Prosecutor fired after not resigning
Trump in November had asked powerful New York official Preet Bharara to stay on
Preet Bharara, one of the most high-profile federal prosecutors in the US, said he was fired after refusing to submit a letter of resignation as part of an ouster of the remaining US Attorneys who were holdovers from the Obama Administration, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bharara’s dismissal was an aboutface from President Donald Trump’s assurances to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York in November, weeks after the election, that he wanted him to stay on the job following a meeting at Trump Tower, according to Bharara.
Two people close to Trump said the President’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, and AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessions wanted a clean slate of federal prosecutors and were unconcerned about any perception that the White House changed its mind about Bharara.
The removal of former president Barack Obama’s federal prosecutors is about asserting who’s in power, the two said. Acting Deputy Attorney-General Dana Boente began making calls to 46 prosecutors asking for their resignations by the end of the day. Requests for resignation are a normal part of a transition of power from one administration to another, although both the Bush and Obama Administrations let their US attorneys leave gradually.
During Saturday’s call with Bharara, the New York prosecutor asked for clarity about whether the requests for resignations applied to him, given his previous conversation with Trump.
Yesterday, when the Administra- A California man carrying two cans of Mace and a letter to President Donald Trump about “Russian hackers” scaled a White House fence on Saturday and neared an entrance to the presidential mansion before he was arrested. The suspect — identified as Jonathan Tuan-Anh Tran, 26 — made it nearly to the exterior of the White House, walked alongside the building and then hid behind a pillar before he was spotted by tion had still not received Bharara’s resignation, Boente informed Bharara that the order to submit his resignation indeed applied to him because he was a presidentially appointed US Attorney.
Bharara asked Boente if he was firing him and Boente replied that he was asking him to submit his resignation, a Justice official said. a guard near the South Portico entrance. Tran was charged with entering restricted grounds while carrying a dangerous weapon. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Tran had the Mace in a jacket pocket and a book on Trump, and an Apple laptop. On the computer, the Secret Service said it found a letter addressed to Trump discussing Russian hackers and saying that Tran had “information of relevance”. The President, who was in the residence at the time of the breach, said the “Secret Service service did a fantastic job,” and he described the intruder as a “troubled person”.
Minutes later, Bharara announced on Twitter that he was out. “I did not resign,” Bharara said. “Moments ago I was fired. Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honour of my professional life.”
Bharara sent an email to his staff. “Needless to say it is personally very sad for me,” the note said. “This is the greatest place on Earth and I love you all. Even on a day when your US Attorney gets fired it is still Thanksgiving because you all still get to do the most honourable work there is to do.”
Bharara, who was born in India and came to the US as a child, had a particularly powerful perch in the criminal justice system. The Southern District of New York has 220 assistant US Attorneys.
During his tenure, Bharara indicted 17 prominent New York politicians for malfeasance — 10 of them Democrats. Along with his bipartisan prosecutions, Bharara developed a reputation for being tough on insider trading, although he was criticised for the lack of prosecutions that followed the financial crisis.
There is no indication that the ouster of Bharara stems from a disagreement about a particular case or investigation. While the FBI has been conducting a counterintelligence inquiry looking for evidence of contacts between agents of the Russian Government and Trump campaign advisers, there have been no signs that Bharara’s office has been involved.