Every federal prosecutor’s office is important, but some stand out for unique reasons. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, for example, prosecutes a lot of cases related to the financial industry. The U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., is notable for its role handling cases related to the federal government.
The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, meanwhile, handles many of the country’s most sensitive national security cases. It’s against this backdrop that NBC News reported:
A top national security prosecutor in a key federal office was fired Wednesday after a pro-Trump writer, without evidence, linked him to internal pushback over the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey last week. Michael Ben’Ary, a veteran prosecutor who was serving as chief of the national security unit for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, was fired on Wednesday, three sources familiar with the situation told NBC News.
The timeline is important. On Wednesday, an influential pro-Trump activist and writer named Julie Kelly published an item via social media in which she asserted that the public “can only assume” that Ben’Ary “was a big part of the internal resistance” to indicting Comey.
Kelly didn’t substantiate the claim, and there’s reporting that Ben’Ary had nothing to do with deliberations regarding Comey’s case. But in 2025, far-right influencers are steering the White House, which meant Attorney General Pam Bondi’s DOJ fired the lawyer just hours after Kelly’s missive appeared online.
Or to put it another way, the top federal prosecutor on national security matters, in an office that handles many of the country’s most sensitive national security cases, is unemployed because of a dubious allegation that appears to be wrong. (To the extent that it matters, even if Ben’Ary had been involved in the Comey case, that wouldn’t have been grounds for dismissal, but that the claim appears baseless adds insult to injury.)
No one benefits from this, least of all the American public. But it happened anyway. More to the point, it keeps happening anyway.
A federal prosecutor in Miami was recently fired because far-right activists discovered that he criticized Donald Trump eight years ago while in private practice. A federal prosecutor in California was recently fired because she urged immigration officials to comply with a court order. The full list of prosecutors caught up in the purge federal law enforcement because they worked on cases the president didn’t like has been difficult to keep up with.
For that matter, specifically in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Ben’Ary wasn’t the only prosecutor ousted without cause: Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney in the office (and a former Trump nominee), was forced out because he wouldn’t bring baseless criminal charges against Trump’s political enemies. Alas, that’s not the end of the list. The Washington Post reported: Lawyers inside the high-profile U.S. attorney’s office prosecuting former FBI director James B. Comey are unnerved by what they see as an unprecedented push by President Donald Trump to inject politics into their staffing and charging decisions, according to three people familiar with the matter, a strategy they say could jeopardize national security investigations. The Justice Department in recent days fired two longtime prosecutors who had risen to leadership positions within the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, said the three people, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The firings, of course, came on the heels of Trump installing an unqualified loyalist, Lindsey Halligan, as the interim U.S. attorney in the district. Predictably, these developments have had a destabilizing effect, with law enforcement personnel left to wonder who might be terminated without cause next.
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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