Critics said that the attorneys were fired for failing to prosecute Democratic politicians, for failing to prosecute claims of election fraud that would hamper Democratic voter registration, as retribution for prosecuting Republican politicians, or for failing to pursue adult obscenity prosecutions.
The administration and its supporters said that the attorneys were dismissed for job-performance reasons "related to policy, priorities and management", and that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. However, at least six attorneys had recently received positive evaluations of their performance from the Department of Justice.
Here is the list of our military elite who have been purged or fired under Obama: Commanding Generals fired: -Retired Army Lt. General William G. Jerry Boykin:Over the past three years, it is unprecedented for the number of four-star generals to be relieved of duty, and not necessarily relieved for cause.
^ Horwitz, Sari; Barrett, Devlin (March 10, 2017). "Justice Department tells all remaining Obama administration U.S. attorneys to resign". The Washington Post.
The President of the United States has the authority to appoint U.S. Attorneys, with the consent of the United States Senate, and the President may remove U.S. Attorneys from office. In the event of a vacancy, the United States Attorney General is authorized to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney.
Holder was succeeded as attorney general by Loretta Lynch in April 2015. He returned to Covington & Burling, where he continues to practice corporate litigation, and is also involved with efforts at gerrymandering reform through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He is a member of the Democratic Party.
Loretta LynchOfficial portrait, 201583rd United States Attorney GeneralIn office April 27, 2015 – January 20, 2017PresidentBarack Obama20 more rows
As a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York, Lynch oversaw the prosecution team in the civil rights case of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was beaten and sexually assaulted by Brooklyn police officers.
List of U.S. attorneys generalAttorney GeneralYears of serviceMerrick Garland2021-PresentCharles Lee1795-1801William Bradford1794-1795Edmund Jennings Randolph1789-179482 more rows
Matthew WhitakerPreceded byJeff SessionsSucceeded byWilliam BarrChief of Staff to the United States Attorney GeneralIn office September 22, 2017 – November 7, 201822 more rows
William BarrOfficial portrait, 201977th and 85th United States Attorney GeneralIn office February 14, 2019 – December 23, 2020PresidentDonald Trump30 more rows
60 years (August 4, 1961)Barack Obama / Age
Loretta LynchLeadership[hide]Recent Attorneys GeneralLoretta Lynch2015-2017Barack ObamaJeff Sessions2017-2018Donald TrumpWilliam Barr2019-2020Donald TrumpMerrick Garland2021-PresentJoe Biden6 more rows
Stephen HargroveLoretta Lynch / Spouse (m. 2007)
The attorney general is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States. Washington, D.C. Under the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution, the officeholder is nominated by the president of the United States, then appointed with the advice and consent of the United States Senate.
National Review pointed out that Janet Reno began her tenure as President Bill Clinton 's attorney general in March 1993 by firing U.S. attorneys for 93 of the 94 federal districts, this being more than twice as many as Trump attorney general Sessions fired on Friday.
President Donald Trump declined to accept the resignations of Dana Boente (left) and Rod Rosenstein (right). Trump declined to accept the resignations of Boente (Eastern District of Virginia), who was serving as Acting Deputy Attorney General, and Rosenstein (District of Maryland), whom Trump had selected to become Deputy Attorney General.
Trump's Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, traded stocks of health-related corporations during the time period when Price was working on crafting the legislation that would affect those firms.
He was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi.
Retired U.S. Army Maj . Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, notes how the White House fails to take action or investigate its own officials but finds it easy to fire military commanders "who have given their lives for their country.". Vallely thinks he knows why this purge is happening.
Remember, as (former White House chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel said, never waste a crisis.". For President Obama, the military of a once-feared superpower is an anachronistic vestige of an America whose exceptionalism and world leadership require repeated apologies.
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."
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.
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.
The IG's report contained "substantial evidence" that party politics drove a number of the firings, and IG Glenn Fine said in a statement that Gonzales had "abdicated his responsibility to safeguard the integrity and independence of the department.".
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.
Kevin Ryan (R) Though described as "loyal to the Bush administration," he was allegedly fired for the possible controversy that negative job performance evaluations might cause if they were released. John McKay (R) Was given a positive job evaluation 7 months before he was fired.
Walpin refused. After Walpin’s refusal, Obama wrote a letter to Congress, giving the following explanation: “It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General.”. But here’s what really happened.
This was in violation of the Reform Act, which Obama co-sponsored as a U.S. senator. Walpin refused.
Obama broke the law to protect a donor and ally who had misused federal grant money and sexually abused three underage girls, then he and his appointees misled and stonewalled Congress in an attempt to cover up his own illegal behavior.
Obama Fired an Inspector General to Cover Up a Sex Scandal and No One Said Boo About It. On Friday, Trump fired the inspector general of the State Department, Steve Linick. In accordance with the 2008 Inspector General Reform Act , which protects inspectors general from being fired without cause, Trump informed Congress in writing about ...
SEE ALSO: Obama Awarded the Medal of Freedom to a Sex Predator, But Liberals Are Triggered by Rush Limbaugh’s. An investigation by Congress into the illegal firing was met with stonewalling by the Obama White House, and the withholding of documents. The Obama White House also deliberately misled Congress about the reasons for the firing.
The program was created by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 and grew to over 80,000 members. Program participants received benefits such as student loan deferment, living allowances, health benefits, career opportunities and training, and so forth.
But here’s what really happened. Gerald Walpin had been investigating Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA basketball star and Obama supporter, for misusing federal grant money from AmeriCorps.
Gen McChrystal said in a statement he had resigned out of a "desire to see the mission succeed ". "I strongly support the president's strategy in Afghanistan and am deeply committed to our coalition forces, our partner nations, and the Afghan people.".
Gen McChrystal himself described the period last year when President Obama was slowly moving towards the approval of the deployment of thousands more US soldiers to Afghanistan as "painful".
The day before his dismissal, Gen McChrystal apologised for the magazine article, written by freelance journalist Michael Hastings, admitting: "It was a mistake reflecting poor judgement and should never have happened.".
Others targeted included: Vice-President Joe Biden, who Gen McChrystal pretended not to know. US ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry, who Gen McChrystal said he felt "betrayed" by. National Security Adviser James Jones, who one of Gen McChrystal's aides described as a "clown".
US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, whose electronic communication led Gen McChrystal to say: "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke... I don't even want to open it".
The secretary general of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Western military alliance's Afghan war strategy remained unchanged after Gen McChrystal's replacement. "The approach he helped put in place is the right one," he added.
The commander of multinational forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, has been dismissed by US President Barack Obama after critical comments about senior administration officials. He will be replaced by Gen David Petraeus, who led the "surge" in Iraq.
By April 2007, there was some speculation that the dismissal of the US attorneys might affect cases of public corruption and voter fraud. According to the National Law Journal,
Just the appearance of political influence in cases related to those firings, combined with the recent, unusual reversal of a federal public corruption convi…
By tradition, all U.S. Attorneys are asked to resign at the start of a new administration. The new President may elect to keep or remove any U.S. Attorney. They are traditionally replaced collectively only at the start of a new White House administration. U.S. Attorneys hold a political office, in which the President nominates candidates to office and the Senate confirms, and consequently, they serve at the pleasure of the President. When a new President is from a differ…
On January 6, 2005, Colin Newman, an assistant in the White House counsels office, wrote to David Leitch stating, "Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) 'how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them or selectively replace them, etc.'". The email was then forwarded to Kyle …
The initial reaction was from the senators of the affected states. In a letter to Gonzales on January 9, 2007, Senators Feinstein (D, California) and Leahy (D, Vermont; Chair of the Committee) of the Senate Judiciary Committee expressed concern that the confirmation process for U.S. attorneys would be bypassed, and on January 11, they, together with Senator Pryor (D, Arkansas), introduced legislation "to prevent circumvention of the Senate's constitutional prerogative to con…
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 …
• 2017 dismissal of U.S. attorneys
• List of federal political scandals in the United States
• Don Siegelman
• Cyril Wecht
1. ^ "Although Bush and President Bill Clinton each dismissed nearly all U.S. attorneys upon taking office, legal experts and former prosecutors say the firing of a large number of prosecutors in the middle of a term appears to be unprecedented and threatens the independence of prosecutors." Gonzales: 'Mistakes Were Made' The Washington Post, March 14, 2007
2. ^ Bowermaster, David (2007-05-09). "Charges may result from firings, say two former U.S. attorneys". The Seattle Times. …