SYRACUSE, New York (WWNY) – Who is in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Syracuse?
As of Thursday morning, the most correct answer might be “not sure.”
President Trump appointed an ally with no prior experience as a prosecutor, John Sarcone III, to lead the office, which handles criminal and civil cases involving federal law for a large part of New York state, from Albany to Syracuse to Watertown to Plattsburgh.
But because Sarcone’s appointment was as ‘acting U.S. Attorney’ he was limited to 120 days in office, and the judges in the Northern District of New York declined to extend that.
The Trump administration attempted to get around the law by naming Sarcone as “1st Assistant U.S. Attorney,” and then as “special attorney.”
Then a judge ruled what the administration was trying runs afoul of existing law governing vacancies in U.S. Attorney offices, and which assigns judges the job of picking an acting U.S. Attorney when a vacancy occurs.
That gets us to Wednesday, when Northern District judges picked a veteran lawyer, Donald Kinsella, with deep experience in prosecution, to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The White House promptly fired him.
“You are fired, Donald Kinsella,” Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general wrote on X.
“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does. See Article II of our Constitution,” he wrote.
The New York Times reached Kinsella Wednesday evening and he “did not yet know whether the White House email carried the force of law. He said he would discuss the matter with the district judges in the morning and go from there.”
A press release from the Northern District U.S. Attorney’s Office Thursday continued to list Sarcone as “First Assistant United States Attorney.”
The selection of who runs a U.S. Attorney’s office is important because each office has broad authority to decide what and who gets investigated for federal crimes.
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) reacted to the firing.
“Everyone knows Trump only cares about one quality in a U.S. Attorney: complete political subservience. The people of upstate New York deserve a qualified, independent prosecutor, not another political loyalist,” Schumer said in a statement.
Sarcone is among a number of interim U.S. attorneys installed by the administration who judges have found to be unlawfully serving in their positions.
U.S. law normally requires senate confirmation for U.S. attorneys and only allows people to serve in the position without that confirmation for limited time periods. Under Trump, however, the Justice Department has sought to leave unconfirmed prosecutors in their positions indefinitely, often through novel personnel maneuvers that courts have later ruled to be improper.
In December, Alina Habba resigned as the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey after an appeals court said she had been serving in the post unlawfully.
Lindsey Halligan,who pursued indictments against a pair of Trump’s adversaries, left her position as an acting U.S. attorney in Virginia after a judge concluded in November that her appointment was unlawful and that indictments she brought against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey must be dismissed.
CBS News has much more background on the story here.
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