Top prosecutor fired from embattled US attorney's office slams DOJ leadership
The top national security prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Virginia circulated a scathing departure letter to his former colleagues Friday slamming DOJ leadership, who he said "is more concerned with punishing the President's perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security."
Michael Ben'Ary, who served with the department for 20 years, was suddenly ousted this week in the wake of the arrival of President Donald Trump's hand-picked choice to take over the EDVA office as the district's new U.S. attorney.
Trump picked Lindsey Halligan, who was previously his personal lawyer, to replace U.S. attorney Erik Siebert, who Trump fired after sources said Siebert refused to bring charges against at least one of Trump's political foes.
Halligan last week indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, after Trump called on her to bring cases against Comey and others.
Ben'Ary, who sources say was one of at least two top EDVA attorneys to be fired this week, said in his departure letter, "I am disappointed to leave behind a national security and public safety mission that I truly believed in. I am even more disappointed to see what has happened to this office and the Department of Justice in just a few short months."
"The decisions to remove experienced career officials from US Attorneys Offices, the FBI, and other critical parts of DOJ undermines our country's ability to counter terrorist organizations, malign nation-state actors, and countless others that seek to harm our nation and its citizens," he wrote.
Ben'Ary's letter said he was informed of his termination Wednesday, just hours after a social media post from a pro-Trump influencer sought to tie him to resistance in the office by career prosecutors to charging Comey, which Ben'Ary denied.
Representatives for the Justice Department and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
In his letter, Ben'Ary said that he was in the process of leading the prosecution of the only defendant in custody to date who has been charged in connection with the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan, the trial for which is set to begin in just two months.
"While I have the utmost confidence in my co-counsel, my abrupt, apparently thoughtless removal with no period of transition will hurt this case," Ben'Ary said. "This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President's perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security."
"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," Ben'Ary wrote.
