PRESIDENT DONALD JOHN TRUMP fired all of our Ambassadors effective Inauguration Day. Apparently faux Fox News hack Sean Hannity persuaded PRESIDENT TRUMP to purge 46 of our United States Attorneys. No word on the website of the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, A. Lee Bentley, III, as to whether the demand to resign included him. Mr. Bentley's office has prosecuted corrupt elected officials of both parties, including ex-Congresswoman CORINNE BROWN.
Trump Abruptly Orders 46 Obama-Era Prosecutors to Resign
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and MAGGIE HABERMAN
MARCH 10, 2017
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration moved on Friday to sweep away most of the remaining vestiges of Obama administration prosecutors at the Justice Department, ordering 46 holdover United States attorneys to tender their resignations immediately — including Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.
The firings were a surprise — especially for Mr. Bharara, who has a reputation for prosecuting public corruption cases and for investigating insider trading. In November, Mr. Bharara met with then President-elect Donald J. Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan and told reporters afterward that both Mr. Trump and Jeff Sessions, who is now the attorney general, had asked him about staying on, which the prosecutor said he expected to do.
But on Friday, Mr. Bharara was among federal prosecutors who received a call from Dana Boente, the acting deputy attorney general, instructing him to resign, according to a person familiar with the matter. As of Friday evening, though some of the prosecutors had publicly announced their resignations, Mr. Bharara had not. A spokesman for Mr. Bharara declined to comment.
Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in an email that all remaining holdover United States attorneys had been asked to resign, leaving their deputy United States attorneys, who are career officials, in place in an acting capacity.
“As was the case in prior transitions, many of the United States Attorneys nominated by the previous administration already have left the Department of Justice,” she said in the email. “The Attorney General has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. Attorneys to tender their resignations in order to ensure a uniform transition.”
The abrupt order came after two weeks of increasing calls from Mr. Trump’s allies outside the government to oust appointees from President Barack Obama’s administration. Mr. Trump has been angered by a series of reports based on leaked information from a sprawling bureaucracy, as well as from his own West Wing.
Several officials said the firings had been planned before Friday.
But the calls from the acting deputy attorney general arose a day after Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator who is a strong supporter of President Trump, said on his evening show that Mr. Trump needed to “purge” Obama holdovers from the federal government. Mr. Hannity portrayed them as “saboteurs” from the “deep state” who were leaking secrets to hurt Mr. Trump. It also came the same week that government watchdogs wrote to Mr. Bharara and urged him to investigate whether Mr. Trump had violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments.
In Mr. Hannity’s monologue, he highlighted the fact that the Clinton administration had told all 93 United States attorneys to resign soon after he took office in 1993, and that “nobody blinked an eye,” but he said it became a scandal when the George W. Bush administration fired several top prosecutors midway through his second term.
Several Democratic members of Congress said they only heard that the United States attorneys from their states were being immediately let go shortly before the Friday afternoon statement from the Justice Department. One senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect the identity of the United States attorney in that state, said that an Obama-appointed prosecutor had been instructed to vacate the office by the end of the day.
Although it was not clear whether all were given the same instructions, that United States attorney was not the only one told to clear out by the close of business. The abrupt nature of the dismissals distinguished Mr. Trump’s mass firing from Mr. Clinton’s, because the prosecutors in 1993 were not summarily told to clear out their offices.
Michael D. McKay, who was the United States attorney in Seattle under the George Bush administration, recalled that even though he had already made plans to leave, he nevertheless stayed on for about three weeks beyond a request by then-Attorney General Janet Reno for all of the holdover prosecutors to resign. He also recalled at least one colleague who was in the midst of a major investigation and was kept on to finish it.
“I’m confident it wasn’t on the same day,” he said, adding: “While there was a wholesale ‘Good to see you, thanks for your service, and now please leave,’ people were kept on on a case-by-case basis depending on the situation.”
Two United States attorneys survived the firings: Mr. Boente, the top prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is serving as acting deputy attorney general, and Rod Rosenstein, the top prosecutor in Baltimore, whom Mr. Trump has nominated to be deputy attorney general.
“The president called Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein tonight to inform them that he has declined to accept their resignation, and they will remain in their current positions,” said Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman.
It remains possible that Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions could put others on that list later.
It is not unusual for a new president to replace United States attorneys appointed by a predecessor, especially when there has been a change in which party controls the White House.
Still, other presidents have done it gradually in order to minimize disruption, giving those asked to resign more time to make the transition while keeping some inherited prosecutors in place, as it had appeared Mr. Trump would do with Mr. Bharara. Mr. Obama, for example, kept Mr. Rosenstein, who had been appointed by George W. Bush.
The abrupt mass firing appeared to be a change in plans for the administration, according to a statement by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“In January, I met with Vice President Pence and White House Counsel Donald McGahn and asked specifically whether all U.S. attorneys would be fired at once,” she said. “Mr. McGahn told me that the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity. Clearly this is not the case. I’m very concerned about the effect of this sudden and unexpected decision on federal law enforcement.”
Still, the cases the various federal prosecutors were overseeing will continue, with their career deputies becoming acting United States attorneys in their place for the time being.
Mr. Bharara has been among the highest-profile United States attorneys, with a purview that includes Wall Street and public corruption prosecutions, including of both Democratic and Republican officials and other influential figures.
His office, for example, has prosecuted top police officials in New York and the powerful leader of the city correction officers’ union; they have pleaded not guilty. It is preparing to try a major public corruption case involving former aides and associates of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and is looking into allegations of pay-for-play around Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York.
But Mr. Bharara is also closely associated with the Senate minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. Mr. Bharara was formerly a counsel to Mr. Schumer, who pushed Mr. Obama to nominate Mr. Bharara to be the top federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.
At the time of the November meeting at Trump Tower, Mr. Schumer was saying publicly that Democrats should try to find common ground and work with the president-elect. But relations between Mr. Trump and Mr. Schumer have since soured.
Mr. Trump has called Mr. Schumer the Democrats’ “head clown” and accused him of shedding “fake tears” over the president’s efforts to bar refugees from entering the United States.
For his part, Mr. Schumer has called for an independent investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and demanded that Mr. Sessions resign for having testified that he had no contacts with Russians even though he had met with the Russian ambassador.
The White House officials ascribed the reversal over Mr. Bharara as emblematic of a chaotic transition process. One official said it was tied to Mr. Trump’s belief in November that he and Mr. Schumer would be able to work together.
Benjamin Weiser and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.
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Justice Department tells all remaining Obama administration U.S. attorneys to resign
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked the remaining 46 chief federal prosecutors left over from the Obama administration to resign "in order to ensure a uniform transition," the Justice Department said (Reuters)
By Sari Horwitz and Devlin Barrett
March 10 at 10:00 PM
The Washington Post
The Justice Department announced Friday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked all 46 remaining Obama administration U.S. attorneys across the country to submit their resignations immediately.
“As was the case in prior transitions, many of the United States attorneys nominated by the previous administration already have left the Department of Justice,” agency spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement. “The Attorney General has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys to tender their resignations in order to ensure a uniform transition.”
Flores said that until new U.S. attorneys are confirmed, the career prosecutors in the nation’s 94 U.S. attorneys’ offices will oversee cases. No new U.S. attorneys have yet been nominated by the Trump administration.
Flores said the action is not unusual. A similar step was taken at the start of the Bill Clinton administration. Sessions himself was asked to resign as the U.S. attorney in Alabama in March 1993 by Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno.
But the George W. Bush administration eased U.S. attorneys out gradually while officials sought replacements, as did Barack Obama’s Justice Department.
Justice officials said they could not say whether Preet Bharara, the fiercely independent U.S. attorney in Manhattan, would be forced to resign. They said that the Justice announcement told all U.S. attorneys to “tender their resignations,” which means that Sessions could choose to keep some in place.
A spokesman for Bharara’s office declined to comment.
In November, Trump personally met with Bharara and asked him to stay on, as did Sessions. Bharara, who was born in India and brought to the United States as a child, heads one of the highest-profile U.S. attorney’s offices in the country.
[The brash New York prosecutor who’s indicting left and right]
“The president-elect asked, presumably because he’s a New Yorker and is aware of the great work that our office has done over the past seven years, asked to meet with me to discuss whether or not I’d be prepared to stay on as the United States attorney to do the work as we have done it, independently, without fear or favor, for the last seven years,” Bharara said in a brief statement to reporters after meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in November.
“We had a good meeting,” Bharara said, adding, “I agreed to stay on. I have already spoken to Senator Sessions, who is as you know the nominee to be the attorney general. He also asked that I stay on, and so I expect that I will be continuing to work at the Southern District” of New York.
Yet on Friday, Bharara received the same call from the Justice Department as the other U.S. attorneys did, according to people familiar with the matter. Those people said acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente, who made the calls, told Bharara the Obama holdovers were being asked to leave. There was, however, some confusion as to whether the administration had specifically decided Bharara, despite the earlier conversations about staying on, should go.
A White House official said the president did not accept the resignation of Boente as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Boente was made acting attorney general in January by Trump after he fired acting attorney general Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover, when she refused to defend his first executive order banning travel from some Muslim-majority nations. Boente became acting deputy attorney general when Sessions was confirmed and sworn in.
The president also did not accept the resignation of Maryland’s U.S. attorney, Rod Rosenstein, who has been nominated to take over as deputy attorney general but needs to win Senate confirmation, the official said.
Most of the resignation discussions were straightforward. Robert L. Capers, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said he was asked to resign. “It has been my greatest honor to serve my country, New York City and the people of this district for almost 14 years, with the last 17 months serving as United States attorney,’’ he said.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that by asking for the immediate resignation of every remaining U.S. attorney before replacements have been nominated, “the president is interrupting ongoing cases and investigations and hindering the administration of justice.’’
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she had met with Vice President Pence and White House Counsel Donald McGahn in January and “asked specifically whether all U.S. attorneys would be fired at once. Mr. McGahn told me that the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity. Clearly this is not the case. I’m very concerned about the effect of this sudden and unexpected decision on federal law enforcement.”
Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.
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