Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Wednesday that if President Donald Trump wanted to fire U.S.Attorney Jeanine Pirro for dropping charges against people he wanted to prosecute, Trump is fully within his rights to do so.
Pirro, who used to host Fox News, upset Trump last week by dropping charges in a case involving vandalism at the Reflecting Pool.
She said there wasn’t enough evidence to take the case to court.Trump told reporters earlier in the week that Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” when she dropped the charges, even though he still claims he has evidence to support the case.
A reporter asked Blanche during a DOJ press conference, “You haven’t said whether you support Jeanine Pirro’s decision to drop that case.
What message would it send if President Trump fires a U.S.Attorney because she decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge four people with a crime?Did he fire her?What message would that send?”
Blanche responded, “If the president decided to fire a U.S.
Attorney, he is allowed to do that because he is the president of the United States.And by the way, if President Trump wanted to fire anyone in his administration, he knows he has the power to do that.So when he decides whether to fire a U.S.Attorney or anyone else, that’s his choice.” Blanche had previously worked as Trump’s personal attorney.
Blanche added:
As far as any message — what I said earlier, Alex, is true, which is that when you look at the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office’s body of work over the past year and a half, and where we are in this city compared to where we were, they are doing a phenomenal job. Now, does that mean that every case goes exactly the way that President Trump, or I, or U.S. Attorney Pirro wants?
I mean, of course not — it doesn’t. So I think that what you’ve seen play out in the press with respect to President Trump and U.S. Attorney Pirro is… it’s all out there already, but I don’t think that that changes the fact that her prosecutors, her office, what they’ve done over the past year to transform the city into a place that we can all now walk around in after sunset, is something that’s incredible. So I don’t think they’re inconsistent with each other.
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