U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert informed employees at his office in Alexandria, Virginia, Friday that he intends to resign, according to sources, after President Donald Trump said he wants him out.
ABC News has reported that Trump was expected to fire Siebert after investigators were unable to find incriminating evidence of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia 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."
Siebert's departure 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.