By Aaron Miller-
Donald Trump’s administration has fired remaining prosecutors at the Justice Department from Obama’s administration, with 46 holdover United States attorneys ordered to tender their resignations immediately.
The order was made by Dana Boente, who confirmed that all remaining holdover United States attorneys had been asked to resign, leaving their deputy United States attorneys, who are career officials, in place in an acting capacity A justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that many of the United States Attorneys nominated by the previous administration have already left the Department of Justice. The order is consistent with that made by past administrations in an effort to ensure a complete and uniform transition from the new administration.
The calls from the acting deputy attorney general came just a day after Fox News commentator, Sean Hannity, had expressed a need for Mr Trump to “purge” Obama holdovers-whom he referred to as saboteurs- from the deep state who were leaking secrets to hurt Mr.Trump. With this coincidence, is the suspicion that the hasty resignation calls may have been influenced by ill feelings relating to suspicion about the leaks, but firings of this nature are nothing different to what many previous administrations have done.
The resignation calls also came the same week that government watchdogs wrote to the top prosecutor, Mr Bharara, urging him to investigate whether Mr Trump had violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments. Mr.Bharara, who has presided over public corruption prosecutions, is one of the highest profile Attorneys to be given the boot.
The sudden orders for the mass resignation of top U.S prosecutors have come as a shock to many, despite it not being anything new for incumbent administrations to fire prosecutors from the previous administration.
Bill Clinton’s administration fired 93 prosecutors when he came to power, but they were not fired as abruptly as has occurred here with the Trump administration. The deputies of the redundant prosecutors are in the meantime acting in their place.