Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney-General Pam Bondi and US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last week. Photo / Tom Brenner, for The Washington Post
United States President Donald Trump yesterday demanded that Attorney-General Pam Bondi move swiftly to prosecute several political opponents in a series of extraordinary social media posts.
The move amounts to a breakdown of traditional firewalls that have existed between the White House and the US Justice Department on prosecutorial discretion.
He urged the prosecutions of New York Attorney-General Letitia James (Democrat), former FBI director James Comey and Senator Adam Schiff (D-California), claiming all three were “guilty as hell” and that his supporters were noting “nothing has been done”.
Comey and James were both investigated but ultimately not charged by the US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia this year. Both have denied any wrongdoing.
“We cant delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump said in one message to Bondi.
“They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Trump’s messages were one of his most overt attempts to date to override the traditional restraints on a president’s involvement in law enforcement investigations.
It came after months of calling for criminal charges against those he perceives as political enemies, and a day after he called for the ouster of US Attorney for Eastern Virginia, Erik Siebert.
In one of the posts, Trump announced he intends to nominate Lindsey Halligan, a White House adviser and his former personal lawyer, to be the US Attorney in a high-profile office based in Virginia.
She has no prior experience as a prosecutor.
Halligan is a former Florida insurance lawyer who joined Trump’s personal legal team in 2022 and was at his Mar-a-Lago compound when the FBI executed a search warrant in its classified records investigation.
She is the White House adviser tasked with removing “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution.
“She will be Fair, Smart, and will provide desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!” Trump said on Truth Social.
Siebert resigned under pressure on Saturday after eight months as interim leader.
It came after he decided not to pursue a mortgage fraud indictment against James, citing insufficient evidence.
Siebert, a Trump appointee who was initially recommended by advisers to Governor Glenn Youngkin (Republican), also recently declined to prosecute Comey.
Before Siebert resigned, his chief deputy, who would traditionally have assumed the role, was also demoted, leaving the leadership of the Alexandria-based office in question.
Earlier yesterday the Justice Department installed an acting US Attorney, Mary “Maggie” Cleary, who most recently had been working in the Justice Department’s criminal division and before that worked as a local prosecutor in Northern Virginia.
In an essay published this year, Cleary claimed she had been “framed” as having participated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol - an incident, she said, that ended with her being cleared by investigators and spurring her to apply for a US Attorney position.
In an email to staff yesterday, Cleary described her appointment as “unexpected” but told employees she was “humbled to be joining” their ranks, according to a copy reviewed by the Washington Post. She did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
James and her lawyers have described the investigation into her real estate dealings as baseless and a brazen example of the Trump Administration using the Justice Department to seek “political retribution”. A separate mortgage fraud accusation against Schiff relates to a home he purchased in Maryland.
James secured a civil fraud judgment against Trump and representatives of his real estate empire last year, and since his return to the White House, James has joined several lawsuits challenging his Administration’s policies.
One social media post addressed to Bondi yesterday specifically linked Siebert’s ouster to the decision not to pursue charges against James and Comey.
A day earlier, the President, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, described James as “very guilty of something”, though he cited no evidence to support that claim.
Trump, in his Oval Office remarks on Saturday, cited support for Siebert from Democratic senators’ Tim Kaine and Mark Warner for the top job in the Eastern District as a reason he needed to go.
Both senators had expressed their support to the President before Trump formally nominated Siebert to a full four-year term in the US Attorney’s job in May.
Trump said on social media yesterday that he was withdrawing Siebert’s nomination, hours after his resignation, insisting Siebert had not quit but was fired.
Chief among those calling for Siebert to be fired was Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to multiple people familiar with those discussions.
It was Pulte who initially alleged in April that James falsely listed a Norfolk home as her principal residence on a 2023 mortgage application to receive more favourable terms.
Her lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has dismissed the error as a paperwork mistake - one James quickly sought to correct in an email to her mortgage broker around the time of the purchase.
In a statement, Lowell called the campaign to oust Siebert “a brazen attack on the rule of law”.
“Firing people until he finds someone who will bend the law to carry out his revenge has been the President’s pattern - and it’s illegal,” Lowell said.
“Punishing this prosecutor, a Trump appointee, for doing his job sends a clear and chilling message that anyone who dares uphold the law over politics will face the same fate.”
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.