Obama-appointed prosecutor fired after refusing to resign

Preet Bharara
(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was fired by the Trump administration Saturday after he refused to resign at the request of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who on Friday asked for the resignation of 46 Obama-appointed district attorneys in the Justice Department.

It is routine for incoming administrations to ask these attorneys, who are political appointees, to step down, though Sessions' request was unexpectedly abrupt, and some attorneys reportedly were not privately informed before the public statement. So far, Bharara is the only attorney to refuse to resign when asked.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.