Preet Bharara, top US prosecutor fired after refusing White House order to quit

Preet Bharara, the Manhattan federal prosecutor was fired on Saturday after he refused an order to submit his resignation
On Friday, Bharara was asked to step down along with 45 other United States attorneys.
Sunday, 12 March 2017 01:49

Preet Bharara, the Manhattan federal prosecutor who was asked by President Donald Trump to remain in his post shortly after the election, was fired on Saturday after he refused an order to submit his resignation.

“I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired,” Bharara wrote on Twitter.

Bharara was among 46 holdover Obama appointees who were called by the acting deputy attorney general on Friday and told to immediately submit their resignations and plan to clear out of their offices.

Presidents often order political appointees from the previous administration to resign when they take office, but the abrupt nature of the move caught some by surprise -- especially given that so many were asked to leave at one time.

Trump's request that Bharara leave came as a particular jolt because the attorney had met with the US president shortly after his November election at Manhattan's Trump Tower. He told journalists then that Trump asked him to stay on.

Earlier last year, Bharara had become a popular name in Turkey after the arrest of a Iranian-born, Turkish citizen tycoon Reza Zarrab who was once entangled in a corruption scandal there. Bharara's Twitter following soared from several thousand to over a quarter-million after he tweeted that Reza Zarrab would "soon face American justice" after being arrested on charges of conspiring to evade U.S. economic sanctions against Iran.

Zarrab's arrest stunned Turkey, where the young tycoon had been linked to a 2013 corruption scandal that ensnared the government of then premier, now president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  

Zarrab spent 70 days in custody in Turkey over the scandal, which Erdogan denounced as a plot by his arch-foe -- the US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen -- to bring down his government.