Former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara on Sunday said President Donald Trump called him three times before he was fired, The Hill reports.
“It’s a very weird and peculiar thing for a one-on-one conversation without the attorney general, without warning between the president and me or any United States attorney who has been asked to investigate various things and is in a position hypothetically to investigate business interests and associates of the president,” Bharara said on ABC’s “This Week”, adding that he reported at least one call to his chief of staff.
Bharara said that Trump called him twice during the transition and once after the inauguration, and that he never returned the final call. “So the call came in. I got a message. We deliberated over it, thought it was inappropriate to return the call. And 22 hours later I was asked to resign along with 45 other people”, Bharara said.
He added that former President Barack Obama never called him while he was serving in the Justice Department.“The number of times I would have been expected to be called by the president of the United States would be zero because there has to be some kind of arm’s length relationship given the jurisdiction that various people had,” Bharara said.
Bharara described the first call as “a little bit uncomfortable,” but noted Trump at the time was the president-elect.
Regarding former FBI director James Comey’s testimony last week, when he said that he felt that Trump was seeking a “patronage relationship” with him, Bharara said that he didn’t have the same feeling after his conversations with Trump, though it appeared that Trump “was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship”.
“That’s not the word I use. I was in discussions with my own folks, and in reporting the phone call to the chief of staff to the attorney general I said, it appeared to be that he was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship”, Bharara said.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman of Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, pushed back against Bharara’s characterizations, suggesting on Twitter that if a U.S. attorney refused to take Trump’s call “he deserved to be fired.”
As U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, Bharara prosecuted insider trading cases, including one against disgraced financier Bernie Madoff.
Bharara’s jurisdiction included the headquarters of the Trump Organization, though at the time of his ouster, there was no indication that it was related to any specific case. It is common for new presidents to ask for the resignation of U.S. attorneys appointed by a predecessor, and he was one of 46 asked to step down, The Chicago Tribune writes.
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