WASHINGTON: The US Justice Department fired a number of officials on Monday who were involved in the criminal prosecutions of President Donald Trump.
\n\u201cActing attorney general James McHenry made this decision because he did not believe these officials could be trusted to faithfully implement the president\u2019s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president,\u201d a Justice Department official said.
\nThe official did not specify now many people had their employment terminated, but US media outlets said it was more than a dozen and several were career prosecutors with the Justice Department.
\nSpecial Counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal cases against Trump, resigned earlier this month.
\nSmith charged Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
\nNeither case came to trial and Smith \u2014 in line with a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president \u2014 dropped them both after the Republican won November\u2019s presidential election.
\nThe firing of the Justice Department officials involved in prosecuting Trump was not unexpected.
\nTrump had vowed before the election to fire Smith \u201con day one\u201d and accused the Justice Department under Democratic president Joe Biden of conducting a \u201cpolitical witchhunt\u201d against him.
\nIn his inauguration speech, Trump said he would end the \u201cvicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government.\u201d
\nIn his final report, Smith said Trump would have been convicted for his \u201ccriminal efforts\u201d to retain power after the 2020 election if the case had not been dropped.
\nTrump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding \u2014 the session of Congress held to certify Biden\u2019s win that was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a mob of Trump supporters.
\nSmith also prepared a report into Trump\u2019s alleged mishandling of classified documents but it is being withheld because charges are pending against two of his former co-defendants.
\nTrump faces separate racketeering charges in Georgia over his efforts to subvert the election results in the southern state, but the case will likely be frozen while he is in office.
\nTrump was convicted in New York in May of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star. The judge who presided over the case gave him an \u201cunconditional discharge\u201d which carries no jail time, fine or probation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The US Justice Department fired a number of officials on Monday who were involved in the criminal prosecutions of President Donald Trump. \u201cActing attorney general James McHenry made this decision because he did not believe these officials could be trusted to faithfully implement the president\u2019s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":76207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76214,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76190\/revisions\/76214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}