Trump’s Dangerous Purge of Terrorism Prosecutors

While the Department of Justice busy is erasing data from its websites in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder that documents that the vast majority of domestic terrorism - other sources still contain the now removed data from the DOJ website - perhaps even more disturbing and dangerous is the purge of experienced terrorism prosecutors.  The removal of such prosecutors is based not on any lack of competence and professionalism but instead on political directives coming from the Felon through Pam Bondi, a total hack in my view who deserves disbarment, where retribution and revenge is sought against anyone who has any previous involvement with cases against the Felon or who refuses to bring revenge motivated indictments that lack of any real evidence to justify cases against the Felon's targets.   In the place of these career prosecutors individuals are being appointed based on loyalty to the Felon's regime regardless of their incompetence and/or lack of experience.  All of this is leaving the nation and the American public less safe and threatens the government's ability to prosecute terrorist.  But then, perhaps that is the point as the Felon continues to fan the flames of political violence by right wing and MAGA extremists.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this dangerous purge:

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is firing some of the nation’s most experienced counterterrorism prosecutors and experts, apparently for political reasons. Line prosecutors and terrorism experts across the country are watching with alarm, although many are afraid to say so publicly.

On Wednesday night, the department pushed out Michael Ben’Ary, who was head of national security at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. He lost his job, CNN reported, because a MAGA activist had falsely accused him of resisting the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. (Ben’Ary was not involved in the case, the network found.)

As a prosecutor, Ben’Ary took an oath “that requires you to follow the facts and the law wherever they lead, free from fear or favor, and unhindered by political interference,” he wrote to colleagues on Friday. “In recent months, the political leadership of the Department have violated these principles, jeopardizing our national security and making American citizens less safe.”

His ouster follows that of George Toscas, one of the most experienced anti-terrorist attorneys in the Justice Department. As the deputy assistant attorney general in the National Security Division, Toscas had encouraged the investigation into the inappropriate storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office in 2020. Toscas was forced out of his division and sidelined at the DOJ in January.

The United States loses these seasoned prosecutors at its own peril. Bringing terrorists to justice in American courts has become a crucial part of the nation’s self-defense. But this legal work requires judgment and expertise that, once lost, are extraordinarily difficult to replicate.

For the second time ever, the Trump administration is now trying to prosecute in U.S. criminal court a foreign terrorism suspect on charges related to killing American service members in a war zone. Mohammad Sharifullah, a.k.a. Jafar, reputedly a member of an Islamic State offshoot, was charged in March with aiding and abetting a 2021 suicide bombing that killed 13 American service members and more than 160 Afghans.

That case was assigned to the Eastern District of Virginia, which because of its concentration of national-security agencies is a crucial jurisdiction for terrorism cases. But Michael Ben’Ary was a leading prosecutor on the case. In his letter, the 20-year veteran said that his dismissal “will hurt this case” against Jafar: “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”

Toscas’s sidelining, from the National Security Division of the Justice Department, means that he will not be of much help either. His last day is coming soon.

Before Ben’Ary was fired, another respected prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, was forced out by Trump because he wouldn’t support the president’s questionable case against New York Attorney General Letitia James. Siebert’s replacement is the Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance attorney in Florida. The New York Times reported that when she showed up to indict Comey, she wasn’t sure where to stand in the room.

Siebert, Ben’Ary, Toscas: No one can credibly argue that the Justice Department’s recent personnel decisions are based on a lack of prosecutorial excellence. The political removal of these civil servants makes the United States and the world less safe.