Erik Siebert, a former police officer who’d worked his way up through the ranks at the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, appeared well-positioned to serve through the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term. That is, until September.
The White House leaned heavily on the U.S. attorney for brazenly corrupt reasons: Team Trump wanted him to go after New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, not because they’d done anything wrong, but because the president saw them as political foes.
This was, in and of itself, indefensible. There is no scenario in which a White House should privately lobby federal prosecutors to bring baseless charges at the president’s direction as part of a retaliatory scheme.
But Trump didn’t stop there. When Siebert’s office made clear that there simply wasn’t enough evidence to justify such indictments, Trump forced the prosecutor out of his job, taking the scandal to a new level.
Soon after, other federal prosecutors, including Elizabeth Yusi and Robert McBride, were also ousted because they, too, balked at filing baseless charges against people Trump didn’t like.
The message to U.S. attorneys’ offices was unsubtle: Those who choose not to participate in Trump’s revenge campaign should expect to be punished.
The list continues to grow. MS NOW reported late Friday:
The Justice Department has removed the lead prosecutor overseeing an investigation involving former CIA Director John Brennan, a longtime critic of President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Maria Medetis Long, a veteran prosecutor for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, told colleagues in her office that she had recently told her superiors that there was not ample justification to bring criminal charges against Brennan, according to one person briefed on her discussions who asked to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of internal deliberations.
To be sure, Medetis Long wasn’t exactly disobedient from the White House’s perspective. She’d agreed to help her boss, Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Quinones, examine Republican conspiracy theories surrounding the origins of Trump’s 2016 Russia scandal.
But when she struggled to find sufficient evidence to file charges against the former CIA director, CNN was first to report that Trump’s Justice Department removed Medetis Long from the case. (Trump’s DOJ first started targeting Brennan six months ago after the incumbent president made clear that Brennan was on his enemies list.)
As for Medetis Long’s successor, a Justice Department official told The New York Times over the weekend that Joseph diGenova, a former Trump campaign lawyer who also helped defend the president during his first term, will take over on Monday, but his responsibilities will apparently be broader than just going after Brennan. The Times reported that diGenova will help lead “a sprawling inquiry” into what members of Team Trump have referred to as a “grand conspiracy” case.
The same article, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that the investigation will use a Florida grand jury overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon — perhaps best known for her atrocious handling of Trump’s classified documents case.
If diGenova’s name sounds at all familiar, there’s a good reason for that. The Times’ report noted that the conspiratorial Republican lawyer, known for his frequent Fox News appearances, “has claimed the Russia investigation was a law-enforcement plot to frame Mr. Trump and keep him out of the White House during his first presidential campaign. In 2020, as part of the legal team for the Trump campaign, Mr. diGenova said that Christopher Krebs, a cybersecurity official who had contradicted false pro-Trump claims of election fraud, should be ‘shot.’ (Mr. diGenova later apologized.)”
Watch this space.
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