Donald Trump is planning to appoint a right-wing election denier to serve as a U.S. attorney in North Carolina.

Conservative outlet The Federalist was first to report that Trump intends to appoint Dan Bishop, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, which includes Durham and Winston-Salem. Trump tapped Bishop for the role at OMB after he lost his race last year for North Carolina attorney general.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told the Raleigh News & Observer that Bishop had “been discussed” for the role and suggested “he’s probably in the vetting process.” The House Freedom Caucus celebrated the news, and Bishop has already begun thanking his supporters on social media. Bishop’s appointment would (at least temporarily, since his appointment needs Senate confirmation) put a MAGA loyalist into a seat as one of three top federal attorneys in the state.

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Bishop, a former congressman who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, was one of several extremist candidates to run for statewide offices in North Carolina last year (as a state representative he was, among other things, the author of the state’s notorious 2016 “bathroom bill”). During Donald Trump’s criminal fraud trial in New York last year, Bishop compared Trump’s treatment to the kind of abuse Black people faced from the racist justice systems in the Jim Crow South. In that same 2024 radio interview, Bishop called for Republicans to engage in legal “warfare” against liberals, including by prosecuting people involved in the legal challenges to remove Trump from presidential ballots in Maine and Colorado over his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

As I wrote last year, Bishop’s comments show “his eagerness to wage war on liberals using the courts.” Given Trump’s efforts to weaponize the federal government against his perceived foes, Bishop’s zealotry may be what’s helped to put him in line for this job.