Erik Siebert, the federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia, has resigned under intense pressure from former President Donald Trump. Siebert, whom Trump appointed in May, is the only person to have held the position since Trump appointed him. On Friday, he announced his decision to colleagues in a letter. His resignation follows a five-month-long investigation. The investigation targeted accusations that New York Attorney General Letitia James misreported a home in Virginia as her principal residence.
The investigation did not produce enough evidence to prosecute James with any crime. Trump ordered Siebert fired. He didn’t think the two Democratic senators from Virginia would support Siebert’s nomination, which stoked his effort to get him fired. Trump said that James “is very guilty of something,” even though there was no evidence pinned on her.
Siebert’s career as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia began in 2010, where he built a reputation for handling a variety of cases. His recent resignation finds its place alongside the most controversial Trump personnel change-ups of his presidency thus far. This series features the ouster of career attorneys and FBI agents who played a role in investigation stemming from the January 6 Capitol riots.
Pressure on Siebert quickly heated up after Bill Pulte, the new head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, tweeted some things. He publicly called on Trump to fire Siebert. Ed Martin, a private lawyer currently representing several defendants from the January 6th insurrection, has been pressuring prosecutors to bring an indictment against James. This pressure is confusing the domestic political landscape that surrounds the case.
This attack isn’t a one-off occurrence. It’s like the firing of Maurene Comey, a career prosecutor known for her work on high-profile cases in the Southern District of New York. Comey was dismissed and subsequently sued the Trump administration, highlighting the friction between political motives and judicial processes during Trump’s tenure.