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A federal prosecutor who resisted President Trump’s demands to bring charges against Letitia James, the New York state attorney general, was fired along with her deputy on Friday evening, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The dismissal of the prosecutor, Elizabeth Yusi, was the latest fallout from attempts by career Justice Department officials to pump the brakes on Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging efforts to seek retribution against his perceived political opponents.
Ms. Yusi, who oversaw major criminal cases in the Norfolk office of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, had pushed back against Mr. Trump’s public calls for Ms. James to be indicted, telling colleagues that she had not found probable cause to file charges, the people familiar with the matter said. It was not immediately clear why her deputy, Kristin G. Bird, had also been fired.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite the concerns career prosecutors raised about the case, Mr. Trump’s inexperienced handpicked choice to lead the prosecutors’ office, Lindsey Halligan, secured an indictment against Ms. James last week, accusing her of mortgage fraud. The indictment said Ms. James had falsely claimed in loan documents that she would use a home she had purchased in Norfolk, Va., as a secondary residence, but instead had used it as a rental property, allowing her to receive favorable terms that saved her close to $19,000.
The firings of Ms. Yusi and Ms. Bird came less than a month after Ms. Halligan’s predecessor, Erik S. Siebert, resigned under pressure from Mr. Trump. Mr. Siebert, who had been chosen by the president to run the office, had taken a stand against his desire to seek charges against another of his adversaries: James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.
In the end, Ms. Halligan did Mr. Trump’s bidding in that case, too, personally presenting a case to a grand jury last month and securing an indictment against Mr. Comey that accused him of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
The U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which has traditionally handled some of the country’s most significant terrorism and national security cases, has been battered by dismissals and resignations, stemming from the cases against Ms. James and Mr. Comey. Ms. James and Mr. Comey have both denied the charges against them.
Maya Song, the office’s former first assistant U.S. attorney, was fired in the wake of Mr. Comey’s indictment, as was her replacement, Maggie Cleary, a well-known conservative lawyer in Virginia.
Mr. Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards Jr., who handled national security cases, resigned in protest shortly after the indictment was returned. And Mr. Edwards’s boss, Michael P. Ben’Ary, was dismissed after a pro-Trump social media influencer wrongly accused him in an online post of having questioned the indictment of Mr. Comey.
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President Trump’s handpicked acting U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, secured an indictment against the New York attorney general last week after other prosecutors resisted seeking charges. Credit…Evan Vucci/Associated Press
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