Bethel board member Kate Brubacher selected by Biden as U.S. Attorney for Kansas
Bethel board member Kate Brubacher selected by Biden as U.S. Attorney for Kansas
Brubacher is a North Newton native and graduate of Stanford and Yale.
Kate Brubacher, a current member of the Bethel College board of directors, was selected by President Joe Biden on Nov. 29 to be the United States Attorney for Kansas. If confirmed, she would become the first woman to hold the position.
Brubacher graduated from Yale Law School in 2010, received her Master of Arts from Yale Divinity School in 2007 and Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University in 2003. She’s a former Missouri prosecutor who worked as an assistant prosecutor attorney in Jackson County, Mo. where she worked from 2016 through Aug. 2022.
A North Newton native and Newton High School alumuna, Brubacher has worked for New York law firms as an associate and as an analyst at Essex Management Company from 2010 through 2011 prior to her work in Missouri. Her most notable work was her team’s efforts to coordinate the release of Kevin Strickland, a wrongfully convicted incarcerated male who had spent forty years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
Additionally, she worked with a project to combat gun violence in the Kansas City area and led a support project while living in Ghana for women who fell victim to the impacts of the Liberian Civil War. She has worked in the realm of homicide cases and helped with a federally-funded restorative justice program.
Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker — whom Brubacher worked with on the Strickland case — told The Kansas City Star that she’s “one of the best lawyers I have seen walk through the doors of this office,” and, “I just don’t believe Kevin Strickland would be free without the work that she did.”
The timeline for the confirmation process is still unknown as she still must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. If she gets confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she’ll replace Duston Slinkard, a prosecutor who has been serving as the U.S. Attorney in Kansas since the beginning of Biden’s presidency.
There are currently three U.S. attorney offices in Kansas. They’re located in the capital city of Topeka, Wichita, and Kansas City with around 50 federal prosecutors who handle cases across the state.