Fight Erupts Over Fate of U.S. Attorney Investigating Two Trump Foes

A high-stakes debate raged inside the Trump administration on Friday over the fate of the veteran U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to people briefed on the situation.

Administration officials informed Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, that he would most likely be fired, but there appeared to be a last-ditch effort by some in the Justice Department to protect Mr. Siebert and the situation remained in flux, those people said.

Mr. Siebert has recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and has also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials.

President Trump has long viewed Ms. James and Mr. Comey as adversaries and has repeatedly pledged retribution against law enforcement officials who pursued him. The president, who has publicly called Ms. James “a crook,” has in the past expressed frustration that a prosecution against her was not moving ahead, according to a person briefed on his remarks.

A Justice Department spokesman and a White House spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Siebert did not comment.

Several administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters, described the situation as fluid, unsettled and confusing. Mr. Siebert and his top deputy were still at their desks working, and no one had been officially ordered to leave, as of midday Friday.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who runs the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department, have privately defended Mr. Siebert against officials, including William J. Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who have urged that he be fired and replaced with a prosecutor who would push the cases forward, according to a senior law enforcement official.

Mr. Blanche has also questioned the legal viability of bringing charges against Ms. James, according to current and former department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about internal discussions.

Mr. Siebert’s office also recently hit a roadblock in its investigation of Mr. Comey on claims that he lied under oath.

Last week, prosecutors from Mr. Siebert’s office subpoenaed Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia law professor and close friend and adviser to Mr. Comey, in connection with an investigation into whether the former director had lied about whether he authorized Mr. Richman to leak information to the news media, according to people familiar with the situation. Documents released by the F.B.I. in August showed that investigators had examined possible disclosures of classified information to The New York Times.

Mr. Richman’s statements to prosecutors were not helpful in their efforts to build a case against Mr. Comey, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The push to remove Mr. Siebert, a highly regarded career prosecutor who worked closely with Emil Bove III, Mr. Trump’s former enforcer in the department on immigration and gang cases, came as a shock in an office that handles some of the nation’s most sensitive national security investigations. His possible termination was reported earlier by ABC News.

Mr. Siebert is well liked by many Trump administration officials and key congressional leaders, including Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A former Washington, D.C., police officer, Mr. Siebert has worked his way up through the ranks at the office over the past 15 years. He has handled a broad rage of cases including international drug and firearms trafficking, white-collar crime, child sexual exploitation, public corruption and immigration.

He has been particularly active on immigrant gang cases during the Trump administration and often spoke about his solid working relationship with Mr. Bove, who while at the department oversaw a wave of firings and forced retirements, according to officials.

Beginning in 2019, he was the deputy criminal supervisor in the Richmond division of the U.S. attorney’s office. He became the interim U.S. attorney of Eastern Virginia in January, and in May the federal judges in the district unanimously chose to keep him in the role.