Behind Attorney General Dave Sunday’s friendly demeanor is a no-nonsense lawman elected in November to be Pennsylvania’s chief law enforcement officer–a workhorse, not a show pony.
In a recent interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday said he doesn’t mind being a boring attorney general.
“We have a lot of people in this world that are very performative in the way that they do their job,” Sunday told DVJournal in a podcast interview. “And so I have a lot of pride in the fact that I focus on the daily grind of what it takes to keep people safe. And so I’m the type of guy, you’re not going to see a million tweets out of me. You’re not going to see me just screaming and yelling for the sake of doing it.
“I don’t mind being the guy who just gets the job done and provides outcomes, and not the guy who is just talking about it all day long and trying to make a lot of noise,” said Sunday. “And I’m not really calling anyone specifically out. I’m just stating that I think we need to get back to a place where we reward outcomes.”
Recently, in Washington, D.C., Sunday attended a meeting with other Republican state attorneys general, President Donald Trump, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, to talk about keeping Americans safe. Sunday, the former York County district attorney, spoke about the fentanyl problem afterward.
“One of the reasons I ran for Attorney General in the first place is because of the devastation that I’ve seen, um, in our communities with families, with children, everybody, from the opioid epidemic…has now morphed into fentanyl.”
That drug is “one hundred times more potent than the traditional heroin that people were using,” said Sunday. “It’s so powerful. A few little specks can cause someone to die.”
Even though Trump has closed the border, there is “a lot (of fentanyl) already in the system.”
Asked whether he’ll help Immigration and Customs Enforcement enforce border laws, Sunday said he will.
“We will work with our federal partners anytime an issue comes up,” said Sunday. “I mean, honestly, this really comes down very simply to enforcing the law, right? And it’s that simple.”
Sunday joined 25 other state attorney generals in signing a friend of the court brief in support of Trump’s deportation of dangerous Tren de Aragua gang members.
Sunday noted the Biden administration had designated the gang a “transnational criminal organization. And the Trump administration took it a step further and said they are a foreign terrorist organization.”
Those gang members have committed crimes in at least 16 states, including Pennsylvania, Sunday said.
“So, the Trump administration acted within its constitutional and statutory authority to remove that violent gang,” said Sunday. “That’s what I weighed in on,” not whether “it’s appropriate to violate a court order.”
A federal judge had ordered the justice department to turn around planes carrying those gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
DV Journal asked Sunday about progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and whether he would use a proposed state law to take over some prosecutions from him.
“Throughout the entirety of my campaign, I made it very clear that I would work with the Philadelphia district attorney to the extent that he would be willing to work with me to achieve public safety,” said Sunday.
Sunday said he’s cracking down on Medicaid fraud. A report showed Pennsylvania had more Medicaid fraud prosecutions than any other state. He noted that with Medicaid fraud, it’s taxpayers’ money was being stolen.
