A Manhattan federal prosecutor who says "absolute independence" was his touchstone for over seven years as he battled public corruption announced he was fired Saturday after he refused a request a day earlier to resign.Federal prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the President. It may be an unwise and dickish move to fire them without replacements ready to go, but that's about all that it is. If you're a presidential appointee and the President wants you gone, then the civil thing to do is go.
Preet Bharara, 48, made the announcement on his personal Twitter account after it became widely known hours earlier that he did not intend to step down in response to Attorney General Jeff Sessions' request that leftover appointees of former President Barack Obama quit.
Making the President formally fire you would be as though your girlfriend tells you it's over, but you make her both get a restraining order and have the cops carry your happy ass out to the curb.
I kind of hope that the marshals dragged Bharara out of his office by his testicles.
(But I still hope they toss PharmaBro into a deep, dark hole.)
wut?
ReplyDeleteit might not be classy to refuse to resign and insist on being fired but it's nothing like the scenario you put forth.
Bharara is not a physical threat to anyone, unlike the boyfriend you posit.
So, stupid and dickish is new normal. That happened quick. Even you are getting numb to it. Not sure what Bharara did to piss you off.
ReplyDeletePresidents are entitled to remove all of the U.S. attorneys when they take office. Whether they do it quickly or slowly, they pretty much all do. Not having replacements ready is stupid.
ReplyDeleteDemanding to be fired is a drama queen bit. Bharara may have had reasons for asking for confirmation, given the assurances he had from Trump, but Trump's a noted backstabber. Asking for confirmation is one thing, refusing the order to resign is just dickish.
There may be more here than meets the eye. I think Charlie Pierce's column today suggested a pretty compelling explanation for both Bharara's behavior & the precipitous timing of Trumpsky's response. It involves investigations Bharara may have been pursuing which could have been focused on the White House & attempts at inappropriate direct contact/influence by the Asterisk in Thief. Charlie's always worth a read (as are you, comrade), & his unscheduled weekend column today is no exception.
ReplyDeleteI read some stuff about investigations of foreign cash inflows that would not look good to Trump, or letters to that effect, but I also read that Bharara wasn't as gung-ho with the bankers who crashed the economy a few years ago as he could have been:
ReplyDeletehttp://susiemadrak.com/2017/03/13/when-it-comes-to-wall-street-preet-bharaha-was-no-hero/#more-97935
-Doug in Oakland