If President Donald Trump is serious about his pledge to "drain the swamp," his administration may have fired the high-profile New York prosecutor who is actually doing it, supporters of the now-former U.S. attorney said Saturday.
Preet Bharara, whose term as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York was marked by the successful corruption prosecutions of over a dozen state lawmakers, said he was fired Saturday after refusing to step down as ordered by the Trump administration.
Bharara aggressively pursued insider trading cases, and Time magazine in 2012 put him on the cover with the headline "This Man Is Busting Wall St."
Prosecution against SAC Capital on fraud charges ended in the hedge fund group being hit with a record penalty of $1.8 billion in 2014. After his office charged JP Morgan Chase over the massive Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, the bank agreed to a $1.7 billion settlement.
Prosecutions sent Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad to prison for life. Bharara's office successfully prosecuted Al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Al-Fawwaz in 2015 for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/drain-swamp-supporters-say-fired-prosecutor-bharara-was-doing-it-n732331