U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert resigned his position Friday amid pressure from Trump administration officials to bring a criminal case against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, informed employees at his office in Alexandria of his decision to resign in an email that was obtained by ABC News.
“For the last eight months, I have had the pleasure of leading the finest and most exceptional of DOJ employees, who care deeply about our nation and our EDVA community,” Siebert wrote. “Thank you for the lessons you have taught me, the sacrifices you have made, and the pursuit of justice you strive for every day.”
“He didn’t quit, I fired him!” Trump wrote in an early Saturday morning post on his social media platform.
Staff at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia received an email Saturday afternoon from Maggie Cleary, an official who recently joined the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and now says she has been named the acting head of EDVA.
“While this appointment was unexpected, I am humbled to be joining your ranks,” Cleary said in the message obtained by ABC News. “The Eastern District of Virginia has a distinguished legacy upon which we will build.”
Cleary told staff she plans to be in the office’s Alexandria branch on Monday and will work out of there “most days,” and she closed her message by thanking Siebert for his “many years of service to the District and to the country.”
In May, Cleary wrote an article for The Spectator titled, “I was framed over January 6. Now I plan to end politically weaponized investigations.”
The article recounts Cleary’s experience being interviewed by DOJ officials in 2021 after she said she was falsely identified as having participated in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Cleary, who at the time was just days into her tenure working as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia, said that despite being cleared in that investigation the experience left her scarred and that she felt “targeted politically” because of her background as a conservative.
Siebert was notified of the president’s intention to fire him Thursday, sources said, and Trump said Friday afternoon in the Oval Office that he wanted Siebert “out” of his position.
ABC News reported that Trump was expected to fire Siebert after investigators were unable to find incriminating evidence of mortgage fraud against James, according to sources. Trump officials had pushed Siebert to bring charges against James, despite investigators failing to find clear evidence that she committed a crime, sources said.
“It looks to me like she is very guilty of something, but I really don’t know,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
When asked about Siebert, Trump said he wanted him “out” of the position because Virginia’s two Democratic senators supported his nomination. Trump nominated Siebert for the position in May, and he has served as the interim U.S. attorney since Trump’s inauguration.
“When I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, pull it, because he can’t be any good,” Trump said. “When I learned that they voted for him, I said, I don’t really want him.”
In his subsequent social media post, Trump wrote, “Today I withdrew the Nomination of Erik Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, when I was informed that he received the UNUSUALLY STRONG support of the two absolutely terrible, sleazebag Democrat Senators, from the Great State of Virginia. Next time let him go in as a Democrat, not a Republican.”
While Siebert resigned from his position as interim U.S. attorney, he told his colleagues that he intends to continue working as a line prosecutor in the office, sources familiar with the matter said.
It is unclear if he will be permitted to return to his previous role as an assistant U.S. attorney.
Siebert’s removal leaves one of the nation’s most important U.S. attorney’s offices without a leader, according to sources, as Siebert’s deputy has already left her position and intends to continue work in the office as a line prosecutor. With her position vacant, there is currently no answer to who specifically will take over the office and whether any of its attorneys have any authority to continue regular prosecutorial activity.
The investigation into James began in April when Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent the Department of Justice a criminal referral alleging that James falsified records related to her 2023 purchase of a home in Virginia.
After investigating the allegations for five months and interviewing 15 witnesses, investigators were unable to find clear evidence that James knowingly falsified records to obtain better loan terms, ABC News first reported earlier this week.
James has denied wrongdoing, and her lawyer, in a statement on Friday, called the reported firing of Siebert a “brazen attack on the rule of law.”
“Firing people until he finds someone who will bend the law to carry out his revenge has been the President’s pattern — and it’s illegal,” Abbe Lowell said Friday morning in a statement to ABC News. “Punishing this prosecutor, a Trump appointee, for doing his job sends a clear and chilling message that anyone who dares uphold the law over politics will face the same fate.”
The forcing out of Siebert because he refused to charge one of Trump’s political rivals marks an escalation in what the president’s critics have called a retribution campaign, with ongoing investigations also targeting Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
Trump has repeatedly accused James — who successfully brought a civil fraud case against him last year and leads multiple lawsuits challenging his administration’s policies — of targeting him for political reasons, calling her “biased and corrupt.”
James is “a horror show who ran on the basis that she was going to get Trump before she even knew anything about me,” Trump said during his civil fraud trial in 2023. “This has to do with election interference, plain and simple. We have a corrupt attorney general in this state.”
Following a three-month trial, a New York judge concluded that Trump and his family had committed a decade of business fraud by overstating the value of their properties to get favorable loan terms, fining Trump and his sons nearly half a billion dollars. An appeals court subsequently tossed the financial penalty but upheld the finding that Trump committed fraud.
A former police officer with Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, Siebert graduated from law school in 2009 and has worked as an assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia since 2010. In addition to serving as a line prosecutor, Siebert headed the office’s organized drug crime task force and supervised the office’s Richmond division from 2019 to 2024.
Siebert began serving as the interim U.S. attorney on Jan. 21 after the late Jessica Aber, who ran the office from 2021-25, resigned following President Trump’s inauguration. Both of Virginia’s Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, recommended Siebert to Trump in April, and Trump nominated him for the position in May.
“Mr. Siebert has dedicated his career to protecting public safety, from his work with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department to his handling of violent crimes and firearms trafficking as a line Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. With his experience and dedication to service, Mr. Siebert is equipped to handle the challenges and important obligations associated with this position,” Warner and Kaine said in a statement in May, pledging to support his nomination.
