By Matt Sepic, Minnesota Public Radio News

U.S. Attorney Andy Luger is stepping down soon as the top federal law enforcement official in Minnesota. As is custom for political appointees, he’s resigning to make way for a yet-to-be-announced successor chosen by incoming President Donald Trump.

After serving under President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden appointed Luger, 65, to a second term that began in in 2022.

Luger spoke Thursday afternoon with MPR News correspondent Matt Sepic. This is a condensed version of the interview. To hear the entire conversation, click the audio link above.

In May of that year, you launched a violent crime initiative that focused initially on carjacking and gun cases, particularly machine guns. Where does that stand now nearly three years later? Has it been successful?

We hear from defendants and community members that our initiatives are having an effect. Someone who commits a carjacking gets arrested and they’re in the car, one of the questions they ask the police is, is this going federal?

Last year, you expanded that effort to focus on Minneapolis street gangs. Why was it important for you to make gangs a priority for federal law enforcement?

Both north side community leaders as well as law enforcement leaders said that following the murder of George Floyd and the riots that ensued, and the downturn in number of officers on the street, the gangs really saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. They began to become more violent against each other, which both affects them, affects the neighborhoods and innocent bystanders.

What have you learned about Minneapolis gangs, and specifically their inner workings as a result of this investigation and the trial a few months ago?

This is almost incredible to say, but when you ask a member of the Highs, what’s their purpose, what are they doing, their answer is to kill members of the Lows. And when you ask a member of the Lows, what’s your purpose, why do you do this, their answer is to kill the Highs. It’s just that simple.

You returned for your second term as U.S. Attorney amid the FBI’s investigation into an alleged $250 million COVID fraud scheme centered around the Twin Cities nonprofit Feeding Our Future. After having prosecuted many different kinds of crimes over the decades in your career, what did you think when you first sat down and cracked open that case file?

The day before the search warrants were executed in January 2022, I got a call from Joe Thompson, who’s the white collar chief in this office, and he said, “When are you coming?” Because we were waiting daily for my confirmation. And I said, any day.

And he said, “All right, well, watch the news Thursday.”

I think it was pretty much from the day I got here, Joe Thompson and I with the FBI agents and others, talking about we need more people on this, and we’re going to turn this into one of the biggest cases this office has ever seen, because it had to be.

After you step down, what happens with this case and all of the other pending cases that are in this office and the trials next year, half dozen of them related to Feeding Our Future?

We have been very careful in the months leading up to the election, knowing that I could leave if the election goes in a particular way, in plotting out what 2025 looks like, it could take a year or more to have a new US Attorney confirmed.

They’ll pick up the mantle. They’ll make changes where that person sees fit, just like I did. But I got to believe the core mission of this office on violent crime and on feeding our future and other large government fraud investigations that could ensue. I got to believe that’s going to go forward.

What’s next for you?

Under Department of Justice rules and my own sense of propriety, I’m not going to talk about my future while I still sit in this chair. I think the state of Minnesota deserves a full time U.S. attorney was focused on that, and that’s where I’m at.

Somebody asked me earlier today in the office, will you retire? And I said, I really don’t know the meaning of that word, so I don’t plan on retiring. I will stay active in the law and in causes and ideas that I believe in, the most important of which is faith in our government institutions.

I believe so much in our criminal justice system that I’ll be a vocal advocate for that system going forward.