Liu worked as an associate at
Jenner & Block from 1999 to 2002, as a partner at the same firm from 2009 to 2016, and as a partner at
Morrison & Foerster from 2016 to 2017. Liu served as
assistant United States attorney in the District of Columbia from 2002 to 2006. Liu worked for the
2016 transition team of
President-elect Donald Trump, and in 2017 became deputy
general counsel at the
United States Department of the Treasury. While serving as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Liu received criticism from residents and
local lawmakers for her record of not prosecuting
hate crimes. An investigation by
The Washington Post found that under her leadership, hate crime prosecutions and convictions in D.C. were at their lowest point in at least a decade. After much public pressure, her office made more prosecutions for hate crimes in 2019 than it did in all of 2018 and 2017 combined. In March 2019, President Donald Trump said he would nominate Liu to become
United States associate attorney general, but she withdrew her name from consideration later that month because the Republican-controlled
Senate Judiciary Committee objected to her nomination. On December 10, 2019, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Liu as
Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes at the Department of the Treasury. The nomination was submitted to the
U.S. Senate on January 6, 2020. Some Republicans doubted her conservative credentials and loyalty to Trump. As a US attorney, Liu had overseen some ancillary cases referred by the
Mueller investigation including the prosecution of longtime Trump associate
Roger Stone, as well as a politically charged case involving former FBI deputy director
Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of Trump's ire. In January 2020 she determined there was insufficient evidence to indict McCabe. She was then transferred to the Treasury Department to await her confirmation, as Barr replaced her with his close advisor
Timothy Shea. On February 11, 2020, Trump withdrew her nomination, two days before her confirmation hearing was scheduled to begin. CNN reported that Liu's nomination was withdrawn because she was perceived to be insufficiently involved in the Stone and McCabe cases. Liu resigned from the government on February 12, 2020. Days later it was reported that before Liu's nomination was withdrawn, Trump was presented with a lengthy memo describing a variety of ways Liu was perceived to be disloyal, primarily by not prosecuting individuals Trump disliked. ==Awards and honors==