VA-07: Fired Former Trump Prosecutor to Run for Congress in Virginia as a Democrat
The former top deputy to Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who twice indicted Donald J. Trump, is expected to announce on Wednesday that he is running for Congress in Virginia, pitching himself as the only Democrat who actually prosecuted the president.
J.P. Cooney, a veteran of the public corruption division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, was fired in January 2025, after Mr. Trump purged all prosecutors associated with Mr. Smith.
In an interview ahead of his announcement, Mr. Cooney said he decided to enter the political arena because he wanted to push back against what he described as the democracy-threatening lawlessness of the Trump administration.
“Never has there been a Congress that has been such a weak and ineffective check on a president’s abuses of power,” Mr. Cooney said. “I lie awake every night worrying that Donald Trump does not have the best interests of our country in mind, and that’s a seismic shift in American leadership and politics.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/us/politics/cooney-trump-prosecutor-congress-virginia.html
