“I want him out,” President Donald Trump declared on Friday, referring to Erik Siebert, the career prosecutor he had tapped less than five months earlier to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Siebert, who had been in the role in an acting capacity since January and whose nomination was pending on the Senate floor, complied in short order. His resignation was not enough for Trump, who took to his social-media platform Truth Social just after midnight to make his point: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!” Trump insisted he had acted when he was informed that Siebert had received the “UNUSUALLY STRONG support of the two absolutely terrible, sleazebag Democrat Senators, from the Great State of Virginia.” He was referring to Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, who, along with the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, had recommended Siebert for the post.
This odd justification—faulting Warner and Kaine for their bipartisanship—should fool no one. The source of Trump’s beef with Siebert was evident. According to numerous reports, Siebert had balked at bringing criminal charges against two of Trump’s supposed enemies: New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who had sued Trump and his company for fraud; and the former F.B.I. director James Comey, whom Trump had fired during his first term. This moment was inevitable. Trump has been proclaiming for years that his political opponents should be locked up, but there is a gulf between loudly alleging criminal behavior and amassing the evidence necessary to prove the elements of an actual crime. The difference in Trump’s second term is that he is not about to be deterred by such niceties. This time around, the lawyers aren’t going to stop him.
The Trump Administration’s modus operandi has been to flood the zone with a torrent of illegal acts. One day it uses the military to blow up boats suspected of trafficking drugs, without legal authorization and in defiance of both U.S. and international law; the next it threatens to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks whose speech displeases the Administration. These are not discrete incidents. They are linked by the common threads of Trump’s disdain for the rule of law, his bloated conception of Presidential power, and his readiness to bend the state to his will. The scope of the assault seems intended to inure the public to the outrages it is witnessing. It is impossible, emotionally and intellectually, to be worked up about everything, everywhere, all at once.
But here we are. In the hierarchy of the Administration’s horrors, the Siebert firing is about as bad as it gets. Since Trump regained office, the Department of Justice has dismissed career prosecutors for an array of unjustified and self-serving reasons: for daring to have worked on the criminal cases against Trump; being the daughter of Comey; failing to remove personal pronouns in a signature block. It has dismissed pending cases to serve political ends, such as that of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams. What’s happening now is worse. Dropping the criminal charges against Adams amounted to a political perversion of the justice system. But using the criminal law to punish political opponents as retribution inflicts far greater damage. Here, a potentially guilty person doesn’t walk free; an innocent person is harmed. The prospect of eventual acquittal in the case of an unjustified prosecution is of little comfort; as Trump well understands, being indicted and having to stand trial is ruinous enough. Firing a prosecutor for refusing to pursue a political opponent without a sufficient legal basis crosses the reddest of lines. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were reported to have privately defended Siebert and questioned the viability of the case against James. On Saturday evening, Trump directed a Truth Social post at his Attorney General, demanding action. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” the President wrote. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.” For good measure, Trump said he would nominate his former criminal-defense lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to take Siebert’s place. “She will be Fair, Smart, and will provide, desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!” Trump wrote, of Halligan, who has been the White House staffer in charge of removing “improper ideology” from museums, as it’s described in an executive order. “Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot,” he publicly assured Bondi.
In another era, of stiffer spines and greater integrity, we would be in Saturday Night Massacre territory. On the evening of October 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned, followed by Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. (The deed was ultimately done by the No. 3 official, Solicitor General Robert Bork; unlike Richardson and Ruckelshaus, he hadn’t assured lawmakers he could not interfere with Cox’s work.) To expect a similar display of principle from Bondi and Blanche would be to ignore their track record of servility to Trump. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on Siebert’s dismissal.
The D.O.J.’s manual for federal prosecutors sets out the standards for determining when to bring a case: the prosecutor may seek charges “only if he/she believes that the person will more likely than not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an unbiased trier of fact and that the conviction will be upheld on appeal.” Pursuing a case that fails to meet that standard is unethical, full stop. The Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson offered the canonical characterization of the federal prosecutor in 1940, when he was serving as Attorney General under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, describing the prosecutor’s “immense power to strike at citizens, not with mere individual strength, but with all the force of government itself.” Jackson’s admonition remains as powerful, and perhaps even more relevant, today. “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America,” he observed. “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”
Jackson could scarcely have imagined a President misusing the Justice Department as Trump has, but his explanation of prosecutorial abuse could have been written with James and Comey in mind:
