Biden nominates acting Solicitor General Prelogar to post

[August 11, 2021]    (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden has nominated acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, a former member of the Special Counsel's Russia investigation team, to serve in the post representing the U.S. government before the Supreme Court, the White House said on Wednesday.

Prelogar, a Washington lawyer who served as an assistant to the solicitor general from 2014 to 2019, has been acting as the DOJ's representative at the nation's top court since January.

She has represented the Biden administration before in cases involving immigration, the Medicaid health insurance program, drug sentencing, political donors and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

The Justice Department's Office of the Solicitor General, handles the federal government's cases at Supreme Court.

The Harvard Law School graduate earlier worked as a clerk for then U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland, who now serves as U.S. attorney general under Biden.

Prelogar, who studied Russian and held a Fulbright fellowship in St Petersburg, also previously worked an assistant special counsel to Robert Mueller, who served as special counsel led the federal government's probe into Russia's role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

She also worked as a clerk for two Supreme Court justices -- Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last year.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; additional reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Kim Coghill and Hugh Lawson)

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