Trump Admin Fires U.S. Attorney Within Hours Of His Appointment

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

President Donald Trump’s administration fired a U.S. attorney on Wednesday, hours after he was appointed by federal judges.

Donald Kinsella was appointed the U.S. attorney in New York’s Northern District in place of John A. Sarcone III, who left his post as the acting U.S. attorney after a judge blocked Sarcone from any further involvement in the investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James, claiming he was not lawfully serving in the office at the time the subpoenas were issued in the case.

Within hours of Kinsella’s appointment, the new U.S attorney recived an email from a White House official, who claimed Kinsella was being removed from his post. Kinsella told The New York Times that he was unsure whether the email could legally constitute his firing, claiming he would speak to the district judges who appointed him before taking any steps.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, however, seemed to feel the email did carry legal weight. Blanche replied to a post that broke the news, written by a reporter at the TimesUnion who first reported the story. He claimed that Kinsella was officially “fired.”

“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does. See Article II of our Constitution,” Blanche wrote. “You are fired, Donald Kinsella.”

The move on the part of the Trump administration continues the White House’s long battle over the appointment of U.S. attorneys.

In December of last year, Trump’s former personal lawyer, Alina Habba, was barred from her previously held post as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision that found she was unlawfully serving in her position.

The president’s handpicked prosecutor in northern Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, was dually deemed to have been “unlawfully appointed” in November. Her illegal appointment was the basis for the dismissal of charges against ex-FBI Director James Comey and Letitia James.

Halligan left the U.S. attorney’s office in Janurary, after a judge called her repeated attempts to identify herself in court filings as the U.S. attorney a “charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States attorney.”

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