Trump is the most shamelessly corrupt president in US history
U.S. Attorney Investigating Two Trump Foes Resigns After President Seeks to Oust Him
Erik S. Siebert had hit roadblocks investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey.
nytimes.com
The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey resigned under pressure on Friday after President Trump called for his ouster.
Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation. Mr. Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him.
Mr. Siebert informed prosecutors in his office of his resignation through an email hours after the president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he wanted him removed because two Democratic senators from Virginia had approved of his nomination.
“When I saw that he got two senators, two gentlemen that are bad news as far as I’m concerned — when I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good,” Mr. Trump said. The president did not mention that he nominated Mr. Siebert only after the two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, had already written Mr. Trump praising him.
When asked if he would fire Mr. Siebert, Mr. Trump responded, “Yeah, I want him out.”
Ms. James, he told reporters, was “very guilty of something.”
Mr. Trump’s comments came after a high-stakes internal debate raged on Friday over the fate of Mr. Siebert — with Mr. Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department and key Republicans on Capitol Hill arguing to retain the veteran prosecutor.
The episode was consistent with Mr. Trump’s threats to pursue the law enforcement officials who investigated him, an apparent challenge to the fundamental principle enshrined in the Justice Department’s rulebook of investigating crimes rather than targeting out-of-favor individuals to uncover potential wrongdoing.
And though Mr. Trump provided a rationale for Mr. Siebert’s ouster unrelated to the cases against Ms. James and Mr. Comey, the removal of a U.S. attorney who was investigating the president’s foes showed how deeply the administration has departed from the longstanding norm of avoiding political interference in prosecutions in favor of using the justice system to seek retribution.
A lawyer for Ms. James, Abbe D. Lowell, called Mr. Siebert’s removal “a brazen attack on the rule of law.”
“The prosecutor did exactly what justice required by following the facts and the evidence, which didn’t support charges against Attorney General James,” he said. “Firing people until he finds someone who will bend the law to carry out his revenge has been President Trump’s pattern — and it’s illegal.”
nytimes.com |
