When the White House dismissed a federal prosecutor last week in Los Angeles, he could have been dismissed as an isolated case, with the administration addressed to a Democratic candidate of Congress who had criticized President Trump in the campaign.
But in later days, it is clear that dismissal is part of a more broad campaign against Trump's perceived enemies traveled by the Department of Justice and some of the law firms with the best power of the nation.
Last Friday, the White House ended Adam Schleifer, a United States assistant prosecutor in the corporate and values fraud strike that had been leading an investigation into a Pro-Trump business executive. After the Times reported on the matter, the White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, issued a statement that said the Department of Justice had eliminated at least 50 US prosecutors and deputies throughout the country in recent weeks.
“The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest referees of the law that want to protect democracy, not subvert it,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt did not explain how the dismissed were supposedly subverting democracy, and the White House officials did not respond to more information requests.
Trump has authority over federal prosecutors because the offices of the United States prosecutor are part of the Department of Justice, which falls under the executive branch, not of the judicial branch. While it is normal for US lawyers to, who are appointed politicians, resign or be forced when a new administration takes power, several lawyers said that line prosecutors such as Schleifer are career employees that can only be completed by low performance or misconduct.
By saying goodbye to an individual prosecutor with an email that the sources said he was “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” the White House took a step that returns the rules that could be illegal and could paralyze the independence of individual prosecutors throughout the Department of Justice if it was repeated, according to several current and previous prosecutors. The familiar sources with Schleifer's shot, along with several others who spoke with the Times, requested anonymity citing concerns about the violent reaction.
The White House and the United States Department of Justice have not said exactly why Schleifer was fired. Both Schleifer and the United States prosecutor's office in Los Angeles declined to comment.
Multiple federal sources of application of the law said they suspect that Schleifer's dismissal was linked to the critical comments he made about Trump during his Congress campaign and his prosecution of a CEO of fast food that donated approximately $ 40,000 to the Republican and Trump causes in recent years.
Connie Woodhead, a 30 -year -old veteran from the Department of Justice and former First Assistant Prosecutor of the United States in the office where Schleifer worked, described the circumstances of his “unprecedented” departure.
“I think it is extremely chilling … especially without more explanation, for any assistant of the United States prosecutor who charges anyone who can be a friend of the [Trump] Administration, or a donor of the administration, ”he said.
The Trump team has not hidden its intention to free the government of employees who have challenged the president or their allies and their interests. An hour before Schleiifer was fired, Laura Loomer, who has sometimes served as a Trump advisor, began asking for her dismissal in social networks. Later, Loomer celebrated the shot in X on Saturday, stating that “Biden Makes who openly express bias against President Trump” should be fired.
The work of the United States assistant prosecutor is not typically glamorous, which involves the worldly but crucial legal work of the grunts of prosecuting all kinds of federal crimes, ranging from white collar scams to conspiracies of international narcotics and public corruption. It has been a launching point for his career for many prominent legal figures, and the main law firms frequently hunt the best talent. Retaining the best prosecutors, whose case work is largely apolitical, has been a long data challenge for the government.
Several former federal prosecutors said that the dismissal of an assistant prosecutor of the United States prosecutor would usually be a laborious process that involves the employee's and supervisor supervisor in the office of his district. A prosecutor could be put in a “performance improvement plan”, for example, before the termination was considered.
“The career prosecutors who have passed their trial status have public service protections. That normally means that before one of them can be fired, there would be a long and well documented process,” said Carley Palmer, former supervisor in the federal prosecutor's office in Los Angeles, who is now a Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg LLP partner. “It's hard to make someone who has spent their trial period.”
Multiple sources told the Times during the weekend that Joseph T. McNally, the American prosecutor of Los Angeles, did not participate in the decision to finish Schleifer. The sources, which were not publicly authorized and feared reprisals, Schleifer's alleged dismissal was motivated, in part, by a case that was assigned that involves Andrew Wiederhorn, former executive director of the company that has Fatburger and Johnny Rockets fast food chains.
A large jury accused Wiederhorn last May for charges that he hid the taxable income of the federal government disburseing “loans for shareholders” of the company itself and its family, money that was then used to obtain personal profits. He declared himself innocent.
Wiederhorn lawyers have aggressively pushed the officials of the Department of Justice to leave the case, according to two sources. The case against Wiederhorn, who donated approximately $ 40,000 to Trump's political action committees and the Republican National Committee in the last two years, is still pending in the Federal Court. The defense team did not respond to a request for comments after Schleifer's dismissal.
Beyond the Wiederhorn case, there are also concerns that Schleifer was attacked for political reasons. Schleifer made several little flattering comments about Trump when he ran for an open seat in Congress in New York district in 2020. In a tweet of 2020, Schleifer accused Trump of eroding constitutional integrity “every day with each lie and every act of narcissistic corruption without benefit.”
One of Schleifer's former colleagues said that despite his political ambitions outside the office, he focused only on the law when he came to work.
“He is very intelligent. He is a worker. And he is impartial. He plays evidence -based cases,” Woodhead said. “He was apolitical in the office.”
Schleifer left his position during his political campaign of 2020, but was hired back to the office before the opening of Biden in 2021 by the former USA Atty. UU. Nicola Hanna, designated by Trump. Hanna is now part of the Wiederhorn defense team. None of Wiederhorn's lawyers responded to requests for comments from time to time.
Schleifer's dismissal seems to be just the last case of the Department of Justice.
Reagan Fondren, the interim American prosecutor in the western district of Tennessee, was also recently fired in an email from a White House line, according to Daily Memphian. Fonden could not be contacted immediately to comment.
Adam Cohen, director of the drug task forces of organized crime, wrote last month on LinkedIn who was abruptly fired after more than 26 years chasing “old school gangsters, street gangs, posters chiefs, terrorists” and others for the Department of Justice in Washington.
“Putting the bad in jail was as apolitic as it seems,” Cohen wrote. “I served less than five presidents and 11 general prosecutors … My personal policy was never relevant.”
In January, more than a dozen prosecutors were fired after working in criminal cases against Trump. That included Gregory Bernstein, who worked in the main fraud section of the United States Prosecutor's Office in Los Angeles
Bernstein had previously helped the investigation of the special lawyer Jack Smith about the accusations that Trump was evidently handled qualified documents after leaving office and encouraged an insurrection with lies about the results of the 2020 elections. Bernstein rejected an interview application.
Special advice prosecutors each receive a letter from the Department of Justice who indicated that given their “important role” in Trump's prosecution: “I do not believe that department leadership can trust you to help implement the president's agenda faithfully.”
Since then, these lawyers have retained a lawyer and questioned the legality of the shots through an appeal before the Merit Systems Protection Board, which is announced as an independent and judicial agency in the executive branch. Palmer said that if the Board does not annul Schleifer and Bernstein's layoffs, they are likely to have to sue in a federal court to recover their work.
Jack Smith was among hundreds of former lawyers from the Department of Justice who signed an open letter from February to federal career prosecutors who expressed “alarm” on recent actions by department leadership. The letter followed the order of the Department of Justice to dismiss corruption charges against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, despite high -level prosecutors of both extremes of the political spectrum renouncing in protest of that order.
“They taught us to seek justice without fear or favor, and they knew that our decisions to investigate and load should be based only on the facts and law,” said the letter. “We knew that these values were more than only requirements in a manual: they were fundamentally a fair and only legal system. And we confirm them regardless of who the president was.”
Current and previous federal prosecutors have raised concerns about the ability of federal prosecutors fired to find work in the private sector after Trump issued several executive orders aimed at companies that had links with some of his political enemies, including former special lawyer Robert S. Mueller III and Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 elections.
Although the judges of the District Court have ruled that some of Trump's orders aimed at law firms are probably unconstitutional, some signatures have tried to appease it.
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, who has a partner who once tried to build a criminal case against Trump while working in the Office of the Manhattan district prosecutor, agreed to contribute $ 40 million in legal services to cause Trump supports, including the “task force of the president to combat anti -Semitism and other mutual projects.”
The firm, which, according to the reports, employs some 2,000 people, also agreed to audit their hiring practices and promised to “not adopt, use or look for DEI policies.”
