PITTSBURGH (TNS) — President Joe Biden has nominated a longtime assistant U.S. Attorney to become the top prosecutor in the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Eric G. Olshan has served as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania for more than six years. The district covers 25 counties in the western half of the state and stretches from the Pittsburgh area north to Erie and as far east as Altoona.
Olshan’s nomination is part of a package of nominees from Biden that includes several judges and two U.S. Attorney picks.
The president said in a statement that Olshan and the other attorney nominee were “chosen for their devotion to enforcing the law, their professionalism, their experience and credentials, their dedication to pursuing equal justice for all, and their commitment to the independence of the Department of Justice.”
In 2020, Olshan signed onto a letter with 15 other career prosecutors criticizing then-U.S. Attorney William Barr’s controversial memo that would have opened the door to using the Justice Department to investigate voter fraud before the results were certified.
Former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Scott Brady was the head of the district in 2020. In a 2020 news conference, Brady commented on Olshan’s inclusion in the letter and mentioned that Olshan’s wife formerly worked for former attorneys general Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.
In 2022, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General rebuked Brady for his actions and said it was “unbecoming of a U.S. attorney.”
Before working in the Western District of Pennsylvania, Olshan served in the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003 and a law degree from Northwestern University in 2006.
The vacancy in the Western District opened up when then- U.S. Attorney Cindy Chung was confirmed as judge on the 3rd Circuit federal Court of Appeals in mid-February. Troy Rivetti has been serving as Acting U.S. Attorney for the district since then.
Olshan would replace Rivetti if confirmed.
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