The federal prosecutor in charge of seeking accusations of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General, Letitia James, resigned on Friday after President Donald Trump said he no longer wanted him to be in the position.
Erik S. Siebert, the interim American prosecutor in the East district of Virginia, announced his resignation in an email to colleagues obtained by NBC News.
Trump unleashed an attack on Siebert on Friday, whom he had the task of presenting mortgage fraud against James, an enemy of Trump for a long time.
“I want it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval office when asked if he wanted Siebert to be fired.
The Department of Justice declined to comment, and the Siebert office and did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Trump administration officials had been pressing Siebert to investigate possible mortgage fraud charges against James.
This investigation stopped on the concerns of federal agents and prosecutors who felt that they lacked the evidence to obtain a conviction if the case were to trial, they told NBC News to NBC News, two senior federal officials of the law, they told NBC News.
James has denied having acted badly.
Speaking to journalists at the Oval office on Friday, Trump, who nominated Siebert earlier this year, lamented the custom of the “Slip” of the Senate, which allowed the democratic sensors Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia recommend to Siebert for the position.
He referred to Kaine and Warner as “two bad guys, also bad senators, and do a terrible job for the people of Virginia.”
In a joint statement on Friday, the senators criticized Trump for “expelling” Siebert, who referred as an “ethical prosecutor who refused to present criminal charges against Trump’s perceived enemies when the facts would not support him.”
“The East district of Virginia is at the forefront of important cases essential for our national security, and like any United States court, it must focus on justice instead of the avengdas of a thin skin president,” they added.
A New York Court of Appeals dismissed last month a civil fraud of $ 500 million derived from a case presented by the James office that had accused Trump and his companies to routinely inflate the values of the properties in the financial statements.
In a publication on social networks last month he praised the decision of the Court, Trump referred to James as a “political trick” and a “corrupt and incompetent attorney who only brought this case to hurt me politically.”
James’s investigation is not the first time that the Trump administration has investigated Mortgage fraud claims in relation to one of Trump’s perceived political enemies.
Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook, has also been sent to the Department of Justice by the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Ablicte, Trump’s political designation. Trump has cited those accusations as a justification for his dismissal and has asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Cook has denied the accusations of the mortgage and refused to leave his position on the board.
Alexandra Márquez contributed.
