On the surface, Todd Gilbert seems like the kind of person the White House should like. Gilbert was a longtime Republican state lawmaker in Virginia who climbed the ranks and ultimately served as speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates up until last year. No one was especially surprised when Donald Trump tapped Gilbert a few months ago to serve as a U.S. attorney in the commonwealth.
His tenure, however, was short-lived for an unexpected reason. The New York Times reported:
Career prosecutors at the Justice Department do not believe criminal charges are warranted from an investigation seeking to discredit an earlier F.B.I. inquiry into Russia’s attempt to tilt the 2016 election in President Trump’s favor, according to people familiar with the matter. It leaves unclear what political appointees at the Justice Department might do, given the breadth of Mr. Trump’s demands that it pursue people he perceives as enemies.
The reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC, is a little tough to summarize, but at issue is a ridiculous set of circumstances.
Senior officials at Trump’s Justice Department reportedly ordered Gilbert to open a grand jury investigation related to the FBI’s handling of Trump’s Russia scandal. Gilbert reviewed the matter and told his superiors he couldn’t find sufficient evidence of a crime.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (both of whom worked as defense lawyers for Trump) not only weren’t satisfied with Gilbert’s assessment, they also blamed a veteran prosecutor named Zachary Lee (who was appointed by George W. Bush) for swaying the U.S. attorney not to pursue a case.
So DOJ leaders ordered Gilbert to demote Lee, while simultaneously offering the U.S. attorney more resources to pursue a case that would make the president happy.
Told that he hadn’t sufficiently sidelined Lee, Trump’s Justice Department told Gilbert he would be fired after just two months on the job. He resigned soon after.
“Defense lawyers who have clients caught up in the case have expressed bafflement at what possible crime could have been committed,” the Times added, “and one witness approached earlier this year was told the investigation was being conducted at the specific direction of [FBI Director Kash Patel].”
It’s ridiculous to see senior law enforcement officials pretend there’s a criminal case worth pursuing related to the FBI and Trump’s Russia scandal, but let’s not overlook the broader pattern related to punishing prosecutors for not bending over backward to satisfy Team Trump’s political wishes.
Indeed, Gilbert’s ouster deserves to be seen as a scandal in its own right, but it’s made worse when one considers how much company he has.
Shortly after Gilbert was ousted as the U.S. attorney in Virginia’s western district, Erik Siebert was also ousted as the U.S. attorney in Virginia’s eastern district because he wouldn’t bring baseless criminal charges against Trump’s political enemies.
Michael Ben’Ary, top national security prosecutor in Virginia, was fired after a pro-Trump activist peddled a baseless accusation against him; a federal prosecutor in Miami was recently fired because far-right activists discovered that he criticized Trump eight years ago while in private practice; and a federal prosecutor in California was recently fired because she urged immigration officials to comply with a court order. For that matter, the full list of prosecutors caught up in the purge of federal law enforcement because they worked on cases the president didn’t like has been difficult to keep up with. As longtime readers may recall, it was nearly two decades ago when officials from the Bush/Cheney White House executed a scheme in which they fired several U.S. attorneys who refused to politicize federal prosecutions ahead of congressional elections. As part of that scandal, Americans were introduced to the phrase “loyal Bushies,” a label applied to prosecutors the Republican White House perceived as allies. The public also learned about Monica Goodling, who made the transition from opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee to scrutinizing applicants seeking nonpartisan positions at the Justice Department, testing their partisan purity. (In one notorious instance, Goodling blocked a career prosecutor from being promoted to a counterterrorism post because she discovered that the prosecutor’s wife had donated money to some Democratic candidates.) That scandal lasted months, generated dramatic congressional hearings, led to a variety of Justice Department resignations and even played a role in the ouster of an attorney general. As a new U.S. attorney scandal unfolds, will there be any comparable response? Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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