A federal prosecutor in Los Angeles was fired Friday by the White House request after he was suing a Quick Food executive who was suing officials in Washington to file all charges against him, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Adam Schleifer was fired Friday morning and received an email informing him that he had dismissed “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump”, according to two sources, who requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from federal officials, according to two sources. Sources say Joseph McNally, an attorney in central California, said Joseph T.
Carley Palmer, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and now a partner at Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg LLP, said Schleifer was fired through “a line email, which comes from a White House employee account.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment. Schleifer declined a request for an interview. The White House and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to inquiries.
Sources who spoke with The New York Times suspected the dismissal was partly due to Schleifer’s case being allocated to the company’s former CEO Andrew Wiederhorn, which owns fast food chains Fatburger and Johnny Rockets.
Last May, a grand jury charged Wiederhorn with taxable income distributed to the federal government by distributing “shareholder loans” from the company and its family. According to the indictment, Wiederhorn allegedly used the funds to earn personal gain, including payments for private jet travel, holidays, Rolls-Royce Phantom, other luxury cars, jewelry and pianos. He pleaded not guilty.
Widhorn’s lawyers have actively prompted Justice Department officials to abandon the case, according to two sources familiar with conversations that demanded anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Sources said the defense team attacked the legal theory of the case and said Sliver’s bias was biased.
Wiederhorn’s defense attorney Nicola Hanna had previously told Times that prosecutors went beyond the law on the allegations against the client. “This is an unfortunate example of the over-division of the government, and a case of no victims, no losses and crimes,” Hanna said in a statement last year.
McNally was ordered to meet with Hannah, and during the conversation, Widhorn’s attorney criticized Schlever, two sources said.
Hanna, a former Los Angeles lawyer, and other members of the Wiederhorn defense team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two sources familiar with the matter said Schleifer received an email around 11:15 a.m. informing him of the termination. After Schleifer’s work phone was wiped remotely and locked onto him, the prosecutor helped him pack his family photos and personal effects before leaving.
Schleifer, a registered Democrat, made a few words about Trump during a public seat in New York’s 17th District in 2020. Schleifer’s father, co-founder and CEO of pharmaceutical company Regeneron Technologies, criticized a criticism that he criticized himself during the campaign, which was a criticism made during the period. information. Schleifer holds nearly $25 million in shares in the company.
Schleifer started in 2016 with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He sued drug trafficking and fraud cases and then withdrew from Congress bidding in 2019. He finished second in the Democratic primary and resumed work as a federal prosecutor.
Although U.S. lawyers are politically appointed people, who often align with the current Presidential Administration agenda, line prosecutors like Schlever are often seen as professional employees. But since taking office, the Trump administration has proposed a man who drives political enemies from all levels of the federal government.
“This is the most public political dismissal I’ve ever seen during the Justice Department,” said former federal prosecutor Palmer. “I can definitely see it has a frightening effect. I also think current prosecutors are concerned about having the ability to have free speech. AUSA [assistant U.S. attorney] The people I talk to said they fear that the only person allowed to stay is a Republican or a very quiet Democrat. ”
In January, Gregory Bernstein worked in the main fraud department of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, where he was fired more than a dozen lawyers at the Justice Department after Jack Smith filed a lawsuit against Trump. Bernstein declined to comment.
In several social media posts during his political campaign, Shriver attacked the president’s tax policies and Trump’s actions against federal agencies that committed him extensive state and federal crimes.
In a 2020 tweet, Schleifer accused Trump of eroding the integrity of the constitution, “there are lies every day and every unintentional, narcissistic corrupt act.”
“It’s hard to imagine a president doing more with a down-to-moral prosecutor, law enforcement partner and belief in the rule of law,” Schleifer said in a February 2020 tweet.
On Friday, Laura Loomer, a right-wing provocateur who sometimes served as Trump’s adviser, shared Schleifer’s previous key tweet on X and called for the firing of prosecutors.
“We need to clear the U.S. Attorney’s Office that Trump hates all leftists,” Loomer wrote.
Although Loomer calls Schleifer “Biden Holdover,” he was hired as an office before Biden took office in 2021.
“People are obviously angry,” said a source inside the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who asked to be anonymous for concerns about revenge.
Sources say that while Shriver’s family may be wealthy, the firing appears to be politically motivated, intended to scare care prosecutors who may pursue a defendant who courtesy Trump.
“No one is particularly afraid of his livelihood, but I do think it’s a bull market,” the source said.
Another source, a former prosecutor who handles fraud cases in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and seeks anonymity for fear of professional opposition, said Schleifer’s dismissal “has an incredibly creepy effect on any federal prosecutor who is considering criminal investigations of any meaningful company or prosecuting any meaningful company.”
“The message in the Adam case is that if you are prosecuting some CEOs of the company, you need to check if he is a Trump supporter in the first place,” the former prosecutor said. “This will lead to the end-point prosecutors being much more cautious when pursuing someone with a slight connection to the president, which is bad for the Justice Department.”
Since 2023, Wiedhorn has donated about $40,000 to the Trump PAC and the Republican National Committee, according to Federal Election Commission records.
The most recent federal case comes nearly twenty years after Wiederhorn first fell into financial crime. In 2004, he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Oregon, accusing him of paying illegal tips to colleagues and filing false tax returns. He spent 15 months in federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon and paid a $2 million fine.
Trump has repeatedly complained about “weaponization of the federal government” while facing investigations as they handled improper handling of confidential documents and promoted an uprising of lies about election fraud, but since returning to office, he has taken steps to succumb to the Justice Department to his agenda.
Earlier this year, Trump’s appointments pushed federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss allegations of corruption against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of accepting more than $100,000 in illegal campaign donations from Turkish government officials. Several senior prosecutors refused to order the charges to be dropped against Adams and resigned in protest, some of which accused Trump of trying to force Adams to help deport the number of undocumented immigrants recorded.
Last week, Trump appointed one of his personal attorneys and counselors Alina Habba as a U.S. attorney in New Jersey. Habba has no experience as a prosecutor, but represents Trump in several civil cases and serves as an adviser to his political action committee.
Four of the current and former federal law enforcement officers are anonymous because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, and they told The Times that Trump is strongly considering naming Bill Eseyley as a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.
Essayli, a devout Trump supporter, locked in positions with the president of the California Legislature, including a bill in 2023 that would force schools to notify parents if their children identify with gender that does not match their birth certificate. The bill died on the committee. Essayli’s representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Times worker Seema Mehta and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
