Paul Charlton was an assistant U.S. attorney from 1991 to 2001, and the U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona from 2001 to 2007. He is now an attorney in private practice.
Mar 20, 2017 · American lawyer and former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York President Donald Trump recently compelled 46 U.S. attorneys to resign, and to do so …
Aug 27, 2009 · Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, a former governor of and senator from Rhode Island, appointed Newbold Morris as a special assistant attorney general in the Justice …
Jan 31, 2017 · The U.S. attorney general is appointed by the President of the United States and serves at the pleasure of the President. The President has the power to fire the attorney …
United States Attorney General | |
---|---|
Member of | Cabinet National Security Council |
Reports to | President of the United States |
Attorney General | Years of service |
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Merrick Garland | 2021-Present |
Jeff Sessions | 2017-2018 |
Loretta Lynch | 2015-2017 |
Eric Holder | 2009-2015 |
Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, a former governor of and senator from Rhode Island, appointed Newbold Morris as a special assistant attorney general in the Justice Department to investigate corruption.
The attorney general serves at the pleasure of the president, and the president can determine that a prosecution would undermine the national security—a subject on which he has a wider perspective and a greater responsibility than the attorney general—and order that it not go forward.
It concluded that the president — but not the attorney general — could fire such an official. In a memorandum opinion, John M. Harmon, the head of the office at the time, cited the law that says presidents may fire U.S. attorneys.
Barr invoked the president. Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, arrived at his office in New York on Saturday hours after defying the attorney general’s attempt to fire him.
attorneys following Senate confirmation, a law permits an attorney general to appoint a prosecutor to fill those vacancies for 120 days. If that temporary appointment expires, judges can fill it. A prosecutor appointed by the court will “serve until the vacancy is filled,” the statute says.
That is how Mr. Berman became U.S. attorney. He was initially appointed by the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions , and federal judges in Manhattan reappointed him after the 120-day period expired. In his statement Friday night, Mr. Berman indicated that Mr. Barr could not fire him because he had been appointed by the court, ...
Barr could not fire him because he had been appointed by the court, and declared he intended to remain in office until the Senate confirms a successor. However, another federal law says that U.S. attorneys may be removed by the president. On its face, it makes no exception ...
Office of Legal Counsel opinions are generally considered to be binding interpretations of the law for Justice Department officials, but they are not legal precedent s in the sense of judicial opinions by appeals courts or the Supreme Court.
The 1979 opinion pointed to one district court opinion from 1963 — also in Manhattan — which expressed the view that a president may remove a court-appointed prosecutor. In his letter, Mr. Barr also pointed to a 2000 opinion by the federal appeals court in Boston that took the same position in passing, saying that a “president may override ...
The change in the law undermined the confirmation authority of the Senate and gave the Attorney General greater appointment powers than the President, since the President's U.S. Attorney appointees are required to be confirmed by the Senate and those of the Attorney General did not require confirmation.
A subsequent report by the Justice Department Inspector General in October 2008 found that the process used to fire the first seven attorneys and two others dismissed around the same time was "arbitrary", "fundamentally flawed" and "raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecution decisions".
Allegations were that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that some of the emails that had involved official correspondence relating to the firing of attorneys may have been lost because they were conducted on Republican party accounts and not stored properly. "Some official e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake the White House is aggressively working to correct." said Stanzel, a White House spokesman. Stonzel said that they could not rule out the possibility that some of the lost emails dealt with the firing of U.S. attorneys. For example, J. Scott Jennings, an aide to Karl Rove communicated with Justice Department officials "concerning the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former Rove aide, as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, according to e-mails released in March, 2007. For that exchange, Jennings, although working at the White House, used an e-mail account registered to the Republican National Committee, where Griffin had worked as a political opposition researcher."
Officials who resigned. Alberto Gonzales, United States Attorney General, former White House Counsel. Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General. Michael A. Battle, Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. Michael Elston, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General.
Attorney General Gonzales, in a confidential memorandum dated March 1, 2006, delegated authority to senior DOJ staff Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson to hire and dismiss political appointees and some civil service positions.
On September 29, 2008 the Justice Department's Inspector General (IG) released a report on the matter that found most of the firings were politically motivated and improper.