Trump personally ordered firings of special counsel prosecutors
Source: The Guardian
Tue 4 Feb 2025 06.00 EST
Last modified on Tue 4 Feb 2025 07.42 EST
The US justice department fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the criminal cases against Donald Trump hours after the president directly ordered it from the Oval Office, according to two people familiar with the intervention. The move to purge people who worked for former special counsel Jack Smith had ostensibly come from the acting attorney general, James McHenry, who sent the formal termination notices that said they could not be trusted to implement Trumps agenda.
But the genesis for the firings was Trump himself, according to two people directly familiar with the matter, and a demonstration of Trumps unchecked power as he implements a new order where the justice department is answerable to the White House. The end goal of Trumps team is for the president to have at his disposal a justice department that plays a leading role in enforcing his wishes and doing his bidding, under their version of a unitary executive, where the president directs every agency.
Trumps intervention to remove the prosecutors in Smiths office was seen by some of his advisers as the start of their efforts to make it normal practice to have the attorney general work with the West Wing to enforce and enact its political agenda. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
After Trump instructed his advisers that he wanted the prosecutors gone, the White House presidential personnel office, led by longtime Trump ally Sergio Gor, issued a memo that directed the justice department to proceed and gave the move a degree of legal cover.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/trump-jack-smith-special-counsel-prosecutors-firings

Blue Owl
(55,195 posts)Where a criminal is essentially prosecuting law enforcement.
I cant believe our justice system is allowing all this to happen.
Turbineguy
(38,703 posts)Suing the shit out of trump and Musk.