Ask Senators Warner and Kaine to oppose Donald Trump's proposed appointment of Theo Stamos as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Given Ms. Stamos’s previous tenure as Commonwealth's Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church, where she held herself out as a Democrat, we anticipate she will be presented as a bipartisan nominee with the integrity and independence to withstand pressure from Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, who have made clear their desire to use the US Attorney's Office to achieve unconstitutional and vindictive political aims.

Any gloss of bipartisanship is undeserved, and any confidence that Stamos will not become a pawn of the White House is unwarranted. Even though she professed to be a Democrat, Arlington voters removed Stamos from office precisely because of her reactionary and regressive policies, her indifference to injustice, and her alignment with what are now core values of the MAGA and Republican platforms.

It came as no surprise to Arlington voters that upon losing her election in 2019, Stamos immediately accepted an invitation to work for the Trump administration, and later for Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. With respect to the former, Stamos joined Donald Trump’s Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. This Commission, headed by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, was widely criticized as a law enforcement mouthpiece thinly disguised as a reform body. Those critics included a federal judge, who temporarily halted the work of the commission due to its lack of transparency and pro-law enforcement bias, and two members of the commission — both chief elected prosecutors — who eventually resigned for the same reasons.

Miyares specifically enlisted and deputized Stamos to be an attack dog in his right-wing culture war, most notably by empaneling a special grand jury in Loudoun County ostensibly to investigate two sexual assaults, but which in reality was political theater, intended to inflame prejudices against transgender students and the administrators who believed in their inherent dignity.

A primary target of political prosecutions in Loudoun County was its former schools Superintendent, Scott Ziegler, who upon having the last of his charges dismissed, commented that “it is deeply troubling that I was subjected to a politically motivated prosecution, one that disregarded the facts and sought to undermine my dedication and service to public education." He continued, calling "upon the people and Legislature of Virginia to examine and reflect on the circumstances that led to this misuse of executive power and to the unprecedented waste of taxpayer money. At its core, this effort was designed to sway voters in Northern Virginia, prioritizing political gain over truth and justice."

Stamos was also the lead author of a January 2023 report, commissioned by Miyares to bolster his campaign's false claims of misconduct by the parole board in granting early release to prisoners during the COVID crisis. As most states did, Virginia sought to release many geriatric and medically vulnerable inmates, in light of the inordinate risks COVID posed to them in the correctional setting. The report, of which Stamos was the lead author, was transparently propaganda, making spurious claims about recidivism while completely omitting the most important context — the COVID crisis itself, and parole board's goal of preventing deaths of individuals who no longer posed a danger to the community.

In one final demonstration of fealty to MAGA, in the Fall of 2025, Stamos subverted the Constitution of Virginia by interfering with an Arlington County case involving a protestor who distributed flyers near the home of Stephen Miller. In Virginia, the Attorney General has extremely limited jurisdiction over prosecution of criminal offenses in trial courts. Instead, that responsibility falls to local elected Commonwealth's Attorneys, who in Virginia are constitutional officers. Nevertheless, as reported by Axios and the New York Times, Stamos, at the urging of Stephen Miller himself — who was dissatisfied by the decision not to charge the activist — unlawfully attempted to assert standing and assume responsibility for prosecution of the case

When Miyares lost his reelection bid, Stamos lost her position, as well. In her farewell remarks on social media, she described working for Miyares as "the highlight of my nearly 40 years in law enforcement."

Ms. Stamos has unequivocally demonstrated, through her work with Trump and Miyares, that if sworn in as US Attorney for EDVA, she would disregard the law and not prosecute objectively but adopt the political motivations of her superiors.

Tell your Senators to decline her nomination.