In a notice posted on her “Mimi Rocah for District Attorney” Facebook page, Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah on the afternoon of Oct. 26 announced that she will not seek reelection to the DA’s office. Rocah did not specify any future vocational plans including whether she might run for a different office.
“This has been a difficult decision but one that is right for me and my family at this time,” Rocah said. “As I approached the decision whether to run for a second term, my thoughts have been occupied in recent weeks by the terrorist attack on Israel and the aftermath, which has profoundly and personally impacted me in ways that I did not expect. I do not know what my next role will be. But I do know that I will work to raise public awareness and advocate for the extremely necessary ethical reforms for our country, continue to fight for truth and justice, and work on pressing national and world-wide issues.”
Before running for office, Rocah was Pace University School of Law’s Distinguished Fellow in Criminal Justice and a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. In recent months, she has been seen periodically on television commenting on various news events.
Rocah served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Department of Justice from 2001 to 2017 in the Southern District of New York. During the Obama Administration, she was promoted in 2012 by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to chief of the Department of Justice’s Westchester Division.
“I do not fit the mold of a career politician,” Rocah wrote in her announcement. “I have approached the role of DA as I have always approached being a prosecutor over the past 20 years: I make decisions about cases and policies based on facts, law, public safety, and what is the right thing to do.”
Rocah said that she is confident that the staff at the DA’s office will continue to carry out “the great work that is being done” but added that there is “still more work to be done to bring Westchester a truly modern, independent, and apolitical justice system.”
At about the time the announcement about her not running was posted on social media, her office announced that an Elmsford man, Hani Saleh, was arrested in White Plains and charged for possessing a loaded semi-automatic weapon without a permit. His car was covered in various writings and images and the case is under investigation by the White Plains Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI’s Westchester Safe Streets Task Force. A judge in White Plains City Court ordered Saleh held in custody pending another court appearance next week.
