Lindsey Halligan fires more prosecutors in key US attorney’s office
By Kristen Holmes, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s hand-picked interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan has fired more senior prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia office, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Beth Yusi and Kristin Bird were no longer with the office as of Friday. Yusi has been with the Department of Justice since 2007. One source said that Halligan believed the attorneys to be leaking “unauthorized” information to the press. The other source added that they received termination letters.
CNN has reached out to Yusi and Bird for comment.
Halligan has moved quickly to assert her authority over the office, with several recent firings and departures, and she has become personally involved in courtroom proceedings — which is unusual for a US attorney —in the recent indictments of Trump foes James Comey and Letitia James.
The move indicates a deepening split between Halligan, who leads the powerful office, and its roster of experienced prosecutors.
The departures mark the latest in a string of resignations and firings in the Eastern District of Virginia in less than a month.
CNN reported earlier this week that Maggie Cleary, the senior Justice Department prosecutor who briefly led EDVA, had been removed from the office, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The first Trump-appointed US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, resigned under pressure from Trump, as resistance in the office built around charging Comey at the end of September.
Cleary sided with career prosecutors who opposed bringing the Comey case. She sat in a back row, not at the government table, when Halligan presented the indictment from the grand jury before the magistrate judge.
Two other career prosecutors, Michael Ben’Ary and Maya Song, were fired in the aftermath of Halligan charging Comey. Comey’s son-in-law Troy Edwards Jr., who was a career prosecutor in the office, also resigned.
Justice Department “leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote in a note he taped to the door of his former office when he left two weeks ago.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
