Daniel Rosen earned a unique distinction when he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate early this month to be Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor.

The 60-year-old lawyer and Orthodox Jewish community activist is one of the few Orthodox Jews to serve as U.S. attorney. And he is almost certainly the only chief federal law enforcement officer in the county who regularly studies the Talmud, a text, he says, that shares a “phenomenal” range of common principles with the American legal tradition.

“The more you study the Talmud, the more you see how rooted in our [Jewish] traditions American law, and the British law from which it emerged, really is,” Rosen explained in a recent interview with Jewish Insider.

As he acclimates to his new role, Rosen, who had previously worked in private practice, said that one of his “primary motivations” for seeking the position was the “rapid escalation of violent antisemitism” in the United States, calling the “prosecution of violent hate crimes” a top priority for his office.

“Jewish history tells us that Jews fare poorly in societies that turn polarized,” he said, arguing that Jewish Americans, in particular, “have a profound and immediate interest in reversing the direction of the violent hatred that’s being expressed in many directions.”

Rosen, a Minnesota native who gave up his law practice to assume his government position this month, is a graduate of University of Minnesota Law School and a Navy veteran. He has long been involved in Jewish communal life and pro-Israel activism, having served as a board member of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas as well as a state representative for AIPAC.

Despite his lack of prosecutorial experience, Rosen was among three candidates for the job put forward by Minnesota’s four House Republicans — including Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), the majority whip. 

In their recommendation to President Donald Trump, Emmer and his colleagues praised Rosen’s advocacy on behalf of “community and charitable issues, especially matters of particular interest to the American Jewish community,” later describing him as “one of the sharpest legal minds in the entire country.”

Speaking with JI this week, Rosen discussed his expectations for the role he assumed just weeks ago and how his Jewish faith influences his approach to the law, among other things. 

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jewish Insider: How have you been acclimating to your new job after being confirmed earlier this month?

Daniel Rosen: It’s been profoundly interesting, above all. For me, who comes in without a prosecutorial background, it has required a considerable education in the specifics of criminal procedure. But far more interesting are all the inputs that go into every case. From all of the various participants in the investigation and the prosecution and the cases, I’m seeing a world that heretofore I had not seen, and I’m finding it absolutely fascinating. 

What really strikes home is the not only the number of bad actors out there, but the sheer nefariousness of all of those bad actors and the real need for what it is that U.S. attorneys’ offices are doing all over the country in order to help maintain safety in an environment when our society is tearing apart.

In Minneapolis, we are one of several locales around the country where the philosophy of the local prosecutor is really inconsistent with the kind of law enforcement that, in my view, the country needs right now. And accordingly, the burden on the U.S. attorney’s office here in Minnesota — to pick up the slack that’s left behind by the local prosecutor — is a heavy burden, and dealing with the additional burden that their reticence creates for us is something that I’m having to learn quickly on the job. But I’m adjusting to it. 

JI: Are there any noteworthy cases that your office is currently handling that you can mention?

DR: There are several cases that have achieved quite a bit of not only local but national notoriety that we are in the midst of right now. First of all, in Minnesota, this office has been prosecuting a COVID assistance fraud that is simply breathtaking in a scope and amount. It is generally known as the ‘Feeding Our Future’ case, or more accurately put its cases — where a large group of defendants and others that have not been charged have together stolen hundreds of millions of the taxpayers’ dollars in a brazen fraud. We’ve also uncovered and now charged frauds of similar character also involving taxpayer money and also involving breathtakingly large amounts of money.

We have a team here in our office that certainly has its hands full in completing the investigations and bringing those cases to trial. In addition to that, we of course had a political assassination here in Minnesota early in the summer, where the former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives and the current leader of the House Democratic Caucus was assassinated, along with her husband, and another legislator was shot and left for dead but, thank God, he survived. The prosecution of that case is one of tremendous importance, particularly given our current times where bitterness in political discourse has turned to violence, and deadly violence, repeatedly.

JI: As you know, we’ve seen the rise of political violence across the country, some of it related to anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment. Is that on your mind as you take over this job?

DR: The rapid escalation of violent antisemitism in America is not only on my mind, but it’s one of my primary motivations for having sought this position. Jewish history tells us that Jews fare poorly in societies that turn polarized, and where that polarization evolves into factional hatreds in the non-Jewish societies within which we live. Those factional hatreds virtually always evolve into violent expressions of hate against the Jews. 

Accordingly, Jewish Americans have a profound and immediate interest in reversing the direction of the violent hatred that’s being expressed in many directions in the country. So for that reason, prosecution of violent hate crimes is certainly at the highest level of priority for me.

JI: In your lifetime, do you feel antisemitism has reached a level that you haven’t seen before?

DR: Yes. By my recollection, in the 1990s, if someone sprayed a swastika on the side of a synagogue in Omaha, it would probably be noted in The New York Times. Today, those kinds of antisemitic acts are happening, it seems, every single day, or nearly every single day, and they’re happening all over the country. It’s been a slow change, but now it’s rapidly escalating.

There is something else I can add. I don’t know if it’s directly responsive to the question, but it is something that I think about. In the 2,000-year odyssey of the Jews, through the diaspora, we have had other countries that have played host to us, and where the lives of the Jews were comparable to what they are here in America. In Spain, the Jews had what historically is referred to as the Golden Age in Spain. There was a Jewish Torah scholar who was the prime minister. There was another tremendous Jewish Torah scholar who was the finance minister to the king and the queen. Our life in Spain, everybody thought it couldn’t get better. And then, of course, it ultimately came to the point where every Jew in Spain had to choose to either leave, surrender their faith or die.

In Germany, there were Jews who said, ‘Forget Jerusalem. Berlin is our Jerusalem.’ There were Jews who thought, ‘Here we are at the height of culture, at the height of refinement, at the height of knowledge. What could be better for us than Germany? We Jews, a cultured and knowledgeable people, fit in here so well.’ But, of course, we know how that ended. 

So, we all have to ask ourselves, how’s it going to proceed here in the United States? And I believe the answer is, it depends on the good faith of the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of elected and appointed officials all over the country who recognize the good that the Jews contribute to society and recognize the good that comes from being good to the Jews, and having the courage to stand by their convictions. If they lose their courage, it would not bode well for the Jews in the country. So it’s my view that, if nothing else, as an example to fellow Americans, sometimes we’re just called to do our part to contribute to the rebuilding of the society that we so desperately need. And so I gave up a law practice and here I am now, an appointed public servant.

JI: Can you elaborate on your own involvement in Jewish communal life and fighting antisemitism?

DR: When I was a young lawyer, my father had some political relationships. He was not a man of politics, but he had political relationships, and he was a person who was not for any organization or in any communally organized way, but he was an advocate for Jews, for the Jewish community and for Israel in the non-Jewish world in a very active way. I can remember as a teenager going with my father to an annual convention of all the employees of a company that he represented, and the chief executive officer of that company asked my father to speak to them about the history of Israel and the imperative of supporting Israel. By my recollection, there was not a dry eye in the house. But whether that recollection is precisely correct or not, what I can tell you is it had a profound impact on me.

Early on in my law career, my father encouraged me to develop political relationships, and I realized that if there was going to be a way that I could contribute to the welfare of the Jewish community, that was really the realm within which I could do it. That evolved into developing really important and long-lasting relationships with elected officials, especially federally elected officials. I acted a lot in partnership with AIPAC, and I did a lot, following my father’s example, on my own independent path. 

Over the years, I realized the importance of bringing members of Congress to Israel, showing them Israel through the eyes of members of the Jewish community who were committed to the welfare of the people of Israel and who were also committed to the welfare of the Jews of America. So I began to organize and lead trips to Israel for members of the U.S. House of Representatives. I’ve taken a good number of members of the U.S. House from the Upper Midwest to Israel, one or two or three at a time, and those members of the House have gone on to become governors and Cabinet secretaries and congressional leaders. Their exposure to Israel and to Jewish lay leaders on the trips that I have led, I think, has resulted in developing a very strong and, God-willing, unbreakable affinity, on their part, for the Jewish community.

JI: Were you raised in an Orthodox household? 

DR: I was raised in a traditional household where Shabbat was respected but not strictly observed. My evolution into Orthodoxy was a slow one through my early adulthood, but I became shomer Shabbat approximately 20 years ago.

JI: How do Judaism and Jewish values influence your own approach to the law?

DR: I study the Talmud every day. What I can tell you is, the more you study the Torah, and the more you study the Talmud, the more you see how rooted in our traditions American law, and the British law from which it emerged, really is. The common denominators are phenomenal. But why is that? That’s because the values that we hold dear, the values that the Torah instills in us, are the values from which the societies in which we live have derived their fundamental principles of justice.

JI: Are there any specific concepts you’d like to cite? 

DR: I guess my answer to your question is, Tzedek, tzedek tirdof — ‘Justice, justice, you shall pursue.’ I think that’s a good one for a U.S. attorney.

When interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro began her tenure as Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney on New Years Day in 1994, she walked into her new office to discover a backlog of antisemitism-related cases left behind by her predecessor. 

“One had to do with a swastika cut into the grass at Winged Foot Golf Club. I don’t know if you know Winged Foot, but it’s the creme de la creme of golf courses,” she remarked during an interview with Jewish Insider at her D.C. office on Tuesday. 

Pirro said learning of the scope of antisemitism in Westchester County, which has long been home to a sizable Jewish population, opened her eyes to “the trauma and the revictimization” of the Jewish people and prompted her to get involved with efforts to promote Holocaust education through the Simon Wiesenthal Center. 

“It’s almost like this thing that follows me,” Pirro said of prosecuting anti-Jewish hate crimes, calling it “so telling” that the fatal shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington — by a 31-year-old suspect who witnesses said shouted “free Palestine” and “I did it for Gaza” — took place during her first week in her current role. 

“My introduction here was just stunning, and it kind of brought me back to where I started, as a local DA, right off the bat with antisemitism,” she said of her initial days as U.S. attorney for the nation’s capital.

President Donald Trump appointed Pirro, known colloquially as Judge Jeanine from her 11 years hosting “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Fox News’ weekend lineup, to serve as Washington’s chief federal law enforcement officer in an acting capacity in mid-May. He formally nominated her for a full term in the position a month later.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines last week to advance Pirro’s nomination, and she’s expected to come before the full Senate in the fall, when the chamber returns from its August recess.

Pirro emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal defenders on the network, and is a personal friend of the president. She aggressively disputed allegations at the start of his first term of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to swing the 2016 election in the president’s favor. Her repeated on-air claims that Democrats had rigged the 2020 election for former President Joe Biden in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat was referenced several times in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against the network, which Fox ultimately settled for $787.5 million in 2023.

She had been co-hosting Fox’s “The Five,” one of the network’s top rated programs, in New York in early May when she agreed to join the Trump administration. The decision came after Ed Martin’s nomination to the U.S. attorney role was pulled over collapsing support among Senate Republicans due to his lack of experience as a prosecutor, ties to alleged Nazi sympathizers and defense of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Within weeks, Pirro found herself speaking to the nation about the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers, one of the highest profile antisemitic crimes in the nation’s capital — amid growing antisemitism taking place across the country. 

“What I want to be clear about today, since this is the first time you are hearing from me, is that this is a horrific crime. And these crimes are not going to be tolerated by me and by this office. A young couple at the beginning of their life’s journey, about to be engaged in another country, had their bodies removed in the cold of the night, in a foreign city, in a body bag,” Pirro said at a press conference the morning after the May 21 slayings of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.

“I am not unaware, based upon my own background, of the repercussions of this kind of case. This is the kind of case that picks at old sores and old scars, because these kinds of cases remind us of what has happened in the past that we can never and must never forget,” she continued. 

In addition to prosecuting the alleged assailant, Elias Rodriguez, Pirro has been doing outreach to Jewish groups to find ways to offer her office’s resources and “highlight that I’m here. Call me.”

She recently connected with the family of Malki Roth, the 15-year-old Israeli American killed in a 2001 suicide bombing at a Sbarro restaurant in Israel, who informed her that they had never heard from anyone at her senior level in the Justice Department about their daughter’s death.

“I said to myself: I ain’t high up, but it’s sad they lost a daughter and they didn’t get the attention that they needed. They will get that attention now, and I am determined to do whatever I can,” Pirro said. 

As part of that commitment, Pirro said she’s “working on” securing the extradition from Jordan of Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian terrorist convicted by an Israeli court for her role in the bombing, to the U.S. in order to face federal charges for the attack, which Roth’s parents have been advocating for since their daughter’s death. 

Tamimi was released from Israel to Jordan as part of a 2011 deal. Jordan has repeatedly refused U.S. extradition requests for Tamimi since the DOJ indictment against her became public in 2017.

Pirro noted that Tamimi has expressed no remorse for her actions and is living a life of fame and freedom in Jordan, where she became well known for hosting a program on a Hamas-affiliated television network for years. “That hate has always been so incomprehensible to me, and that’s why this has always been a mission. Now I’m back at my roots, and I continue with the mission,” she said.

“I don’t want to look in anymore. I want to look out,” Pirro said. “I want the people on the outside to know that there’s someone on the inside that they have access to, that they can speak with, that they can go back into the community and say, ‘She’s taking a strong stand. She’s going to prosecute these cases. She feels strongly about them, and if you’re not sure, go talk to her.’”

Pirro said that the office’s national security division is also pursuing three active cases “in the Arab world.”

Asked about what tools she could utilize as U.S. attorney in the broader fight against antisemitism, Pirro said that she and her team were reaching out to Jewish organizations to encourage community leaders to contact their office directly on local matters where they could be of assistance.

She argued that her emphasis on direct community outreach, rather than solely engaging with “other federal agencies that talk to each other all day long,” marked a shift in approach.

“They’re acronyms,” she said of those agencies. “I don’t want to look in anymore. I want to look out,” Pirro said. “I want the people on the outside to know that there’s someone on the inside that they have access to, that they can speak with, that they can go back into the community and say, ‘She’s taking a strong stand. She’s going to prosecute these cases. She feels strongly about them, and if you’re not sure, go talk to her.’”

Since taking over the role, Pirro has been connecting with D.C. leaders and other relevant stakeholders involved in efforts to address crime, domestic violence and antisemitism. 

Pirro said she needed to tread carefully, in light of her ongoing confirmation proceedings, on the subject of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic mayoral primary in New York. She argued that his plans would be “a disaster for business, a disaster for crime victims … a disaster for quality of life in New York.”

She argued that cutting the New York Police Department  or trying to replace them with social services and mental health workers, as Mamdani has advocated for, would send the city in the wrong direction and make it more difficult to build business and community.

“When you see other Democrats joining, you say to yourself, it’s about power,” Pirro said. “And that’s why we’ve got Donald Trump in, because people heard him loud and clear — they want to be safe, and if they’re safe, then they can think about, you know, having a business, you know, making sure that maybe one day they can take a vacation, and, you know, their families can survive.”

Democrats, highlighting that Pirro is a longtime friend and ally of the president, have argued that she can’t be trusted to uphold the rule of law or the Constitution when they conflict with Trump’s agenda and desires.

Pirro said she’s had a positive working relationship with Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and that she intends to work with city officials regardless of political differences. Still, she criticized the D.C. City Council for its approach to criminal justice issues. 

“My relationship with Muriel Bowser is good. I want to work with her. That’s the only way to make the city safe again. I think that the chief of police, Pamela Smith, is great. The mayor has a similar agenda. I think the mayor believes that D.C. needs to be safe,” Pirro explained.“I think we’ve got a city council that’s out of control, that is so defense oriented. They’re totally tolerant of criminals.”

While Pirro said that securing convictions in the Democratic stronghold was a tall task, she said she was undeterred. 

“We are in the center of the nation where laws are passed on a regular basis, and yet the enforcement of those laws is a very difficult thing to push in some areas,” Pirro said. “I mean, in the end, if we don’t have the determination and if we don’t have the will, then nothing happens, because there is a system that is geared toward the defendant.”

“I’m not going to worry about whether or not they’re liberal judges. I’m not going to worry about whether or not you know, juries in Washington are very defense oriented, and my staff won’t either,” Pirro said. “They know that it’s a hard fight in the district, but that’s our job, and you know what? That’s why I’m here. It’s a challenge, and it’s worth it.”

Pressed about the slow response by municipalities like D.C. to anti-Israel protest encampments on university campuses, and if the decision by city leaders to act in some cases but not in others was an indication that changes could be made in the nation’s capital, Pirro concurred. 

“All law is a matter of will, it’s all about enforcement,” Pirro said, adding that a longtime concern for her has been a lack of consideration for and rights of crime victims in the justice system.

“We are in the center of the nation where laws are passed on a regular basis, and yet the enforcement of those laws is a very difficult thing to push in some areas,” Pirro said. “I mean, in the end, if we don’t have the determination and if we don’t have the will, then nothing happens, because there is a system that is geared toward the defendant.”

Pirro said that the D.C. attorney’s office is “neglected” and understaffed — relying on contractors — and in need of additional full-time staff and resources. 

“I want more people, and I will get more people,” Pirro said. “I’m hiring people who want to fight the good fight and [are] competent.”

Trump, a longtime ally, has been “very gracious” in allowing her to hire more staff, Pirro said. She said she’d also spoken to senators about the resource crunch and they’ve been “very receptive, very interested in making D.C. safe.” She described the recent shooting of a congressional intern in the district as helping to motivate concern and interest from lawmakers.

Despite the lack of staff, Pirro lavished praise on the prosecutors in her office.

“What I’m most proud of in this office is the level of prosecutors and the level of talent. These are serious, well prepared, competent, aggressive prosecutors who are in a city that is not necessarily victim oriented. So we fight the good fight every day here. We fight it on behalf of many, many different segments of the community, whether it’s seniors, whether it’s just innocent victims, whether it’s people of the Jewish faith, whether it’s antisemitism, hate crimes of any type,” she said.