- Attorney General-elect Derek Brown will be sworn in on Wednesday.
- Brown has promised a "top-to-bottom" review of the AG office's ethics and transparency standards.
- Brown wants to "ratchet up" Utah's legal fights against social media companies that are harming young people.
Utah’s soon-to-be top law enforcement official said he will stop at nothing to reclaim trust in the state’s largest legal institution.
In the two months since he was elected, incoming Attorney General Derek Brown said he has launched a “top-to-bottom review” of the office he will occupy starting Monday.
Brown’s transition team includes outgoing state auditor John Dougall as co-chair and former Utah Bar Foundation Director V. Lowry Snow as head of an “ethics subcommittee.”
Both have already begun making recommendations to increase the integrity of the Utah Attorney General’s Office.
“If there’s transparency, just the natural outgrowth will be trust, and that’s what I want,” Brown told the Deseret News. “My hope is that when my tenure as attorney general comes to a conclusion, people will say that was someone that we could trust.”
Brown’s three predecessors faced a number of lawsuits with allegations ranging from suppression of free speech, to witness tampering, to misuse of public funds, to bribery and public corruption.
None of these former attorneys general were convicted of a crime.
But Brown said he is willing to do whatever it takes to erase the appearance of wrongdoing from the office.
To start, Brown has committed to making his work calendars public — something outgoing Attorney General Sean Reyes did not do until a court required him to.
Brown said his office will also create a new ethics committee to introduce and enforce other transparency and accountability measures.
“I want to implement a set of best practices that becomes the gold standard for the Attorney General’s Office moving into the future,” Brown said.
To maintain his independence as attorney general, Brown said his family has placed their assets in a blind trust.
Additionally, Brown committed to step away from each of the nonprofit boards he serves on and to find a way to prevent political donations from anyone that has “involvement with the office.”
“Anything I can do to eliminate conflicts of interest, I’m going to do,” Brown said. “Yes, it would be protecting myself, but more importantly, it’s protecting the office in a way that benefits the state.”
Who is Derek Brown?
Prior to entering the Attorney General’s Office, Brown, 53, developed a long list of connections serving in the state as:
- Legal counsel to former Utah Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch.
- Deputy chief of staff and state director for Sen. Mike Lee.
- A member of the state House of Representatives (District 49).
- Chairman of the Utah Republican Party.
His professional career included stints practicing constitutional and appellate law at Sidley Austin and Mayer Brown. His most recent work was as a lobbyist and legal adviser. One of his clients was Meta, the owner of Facebook, and he represented them in discussions over social media regulations at the Utah Capitol.
Brown insisted that he would have no problem continuing Utah’s lawsuit against his former client. He said his work for the company demonstrates his qualifications for his new job.
“There’s a reason they hired me. It’s because I’m good at bringing people together. I’m good at these legal issues. I understand them,” Brown said.
In 2023, Utah joined 42 states in suing Meta Platforms, alleging the company intentionally designed flagship social media platforms Facebook and Instagram with addictive features, contributing to poor mental health in children and teens.
Fight big-tech, work with Trump
Besides building trust in his institution, Brown said his priorities are first, to protect the citizens of Utah, particularly children; second, to protect the state against federal overreach; and third, to improve the functioning of “the largest law firm in the state.”
To protect children, Brown wants to “ratchet up what we’re doing” on social media lawsuits.
In October 2023, Utah sued TikTok, arguing that the company knew its app is habit forming in a way that can harm teen mental health. Utah filed another lawsuit in June, alleging that the company also knew it earns profits from the sexual exploitation of young people via the livestream feature.
On Friday, the Utah Attorney General’s Office released a new unredacted filing that provided further evidence on allegations that TikTok executives knew about the ineffectiveness of age restrictions on their platform.
Brown also promised to stick with Utah’s landmark lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court questioning the federal government’s indefinite management of 18.5 million acres of unappropriated public lands.
Utah has filed dozens of lawsuits against federal agencies during the last four years of Democratic control in the White House. Most of these were the result of unwillingness on the part of the Biden administration to communicate and compromise with the state, Brown said.
Brown does not foresee this problem persisting during the Trump presidency, he said. Brown believes the Trump administration will be much more willing to work with Utah on complicated issues, whether it’s public lands, energy permitting or the legal questions surrounding mass deportation of migrants who are in the country illegally.
As a self-identified “collaborative conservative,” Brown views litigation as a last resort if other forms of negotiation break down. But when it comes to the question of whether the Utah Attorney General’s Office will crack down on international gangs or drug cartels, Brown said there’s no room for negotiation.
“Absolutely we will do that,” Brown said, noting that his deputy over the criminal department, Stewart Young, previously specialized in prosecuting drug cartels and gang members for the United States Attorney’s Office. “That position sends a very clear message to people in that community that we’re not messing around. We understand exactly what we’re doing, and this is a priority.”