A veteran federal prosecutor fired abruptly this week issued a stark warning to colleagues Friday: The Trump administration’s effort to cull perceived adversaries from the Justice Department has put Americans’ safety at risk.
“The leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” wrote Michael Ben’Ary, in a note scotch-taped to his door after he cleaned out his office Friday, the last act of a 20-year career as a federal prosecutor.
In his note, Ben’Ary said his termination was a surprise, coming just hours after a conservative journalist pointed out he had once worked as senior counsel to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, one of the Biden-era officials Trump despises most. And it came while he is in the midst of leading the prosecution of Mohammad Sharifullah, who is charged with orchestrating the fatal bombing of 13 U.S. military service members in Afghanistan.
“Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day,” Ben’Ary wrote.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ben’Ary’s exit from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia came days after the termination of Maya Song, the office’s top deputy and another former aide to Monaco. The shake-up, in one of the most prominent hubs for national security cases in the country, adds to growing turmoil in that office stoked by Trump himself.
Last month, Trump engineered the ouster of the U.S. attorney in the district amid pressure to bring criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and other Trump adversaries. And he pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi to install his former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to lead the office. Within days of Halligan’s swearing in, Comey was indicted on two counts related to his 2020 testimony to Congress — a case riddled with anomalies and legal defects.
Ben’Ary described deepening disappointment over what he deemed “political interference” in the department’s work and urged his colleagues to resist giving into those demands. It’s a microcosm of broader alarm among Justice Department veterans and other fired prosecutors, who have described pressure from senior officials to take actions they viewed as political or unethical.
