A federal prosecutor in Los Angeles was dismissed on Friday at the request of the White House, after the lawyers of a fast food setting that he was pursuing officials in Washington to abandon all the accusations against him, according to several sources familiar with the issue.
Adam Schleifer was terminated on Friday morning, receiving an email informing him that dismissal was “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump”, according to two sources, who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisals from federal officials. Joseph T. McNally, the acting American lawyer of the California central district, the boss of Schleifer, was not involved in the decision, the sources said.
Carley Palmer, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, who is now associated with Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg LLP, said that he heard that Schleifer had been dismissed via an “e-mail of a line, and he comes from a personal account of the White House”.
A spokesperson for the American lawyer’s office in Los Angeles refused to comment. Schleifer refused a request to question. The White House and the US Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to the surveys.
The sources that spoke to Times suspected that the dismissal was motivated, in part, by a case that Schleifer was assigned with Andrew Wiederhorn, former director general of the company who has fast food chains Fatburger and Johnny Rockets.
Last May, a large jury charged Wiederhorn for hiding a taxable income from the federal government by dispersing the shareholders’ “loans” to himself and his family. Wiederhorn would have used funds for personal advantages, according to the indictment, including payments for private jet trips, holidays, a Rolls-Royce ghost, other luxury cars, jewelry and a piano. He pleaded not guilty.
Wiederhorn lawyers have aggressively pushed those responsible for the Ministry of Justice to abandon the case, according to two familiar sources with the conversations that requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The defense team attacked the legal theory of the case and the alleged Schleifer was biased, the sources said.
Wiederhorn’s defense lawyer Nicola Hanna previously told Times that prosecutors had exceeded the law by loading his client. “This is an unfortunate example of surpassing the government – and a case without victims, without losses and without crimes,” said Hanna in a statement last year.
McNally was ordered to meet Hanna and during the conversation, the lawyers of Wiederhorn criticized Schleifer, the two sources said.
Hanna, the former American lawyer in Los Angeles, and other members of the Wiederhorn defense team did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Two of the sources familiar with the case said that Schleifer had received an e-mail around 11:15 a.m. him informing him of the termination. After Schleifer’s work telephone was wiped out of distance and his computer locked him up, the other prosecutors helped him boxes family photos and personal effects before his departure.
Schleifer is an inscribed Democrat who made several unflattering comments on Trump when he ran for an open seat of the congress in the 17th district of New York in 2020. Schleifer’s father is the co -founder and general manager of the pharmaceutical company Regeneron Technologies of these heists if Elsed has published for reflecting Rockland. Newspaper News. Schleifer holds nearly $ 25 million in shares in the company.
Schleifer started with the American lawyer’s office in 2016. He continued drug trafficking and fraud cases before leaving in 2019 for his candidacy for the congress. He finished second in the Democratic primary and returned to his work as a federal prosecutor.
Although American lawyers are people appointed by policies that often combine on the agenda of the current presidential administration, line prosecutors like Schleifer are normally considered as career employees. But since its entry into office, the Trump administration has wanted to lead those who are considered to be political enemies of all levels of the federal government.
“It is the most openly political dismissal that I saw in my time at the Ministry of Justice,” said Palmer, the former federal prosecutor. “I could absolutely see him have a sort of scary. I also think that current prosecutors are concerned about the ability to have freedom of expression. An ausa (assistant American prosecutor) to whom I spoke said they feared that the only people who will be allowed to stay are republicans or very quiet democrats. ”
In January, Gregory Bernstein, who worked in the major section of the Frauds of the American prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles, was part of more than a dozen lawyers licensed through the Ministry of Justice after working on the proceedings by the Special Council Jack Smith. Bernstein refused to comment.
In several publications on social networks during his political campaign, Schleifer attacked the president’s tax policies and Trump’s behavior towards federal agencies that investigated him for a wide range of state and federal crimes.
In a tweet in 2020, Schleifer accused Trump of having eroded constitutional integrity “every day with each lie and each act of narcissistic corruption without attention”.
“It is difficult to imagine a president who does more to demoralize the line prosecutors, the partners of the forces in court and the faith in the rule of law than what he has already done,” tweeted Schleifer in February 2020.
On Friday, Laura Loomer, a right -wing provocateur who was sometimes advisor to Trump, shared one of the previous critical tweets of Schleifer on X and called the prosecutor.
“We have to purge the office of the American lawyer for all the Trump enemies on the left,” wrote Loomer.
Although Loomer called Schleifer as a “Holdover Biden”, he was hired at the office before the inauguration of Biden in 2021. According to sources, he was assigned to the Fatburger case after his return.
A source in the American lawyer’s office, who asked for anonymity for concerns about reprisals, said that “people are obviously very upset”.
Although Schleifer’s family could be rich, said the source, the dismissal seemed politically motivated and intended to frighten prosecutors who could prosecute the accused who promotes Trump.
“No one feels particularly frightened for their livelihoods, but I think it’s Bull -” said the source.
Another source, a former prosecutor who has dealt with fraud cases in the American prosecutor’s office and asked for anonymity about concerns about the fact of facing professional counterweights, said that he thought that Schleifer’s dismissal “will have an incredible scary effect on any line of the federal prosecutor who envisages the criminally investigating investigation or the continuation of an executive. “”
“The message of Adam’s case is that if you will instill a CEO of banal of a company, you must first check if he is a supporter of Trump,” said the former prosecutor. “This will ensure that online prosecutors are considerably more prudent to continue anyone who has even tied links with the president, which is not good for the doj.”
According to the files of the Federal Electoral Commission, Wiederhorn gave $ 40,000 to the Trump political action committees and the National Republican Committee since 2023.
The recent federal affair comes nearly two decades after Wiederhorn was trapped for the first time in financial crimes. In 2004, he pleaded guilty before the American district court for Oregon for having paid an illegal gratuity to a partner and to produce a false declaration of income. He spent 15 months in federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, and paid a fine of $ 2 million.
Trump repeatedly complained of “the armament of the federal government” while facing surveys for poor management of classified documents and promoting an insurrection with lies on electoral fraud, but since his return to functions, he has taken measures to fold the Ministry of Justice to his program.
Earlier this year, people appointed by Trump pushed federal prosecutors to Manhattan to reject the corruption accusations against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, accused of having accepted more than $ 100,000 in contributions to the illegal campaign of a Turkish government official. Several high -ranking prosecutors refused order to drop the accusations against Adams and resigned to protest, some alleging that Trump tries to force Adams to expel a record number of undocumented immigrants.
Last week, Trump appointed one of his lawyers and personal advisers, Alina Habba, as an American lawyer for New Jersey. Habba has no experience as a prosecutor, but represented Trump in several civil affairs and was an adviser to his political action committee.
Four federal sources of application of federal law, which all spoke under the guise of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the case publicly, Times told Times that Trump strongly planned to appoint the member of the assembly Bill Essayli (R-Riverside) as a American prosecutor in Los Angeles.
Essayli is a dedicated supporter of Trump who marked out positions in locking with the president in the California legislative assembly, in particular by pushing a bill in 2023 which would oblige schools to inform parents if their children identify with a sex that does not align themselves with sex on their birth certificate. The bill died on a committee. Essayli representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comments on Saturday.
The staff writer Seema Mehta and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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