Pasco mayor chosen as Eastern District U.S. Attorney

Pasco Mayor Peter Serrano, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican last year for state attorney general, has been tapped as the new U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington.

His selection will have to be considered by the U.S. Senate, but Serrano said via phone on Thursday that he is “excited and waiting for it to be finalized.” He declined to provide further comment.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, located in Spokane, also declined to comment. The appointment by President Donald Trump would effectively end the role of Acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie Van Marter, who assumed the position July 7 after the resignation of acting U.S. Attorney Richard Barker.

Barker resigned after five months in office.

Serrano, a former lawyer with the U.S. Department of Energy, was selected as mayor in 2024 after serving on the Pasco City Council since 2017. Pasco has a council-city manager form of government, meaning the mayor is selected from the elected members of the council and does not handle day-to-day operations of the city.

Serrano described the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol rioters as “political prisoners” who were held on “political charges” during a debate with Nick Brown, the eventual winner of the state attorney general race. Trump earlier this year issued a blanket pardon for those who participated in the insurrection.

Brown and Serrano clashed with one another in pre-election debates about gun safety and abortion, The Spokesman-Review reported in 2024. Serrano, 44, said in those debates he would struggle to defend Washington’s abortion shield law.

Serrano is currently the director and general counsel of the Silent Majority Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that has sued the state of Washington over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates and gun laws.

In his work at the Silent Majority Foundation, Serrano is representing evangelical preacher and self-described Christian Nationalist Sean Feucht in a lawsuit against the city of Spokane.

The lawsuit was filed over the council’s vote in 2023 to denounce then-Mayor Nadine Woodward for appearing on stage with Feucht and with former state Rep. Matt Shea during a stop on the Kingdom to the Capitol tour, a religious and political series organized by Feucht.

U.S. attorneys are appointed by presidential administrations and need confirmation by the Senate. Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t want to appoint anyone in the U.S Department of Justice who is not loyal to him and has purged the department of attorneys who previously worked on his classified documents case, CBS and Politico reported.

Barker left his post for a role at Singleton Schreiber, a law firm with attorneys across the western half of the U.S. Barker wrote in a statement on LinkedIn last month he was grateful he “never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that I didn’t believe in.”

The law firm Barker turned to also employs former U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref, a Biden appointee who departed in January.