How a connectionless Utahn worked in Obama, Trump administrations

Unflappable, tough-talking U.S. Attorney John Huber admittedly had a case of the jitters when he had to face the Washington media in the White House briefing room.

The Department of Justice summoned him to the nation’s capital on short notice to hold a news conference on immigration. The DOJ at the time was having trouble getting any of its own messages out because wherever Attorney General Jeff Sessions went, the press just wanted to talk about the Russia investigation.

Huber spent a day prepping to talk from a Utah perspective about proposed federal laws aimed at making stiffer penalties for deported immigrants who return illegally to commit crimes.

“I was freaking out,” he said.

As then-deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders escorted him to the small theater in the West Wing of the White House, he heard the clicking of cameras in the room packed with reporters. As he took the podium, he told himself to pretend he was in Salt Lake City, to pretend they were Utah media.

Now, Utah reporters are no slouches, but they are not the Washington press corps, famed for testy exchanges with presidential press secretaries over the years. But they had no idea who Huber was, which might have been part of DOJ’s strategy to get its message out.

Huber survived the press conference. The other thing he told himself that day in June 2017 was to soak it all in because he would never “find myself at the center of the power of the universe” again.

It was one of several pinch-me moments for a kid from Magna, Utah, a working-class town west of Salt Lake City with a reputation for foul-tasting water. He still lives across the street from the elementary school he attended and the home he grew up in is just down the block.

Huber’s tenure as U.S. attorney in Utah will come to an end Sunday after serving under three presidents, albeit only a few weeks with President Joe Biden. He is the rare U.S. attorney to be appointed by both a Democratic and Republican president. Huber figures that in this age, he might be the last one.

Biden this month asked Huber and U.S. attorneys across the country to submit their resignations — as President Donald Trump did four years ago — so he can replace them with his own appointees.

“I’ve worked for three presidents now, two of whom have fired me. That’s not a great batting average,” Huber said with a laugh.

On the “vanity” wall in his 19th floor corner office on Main Street with sweeping views of the Salt Lake Valley, he has pictures of himself with Biden, Trump and Barack Obama, who first appointed him in 2015. (Local law firms question how the government scored such sweet office space, but Huber insists the feds won the bid fair and square.)

Biden, who was vice president at the time of the photo with Huber, signed it, “John, you’re the best.”

“I kind of wish I could send that to him,” Huber said.

Huber, 53, would like to stay on the job, but it isn’t in the cards this time. All it took when he resigned under Trump was a phone call to Sessions — a voicemail, actually — from now-retired Republican Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch to keep him employed four years ago.

It was Hatch’s…