DOJ Asks 46 U.S. Attorneys To Resign; Preet Bharara Refuses, Forces Trump To Fire Him

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, appointed by President Donald Trump, abruptly asked the country's 46 remaining U.S. Attorneys chosen by Obama to resign on Friday afternoon.

The Department of Justice refused to provide Patch with a list of the 46 names.

New York City has two U.S. Attorneys, both appointed by Obama: Preet Bharara in Manhattan and Robert Capers in Brooklyn.

Capers, who made headlines recently when El Chapo was extradited to Brooklyn for federal trial, agreed to resign within an hour of Sessions' request. He said in a statement:

This afternoon, I was instructed to resign my position as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, effective March 10, 2017.

It has been my greatest honor to serve my country, New York City and the people of this district for almost 14 years, with the last 17 months serving as United States Attorney.

Bridget M. Rohde will continue the great work of this office as Acting United States Attorney.

Bharara, by contrast, was silent for nearly a full day before announcing on Twitter around 2:30 p.m. Saturday: "I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired."

"Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life," Bharara said.

Reached the previous afternoon, a spokesman for Bharara had said that "as far as today's statement" from Sessions, "we're declining to comment." The spokesman did, however, note that Trump chose to re-appoint Bharara as Manhattan's U.S. Attorney back in November.

An unnamed official told the New York Times that Bharara was indeed on the list, and that he got a call asking him to resign along with the 45 others Friday.

At the end of November, after a meeting with Trump, Bharara had told reporters outside Trump Tower:

“The president-elect asked, presumably because he's a New Yorker and is aware of the great work that our office has done over the past seven years, asked to meet with me to discuss whether or not I'd be prepared to stay on as the United States attorney to do the work as we have done it, independently, without fear or favor for the last seven years. We had a good meeting. I said I would absolutely consider staying on. I agreed to stay on. I have already spoken to Senator Sessions, who is as you know is the nominee to be the attorney general. He also asked that I stay on, and so I expect that I will be continuing to work at the southern district.”

There were some musings among political journalists Friday night that Trump's turnaround on Bharara may have had something to do with his beef with Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader and Bharara's former boss.

“I’m troubled to learn of reports of requests for resignations from the remaining U.S. Attorneys, particularly that of Preet Bharara, after the President initiated a call to me in November and assured me he wanted Mr. Bharara to continue to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District," Schumer said in a statement issued Friday night.

“While it’s true that presidents from both parties made their own choices for U.S. Attorney positions across the country," the senator said, "they have always done so in an orderly fashion that doesn’t put ongoing investigations at risk. They ask for letters of resignation but the attorneys are allowed to stay on the job until their successor is confirmed."

Bharara is known as an aggressive prosecutor with some of the fattest cats in white-collar NYC crime on his trophy wall. Since taking office in 2009, he's brought down two state politicians, dozens of big-time bankers and various other billionaires.

In recent months, Manhattan's U.S. Attorney has turned his sights on NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and the mayor's network of campaign donors. He's also reportedly been weighing child-porn charges for disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner. It's unclear how Bharara's abrupt exit will affect those investigations.

While previous Attorney Generals have, like Sessions, purged the preceding administration's set of U.S. Attorneys, Friday's request was seen by some White House watchers as unusually sudden.

Others rebuked that notion.

"As was the case in prior transitions, many of the United States Attorneys nominated by the previous administration already have left the Department of Justice," Sessions' spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, said in a statement issued Friday. "The Attorney General has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. Attorneys to tender their resignations in order to ensure a uniform transition."

"Until the new U.S. Attorneys are confirmed," she said, "the dedicated career prosecutors in our U.S. Attorney's Offices will continue the great work of the Department in investigation, prosecuting and deterring the most violent offenders."

This story has been updated

Pictured: Preet Bharara. Photo courtesy of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office