at Mr. Sarcone, who was smoking a cigar while on the phone outside the hotel. Mr. Morales-Garcia walks toward Mr. Sarcone while brandishing an object. But the video does not show him lunge at Mr. Sarcone or even come close to him, as the U.S. attorney’s office had claimed in a news release after the incident.
Mr. Sarcone nonetheless used the incident to harshly criticize both the local police and what he saw as lax immigration policies. During a news conference a week later, Mr. Sarcone blamed former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s immigration policies and called the Albany Police Department’s leadership “disgraceful,” The Times Union reported.
Last month, the Times Union reported that Mr. Sarcone had listed a boarded-up building as his residence when he filed an affidavit about the incident. After the Times Union published that story, he directed his staff to remove the newspaper from the office’s press distribution lists, it reported last week.
During Mr. Trump’s first administration, the president nominated 85 U.S. attorneys, all of whom were confirmed by the Senate. But so far in his second administration, he has formally nominated about a quarter as many, putting many more interim officials in place.
Under federal law, district court judges may appoint a U.S. attorney to serve until the Senate confirms a nominee. In Mr. Trump’s first term, judges in both the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York appointed his picks for interim U.S. attorneys as permanent officeholders.
Though it is rare for courts to appoint U.S. attorneys, it is even rarer for them to decline to appoint an official who is already serving on an interim basis, said Carl W. Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.
Professor Tobias said the judges’ decision could be a sign of growing discomfort with Mr. Trump’s choices. But they may have also been uniquely displeased with Mr. Sarcone, he said.
“There were enough incidents that may have given the judges pause,” Professor Tobias said.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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