USA Media: Trump administration fires justice officials

SDA

28.1.2025 - 00:57

ARCHIVE - "Department of Justice" can be read on the facade of the Department of Justice. Photo: Valerie Plesch/dpa
ARCHIVE - "Department of Justice" can be read on the facade of the Department of Justice. Photo: Valerie Plesch/dpa
Keystone

According to media reports, the US Department of Justice is dismissing several employees who were involved in the investigations against the now incumbent President Donald Trump.

Keystone-SDA

Acting Attorney General James McHenry has doubts "that they are helping to faithfully implement the president's agenda", reported the Washington Post and ABC News, among others, citing ministry circles. Trump's preferred Attorney General Pam Bondi still has to be confirmed by the Senate, until then the agency will be headed by McHenry.

Under Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, the then Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed the special investigator Jack Smith. Smith's remit was to investigate Trump's handling of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021, as well as his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.

After Trump's election victory on November 5, the two criminal proceedings were dropped. Smith justified this with the custom that the Department of Justice does not investigate sitting presidents - he himself left the department. However, in a report of around 130 pages, which according to the US media was handed over to Congress a few days before Trump was sworn in, the special investigator emphasized that in his opinion Trump had only escaped conviction for election fraud thanks to his re-election.

The Republican had been charged with electoral fraud and his role in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, among other things. If convicted, he would have faced decades in prison. Trump repeatedly denied the accusations and presented himself during the election campaign as the victim of a politically motivated "witch hunt" in which Smith was also involved.