A federal prosecutor in Los Angeles was fired Friday at a White House request. He appealed to Washington officials to stop all charges against him after a fast food executive lawyer was prosecuting, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Adam Schleifer ended Friday morning, receiving an email informing him that his fire was “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump.” Schleifer boss Joseph T. McNally, representing the US lawyer for the Central District of California, was not involved in the decision, sources said.
Carley Palmer, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, now a partner at Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg LLP, said he heard Schleifer was “dismissed in a single-line email and came from a White House staff account.”
A spokesman for the US Lawyer’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment. Schleifer declined a request to be interviewed. The White House and the U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to inquiries immediately.
Sources who suspected that the Times had been fired were partially motivated when Andrew Weederhorn, the former chief executive of the company that owns fast food chains Fatburger and Johnny Rockets, were involved.
Last May, the large ju judge indicted Weederhorn on charges of concealing taxable income from the federal government by diversifying “shareholder loans” from the company to himself and his family. Weederhorn allegedly used the funds for personal benefits, including paying for private jet trips, vacations, Rolls-Royce Phantoms and other luxury cars, jewelry and pianos. He pleaded not guilty.
According to two sources familiar with conversations that demanded anonymity for fear of retaliation, Weederhorn’s lawyers urged Justice Department officials to aggressively drop the case.
The defense team attacked the legal theory of the incident, claiming Schleifer was biased, sources said.
Weederhorn’s defense attorney Nicola Hanna previously told the Times that prosecutors had surpassed the law when prosecuting clients. “This is an unfortunate example of government overreach, a case that has no victims, no losses or crime,” Hanna said in a statement last year.
McNally was ordered to meet Hannah, and during the conversation, Weederhorn’s lawyer criticized Schleifer, two sources said.
Hannah, a former US lawyer in Los Angeles and another member of the Weederhorn defense team, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Two of the sources familiar with the matter said Schleifer received an email informing him that he was finished around 11:15am. After Schleifer’s work phone was wiped remotely and his computer locked him out, prosecutors helped him pack photos of his family and boxes of personal belongings before he left.
Schleifer is a registered Democrat who made some misguided remarks about Trump when he ran for a seat in the Congress in New York’s 17th district in 2020. Schleifer’s father is co-founder and CEO of drug company Regeneron Technologies. Journal News. Schleifer holds nearly $25 million in stake in the company.
Schleifer started in 2016 with a US Lawyer’s Office. He charged drug trafficking and fraud cases before quitting his congressional bid in 2019. He came in second in the Democratic primary and returned to his job as a federal prosecutor.
While US lawyers are political appointees who often alliance with the current presidential administration agenda, line prosecutors like Schleifer are usually considered career employees. But since taking office, the Trump administration has insisted on driving people who are considered political enemies from all levels of the federal government.
“This is the most obvious political dismissal I’ve seen in my time at the Department of Justice,” said Palmer, a former federal prosecutor. “I absolutely could see it having a kind of calm effect, and I think current prosecutors are concerned about their ability to gain freedom of speech. [assistant U.S. attorney] What I said was that they were worried that only Republicans or very quiet Democrats would be allowed to stay. ”
In January, Gregory Bernstein, who worked in the main fraud division of the US Lawyer’s office in Los Angeles, was one of more than 12 lawyers who fired fire at the Justice Department after working on the prosecution of Special Adviser Jack Smith. Bernstein declined to comment.
In several social media posts during his political campaign, Schleifer attacked the president’s tax policy and Trump’s actions against federal agencies that investigated him on a wide range of state and federal crimes.
In a 2020 tweet, Schleifer accused Trump of eroding the integrity of the constitution.
“It’s hard to imagine the president doing more to curb morale with his prosecutor, his law enforcement partner and his belief in the rule of law than he already has,” Schleifer tweeted in February 2020.
On Friday, right-wing provocateur Laura Rumer, who served as Trump’s advisor, shared one of Schleifer’s previous important tweets about the X, calling for the prosecutor to be fired.
“We need to expel the offices of US lawyers to all left-wing Trump hate offices,” Rumer wrote.
Rumer called Schleifer a “Biden Holdover,” but was hired by the office in 2021 prior to Biden’s appointment. Sources say he was assigned to the Fatburger case upon his return.
One source within the U.S. Lawyer’s office that called for anonymity over concerns about retaliation said “people are clearly very upset.”
Schreifer’s family may be wealthy, but sources say the firing appears to be politically motivated and intended to scare prosecutors who pursue defendants who like Trump.
“No one feels particularly scared of his living, but I think it’s a bull,” the source said.
Another source, a former prosecutor who called for anonymity over concerns about dealing with fraud cases at a US law firm and facing professional backlash, said Schleifer’s layoff “seems incredibly and horrifying effects on federal prosecutors who are considering criminally investigating or considering executives from key companies.”
“The message from Adam’s case is that if you are prosecuting a CEO of a company’s operations, you need to first check if he is a Trump supporter,” the former prosecutor said. “It makes prosecutors quite cautious about pursuing someone with even tenuous connections to the president, which is not good for DOJ.”
Federal Election Commission records show that Weederhorn has donated roughly $40,000 since 2023 to the Trump Political Action Committee and the Republican National Committee.
Recent federal lawsuits come almost 20 years after Weederhorn was first caught up in a financial crime. In 2004, he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Oregon to pay an associate an illegal reward and filing a false tax return. He spent 15 months at a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, and paid a $2 million fine.
Faced with investigation into the improper handling of classified documents, Trump has repeatedly complained about “federal weaponization” by lying about election fraud, but he has taken steps to bending the Justice Department to his agenda.
Earlier this year, Trump’s appointees asked federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss a corruption charge against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of accepting more than $100,000 for his contributions to illegal campaigns by Turkish government officials. Several high-ranking prosecutors have refused an order to drop the charges against Adams, resigned in protest, and others argued that Trump is trying to force Adams to force undocumented immigrant records.
Last week, Trump appointed Alina Haba, one of his personal lawyers and counselors, as a US lawyer in New Jersey. Haba has no experience as a prosecutor, but he represented Trump in several civil cases and served as an advisor to his political action committee.
Current and former federal law enforcement sources had spoken on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the matter publicly, but Trump is strongly considering naming Bill Essay (R-Riverside) as a US lawyer in Los Angeles.
The essays are dedicated Trump supporters who take a position in Rockstep with the president of the California state legislature. This includes forcing the school to notify parents in 2023 if the child equates with a gender that is not in line with the gender on his birth certificate. The bill died on the committee. Essayli’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
Times staff writer Seema Mehta and the Associated Press contributed to the report.
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