Darline Graham

NORTH CHARLESTON —Stephen Federico, the father of slain college student Logan Federico, has relived his daughter’s murder countless times since her killer, Alexander Dickey, broke into a downtown Columbia home and shot her to death.

Time and time again, Federico — in media interviews, hearings in Congress and campaign events — relives his 22-year-old daughter’s May 2025 death and Dickey’s ability to cause it due to record-keeping issues that allowed him to receive probation rather than prison time for past offenses despite a lengthy criminal history.

Federico’s latest audience Oct. 8 was U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, the nation’s top prosecutor and former personal attorney to President Donald Trump.

Blanche, confirmed to the seat earlier this year in a narrow 50-49 Senate vote, was in North Charleston for a roundtable with local law enforcement to discuss federal legislation named for Federico’s daughter called “Logan’s Law.”

Sponsored by Republicans U.S. Sen. Darline Graham and Rep. Russell Fry — who were seated beside Blanche at the head of the table of local police officers — the bill would create a publicly accessible national database of violent offenders accessible to law enforcement across jurisdictions. It would allow individual departments to track criminal records across jurisdictional lines and close the type of gaps Federico says allowed Dickey to go free.

"If we did our jobs, she would be here," Blanche told Federico after an emotional opening statement before the roundtable discussion.

Insufficiencies in record-keeping practices dominated the 45-minute conversation. But it was also an opportunity for the politicians to talk about what was going well. Homicides statewide were down 18 percent last year, and down 21 percent to start 2026, Blanche said. Rates of rape, assaults and robberies fell by double-digits, with overall crime in Charleston down an estimated 36 percent last year, according to numbers Blanche shared.

“South Carolinians are safer right now than they were two years ago, three years ago, four years ago,” Blanche said. “And there are numbers to back that up.”

It was a positive press event for all of them: an opportunity to tout “common sense” fixes to the criminal justice system and highlight law enforcement’s successes before a battery of television news cameras.

It also came at an interesting time, with the House and Senate in recess and an election cycle actively underway.

To Blanche’s left at the table was Charleston County Sheriff Carl Ritchie, who hours earlier had been criticized by an attorney representing the family of two girls found dead from neglect over his deputies’ actions in the lead-up to their deaths. Ritchie is not up for election this year.

Graham, there in an official capacity, is in the throes of an active and bitterly contested U.S. Senate campaign, and sat beside Blanche. Earlier in the year, she cast the deciding vote for his nomination. After the death of her brother Lindsey Graham, she was picked to serve out his term and took up sponsorship of Logan’s Law in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she serves as a member. Fry is also up for re-election and is considered safe.

Politics, Blanche said, had nothing to do with it.

"This is not my first trip here,” Blanche told reporters. “I travel every single week saying exactly the same thing I said today. It has nothing to do with the fact that it's October."

Blanche had been to Charleston once before — as a deputy attorney general, where he served prior to his ascension to the top post. He succeeded his former boss, Pam Bondi, who was fired over her alleged unwillingness to prosecute Trump’s political opponents, as well as her handling of the Epstein files. But it was his first opportunity to leave his own imprint on the position.

Questioned about his office’s progress in filling thousands of vacant attorney positions created at the start of Trump’s administration, Blanche criticized the estimates as the product of “activist organizations,” adding that they were “aggressively hiring” to fill vacancies across the country.

Numbers provided to The Post and Courier showed vacancy rates around 10 percent across the country — similar or lower to numbers under recent Democratic administrations. U.S. Attorney for South Carolina Bryan Stirling told The Post and Courier they were rapidly closing their current vacancy rate of 15 percent in the criminal investigations division, with three job offers currently extended.

Next to accomplish is the passage of Logan’s Law, with both bills still awaiting a public hearing in each respective chamber of Congress. With Democrats now appearing likely to regain control of the House and Senate, however, its fate remains uncertain.

Asked whether he believed there would be bipartisan support for the bill in the House, Fry said he had not yet had those conversations, though he believed Democrats would be likely to support the bill.

As for the Senate? “I will work on it,” Graham said.