With Ouster, Justice Dept. Independence Teeters as Trump Exerts Control

The ouster on Friday of the federal prosecutor who failed to charge two of President Trump’s most-reviled adversaries was a huge blow to the Justice Department’s teetering tradition of independence, showing how far Mr. Trump has gone in exerting personal control over the institution.

The way in which the prosecutor, Erik S. Siebert, was abruptly forced from his post atop the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia deepened troubling questions that have arisen in recent months about the politicization of the Justice Department’s supposedly self-governing satellite offices. But it also raised a blunter and more immediate issue: Which of the nation’s U.S. attorneys might be next?

Beyond their efforts to push out Mr. Siebert, whose inquiries into Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, effectively fizzled out, administration officials have also ramped up pressure against Kelly O. Hayes, the U.S. attorney in Maryland, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Ms. Hayes, a career prosecutor who has spent more than a decade in that office, is leading inquiries into two other vocal critics of Mr. Trump: Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who has been accused of mortgage fraud by Mr. Trump’s allies; and John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, who is facing scrutiny over allegations of mishandling classified information.

Recently, Ms. Hayes told associates that she was under no illusions of the pressure she would face if she refused to bring a case she believed to be unsupported by evidence, as Mr. Siebert did, according to people with knowledge of those conversations. And while she signed off last month on asking for a warrant to search Mr. Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Md., she has indicated that should would not bring charges against Mr. Schiff unless her team discovered evidence to support them.