Lawyers inside the high-profile U.S. attorney’s office prosecuting former FBI director James B. Comey are unnerved by what they see as an unprecedented push by President Donald Trump to inject politics into their staffing and charging decisions, according to three people familiar with the matter, a strategy they say could jeopardize national security investigations.
The Justice Department in recent days fired two longtime prosecutors who had risen to leadership positions within the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, said the three people, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The firings came shortly after Trump installed a new interim U.S. attorney in the district, Lindsey Halligan, who got a grand jury to indict Comey last week despite objections from career prosecutors who deemed the evidence too flimsy.
Maya D. Song, a 12-year veteran of the office who until recently was its second-highest-ranking leader, was demoted to a line prosecutor position last month and then fired in recent days, the people said. Michael P. Ben’Ary, who had a decade of experience in the office and was serving as chief of its national security division, also was fired, the people said.
Ben’Ary and Song had worked as senior advisers to Lisa Monaco, who was deputy attorney general, the No. 2 post in the Justice Department, during the Biden administration. Trump last week called on Microsoft to fire Monaco from her position as president of global affairs, calling her one of “the architects of the worst ever Deep State Conspiracies against our Country.”
Ben’Ary and Song did not respond to requests for comment. Halligan did not respond to an email request for comment. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment because he was furloughed Thursday during the federal government shutdown.
Ben’Ary’s firing came shortly after a right-wing commentator, Julie Kelly, posted on X: “One can only assume he was a big part of the internal resistance to the Comey indictment.” Ben’Ary had no role in the Comey investigation, two people familiar with the matter said. He was the lead prosecutor in the case of Mohammad Sharifullah, who is accused of plotting the Abbey Gate attack that killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens of people who were being evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021.
Another prosecutor on that case, Troy A. Edwards Jr., resigned last week after Comey was indicted. Edwards, who was deputy chief of the national security division in the Virginia office, is Comey’s son-in-law.
Trump last month forced the resignation of the U.S. attorney he had appointed in January, Erik S. Siebert, a well-regarded career prosecutor who had determined that the evidence was insufficient to level criminal charges against two of the president’s perceived political foes: Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
The Trump administration then appointed Halligan, a former White House aide who had previously served on Trump’s personal legal team and had no experience as a prosecutor. Trump in social media posts called on federal prosecutors to charge Comey, and Halligan soon after secured an indictment against the former FBI director on allegations that he made false statements in congressional testimony.
Legal experts said they could not recall another instance in which the president appeared to overrule a Justice Department charging decision.
The U.S. attorney’s office, headquartered in Alexandria, employs about 300 lawyers and staff in a district that spans Northern Virginia, Richmond and the Hampton Roads region. Prosecutors there often handle complex cases stemming from terrorist attacks, leaks of classified records, and military and intelligence issues. It was unclear Thursday who was running the office’s national security division. The former head, Danya Atiyeh, resigned this year and moved to another country.