Bishop to be appointed US attorney for Middle District of NC

By
Theresa Opeka
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Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Deputy Director Dan Bishop, who formerly represented North Carolina in the US Congress and in the state House and Senate, will be taking on a new role as the US attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, which covers Durham, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem.

According to The Federalist, President Donald Trump is set to appoint him this week, and he could start serving as early as next week on an interim basis while awaiting Senate confirmation.

Bishop confirmed the news Wednesday night to Sean Davis, the Federalist’s CEO and co-founder, on X.

The House Freedom Caucus also commented on Bishop’s nomination.

He would be replacing Clifton T. “Cliff” Barrett, who was appointed to the office on June 21 by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Senate confirmed Bishop to OMB in March by a vote of 53-45.

His political career started as a Mecklenburg County commissioner, where he served from 2005 to 2009. He then served in the North Carolina General Assembly as a state representative from 2015 to 2017 and a state senator from 2017 to 2019. He won a special election in September 2019 to represent North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District in Congress, serving until 2023, when the district changed to NC-08.

While in Congress, Bishop served on the Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The Federalist linked a CJ article that focused on Bishop and others during a February 2023 hearing. Part of the House Judiciary Committee, the two-year investigative subcommittee looked into what members believed was discrimination by the federal government and social media platforms against conservatives and others during the Biden administration.

The subcommittee discussed the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by many media and social media sources; and a purported FBI document that was reported to target Catholics who attend Latin Mass as potentially dangerous radicals.

Bishop said in the debate over big tech that social media platforms have content moderation policies that are narrower than the First Amendment, and they take down speech as a matter of practice that the First Amendment would protect if it were the government. He said many people say they have a right to do that because they are private businesses. 

“The question that gets at me is this: How could the FBI, who is sworn to protect the Constitution, ever justify using intense application of its resources, agents, etc., to urge social media platforms to use those standards to take down speech that the Constitution protects?” Bishop asked.

The online magazine cited an article Bishop wrote for it after last year’s election about the need for dramatic reform at the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division (CRD), something that division leader, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, agrees with.

Bishop continued serving in Congress before running for North Carolina attorney general.

While campaigning, he held a Crime and Safety Listening Tour across the state. The tour’s focus was on hearing from law enforcement experts and crime victims about ways to restore law and order and make communities safer.

During a stop on the tour in Raleigh in August 2024, Bishop said many people on the left want people to believe that the US has “turned a corner” on crime, including violent acts like rape and murder, but the numbers continue to rise. He said between 2018 and 2022, rapes were up 34% in North Carolina, and murders were up 46%.

As of Oct. 20, Charlotte had 76 homicides, including the brutal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on the light rail.

Bishop would go on to lose the attorney general’s race to former congressman Jeff Jackson.

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