When the White House dismissed a federal prosecutor last week in Los Angeles, he could have been rejected as an isolated case, the administration aimed at a Democratic Congress candidate who criticized President Trump on the campaign track.
But in the days that followed, it has become clear that the dismissal is part of a broader campaign against the perceived enemies of Trump who slipped the Ministry of Justice and some of the most powerful law firms in the country.
Last Friday, the White House dismissed Adam Schleifer, an assistant American prosecutor of the Fraud Force of companies and securities which had conducted an investigation into a pro-Trump business manager. After the time reported on the issue, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt published a statement which said that the Ministry of Justice had eliminated at least 50 American lawyers and deputies nationally in recent weeks.
“The American people deserves a judicial branch full of honest arbitrators of the law who want to protect democracy, not overthrowing it,” said Leavitt.
Leavitt did not explain how these licensees would have reversed democracy, and the managers of the White House did not respond to requests for more information.
Trump has authority over federal prosecutors because the offices of the American lawyer are part of the Ministry of Justice, which is the responsibility of the executive power, and not of the judiciary. If it is normal for American lawyers, which are political political names, resign or should come out when a new administration takes power, several lawyers have declared that line prosecutors like Schleifer are career employees who can only be dismissed for poor performance or poor conduct.
In the running an individual prosecutor with an email which, according to sources, was “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump”, the White House has taken a standard of standard which could be illegal and could paralyze the independence of individual prosecutors from the Ministry of Justice in the event of rehearsal, according to several current and old prosecutors. The sources familiar with the dismissal of Schleifer, as well as several other people who spoke to the Times, asked for anonymity citing concerns concerning the counterpoup.
The White House and the US Ministry of Justice did not explain exactly why Schleifer was dismissed. Schleifer and the American lawyer’s office in Los Angeles refused to comment.
Several federal sources of application of the law said that they suspected that Schleifer’s dismissal was linked to critical comments that he had made on Trump during his Congress campaign and his prosecution of a CEO of fast food which donated about $ 40,000 to Trump and republican causes in recent years.
Connie Woodhead, a 30 -year -old veteran from the Ministry of Justice and former first American prosecutor at the office where Schleifer worked, described the circumstances of his “unprecedented” departure.
“I think it is extremely frightening … especially without explanation, for any assistant American lawyer who accused any person who could be a friend of the administration (Trump) or a donor to the administration,” she said.
Trump’s team did not hide its intention to rid the government of employees who challenged the president or his allies and their interests. An hour before Schleifer’s dismissal, Laura Loomer, who was sometimes Trump’s advisor, began to call her evidence on social networks. Loomer later celebrated the dismissal on X on Saturday, declaring that “Biden holders who openly express the prejudices against President Trump” should all be dismissed.
The work of the American deputy lawyer is generally not glamorous, involving the banal but crucial legal work to continue all kinds of federal crimes, ranging from white collar scams to international narcotics and public corruption conspiracies. It was a career launching point for many eminent legal personalities, the main law firms frequently poache the best talents. The conservation of the best prosecutors, whose work is largely apolitical, has been a long -standing challenge for the government.
Several former federal prosecutors have declared that the dismissal of an American deputy prosecutor would normally be a laborious process which implies the supervisor and the superiors of the employee in their district office. A prosecutor could be placed on an “performance improvement plan”, for example, even before the termination is envisaged.
“Career prosecutors who have exceeded their probation status have public service protections. “It is difficult to dismiss someone who has exceeded their probation period.”
Several sources told Times during the weekend that Joseph T. McNally, the acting American lawyer in Los Angeles, was not involved in the decision to put an end to Schleifer. The sources, which were not authorized publicly and feared reprisals, suspected that Schleifer’s dismissal was motivated, in part, by a case which was affected with Andrew Wiederhorn, former director general of the company who owns Fatburger and Johnny Rockets fast food chains.
A large jury charged Wiederhorn last May for hiding a taxable income from the federal government by disadvantaging the business “loans” of the company to itself and its family, money which was then used for personal purposes. He pleaded not guilty.
Wiederhorn lawyers have aggressively pushed officials from the Ministry of Justice to abandon the case, according to two sources. The case against Wiederhorn, who donated about $ 40,000 to Trump’s political action committees and the National Republican Committee in the past two years, is still unanswered before the Federal Court. The defense team did not respond to a request for comments after Schleifer’s dismissal.
Beyond the Wiederhorn affair, it is also feared that Schleifer has been targeted for political reasons. Schleifer made several inexpensive comments on Trump when he ran for an open seat of Congress in the 17th district of New York in 2020. 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.”
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 works hard. And he is impartial. He judges business according to evidence,” said Woodhead. “He was apolitical at the office.”
Schleifer left his post during his political campaign in 2020, but was hired at the office before the inauguration of Biden in 2021 by the former US Atty. Nicola Hanna, a named Trump. Hanna is now part of Wiederhorn’s defense team. None of Wiederhorn’s lawyers responded to requests for comments from the time.
Schleifer’s dismissal seems to be just the last case that turns the Ministry of Justice.
Reagan Forgen, the acting American lawyer for the Western district of Tennessee, was also recently dismissed in an email of a white house line, according to the Daily Memphian. Fondren could not be reached immediately to comment.
Adam Cohen, director of organized working groups in the fight against drug drugs, wrote last month on LinkedIn that he was suddenly dismissed after more than 26 years of prosecution of “old school mobsters, street gang members, cartel patterns, terrorists” and others for the Ministry of Justice in Washington.
“Putting bad guys in prison was as apolitical as possible,” wrote Cohen. “I served under five presidents and 11 general prosecutors … My personal policy has never been relevant.”
In January, more than a dozen prosecutors were dismissed after working on criminal cases against Trump. This included Gregory Bernstein, who worked in the major section of the Frauds of the American Prosecutor’s Office
Bernstein had previously helped the Special Council, Jack Smith, the allegations that Trump has missed the documents after leaving his duties and favored an insurrection with lies on the 2020 elections. Bernstein refused an interview request.
The prosecutors of the special advisers each received a letter from the Ministry of Justice declaring that, given their “important role” in the pursuit of Trump, “I do not believe that the management of the ministry can trust you to help you faithfully implement the president’s agenda.”
These lawyers have since kept advice and challenged the legality of layoffs by calling on the Merit Systems Protection Board, which considers itself as an independent and almost judicial agency in the executive power. Palmer said that if the board of directors did not overthrow Schleifer and Bernstein’s layoffs, they will probably have to continue the Federal Court to recover their jobs.
Jack Smith was one of the hundreds of former lawyers from the Ministry of Justice who signed an open letter from February to federal career prosecutors who have expressed an “alarm” on recent actions of the Department of the Ministry. The letter followed the ordinance of the Ministry of Justice to reject the accusations of corruption against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, despite the high -level prosecutors of the two ends of the political spectrum resigning to protest against this order.
“We were taught to continue justice without fear or favor, and we knew that our decisions to investigate and accusation should only be based on the facts and the law,” said the letter. “We knew that these values were more than requirements in a manual – they were fundamental to a just and legal system. And we confirmed them, no matter who was president. ”
Current and ancient federal prosecutors have raised concerns about the ability of federal prosecutors licensed to find work in the private sector after Trump has published several decrees targeting companies that had links with some of his political enemies, including the ex-special council Robert S. Mueller III and Hillary Clinton, his adversary during the 2016 elections.
Although the judges of the district courts ruled that some of Trump’s orders targeting law firms are probably unconstitutional, some firms have sought to appease it.
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP – who once tried to build a criminal case against Trump while working at the Manhattan District Prosecutor’s Office – agreed to contribute $ 40 million to legal services to provoke support from Trump, including “the president’s working group to fight anti -Semitism and other projects content.”
The company, which would employ around 2,000 people, would also have agreed to fill its job practices and has committed to “not adopting, using or pursuing dei policies”.
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