St. Louis prosecutor co-leads Virginia prosecution of New York AG

As the Department of Justice prosecutes New York attorney general Letitia James in Virginia, a Missouri man is playing a key role: Roger Keller, a federal prosecutor in St. Louis, is bringing the case on behalf of the government. 

Keller entered into the case last Wednesday. The 58-year-old St. Charles County resident has been a longtime federal prosecutor working out of the St. Louis office, primarily handling civil cases. A former colleague of Keller’s describes him as “outspokenly conservative, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump.” He was known to occasionally sport a red Make America Great Again hat outside of work. 

That seemingly makes him a good person to carry the Trump administration’s water on this case. As the New York Times has reported, career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia reviewed the evidence in the case against James and “concluded it did not support criminal charges.” That’s when the Times says Trump “abruptly forced out the U.S. attorney who had been overseeing the office and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had no prosecutorial experience.” Keller will now assist Halligan in the prosecution.

Under James, the New York attorney general’s office brought a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump (at that time a private citizen) and his children, alleging that they were vastly inflating the net worth of their business. That suit resulted in Trump being hit with a $464 million judgment, which he is currently appealing.

Three years later, with Trump back in the White House, his Justice Department indicted James earlier this month on bank fraud and false statements of a financial institution, accusing her of representing a Virginia property as her primary residence as part of a mortgage application, saying this resulted in $18,933 of “ill-gotten gains” that came at the government’s expense. 

James appeared for her arraignment on Friday. Keller handled most of the business for the prosecution, with Halligan on hand as well. That hearing, covered on blogs that follow legal minutia, contained some “polite discord” between Keller and James’ defense counsel, as well as the judge, about long how the government anticipated the eventual trial would take, the number of witnesses they planned to call, and prosecutors not being able to turn over any evidence to defense attorneys right away.

Keller’s entry into the case is the latest example of Missouri’s legal community serving as a sort of farm team for Trump’s Washington, D.C.

Will Scharf, also a former assistant U.S. attorney in St. Louis, is currently the president’s staff secretary and also leads the National Planning Commission, which reviews federal construction projects, including White House ballrooms. Former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was earlier this fall promoted to co-deputy director of the FBI. Former Missouri solicitor general D. John Sauer is now the U.S. solicitor general, representing the federal government in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Ed Martin, once the head of the Missouri Republican party, was briefly the interim U.S.Attorney for the District of Columbia before leaving that role to head up the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, designed to investigate government officials who investigated Trump. 

James’ prosecution is something of a departure for Keller. While he’s entered appearances in hundreds of cases in Eastern Missouri, a review of the 10 cases filed since the start of 2024 are all civil matters. 

Relatively recent entries include defending the federal government in a lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was hit by a postal truck, by a man who said he was hit by a postal truck and a Department of Veteran Affairs employee who claimed her free speech rights were violated when she was told not to talk about alleged fungus coming out of the air vents at her workplace.  

Hear more on this story from Ryan Krull on The 314 Podcast.