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The Trump Department of Justice has terminated a 64-year old attorney, the number-two official in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, after he refused to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey in a highly-controversial case.
MS NOW on Monday reported that Robert McBride, a senior DOJ prosecutor and former Navy lawyer, “was brought into the prominent satellite office of the Justice Department to serve as first assistant to U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan and took a more prominent role as her status was in question and after a judge ruled in late November that she was not legally appointed to run the office.”
McBride reportedly had held private meetings with judges, MS NOW reported, calling it a move that was “viewed as undermining the Administration.”
He had declined to prosecute Comey, sources said, reportedly telling top Justice Department officials that it would be difficult to do that and also run the office.
MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig added that McBride was also suspected of “gunning for” the top job.
The New York Times reported that there was a “disagreement about whether he would take charge of the Trump administration’s effort to re-indict James B. Comey,” and called McBride’s firing “the latest development in the fallout in the Justice Department over President Trump’s effort to punish Mr. Comey, the former F.B.I. director and his longtime nemesis, whom the president blames for past investigations of his conduct.”
The Times added that meeting with judges is considered “commonplace.”