Donald Trump’s Firing of a Federal Prosecutor Crosses the Reddest of Lines
“I want it,” said President Donald Trump on Friday, referring to Erik Siebert, the career prosecutor whom he had hit less than five months earlier to serve as an American lawyer for the Virginia Oriental District. Siebert, who had played a role in an actor’s title since January and whose appointment was pending on the Senate soil, complied in a short time. His resignation was not sufficient for Trump, who went to his social platform, Truth social just after midnight to assert his point: “He did not stop, I dismissed him!” Trump insisted that he had acted when he was informed that Siebert had received “unusually strong support from the two absolutely terrible and Sleazebag, the great state of Virginia”. He was referring to senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, who, with the state governor of the State, Glenn Youngkin, had recommended Siebert for the post.
This strange justification – the realization of Warner and Kaine for their bipartisme – should not deceive anyone. The source of Trump beef with Siebert was obvious. According to many reports, Siebert had fell to bring criminal charges against two of Trump’s supposed enemies: New York prosecutor, Letitia James, who had pursued Trump and his company for fraud; And the former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump had dismissed during his first mandate. This moment was inevitable. Trump has proclaimed for years that his political opponents should be locked up, but there is a gulf between criminal behavior alleging strongly and raising the evidence necessary to prove the elements of a real crime. The difference in Trump’s second term is that he is not about to be dissuaded by such subtleties. This time, lawyers will not stop him.
The Modus Operandi of the Trump administration was to flood the area with a torrent of illegal acts. One day, he uses soldiers to explode boats suspected of drug trafficking, without legal authorization and in defiance of American and international law; The following, he threatens to revoke the broadcasting licenses of television networks whose speech moving the administration. These are not discreet incidents. They are bound by the common sons of Trump’s disdain for the rule of law, his inflated conception of presidential power and his desire to fold the state to his will. The extent of the aggression seems to harm the public to the outrages that it is witness. It is impossible, emotionally and intellectually, to be developed on everything, everywhere, at the same time.
But here we are. In the hierarchy of administration horrors, Siebert’s dismissal is about as bad as possible. Since Trump reached his duties, the Ministry of Justice rejected career prosecutors for a range of unjustified and selfish reasons: for having dared to have worked on criminal affairs against Trump; being the daughter of Comey; omitting to delete personal pronouns in a signature block. He rejected cases awaiting the end of political ends, such as that of the mayor of New York, Eric Adams. What is happening now is worse. The abolition of criminal accusations against Adams was a political perversion of the judicial system. But the use of criminal law to punish political opponents as a remuneration inflicts much more damage. Here, a potentially guilty person does not work freely; An innocent person is injured. The prospect of a possible acquittal in the case of an unjustified prosecution is of little comfort; As Trump understands well, being charged and having to be judged is sufficiently ruinous. The dismissal of a prosecutor for having refused to continue a political opponent without a sufficient legal basis crosses the redest of the lines. The Attorney General Pam Bondi and the deputy prosecutor Todd Blanche would have defended Siebert in private and questioned the viability of the case against James. Trump directed a social post on his prosecutor general on Saturday evening, demanding an action. “We can no longer delay, it kills our reputation and our credibility,” wrote the president. “They dismissed me twice and charged me (5 times!), On nothing. Justice must be done now !!! President DJT. ” To make a good measure, Trump said he would name his former criminal defense lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to take the place of Siebert. “She will be fair, intelligent and will provide, desperately necessary, justice for all!” Trump wrote Halligan, who was the member of the White House staff responsible for removing an “inappropriate ideology” of museums, as described in a decree. “Lindsey Halligan is a very good lawyer, and loves you very much,” he said publicly Bondi.
In another era, more rigid spines and greater integrity, we would be in the territory of the massacre on Saturday evening. In the evening of October 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered the Attorney General Elliot Richardson to dismiss the special Watergate Archibald Cox prosecutor. Richardson refused and resigned, followed by the sub-procurer General William Ruckelshaus. (The act was finally carried out by manager No. 3, the general requester Robert Bork; unlike Richardson and Ruckelshaus, he had not assured legislators, he could not interfere with the work of Cox.) To expect a similar demonstration in principle of Bondi and Blanche would be to ignore their service report to Trump. The Ministry of Justice did not respond to a request for comments on the dismissal of Siebert.
The doj manual for federal prosecutors defines the standards to determine when to bring a case: the prosecutor cannot ask for accusations “only if he thinks that the person will no longer be probably found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an impartial fact and that the conviction will be confirmed by appealing.” Continuing a case that does not meet this standard is a total judgment contrary to ethics. The judge of the Supreme Court, Robert Jackson, offered the canonical characterization of the federal prosecutor in 1940, while he was a attorney general under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, describing “the immense power of the prosecutor to strike the citizens, not with a simple individual force, but with all the force of the government itself”. Jackson’s admonition remains also powerful, and perhaps even more relevant today. “The prosecutor has more control over life, freedom and reputation than any other person in America,” he observed. “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficial forces of our society, when he acts with wickedness or other basic reasons, he is one of the worst.”
Jackson could hardly imagine a president abusing the Ministry of Justice as Trump did, but his explanation of prosecutor’s abuses could have been written with James and Comey in mind:
