Washington-The dismissal of the White House of a federal career prosecutor last week was one of a series of movements of the Trump administration that have undermined the separation after Watergate between the White House and the Department of Justice, and disseminated fears of political interference in the ongoing criminal cases.
The United States assistant prosecutor Adam Schleifer, based in Los Angeles, was a White House official in an email on Friday who was being fired. The email came from Saurabh Sharma of the Office of Presidential Personnel of the White House, two sources told NBC News.
The office manages approximately 4,000 politicians within the Executive Power, but is not involved in hiring career employees.
The presidents appoint the 93 US prosecutors who serve as the main federal prosecutors in jurisdictions throughout the country, but not the thousands of career prosecutors, known as the United States assistant prosecutors.
A former veteran of the United States Prosecutor’s Office for the Central District of California told NBC News that Schleifer was highly respected by those in supervision positions, calling him “an excellent prosecutor, very hardworking, very intelligent” that he was aggressive but also adhered to ethical standards.
“The whole matter is strange. It is extremely unusual for an AUSA line to be fired by the president of the United States. It is crazy,” said the former official.
Schleifer’s dismissal occurred approximately one hour after the influence of the right Laura Loomer resurfaces the comments that Schleifer had made about Trump during a failed race for Congress in New York.
“He shot him. He supported President Trump’s dismissal and said he wanted to repeal Trump’s fiscal plan,” Loomer wrote. “We need to purge the office of the United States prosecutor of all the enemies of Trump leftists.”
Schleifer was not a federal employee at the time of his 2020 comments, in which he requested the repeal of Trump’s fiscal plan and said Trump “erodes our constitutional integrity every day with each lie and an act of narcissistic corruption without the provision of attention.” Schleifer had left his professional position in the United States prosecutor for the Central District of California before his career for Congress. The office hired him again in January 2021, when Trump was still in the White House.
Not long after Loomer’s publication on Friday, Schleifer received the email that his completion notified him.
The Trump administration has operated under a more expansive theory of presidential power within the executive branch than its predecessors, essentially holding that the power of the executive branch is fully acquired in the presidency and that Trump has the power to do what he wants with the agencies and executive employees.
But that follows decades of precedents, after the resignation of President Richard Nixon, that the White House maintains its distance from the Department of Justice to preserve the independence of the application of the Federal Law.
Stacey Young, a former justice department lawyer who founded a group that supports the employees of the Justice Department called Justice Connection, was similarly alarmed by Schleifer’s dismissal.
“White House career prosecutors for doing their jobs probably do not have precedents,” Young A NBC News told NBC. “It is also the same weapon that this administration pretends to oppose.”
The United States Prosecutor’s Office for the Central District of California declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comments.
The Trump Administration has attacked career prosecutors before, including layoff Officer of the General Hoga of the Affairs Action, which opposed a White House Open.
Schleifer, who was part of the corporate fraud and values strike force of the United States prosecutor’s office, had been working in a case of tax evasion against Andy Wiederhorn, former CEO and current president of Fat Brands, owner of Fatburger, Johnny Rockets and Twin Peaks. The then American lawyer Martin Estrada, announcing the accusation last year, said that Wiederhorn had “treated the company as its personal fund, in violation of the federal law.”
Public records show that Wiederhorn donated to the Trump campaign, the Save America Pac and the Republican National Committee during the 2024 campaign cycle. Reached by NBC News, Wiederhorn’s lawyer, Douglas Fuchs, declined to comment. A spokeswoman for fat brands also declined to comment.
The veterans of the Department of Justice concern that the capacity of the White House to directly fire the career prosecutors who work in cases against Trump’s allies would have a chilling effect on the prosecution of white -collar crimes.
“Who is going to process white collar crime now?” The former Federal Prosecutor of the United States Prosecutor’s Office for the Central District of California said.
