Erik Siebert, the interim U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, couldn’t find anything to use to bring criminal charges against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, so Siebert is now out of a job.
Donald Trump tried to claim today that the decision to fire Siebert is based on him having been nominated for the U.S. Attorney post by U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Democrats.
ICYMI
Which is bulls**t, of course, but the background on that is: it’s Senate tradition for home-state senators to vet candidates for open U.S. Attorney jobs and make the formal nomination, even if the person nominated is of the opposite political party.
Same thing happened with the nomination of rabid MAGA Todd Gilbert for the Western District of Virginia post.
Kaine and Warner signed off on Gilbert, who, predictably, was also forced out by the Trumpers, because he didn’t want to fire a staffer to put a MAGA acolyte in his place.
“When I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good. When I learned that they voted for him, I said, I don’t really want him,” Trump said today in an Oval Office press gaggle.
Dude thinks we’re as stupid as he is.
Why Trump really wants Siebert out is, Siebert, it turns out, has ethics.
Trump wants to use the Justice Department to get back at his political enemies, and James, who prosecuted Trump in the case that led to a $500 million-plus judgment in a civil-fraud trial last year, is at the top of that list.
The Trumpers are trying to accuse James of mortgage fraud because literally one of the documents related to a 2023 home purchased by James falsely indicated that the property would be her primary residence.
What happened, according to sources close to the investigation, is, the lawyers who drafted the document for a third-party closing company used a template that was never corrected.
Every other document in James’ loan file for the mortgage accurately stated that she would not reside at the home.
It was a paperwork error, and not from the fault of James; and not, let’s just be clear here, falsely inflating the value of some properties to get favorable terms on bank loans, and understating the value of others to get tax breaks.
If you voted for, and continue to support, this nonsense, something is seriously wrong with you.
“The American people are begging for lower costs and for the Trump administration to undo its attacks on their health care. But what is Trump focused on? Threatening to pull anyone who criticizes him on TV off the air. And now, pushing out the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia that we recommended, and he himself nominated, because Erik Siebert is an ethical prosecutor who refused to bring criminal charges against Trump’s perceived enemies when the facts wouldn’t support it,” Kaine and Warner said in a joint statement.
“The Eastern District of Virginia is at the forefront of significant cases essential to our national security, and just like any court in America, should be focused on justice instead of a thin-skinned president’s vendettas,” the senators said.
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Chris Graham
