Law Knott worked as a trial lawyer in the
United States Department of Justice during the
Reagan administration. He was an
Assistant United States Attorney for four years and spent two years as a
criminal prosecutor. He is now in private practice with the law firm Ward and Smith and was previously a partner at the law firm Knott, Clark, Berger & Whitehurst. He backed out of a planned debate with Cooper, claiming that the debate would have overshadowed the attorney general candidate's forum. In February 2017, he introduced a ban on university centers filing legal actions and, in September 2017, he voted to block the UNC Center for Civil Rights from doing litigation. In 2019, Knott called for the immediate restoration of "
Silent Sam", a
Confederate monument on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that was
toppled by protestors on August 20, 2018 and subsequently removed from the campus. In an op-ed that he wrote for
The News & Observer, Knott referred to the protestors as "violent people" and a "mob." Knott's term on the board of governors was completed in 2019. In an online meeting for the executive committee in 2022, Knott claimed that the Convention taking preventative steps to end
sexual abuse, in order to protect women and children, would ruin the Baptist church. He also stated that women and children "are going to be victimized no matter how much", and said that he feared the Southern Baptist Convention would end if targeted by class-action lawsuits. == Personal life ==