U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton Announces Appointment Of James McDonald As Deputy United States Attorney; SDNY Plans Leadership Transition

Appointment of James M. McDonald

Jay Clayton, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that James M. McDonald will rejoin the Office as Deputy U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for a period of transition.

"Mr. McDonald, an alumnus of the Office, is a remarkably accomplished, highly respected, and widely sought after counselor, strategist, and advocate, inside and outside the courtroom," said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. "Jamie is President Trump's choice to be the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and he is an outstanding choice to lead the women and men of the Office in their efforts to serve New York families and all Americans."

Jamie McDonald's experience as a lawyer and manager is vast. In addition to serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Mr. McDonald served as the Director of Enforcement at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as a Deputy Associate Counsel in the Office of the White House Counsel, and as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Prior to his appointment, Mr. McDonald was a Partner at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP where he was Co-Head of both the firm's Securities & Commodities Investigations Practice and its Commodities, Futures and Derivatives Group. He currently serves as an Adviser to the American Law Institute's Principles of Compliance, Risk Management, and Enforcement. Mr. McDonald previously served as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School and as a Senior Fellow at New York University Law School's Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement.

Mr. McDonald, originally from Oklahoma, graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law and from Harvard College.

SDNY Leadership Transition

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, who has led the Office since April 2025, was recently nominated by President Trump to serve as the Director of National Intelligence. To best serve the public and ensure a seamless transition in Office leadership, Deputy U.S. Attorney McDonald will begin to supervise the work and operations of the Office while Mr. Clayton attends to the Senate confirmation process.

During this transition period, the executive leadership team of Sean Buckley, Amanda Houle, Jeff Oestericher, and Karl Metzner will continue to lead the Office's work.

"Under Sean, Amanda, Jeff, and Karl's leadership, the Office has thrived," said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. "Their strategic allocation of resources, coordination with the NYPD, the FBI, HSI and other law enforcement partners, and their mentorship of our AUSAs have made our streets safer, combatted the efforts of terrorists and drug cartels, and pursued perpetrators of sexual exploitation and hate crimes in all aspects of our society. We have steadfastly protected the interests of the United States, including rooting out fraud and abuse, and ensuring those entitled to benefits receive them. It has been my great pleasure to work with Sean, Amanda, Jeff, and Karl, and I know that, with the addition of Jamie, they will continue to be an extremely effective leadership team."

Jay Clayton Applauds the Work of the SDNY and its Law Enforcement Partners

Statement of U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton:

"In my first days as U.S. Attorney in April 2025, I asked the members of the Office 'Where would New York families want us to focus our resources?' Their answers led to setting the following priorities for the Office:

• Removing career, gun-toting criminals from our streets;
• Combating the deadly fentanyl epidemic by bankrupting drug cartels and incarcerating gang leaders and their deadly soldiers;
• Pursuing foreign adversaries who are committed to harming Americans, sowing dissent, and undermining our freedoms; and
• Uncovering and prosecuting sex crimes and hate crimes across our communities.

We also turned our 'white collar' resources on the most egregious fraudsters, insider traders, and abusers of our financial systems, public trust, and benefits programs - focusing on individual accountability and the interest of victims.

Through the round the clock efforts of the women and men of the Office, and in partnership with the NYPD (the greatest police force in the world), our DOJ colleagues, the FBI, Homeland Security, the DEA, the Department of State, the Department of the Treasury, and our many other law enforcement colleagues, we have delivered on these priorities for our fellow New Yorkers and our fellow Americans. I am grateful to every member of the Office and the tens of thousands of officers, agents, and others who wake up every day with a commitment to ensuring our safety and protecting our freedoms. Their dedication to the public, expertise in the law, skills in advocacy, and most importantly, mutual support, are unparalleled."

Below are some examples of the results of this team effort in our priority areas.

Removing Career, Gun-Toting Criminals from Our Streets

In April 2025, the SDNY joined with the Gun Violence Strategies Partnership (GVSP), an important New York City-led organization where representatives of over twenty city, state, and federal law enforcement bodies meet seven days a week to immediately and collectively address gun violence from the previous day. Dedicated SDNY personnel work continuously with the GVSP and the NYPD to identify gun crimes where federal charges will remove career, gun-toting criminals from our streets immediately and continuously.

Through our efforts to combat gun violence, in the past 15 months, over 250 individuals with career criminal histories have been charged with federal gun crimes and detained pending trial. More importantly, compared to 2024, the murder rate in New York City is down by 25% and trending lower. New York is our safest large city. This is what New York families want and deserve.

Combatting the Deadly Fentanyl Epidemic; Bankrupting Drug Cartels; Incarcerating Gang Leaders and their Deadly Soldiers

The illegal drug trade is a scourge on America. The international drug cartels are committed to flooding all aspects of our society - schools, businesses, public housing, etc. - with addictive drugs. These are billion dollar, often foreign government-enabled criminal organizations that have vast production and distribution networks. Hooking Americans, corrupting government and business leaders, and brutally defending their turf is their stock-in-trade. They knowingly embrace the death and destruction that follow.

We have joined the Administration's whole of government approach to combatting these enemies of America. From New York City, Yonkers, White Plains, and Newburgh, to South and Central America, to China and the Middle East, our prosecutors and law enforcement partners are on a mission to bankrupt the cartels and take back our parks, schools, and housing projects. We are winning. Provisional reporting shows overdose deaths in New York in 2025 were down by approximately 25% compared to 2024 and continue to drop to their lowest levels in years. The Office is committed to continuing this trend.

In October 2025, together with the NYPD and the DEA, we shut down open-air drug dealing in Washington Square Park and charged over 15 individuals with federal drug crimes involving multiple overdose deaths. Children can now play safely in Washington Square Park, and we have taken that model to other parks and housing projects. Drug gangs in New York now know our truth: if you deal in fentanyl, you deal in death, and we will hold you accountable.

In April of 2026, we charged nine current and former Mexican officials with drug trafficking, weapons offenses, and related federal crimes. These allegations center on coordination with the Sinaloa Cartel, an organization responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. We also charged drug trafficking and weapons offenses involving Nicolas Maduro and other Venezuelan officials and Mexico's Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

The drug cartels affiliate with large-scale gangs, including Tren de Aragua (TDA), in their bloodthirsty efforts to expand and protect drug distribution. Our focus on incarcerating gang leaders and their soldiers has resulted in charges against more than 40 alleged gang members in the past year. In December 2025, we charged a top leader of TDA with racketeering, terrorism, and drug trafficking offenses. We also charged leaders of the Anti-Tren splinter gang with similar offenses and have overall secured convictions against more than 10 TDA-related gang members, including multiple convictions for murder, drug-trafficking, and sex-trafficking.

Some believe we must accept cartels, gangs, and deadly drugs as part of our community. They have been proven wrong.

Pursuing Foreign Adversaries Who Threaten our Safety and Seek to Sow Discontent

Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, the IRGC, and ISIS are terrorist organizations and sworn enemies of the United States and western society, seeking to kill Americans at home and abroad. Together with partners across the federal government, we are bringing their leaders to justice.

In May 2026, Mohammad Al-Saadi, an alleged senior operative of Kata'ib Hezbollah and the IRGC, was arrested on terrorism charges involving multiple attacks and attempted attacks in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Al-Saadi is now detained in the United States and awaits trial in Manhattan. This is one of several recent actions by our Office to disrupt the IRGC threat, including in the cybersecurity space.

These terrorist organizations rely on foreign governments and others for funding. Our Office is working with our federal partners to cut off their access to funds and to charge those who provide financial and other support for terror. We recently charged Reda Sabassi in connection with his efforts to divert funds raised through purported charitable campaigns to Hamas and for personal use, and, together with our federal partners, we are pursuing similar targets.

Our social media platforms and on-line networks are being exploited by terrorists, hostile foreign governments, and their proxies to commit offensive hacking of critical infrastructure networks and to radicalize young men and women and sow political and social discontent. This activity is pervasive. The costs to our foreign adversaries to radicalize and inflame using social media are low and the "benefits" to our adversaries can be great.

In March 2026, we charged two men with multiple federal terrorism charges for allegedly throwing bombs into a crowd outside the New York City Mayor's residence (Gracie Mansion). Our Indictment alleges that these young men, residents of Pennsylvania, were radicalized on-line, including by watching ISIS propaganda, and intended to kill in upwards of sixty people.

We also continue in our investigations of efforts by foreign adversaries to wage influence campaigns within the United States, to affect U.S. public policy and opinion, and to interfere with government functions.

A great challenge we all face, and one our Office is facing head on, is protecting our sacred freedoms of speech, free association, and privacy while combatting foreign actors who use criminal means in efforts to exploit our open communications and other networks to harm us.

Uncovering and Prosecuting Sex Crimes and Hate Crimes Across Our Communities

Sex crimes, including the sexual exploitation of minors, are all too prevalent in our communities, including our schools, our hospitals, and our places of worship - the places we must trust most and must keep free from predators. Our Office has dedicated substantial resources to this mission and adopted a victim-oriented approach to uncovering and prosecuting sexual predators.

In the past 18 months, our Office has charged 41 individuals with federal sex crimes, including teachers, licensed therapists, bankers, and others in positions of significant trust, as well as gang members and others involved in violent crime. Our Office, including through our Civil Rights and Human Trafficking Unit, has focused on advocating for victims by holding accountable perpetrators of sex crimes from all corners of society, including drug dealers and gang members, well-resourced financial industry leaders, real estate professionals, and public media personalities. In addition, our prosecutors and our Civil Division AUSAs are working with our schools, hospitals, and other institutions to ensure that processes for identifying predators are improved and victims feel safe coming forward.

In the past 18 months, the Office has also prosecuted several significant hate-based crimes in New York City, including a defendant charged with three hate crimes in connection with repeated assaults of Jewish victims in New York City between 2024 and 2025; a violent attack on a visiting Israeli rabbi on the street outside a well-known kosher restaurant, allegedly based on his religion; and an alleged attack on a gay man in the Bronx. To further our work in this area, we hosted a conference with community leaders at NYU Law School on June 8, 2026. The conference, titled Combatting Hate Crimes in NYC, brought together approximately 100 leaders from a diverse range of religious, ethnic, and other backgrounds to discuss federal and state efforts to prevent, investigate, and prosecute hate crimes.

When someone is attacked because of who they are - because of their faith, their ethnicity, their race, their sexual orientation - the message is not just directed at that one victim. The message is sent to an entire community: you are not safe here. You do not belong here. You are vulnerable.

That message is unacceptable - in New York City, or anywhere else in the United States.

Prosecuting and Deterring Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

The world-leading success of our financial markets is a direct result of their integrity and the public trust. Our Office has had a remarkably active role in ensuring market integrity in the last 18 months, criminally charging 27 CEOs and corporate leaders with fraud, charging 12 individuals with insider trading, and doubling the number of insider trading investigations year over year. Beyond our financial markets, we have relentlessly pursued and charged those responsible for defrauding consumers, investors, and lenders of more than $1 billion in the past year alone, as well as those who cheat taxpayers by defrauding our local and federal government out of millions more.

Our Civil Division has continued its exemplary efforts to combat benefits fraud - a scourge that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars every year. In April 2025, we obtained a judgment after trial of nearly one billion dollars against Omnicare for fraudulently billing Medicare and Medicaid for drugs dispensed without a proper prescription. In December 2025, we entered into a $37.76 million health care fraud settlement with CVS Pharmacy, Inc. for dispensing more insulin than patients needed and improperly receiving reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. And just last month, we obtained a $36.5 million settlement of a False Claims Act suit against Matrix Medical Network for submitting false and invalid patient diagnoses to the Government to artificially inflate its Medicare payments.

We have also improved our program that incentivizes companies to report misconduct so that it can quickly be addressed, individuals can be held accountable, and victims can be made whole. Since its launch on February 24, 2026, SDNY's Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Program for Financial Crimes has quickly gained traction and yielded tangible results. Companies have a mechanism through which they can quickly commit to cooperation, restitution, and remediation and, in exchange, have prompt and predictable results. Following the announcement of our program, our self-reports have substantially increased. Importantly, several of the resulting investigations have led to the identification of criminal conduct well beyond the reporting companies that, absent the self-report, may have gone undetected.

A first public and flagship example of the benefits of this program to the public is Telekom Malaysia Berhad, which self-reported a fraud scheme and promptly received a declination conditioned on full cooperation, and, just weeks later, we were able to charge senior leaders at the company's U.S. subsidiary with fraud.

Our efforts to root out misconduct and build public trust have extended to prosecution of public officials who prioritize greed over the public good. In January 2026, we charged a former high-ranking City Hall official with abusing his position to commit bribery and fraud. In February 2026, we secured an indictment charging the former commanding officer of the New York City Police Department School Safety Division and a Florida businessman with bribery offenses. We have also secured convictions and sentences of former high-ranking chiefs in the New York City Fire Department for soliciting and accepting bribes; 70 NYCHA employees charged with bribery, fraud, or extortion offenses; and defendants who have defrauded federal programs and charities out of millions.

Conclusion

"Working with the women and men of the SDNY and our partners on behalf of New York families and all Americans to keep them safe from harm, protect their freedoms, and improve their quality of life, has been an immense privilege. The Office is in great hands, has remarkable professionals, and will deliver more and more for the people of New York and America in the days to come.

I thank President Trump for entrusting me with this important role, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for his leadership, my colleagues at the SDNY for their unwavering commitment to the priorities of the Office, and the people of New York for their partnership, including, importantly, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the women and men of the NYPD. New York is the greatest city on Earth, in the greatest country on Earth, because we support each other's safety and freedom."