White House Email Snafu Said to Stall Firings of US Attorneys

The White House sent termination emails to the wrong addresses of as many as 22 US attorneys who learned they’d been dismissed five days later after a perplexing weekend, said two people familiar with the process.

The remaining holdover US attorneys, who were forced to scramble about their status as their district’s chief law enforcement officials when they lost access to their government-issued devices Feb. 14, received clarity Monday evening from Justice Department headquarters.

Top prosecutors from Philadelphia, Arizona, New Mexico, and other districts were anticipating being fired along with fellow Biden-era colleagues who were let go Feb. 12, as is the custom in new administrations. But the group never received the memo from the Presidential Personnel Office and most proceeded until they were told otherwise, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share private conversations.

They made it through the holiday weekend by handing out their personal contact information to their staff, state and local law enforcement officials, and judges, while seeking answers from DOJ leadership in Washington. Some US attorneys delegated decisionmaking authority to their first assistants.

Then Monday, DOJ’s Executive Office for US Attorneys gathered their personal emails and messaged them what many already suspected—President Donald Trump had directed their terminations five days earlier. The two individuals said the Presidential Personnel Office had emailed these US attorneys via their internal DOJ email addresses, which should’ve bounced back to White House staffers.

Only their external email addresses, would’ve gone through from the White House. The botched communications can be attributed to inexperienced political hires in the Trump administration, the two people said.

Media representatives for the White House and DOJ didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Some of the US attorneys started announcing their departures Monday evening in public statements. That list included Jacqueline Romero in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Alexander Uballez in New Mexico, Carla Freedman in the Northern District of New York, Darcie McElwee in Maine, and Zachary Cunha in Rhode Island.

One of the sources said that an EOUSA official emailed the remaining Biden US attorneys to confirm that the White House terminated them Feb. 12, and then quoted from the same language that the earlier batch of dismissed prosecutors received. That brief note told them that they were terminated effective immediately at the direction of the president.