George Beck Jr. (Capell & Howard)

Rep. Artur Davis, Alabama’s senior congressional Democrat, has recommended a Montgomery lawyer for U.S. Attorney in the state’s Middle District, reports The Associated Press.

Davis, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, said on Thursday he is backing George Beck Jr., 68, a white-collar defense lawyer at Capell & Howard and former state prosecutor. Earlier this month, we reported that Beck was the front-runner for the Middle District post, which is based in Montgomery.

Beck is the third lawyer Davis has recommended for the job. Over the summer, the White House eliminated defense lawyers Joe Van Heest of Montgomery and Michel Nicrosi of Mobile, who ran into opposition from the state’s Republican senators.

U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, a Bush appointee, continues to serve, nearly a year into the Obama administration. Alabama Democrats have accused her of bringing politically motivated cases, including the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D). Canary has said the criticism is without merit.

For a more on the troubled history of the Middle District U.S. Attorney search, click here and here.

This report was corrected to reflect that the Middle District is based in Montgomery.

The White House is having trouble finding a replacement for controversial U.S. Attorney Leura Canary in Alabama’s Middle District, having considered and discarded three candidates over the last year, according to Alabama Democrats.

Leura Canary (gov)

Both Republicans and Democrats have objected to different candidates, and the White House has been unwilling to cross the state’s powerful GOP senators, according to a Democrat who has spoken to administration officials about the matter. The result has been the continued service of Canary, a bête noire of Alabama Democrats for her prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D), while the administration now considers a fourth candidate.

Over the summer, the White House eliminated white-collar defense lawyer Joe Van Heest of Montgomery, even though he’d already been fully vetted, the Alabama Democrats said.

Joe Van Heest (via Facebook)

Van Heest met objections from Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee. Shelby had also helped thwart the original candidate for the job, Mobile-based lawyer Michel Nicrosi, the Democrats said. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also opposed Nicrosi.

Then, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Birmingham-based Northern District briefly emerged as a front-runner, only to be shot down by Alabama Democrats who said her past work on politically controversial prosecutions disqualified her.

Last month, Main Justice provided an accounting of U.S. Attorney nominations. The figures — President Barack Obama has nominated 42 U.S. Attorneys, and 31 have been confirmed — painted a picture of a process beset by political interference and a White House counsel’s office in flux. (The latter problem may be solved, with the arrival of White House counsel Bob Bauer, but only time will tell.)

Alabama’s Middle District provides an interesting case study: Republican and Democratic opposition, combined with a hands-off White House, has so gummed up the process, there have been four U.S. Attorney front-runners since the summer – but zero nominations.

Shelby’s objections to Van Heest, as we reported in July, appeared to be related to his efforts to promote the daughter of a political supporter for the job. Shelby pushed Anna Clark Morris for the prosecutor post,  Alabama officials and lawyers told Main Justice over the summer. Morris, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Middle District, is the daughter of influential trial lawyer and Shelby supporter Larry Morris. Neither Shelby’s office nor Van Heest returned phone calls seeking comment.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) (Getty Images)

Both Nicrosi and Van Heest enjoyed the support of  Rep. Artur Davis, the state’s senior congressional Democrat, and they both reached the interview-at-the-Justice-Department stage of the process before the White House eliminated them. Nicrosi was the first choice of a selection committee formed Davis; Van Heest was the second. Click here and here for a more background on their candidacies.

After Van Heest, according to the Democrat with knowledge of the selection process, several individuals were approached about the job, including two state circuit judges, a former federal magistrate judge, and a former president of the Alabama state bar. All declined to throw in their hats — though it’s not clear why. (An indictment of the current process, perhaps?)

At one point, there was an effort to build some support around Montgomery-based lawyer Ed Parish Jr., the knowledgeable Democrat said. But Davis and others raised objections about Parish’s lack of criminal experience.

In the fall, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tamarra Matthews Johnson, 35, of Alabama’s Northern District, emerged as the new front-runner. It’s not clear who recommended her for the post. The knowledgeable Democrat said she applied directly to the White House. Johnson declined to comment.

In any event Johnson, a former clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, wasn’t expected encounter opposition from Sessions and Shelby, the knowledgeable Democrat said.

But she could not overcome her work on corruption cases against Democrats, including the prosecution of Siegelman for alleged bid-rigging. The case, which was overseen by Birmingham-based U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, another villian of the Left, was eventually thrown out. (Siegelman was later indicted and convicted in the Montgomery-based Middle District, on Canary’s turf.)

Democrats have long-maintained the Siegelman cases were politically motivated.

Johnson also worked on the Justice Department’s case against Richard Scrushy, the former chief executive of HealthSouth, who was acquitted in 2005 of masterminding a $2.7 billion accounting fraud. But in 2006, Scrushy was convicted in the Middle District of paying $500,000 to Siegelman in return for a seat on the state hospital regulatory board.

Amid a groundswell of Democratic opposition – Johnson was referred to as a “rabid, right-wing Republican” in one anyonmous quote that gained purchase in the blogosphere, though she and her husband are Democratic donors  –  Davis approached the White House. The congressman warned that her nomination would generate a backlash, the knowledgeable Democrat said.

The White House, which thus far has been loath to mix it up with Republicans over U.S. Attorney nominations, tread at least as carefully with Democrats, and Johnson’s candidacy dissolved.

The new front-runner, the official said, is George Beck Jr., 68, a white-collar defense lawyer at Capell & Howard and former state prosecutor. Davis recently passed his named to the White House, the official said, but it appears his candidacy will be anything but tidy.

Even if he satisfies the state’s Republican senators, he’ll have to assuage Democrats. Like Johnson, he also was involved in the Siegelman case as a lawyer for government witness Nick Bailey, an ex-aide to the governor who was sentenced to 18 months in prison on bribery-related charges. Bailey, one of the government’s star witnesses, testified in three trials and submitted to more than 40 interviews with federal investigators.

Beck, others noted, also defended Guy Hunt, the first Republican governor of Alabama since Reconstruction, who was convicted of illegaly diverting and spending money raised for his 1987 inauguration.

For the first time in this administration, Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys nominated by President Barack Obama outnumber Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys nominated by former President George W. Bush.

As of the end of November, more than 10 months into Obama’s presidency, the score was 24 Obama U.S. Attorneys to 21 Bush U.S. Attorneys, according to a review of Justice Department and congressional records. And of the 48 acting and interim U.S. Attorneys, just seven were appointed during the Bush administration.

Stephanie Villafuerte (gov)

The figures represent a watershed for the Obama administration, which has made halting progress filling the nation’s 93 U.S. Attorneys positions amid political resistance and a crowded legislative agenda.

On Monday, the U.S. Attorney nominee for Colorado, Stephanie Villafuerte, pulled her name from consideration, offering a public view of one of several nomination battles unfolding in districts across the country. Villafuerte, the first Obama U.S. Attorney nominee to withdraw, faced questions from Republicans over whether she accessed a restricted federal database for political purposes.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi’s Northern District, Oxford-based criminal defense lawyer Christi McCoy’s candidacy has foundered. People in Mississippi legal circles said Republicans raised questions about her affiliation with a private investigator under investigation for allegedly padding his bills and submitting false claims. (McCoy, like many other defense lawyers in Mississippi, used the P.I. in her practice.)

McCoy was recommended for the U.S. Attorney post by Mississippi Reps. Bennie Thompson and Travis Childers, both Democrats.

Leura Canary (gov)

And in Alabama, Montgomery criminal defense lawyer Joe Van Heest appears to be out of the running for Middle District U.S. Attorney after objections from Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), one person familiar with the situation said. Van Heest, who was recommended by Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), had been fully vetted by the White House months ago. But the administration never went forward with a nomination.

As a result, a controversial Bush-holder U.S. Attorney, Leura Canary, remains in charge of the Montgomery-based office. Democrats have criticized Canary for prosecuting former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) on public corruption charges. The Justice Department opposes Siegelman’s Supreme Court appeal of his 2006 conviction.

The White House has shown little appetite for these and other feuds, preferring to reservoir political capital for legislative goals such as health-care reform.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Obama administration is treading cautiously in nominating U.S. Attorneys, in part because of lingering sensitivities to politicization in the Justice Department. In an October interview with National Public Radio, Holder said he hoped the offices would be filled by the first part of 2010, but that appears unlikely, with fewer than one-third of the U.S. Attorneys confirmed heading into the New Year.

Eric Holder (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice)

One administration official said Holder is frustrated with the pace of the nominations, which thus far has been set by the White House. And several Justice officials are now privately questioning the wisdom of leaving Bush-appointed U.S. Attorneys in place until their successors are confirmed, a tack Obama took to preserve continuity and avoid political pitfalls after the scandal over prosecutor firings.

More than twice as many Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys were in place by this time in the first year of the previous two administrations. In the Bush administration, the Senate had confirmed 58 U.S. Attorneys by the end of November 2001, congressional records show. President Bill Clinton, by comparison, had moved 57 U.S. Attorneys through the confirmation process by the end of November 1993.

Nominations, too, have been slow in coming, reinforcing the notion that the top rather than the bottom of the process is knotted. Obama has sent 34 U.S. Attorney nominations to the Senate to date. Bush had nominated more than 60 U.S. Attorneys and Clinton more than 70 U.S. Attorneys by this time in their first terms.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the figures, referring a reporter to Holder’s previous statements on U.S. Attorney nominations.

To read our previous most recent accounting of U.S. Attorney nominees, click here. And to view our interactive U.S. Attorney chart, click here.

Below are lists of Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys.

Nominated by Obama:

• Timothy Heaphy (Western District of Virginia)
• Karen Loeffler (District of Alaska)
• Brendan Johnson (District of South Dakota)
• Paul Fishman (District of New Jersey)
• Kenyen Brown (Southern District of Alabama)
• Stephanie Rose (Northern District of Iowa)
• Nick Klinefeldt (Southern District of Iowa)
• Benjamin Wagner (Eastern District of California)
• Ed Tarver (Southern District of Georgia)
• Carmen Ortiz (District of Massachusetts)
• Joyce Vance (Northern District of Alabama)
• B. Todd Jones (District of Minnesota)
• John Kacavas (District of New Hampshire)
• Preet Bharara (Southern District of New York)
• Tristram Coffin (District of Vermont)
• Dennis Burke (District of Arizona)
• Daniel Bogden (District of Nevada)
• Steve Dettelbach (Northern District of Ohio)
• Carter Stewart (Southern District of Ohio)
• Peter Neronha (District of Rhode Island)
• Neil MacBride (Eastern District of Virginia)
• Florence Nakakuni (District of Hawaii)
• Deborah Gilg (District of Nebraska)
• Jenny Durkan (Western District of Washington)

Nominated by Bush:

• Leura Canary (Middle District of Alabama)
• Joseph Russoniello (Northern District of California)
• A. Brian Albritton (Middle District of Florida)
• Leonardo Rapadas (Guam & Northern Mariana Islands)
• Thomas Moss (District of Idaho)
• Patrick Fitzgerald (Northern District of Illinois)
• Jim Letten (Eastern District of Louisiana)
• David Dugas (Middle District of Louisiana)
• Donald Washington (Western District of Louisiana)
• Rod Rosenstein (District of Maryland)
• Jim Greenlee (Northern District of Mississippi)
• William Mercer (District of Montana)
• George E.B. Holding (Eastern District of North Carolina)
• Anna Mills S. Wagner (Middle District of North Carolina)
• Sheldon Sperling (District of Oklahoma)
• William Walter Wilkins III (District of South Carolina)
• James Dedrick (Eastern District of Tennessee)
• Edward Meachan Yardbrough (Middle District of Tennessee)
• Brett Tolman (District of Utah)
• James McDevit (Eastern District of Washington)
• Kelly Rankin (District of Wyoming)

And here’s a list of Obama nominees who have not been confirmed:

• Christopher Crofts (District of Wyoming)
• Thomas Walker (Eastern District of North Carolina)
• James Santelle (Eastern District of Wisconsin)
• Barbara McQuade (Eastern District of Michigan)
• Mary Elizabeth Phillips (Western District of Missouri)
• Sanford Coats (Western District of Oklahoma)
• Michael Cotter (District of Montana)
• Richard Callahan (Eastern District of Missouri)
• Michael Moore (Middle District of Georgia)

Michel Nicrosi (courtesy Trinity Episcopal Church)

Former federal prosecutor and tax-fraud expert Michel Nicrosi on Thursday will file papers with the Alabama Secretary of State to run for the Democratic nomination for state Attorney General, The Associated Press reports. She told The AP she wants the job because the office needs a prosecutor and not a politician.

Nicrosi had been mentioned earlier this year as a possible nominee for U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama. She was the first choice of a selection committee formed by Democratic Rep. Artur Davis. But she didn’t have the support of Alabama Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby.

The White House instead has vetted Joseph P. Van Heest, a criminal defense attorney in Montgomery, for the job. Van Heest was Davis’s second choice. But his nomination has been held up for months over objections from Shelby, who reportedly supports the daughter of a friend and political support for the Middle District instead.

Check out our previous report here.

Nicrosi, who previously was an assistant U.S. Attorney in Mobile, where she is now in private practice, successfully defended a top aide to former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) against racketeering charges.

The only other Democrat to announce a Secretary of State candidacy is former state Democratic chairman Giles Perkins. Two other Democrats have been mentioned as possible candidates for the nomination: attorney James Anderson and Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall.

On the GOP side, current Attorney General Troy King plans to run for re-election. He will face Luther Strange, a Republican activist who also sought the post in 2006.

Capitol Hill staffer Kenyen Brown was nominated Thursday to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. Read the White House news release here. 

Kenyen Brown (Main Justice file photo)

According to Sean Reilly at the Mobile Press-Register, Brown would be the first African-American to hold a top federal prosecuting position in Alabama. 

Main Justice broke the story of the surprise choice for the Mobile-based district two months ago. Brown, a former AUSA in the district, has worked on Capitol Hill as a staffer on the Senate and House ethics committees since 2000. He didn’t lobby for the job and wasn’t one of the two candidates formally recommended to the White House by Rep. Artur Davis, the senior Alabama Democrat in the House.

Artur Davis (gov)

News that Brown was vetted for the job raised eyebrows in Alabama’s gossipy legal community, in part because one of his former mentors is a close friend of arch-conservative Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Read our June 6 report here. 

Since then, we learned more about the events that led to Brown’s unexpected selection. And we can confidently lay to rest the rumor that Sessions secretly had a hand in engineering Brown’s selection.

What rumor? Well, we originally didn’t report it because we couldn’t find any evidence for it. But we can’t debunk something you haven’t heard, so here goes:

When Brown was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District in the 1990s, he was befriended by a veteran prosecutor named Richard Moore, according to people in Alabama who know both men. Moore had been hired by Sessions, who served as U.S. Attorney for the district from 1981 to 1993. Sessions later sponsored Moore for the Inspector General post at the Tennessee Valley Authority and publicly praised him as a “good friend” during his 2003 Senate confirmation hearing. Read our previous report about Moore and Sessions here. 

The rumor in Alabama was that Sessions put Brown’s name forward with some kind of wink and nod that he’d hire Moore, his old mentor, as his deputy — and thus allow Sessions to wield influence indirectly over his old turf.

But this just didn’t check out.

First, Sessions told Main Justice’s Andrew Ramonas in June that while he knows Brown, he didn’t recommend him for the job. Then, a Democratic official with knowledge of the selection process said Brown emerged as a consensus candidate because Rep. Artur Davis’s first choice for the job, Southern District of Alabama Assistant U.S. Attorney Vicki Davis (no relation), didn’t fare well in her Washington interview. For a description of some of the hurdles Vicki Davis appeared to face, click here for our previous report and scroll down.

It turns out that Rep. Davis met Brown last year, after he saw Brown’s name in the congressional newspaper Roll Call’s annual feature on the 50 most powerful staffers in Congress. Reading that Brown was from Alabama, the congressman asked to meet Brown — as any good politician would do.

Later, Vicki Davis ran into trouble. But Rep. Davis’s announced second choice for the Mobile job, former U.S. magistrate judge Patrick Sims, was never seriously considered, because White House wanted at least one African-American heading up one of the three prosecuting districts in a Deep South state with a history of racial conflict. Vicki Davis is African-American. Sims is white.

The nominee for Alabama’s Northern District, Joyce Vance, is also white. And so is the intended nominee for Alabama’s Middle District, Joe Van Heest, who’s been held up because of objections from Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). Read our previous report about Van Heest’s delay here. 

Davis then recommended the White House consider Brown. And the rest is, as they say, history.

President Obama’s intended nominee for the Montgomery-based Middle District of Alabama is all vetted and ready to go. But you didn’t see white collar criminal defense lawyer Joe Van Heest on the list of new nominees released by the White House Friday.

The reason: Objections from Republican Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), two Democrats close to the nominating process recently told me. 

Leura Canary (gov)

As a result, controversial U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, whose office prosecuted former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) on political corruption charges, will likely cling to office a bit longer while the Shelby spat gets sorted out.

Shelby’s office didn’t return phone calls seeking comment. A White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, declined to comment. Van Heest, who practices in Montgomery, did not respond to a request for comment.

As far as we can tell, Shelby’s goal isn’t to prolong the tenure of Canary, who hasn’t taken the hint and resigned yet. Canary, of course, is accused of  helping send the popular Siegelman to prison on bogus charges so he couldn’t run for office again. Canary is married to GOP political operative Bill Canary, who was reportedly close to Karl Rove.

Rather, Shelby’s objections appear to be related to his campaign to promote the daughter of a political supporter for the job, Alabama Democrats say.

Shelby has backed Anna Clark Morris for the position, Alabama officials and lawyers have told me. Morris is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Middle District office and the daughter of influential trial lawyer Larry Morris, the Shelby supporter.

Larry Morris (Morris, Haynes & Hornsby)

Morris, of Morris, Haynes & Hornsby in Birmingham, also has built good relations with both Democrats and Republicans. And Shelby, of course, is himself is a former Democrat and a trial lawyer. 

A local Democratic patronage committee had recommended Anna Clark Morris for the job, but according to a high-ranking Democratic official with knowledge of the process, she hasn’t been vetted by the White House and won’t be nominated.

Another name floated for the position is Montgomery Presiding Circuit Court Judge Charles Price. Price is African American and would add diversity (Van Heest is white). But Price isn’t a contender, Democrats close to the process tell me, despite Price’s recent quotes in this piece in the Montgomery Independent suggesting he’s interested. 

Van Heest was the second choice for the Middle District put forward by Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who as the state’s senior congressional Democrat has been making recommendations to the White House. Davis’s first choice for the job was former federal prosecutor Michel Nicrosi, now in the corporate compliance and white collar defense section of Jones Walker in Mobile. But both Shelby and Alabama’s other Republican senator, Jeff Sessions, objected to Nicrosi, and the White House eliminated her from contention weeks ago. Read our previous report on Nicrosi here.

The odd thing about the Van Heest nomination is how defential the White House is apparently being to Shelby. We know the White House doesn’t want any controversy (ie: no senatorial “blue slips” filed against their nominees.) But in Van Heest, the administration has a guy who’s ready to go – and who would replace one of the bête noires of the Left. The George W. Bush White House would have just rolled any Democrats who tried to object to their nominees – and they didn’t have a 60-vote supermajority in 2001.  

Stay tuned.

Former federal prosecutor and tax-fraud expert Michel Nicrosi is out of the running for the U.S. Attorney position in the Middle District of Alabama, in part because she was opposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), say people with knowledge of the situation.

Michel Nicrosi (courtesy Trinity Episcopal Church)

The leading candidate now appears to be Joseph P. Van Heest, a criminal defense attorney in Montgomery.

Nicrosi, a lawyer now in private practice in Mobile who successfully defended a top aide to former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) against racketeering charges, was the first choice of a selection committee formed by Rep. Artur Davis, the state’s senior congressional Democrat. Van Heest was Davis’s second choice for the job. Read Davis’s January news release about his recommendations here.

Davis is in charge of making judicial and U.S. Attorney recommendations to the White House because Alabama’s two senators – Sessions and Richard Shelby — are both Republicans.  What’s interesting is how much political weight in this process the White House apparently is giving the GOP senators over Davis, an African-American who was an early supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in heavily Republican Alabama.

The conservative Sessions was U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 1981 to 1993 and is said to remain keenly interested in matters down in Mobile. And now, of course, he wields particular influence with the White House because as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has the power to rough up or even block President Obama’s judicial selections. Moreover, it’s not a time when the White House wants to cross Sessions, with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings set to begin July 13.

And, unfortunately for Nicrosi, there is some bad blood between her and a good friend and protege of Sessions named Richard Moore, say people familiar with the Southern District.

Richard Moore (TVA)

In the 1990s, Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorney Don Foster in the Southern District of Alabama chose Nicrosi over Moore to head the office’s criminal division. Moore was a prosecutor in the office who’d been hired by Sessions. Then as criminal division chief, Nicrosi required prosecutors to create standard plea bargain language and write prosecution memos – professional practices that the office had neglected, say people familiar with the Southern District. The extra work load didn’t sit well with some veterans in the office, the people say.

A spokesman for Sessions, Stephen Miller, said he wasn’t able at this time to gather enough information to comment about Nicrosi or what role Sessions is playing in the U.S. Attorney selection process in Alabama. The senator and his staff have been consumed by preparations for the Sotomayor hearing, Miller said. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Melissa Schwartz, said the administration’s policy is not to comment on internal deliberations regarding U.S. Attorney selections. A spokesman for Rep. Davis also declined to comment. 

As for Moore, he went on in 2003 to be named Inspector General of the Tennessee Valley Authority, thanks to a recommendation from Sessions. In a sign of the high esteem Sessions holds for Moore, the senator appeared in person at Moore’s 2003 confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

In testimony that can be read here, Sessions called Moore his “good friend” and said:

“Richard Moore, I think, is one of America’s finest public servants. … He is a churchman, and a man of integrity and ability. … He has a wonderful wife, Elizabeth Ann. I am proud of them… I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the opportunity to say something about my good friend, Richard Moore. He is the kind of person that you would be proud to have in your home for supper with your family and the kind of person all of us are proud to see in public service.

Moore added in his own statement to the committee: “I would also like to thank Senator Sessions for his kind remarks this morning and for his sponsoring my nomination for this position.”

But opposition from the Sessions camp wasn’t the only issue that doomed Nicrosi for the Middle District job, say people familiar with the situation. The hard-charging ex-prosecutor also rubbed some luminaries in Alabama’s close-knit legal community the wrong way by speaking out forcefully against a Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney embroiled in a sex scandal. The U.S. Attorney, David York, resigned his leadership of Alabama’s Southern District in 2005 amid allegations of an improper relationship with an assistant U.S. Attorney under his supervision.

There’s more. A state Democratic patronage committee had recommended the daughter of a major Democratic donor who is close to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala) for the job. Shelby, a former Democrat and trial lawyer, is said to be close to Larry Morris, father of Anna Clark Morris, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Montgomery. A spokesman for Shelby didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

Upshot: Nicrosi appears to have been done in by some combination of Shelby promoting his friend’s daughter for the job, the Sessions camp opposing Nicrosi, and lingering bad feelings in the Alabama judicial community about Nicrosi’s outspokenness against ex-U.S. Attorney York’s improper relationship with the AUSA.

An earlier version of this post was published on June 10.