Ranking Member Raskin Demands Answers from Attorney General Bondi After Republican U.S. Attorney Is Forced Out for Refusing to File Baseless Charges Against Trump Enemies

Washington, D.C. (September 26, 2025)—Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding documents and communications regarding the forced resignation of Erik Siebert, former acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). As part of the Judiciary Democrats’ investigation into the Trump Administration’s pattern of abusing its prosecutorial and law enforcement functions, Ranking Member Raskin is also demanding answers regarding the installation of Trump’s hand-picked replacement, Lindsey Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience and whose principal qualification appears to be her loyalty to Trump.

“Last week, President Trump forced the resignation of Erik S. Siebert, a career prosecutor who President Trump himself had just months earlier nominated to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Mr. Siebert’s offense? He refused to concoct and endorse baseless charges against two of President Trump’s adversaries: New York Attorney General Letitia James and former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey. Mr. Siebert’s coerced departure is a shocking new low in President Trump’s systematic campaign to transform the Justice Department from a guardian of the rule of law into an instrument of presidential vengeance and corruption of American justice,” wrote Ranking Member Raskin.

Erik Siebert, a 15-year veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Trump’s chosen nominee for U.S. Attorney, had served in the position since January 2025. In that role, Mr. Siebert conducted a five-month investigation into accusations of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia James and alleged mishandling of classified information by former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey. 

However, after reviewing the referral from Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte—who has probed the mortgage papers of Democratic officials and ignored similar mortgage issues involving Republican White House officials, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and even Pulte’s family—and interviewing more than a dozen witnesses, Mr. Siebert found no incriminating evidence to justify bringing charges. Similarly, after investigating claims made against former FBI Director James Comey, the EDVA’s probe once again failed to uncover a basis for bringing criminal charges.

When President Trump learned that Mr. Siebert found the evidence insufficient to prosecute Ms. James or Mr. Comey, Trump publicly declared, “I want him out.” Following a public attack by the President, Mr. Siebert submitted his resignation to staff. President Trump again took to Truth Social and wrote, “He didn’t quit, I fired him!” 

After this outburst, Trump vented in what appeared may be a mistakenly posted private message directed to Attorney General Bondi. He ordered that Bondi move to prosecute New York Attorney General James, former FBI Director Comey, Senator Adam Schiff, and others—writing, “[w]e can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” and “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED NOW!!!”

In the aftermath of Mr. Siebert’s forced ouster, President Trump hand-picked Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s defense lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, as the new U.S. Attorney for EDVA. Her installation raises the urgent question of what promises she made to secure this position—and whether she has pledged to bring the very prosecutions that Mr. Siebert, after careful investigation, determined were legally baseless. 

These egregious demands from the White House are part of a larger pattern that has resulted in the firings of career prosecutors, manipulation of charges related to political opponents and adversaries, a concerted cover-up to conceal Trump’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and outrageous and unlawful threats against dissenters across the country.

“President Trump—with you as a willing partner—is obliterating centuries of prosecutorial independence and steering the Justice Department into dangerous new territory. Then-Attorney General Robert Jackson warned in 1940 that ‘the most dangerous power of the prosecutor’ is ‘that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted’—in other words, that a prosecutor will ‘pick[] some person whom he dislikes’ and then ‘search[] the law books, or put[] investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.’ That subversion of justice, designating a target and then finding the crime, is precisely what President Trump demanded of Mr. Siebert,” wrote Ranking Member Raskin.

Click here to read the letter.