On Monday evening, President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refused to comply with his executive orders on immigration and refugees.
Sept. 23, 2005: Sampson becomes chief of staff to the attorney general Jan. 9, 2006: Sampson e-mails Miers to suggest replacing "a limited number of …
Dec 17, 2020 · Presidents Trump, Bush and Clinton all did so at the beginning of their time in office, and Eric Holder, President Obama’s attorney general in May of 2009, announced plans to dismiss a “batch ...
Jul 03, 2017 · Abraham Lincoln fired General George McClellan, who wrote to his wife: “There never was a truer epithet applied to a certain individual than that of the ‘Gorilla.’ ” For his part, Lincoln said, “If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it.” In the 1864 election, McClellan ran against his old boss and lost.
The Bush administration fired seven U.S. attorneys on a single day last December. After Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress in January, they began hearings into whether those dismissals — as well as an earlier one, in June 2006 — were politically motivated. Political furor has ensued.
In response to congressional inquiries, the Department of Justice released a series of internal communications — including e-mails with White House staff — that preceded the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
February 2005: Harriet Miers, who has replaced Gonzales as White House counsel, suggests that all 93 U.S. attorneys be replaced. Feb. 14, 2005: Gonzales is sworn in as attorney general of the United States.
Feb. 14, 2005 : Gonzales is sworn in as attorney general of the United States. March 2, 2005: Sampson e-mails Miers a chart, categorizing U.S. attorneys into one of three groups based on whether they have "produced, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General.".
March 20, 2007 : White House counsel Fred Fielding offers to make White House officials available to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for private interviews without an oath or transcript. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy responds, "I don't accept his offer.".
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy responds, "I don't accept his offer.". March 26, 2007: The Justice Department's White House liaison and senior counselor to Gonzales, Monica Goodling, says she will invoke her Fifth Amendment right not to respond to questions from Congress about the U.S. attorney dismissals.
March 13, 2007: The Justice Department sends documents to Capitol Hill detailing the correspondence between White House and Justice Department officials over the U.S. attorneys issue. Gonzales insists that he will not resign amid calls for his ouster.
That decision-making role fell previously to Stuart Gerson, who served as acting attorney general during the early months of the Clinton administration after his role as assistant attorney general for the civil division during President George H.W. Bush’s time in office.
Biden added that he believed Gonzales had become a “creature of the president, not the attorney for the people as well as representing the president.”. And he went so far as to say the Bush White House even exceeded the Nixon administration in installing loyalists in the U.S. attorney jobs.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to restore integrity to the Justice Department and allow it to run independently, free of White House meddling. But if the experience of his predecessors is any guide, that lofty pledge is easier said than done – even if a president’s own son were not the subject of a federal investigation.
In 2007, Biden publicly called for then-AG Alberto Gonzales to resign in part over the decision to fire eight U.S. attorneys amid allegations of Republican meddling in some of their investigations. Several GOP senators said they also had lost faith in Gonzales, and he eventually stepped down.
In his interview with Wallace, Biden defended his call for Gonzales to step down, arguing that the U.S. attorney firings were politically motivated. Biden added that he believed Gonzales had become a “creature of the president, not the attorney for the people as well as representing the president.”.
Biden underscored the pledge: “I guarantee you that that’s how it will be run.”. As a senator, Biden was particularly critical of another Republican president, George W. Bush, and what he regarded as the politicization of the attorney general position.
The president denounced Barr’s statement that he hadn’t seen enough evidence of election fraud thus far to overturn the presidential outcome. Trump also expressed displeasure with Barr’s decision to keep the Hunter Biden investigation, which began in 2018, under wraps throughout the 2020 campaign. With nearly five decades ...
Amid the Watergate investigation, Richard Nixon asked attorney general Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who months earlier had subpoenaed Nixon’s Oval Office recordings. Both lawyers opted to resign instead. In the wake of what was dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre, the President’s approval rating dropped to 27 percent. Four decades on, the presidential oustings are still the most infamous.
The President caught W’s eye during the walk-and-talk, and the son responded with an affirming wink. 6. Biggest Historical Impact. Abraham Lincoln fired General George McClellan, who wrote to his wife: “There never was a truer epithet applied to a certain individual than that of the ‘Gorilla.’.
Before he was the President, Donald Trump was most famous for booting people on TV—a habit that has proved hard to quit. So far, acting attorney general Sally Yates, national-security adviser Michael Flynn, and FBI director James Comey (above) have all found themselves on the receiving end of the onetime TV host’s catchphrase, “You’re fired.”.
Amid the Watergate investigation, Richard Nixon asked attorney general Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who months earlier had subpoenaed Nixon’s Oval Office recordings. Both lawyers opted to resign instead. In the wake of what was dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre, ...
Biggest Turnaround. On April 11, 1951, Harry S. Truman replaced popular general Douglas MacArthur with General Matthew Ridgway over what Truman called MacArthur’s “rank insubordination” during the Korean War. Enjoying a hero’s welcome back home, MacArthur was invited to speak to a joint session of Congress.
In 1981 , Ronald Reagan fired 11,400 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 48 hours after offering them an ultimatum: end their illegal strike or forfeit their jobs. The workers, seeking better pay and working conditions, were banned from federal employment.
Photo by Life Images Collection/Getty Images. 5. Breakthrough Performance. George W. Bush convinced his President-dad to let him do the dirty work when it was time to fire chief of staff John Sununu in 1991.
Instead, the public took it as a sign the administration was failing and desperate. Alexander Haig (CQ Roll Call Archive Photo) Ronald Reagan. Alexander Haig, Secretary of State. When Haig announced he was in charge following the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, a few feathers were ruffled.
Harry S. Truman. Douglas MacArthur, Commander of U.N. forces in Korea. Truman fired MacArthur for insubordination after privately pushing for a wider war with China and publicly criticizing Truman. After being dismissed, he was invited to address a joint session of Congress.
Allen Dulles, CIA Director. Dulles took the fall for the botched Bay of Pigs operation. Lyndon B. Johnson. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense. After presiding over the escalation of the Vietnam war, McNamara recommended a negotiated peace and withdrawal in 1967.
Dulles took the fall for the botched Bay of Pigs operation. Lyndon B. Johnson. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense. After presiding over the escalation of the Vietnam war, McNamara recommended a negotiated peace and withdrawal in 1967.
When Haig announced he was in charge following the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, a few feathers were ruffled. He lasted just a year longer. Anne Gorsuch, EPA Administrator.
Lauro Cavazos, Secretary of Education. The first Hispanic Cabinet member was told to resign after he surprised the White House with a new policy that would block federal aid to colleges that offered scholarships designed for minority students. Bill Clinton. William Sessions, FBI Director.
Bill Clinton. William Sessions, FBI Director. In President Bill Clinton ’ s first year in office, he fired the FBI director who had been criticized for his mismanagement of the agency and for spending taxpayer money for his own benefit. He replaced Sessions with Louis Freeh, whose appointment Clinton later regretted.
Jeff Sessions' former chief of staff, Matt Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, has in the past publicly criticized the Special Counsel's probe. Alex Wong/Getty Images, FILE.
Rosenstein soon appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the Russia probe, angering the president. Win McNamee/Getty Images.
Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2018. Sessions was the first sitting U.S. senator to endorse then-candidate Trump.
A DOJ spokeswoman said that Whitaker does not need to be sworn in and is therefore already the acting attorney general. Tensions developed between Trump and Sessions in March 2017, when Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein took over.
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 Rovestopped 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
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2. ^ "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