Prosecutor who would not quit: ‘I was fired’
U.S. attorney assured of job by Trump now part of DOJ sweep
Preet Bharara, one of the most high-profile federal prosecutors in the country, said he was fired Saturday after refusing to submit a letter of resignation as part of an ouster of the remaining U.S. attorneys who were holdovers from the Obama administration, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bharara’s dismissal was an about-face from President Donald Trump’s assurances to the Manhattan-based prosecutor 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, Steve Bannon, and Attorney General 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.
The departure of Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, capped a confusing sequence of events, beginning Friday, when 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 U.S. attorneys leave gradually.
About half of the 93 Obama-era U.S. attorneys had already left their jobs.
During Friday’s call to Bharara, the New York prosecutor asked for clarity about whether the requests for resignations applied to him, given his previous conversation with Trump, and did not immediately get a definitive answer, according to a person familiar with the exchange. When asked Friday whether Bharara was also being asked for a resignation letter, one White House official not authorized to speak publicly said, “Everybody’s gone,” and would not speak further on the issue.
On Saturday morning, when the administration had still not received Bharara’s resignation, Boente attempted to call him to find out why, but the two men did not immediately connect, according to people familiar with the discussions.
When they finally did speak shortly before 2:30 p.m., Boente informed Bharara that the order to submit his resignation indeed applied to him because he was a presidentially appointed U.S. attorney, according to a Justice official with knowledge of the conversation.
Bharara asked Boente if he was firing him and Boente replied that he was asking him to submit his resignation, the official said.
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 honor of my professional life.”
Bharara sent an email to his staff, asserting again that Boente had removed him from his job.
Bharara added that the office “could not be in better hands” than with the deputy U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joon Kim, whom he called “a tremendous leader and public servant and who loves the office just as much as I do.”
Bharara, who was born in India and came to the United States as a child, had a particularly powerful perch in the criminal justice system. The Southern District of New York has 220 assistant U.S. attorneys, making it one of the largest federal prosecutors’ offices in the country.
During his tenure, Bharara indicted 17 prominent New York politicians for alleged malfeasance — 10 of them Democrats.
Along with his bipartisan prosecutions, Bharara developed a reputation for being tough on insider trading, although he was criticized 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, and a former campaign adviser to Trump has been part of an investigation into possible overseas corruption, there have been no signs that Bharara’s office has been involved in either of those probes or any other inquiries that might touch on the president or people close to him.
The Justice Department late Saturday confirmed Bharara was no longer U.S. attorney but declined to expound. Spokeswoman Nicole Navas declined comment, according to The Associated Press.