Ex-US attorney Preet Bharara gives play-by-play of how Trump fired him
Preet Bharara had fully anticipated that he could lose his job when President Donald Trump entered the Oval Office. After all, it’s standard protocol for US attorneys to be let go when the opposing party takes the executive branch.
But the former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York was caught off guard because the context of his firing was slightly unusual.
‘I really want Preet to stay’
At the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit Wednesday, Bharara recounted a phone call he received from New York Senator Chuck Schumer eight days after the election. Schumer relayed the message to Bharara: “I really want Preet to stay.”
So, Bharara met with then president-elect Trump, Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan on November 30.
“It was a very nice meeting and an unusual meeting. People like to use the word ‘unprecedented.’ I’m not aware of any time when a new president-elect has asked to meet with a particular US attorney, particularly one who was appointed by a president of the other party. And he was very complimentary of the work that my office had done and asked me to stay on for another term, and I agreed. I agreed to stay,” he said.
But, then, between the election and his inauguration, Bharara started receiving phone calls from the president — seemingly innocuous “chit chats,” he said.
But Bharara said that anyone who has seen some of the testimony of former FBI director Jim Comey can attest that it’s unusual to be called by the president.
“It’s less unusual for an FBI director who has to deal with national security and terrorism issues, but Donald Trump kept calling me on the phone just to chat about stuff,” he explained.
Trump called Bharara again on January 18, just two days before his inauguration. Bharara concluded that it was appropriate to take his calls, as Trump was still president-elect and had no real authority.
“We made a determination among ourselves, including with the head of DOJ transition at the time, that this should not continue to happen after this man becomes president, for a lot of reasons, including the appearance issue. And, the appearance issue related to, among other things, the kind of jurisdiction that I had in Manhattan as the top federal prosecutor there, over businesses and people and buildings,” he said.
A missed call from the president
Then, on March 9, Bharara missed a call from the president, because his assistant had left early for the day. After an hour of contemplation, Bharara decided not to return the call.
“It’s not an easy thing not to return a call of anybody who is putatively your boss. And this is the president of the United States. When you’re a US attorney, attorney general or FBI director, you have to maintain an arm’s length because of the independence and integrity of not just investigations you may have ongoing but the perception of what that independence is,” said Bharara.