1 day ago
7
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Two prosecutors were dismissed out of the blue, notified by a terse one-sentence email stating no reason for the move other than that it was on behalf of the president himself.
- March 30, 2025Updated 5:23 p.m. ET
Two longtime career prosecutors have been suddenly fired by the White House, in what current and former Justice Department officials called an unusual and alarming exercise of presidential power.
In recent days, the prosecutors, in Los Angeles and Memphis, were dismissed abruptly, notified by a terse one-sentence email stating no reason for the move other than that it was on behalf of the president himself.
The ousters reflected a more aggressive effort by the White House to reach deep inside U.S. attorney offices across the country in a stark departure from decades of practice. While it is commonplace and accepted for senior political appointees at the Justice Department to change from administration to administration, no department veteran could recall any similar removal of assistant U.S. attorneys.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Asked about the ousters and whether others had been let go in a similar fashion, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said, “The White House, in coordination with the Department of Justice, has dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies in the past few weeks.”
She added, “The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest arbiters of the law who want to protect democracy, not subvert it,” offering no explanation for how either of the two fired prosecutors might have done that. Prosecutors are part of the executive, not judicial, branch of government.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to drastically reshape the ranks of career Justice Department officials, aggrieved by the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia in his first term and the four criminal indictments between his presidencies.
