Pete Serrano, the conservative former mayor of Pasco and 2024 Republican candidate for Washington attorney general, moved to Spokane this week to take over the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Washington. Serrano previously represented Sean Feucht, an anti-queer worship pastor, in a damages lawsuit against Spokane. He stepped down as mayor of Pasco to take the job.
The Eastern District of Washington is a part of the Federal District Court system, covering the 20 counties that lie east of the Cascades. As US Attorney, Serrano will lead a team of nearly 80 “prosecutors, civil litigators, and support personnel” and will supervise “the prosecution of all federal crimes and the litigation of all civil matters ... in which the United States has an interest.”
Different districts across the country tend to specialize in different things — the Southern District of New York does a high number of financial and regulatory crimes because the district includes Wall Street, for example. But in general, Serrano’s office will take point on federal crimes committed in the region, like drug trafficking, human trafficking, interstate fraud, counterfeiting and child sex offenses.
Serrano will also oversee the prominent federal cases brought last month against local activists who protested immigrant arrests in June.
Last month, Serrano’s predecessor Stephanie Van Marter brought federal felony charges against nine people who had protested outside Spokane’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. They had blocked an ICE van that officers were going to use to bring two immigrants they’d arrested to a federal facility in Tacoma for deportation. The men were in the US legally seeking asylum and awaiting court proceedings.
RANGE reached out to Serrano on his cell phone and through Robert Curry, the spokesperson for the Eastern District, but Curry said Serrano would not be available for interviews before press time. Serrano declined to comment on the federal cases against the protesters.
He will be the third person to serve in the office since Vanessa Waldref resigned in February. The first interim US attorney this year was Richard Barker, and the second was Van Marter, who started on July 7 and filled the role for less than one month. Unlike Barker and Van Marter, though, Serrano was advanced by the Trump Administration to assume the role permanently. That will require confirmation in the Senate, which should happen within 120 days of his appointment.
During his bid for state attorney general last year, Serrano opposed gun control and abortion rights. He also made headlines in a debate with rival and eventual victor Nick Brown when he called people in prison for attacking the US Capitol and assaulting police officers on January 6, 2021, “political prisoners.”
Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Serrano on August 6, according to a press release on the office’s website, and he was sworn in Monday, Curry said.
Serrano spoke briefly with a few reporters late last week, telling The Center Square, “I had different folks reach out to suggest that I'd be good for it, and I talked to my wife and said, ‘Hey, I think it's a great opportunity to serve at least half of the state.’ So I put my name in the hat.”
Serrano left Pasco’s mayoral office and his position as director and general counsel for the Silent Majority Foundation (SMF), a conservative nonprofit that wants to “halt and rein in government overreach,” according to its website. The SMF has unsuccessfully challenged Washington’s ban on gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, which are often used in mass shootings because they increase a gun’s potential to kill.
Serrano told The Center Square he expects the gun lawsuit to come before the US Supreme Court, which the gun shop at the center of the suit requested this month. He is no longer involved in that litigation.
Serrano in Spokane
Serrano has some history with Spokane. Working under the auspices of the SMF he represented the anti-queer Christian worship pastor Feucht in a $2 million lawsuit against the city after the council denounced former Mayor Nadine Woodward for appearing at Feucht’s 2023 “Let Us Worship” concert.
The denouncement focused on a moment during the concert during which far-right Spokane pastor and former Republican state congressperson Matt Shea laid hands on Woodward, praying for her. Just before he did this, Shea compared the Gray Fire, which was burning down parts of Medical Lake that day and had killed a person, to same-sex marriage. Feucht is a peripheral character in the denouncement, but he maintained that the council was coming directly after him.
At the time, Serrano agreed.
“It’s very clear that the city council took a stand against Sean,” Serrano told RANGE in 2024, just after Feucht announced the lawsuit during a local church service. “You have a municipality saying you can’t do these specific things in this way. … It’s pretty clear that it’s an attack against the individual.”
When he took the US attorney job, Serrano handed the Feucht case to another SMF attorney.
Last August, Serrano joined right-wing video journalist Jonathan Choe on the streets of Spokane to interview unhoused people about living on the streets and about the fentanyl crisis. The people they interviewed told them they lacked consistent access to housing resources and said it was easier to find drugs than safety in Spokane.
Choe used the reporting to attack local media coverage of the overlapping homelessness and fentanyl crises, saying on Twitter, “Left-wing corporate media members in this city are too compromised or weak to show the truth.”
(RANGE, The Spokesman, The Inlander and local TV stations have consistently provided daily and long-term coverage of the housing and fentanyl crises in Spokane for years.)
The report had the effect of a glowing campaign ad for Serrano’s AG bid. In the footage, Serrano is seen in an eggshell button-up, with sleeves rolled roughly a quarter way up his forearms, gladhanding unhoused people and asking them about the brutal physical injuries that sometimes accompany homelessness.
“You know, it’s interesting,” Serrano mused to Choe as they strolled at night along a downtown street. “People talk about ‘Seattle this, Seattle that,’ but Spokane obviously has its issues, too, and what I’m hearing is that they’re not being heard.”
In an interview after they’d walked the streets, Choe asked Serrano about the role of drugs in homelessness. “Just about everyone told us the reason they’re out here is because of drugs,” Serrano replied, but Choe did not include any footage in his report of unhoused people saying drugs were the reason they were on the streets.
Though homelessness can cause or worsen drug addiction, the National Coalition for the Homeless says the primary causes of homelessness are expensive housing and poverty.
When Serrano was announced as the US Attorney last week, Choe reupped the footage, tweeting: “I went into Spokane's drug dens with Serrano last year. The guy is fearless but also compassionate. Huge win for the state.”
And while drug use and homelessness was one focus of his run for Washington State Attorney General, Serrano’s new job will likely not overlap with small-scale drug crimes, homelessness or fighting legal battles in the culture war.
Despite that, the former mayor is seen by some — at least on social media — as a bulwark against perceived leftism in the local government. An account called Spokane Zionists for Israel replied to Choe’s tweet: “He’s going to be fighting the city hall progressives.”
In an emailed statement written by spokesperson Curry, Serrano didn’t distance himself from this notion.
“Drug trafficking and the associated crimes are a critical focus of this Office,” Curry wrote. “Mr. Serrano will continue the office’s and the administration’s heightened efforts to protect the people of the district through prosecution of these issues.”
