Top criminal prosecutor in DC US Attorney’s office abruptly resigns amid pressure from Trump officials
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(WASHINGTON) — The chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C. abruptly resigned Tuesday amid pressure from top Trump Justice Department appointees to freeze assets stemming from a Biden administration-era environmental initiative, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
A resignation letter sent to the office’s employees by prosecutor Denise Cheung did not detail specific reasons for her sudden departure from the office, but encouraged prosecutors to continue adhering to the Constitution.
“Please continue to support one another, to fulfill your commitment to pursuing justice without fear or prejudice, and to be kind to, and take care of, yourselves,” Cheung said. “You are the resource our nation has.”
Sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that Cheung was under pressure from Department of Justice (DOJ) leadership, including acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove and interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, to launch a formal criminal investigation into an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding initiative pursued under the Biden administration, a request Cheung believed lacked the proper predication to initiate a grand jury investigation.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has previously addressed with DOJ their effort to rescind contracts tied to the so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. DOJ’s intervention in the process can only come when prosecutors can credibly allege that the funds are tied to a crime.
Cheung’s resignation letter comes just one day after President Trump announced Martin as his nominee for U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. amid a wave of controversial actions and statements by Martin in his weeks leading the office, actions that have led to growing consternation among career prosecutors.
As ABC News has previously reported, Martin has represented defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and was on Capitol grounds himself on that day, though it’s unclear whether he ever entered areas officially designated as restricted.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
Fired CFPB employee, Elizabeth Aniskevich says they were ‘tossed on the streets’ with no info, haven’t been able to get forms for unemployment; ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — For many, a federal government job was a marker of stability or a way to serve the country, in some cases a “dream” job.
But a week after the Trump administration started to hack away at government agencies, many employees who were cut are left fearing for their future and in the dark about their next steps.
Days after they’d been let go, employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s hadn’t received the paperwork they needed to file for unemployment, said Elizabeth Aniskevich, who was a litigation counsel for the agency before she was told her job was eliminated.
“It’s really been a total roller coaster of emotions,” she said. “I will say the solidarity among those of us who have been terminated has been amazing, but we can barely get information.”
Aniskevich was fired with 70 other employees who were still in their probationary period. Many of them are keeping in touch through a group chat.
“We have not received forms that are requested to file for unemployment,” she said. “We have no real understanding of when our health insurance terminates,” she said. “We just have no information. We were just basically tossed out on the streets, and so that has been angering and heartbreaking, and our pay stopped the day we got the termination letter, so we’re all without a paycheck as of Tuesday.”
“I think the main question is, ‘What are we going to do?’” she said.
“I’m a single person in my house. I’m responsible for my insurance and for my mortgage, and I worked really hard to buy this house on my own after putting myself through law school, and I don’t know how I’m going to continue to make mortgage payments very far into the future,” she said.
Aniskevich said she chose to work for the CFPB because she was raised in a military family that believed in service.
“My dad was in the military for 27 years, and he really instilled in me a commitment to this country and to public service,” she said.
Katie Butler, a Department of Education lawyer, knew her days with the agency were numbered.
“Ever since the start of the Trump administration, we knew there would be a cut in federal employees,” she said.
She and her colleagues also knew that the first people to go would be probationary employees with less protection.
And while she expected to be terminated, certainty came with the “Fork in the Road” notice, an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that introduced a new program called “deferred resignation, that allowed them to continue to work until Sept. 30. Around 75,000 federal employees took the buyout, according to the White House.
Butler is also an adjunct professor at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, where she earned her law degree.
She says she was teaching a class when she got the Fork in the Road notice and didn’t see it immediately. The next day, she got a termination letter.
Her supervisors asked, “Did you get a termination notice, because we don’t know who got one.”
Butler doesn’t hold her abrupt termination against them.
“I don’t think this is coming from them, they are doing their best, but this is not the way you run the federal government system.”
Butler and her colleagues were told they could appeal through the Merit Systems Protection Board but she says she knows the decision would be hard to appeal.
The loss of her job has also hit her financially — she had just bought a house in June that she’s been remodeling and also has student debt of around $140,000.
Butler began working for the federal government “right out of college.”
She worked for the National Park Service and at the Bureau of Labor Statistics before getting into law school. In September 2024, she joined the Department of Education, where she had to complete a new probationary period despite having previously established career status.
She says the job she lost was “one of the exact jobs I went to law school for.”
“Career-wise, this is a big detour from what I expected,” she said. “I went to law school because I planned to work long-term as a public servant.”
Given what she calls “the somewhat disrespectful and unthoughtful way this is being handled,” Butler says she will take a detour away from the federal government.
“It’s honestly just really disappointing, from like a personal standpoint.”
Her plan is to go into general litigation at a mid-size to large law firm or a solicitor’s office. She has also considered local government work, given her experience.
She may go to work for a city. Even now, she is “still dedicated to doing good as a civil servant but not under the present circumstances.”
Victoria DeLano, who was an equal opportunity specialist in the education department’s Office for Civil Rights based in Birmingham, Alabama, said she was outraged when she received notice that she had lost her job last week.
“I think that the work that the Office for Civil Rights does is absolutely instrumental to children in my state,” she said.
“When you take out of the equation a fully staffed Office for Civil Rights, you’re taking away an avenue to resolution and an avenue to law enforcement, a really important avenue to law enforcement.”
“These students have no one else,” she said. They can still file complaints with OCR. Please understand OCR is understaffed at best, and OCR right now does not have external communication with you all. So I don’t know where they turn,” she added.
DeLano also called her position a “dream job.”
“It’s something that I’m extraordinarily passionate about because I believe with my history working with students with disabilities,” she said. “So I jumped at the chance to take this job, and absolutely loved it.”
She is concerned that the Trump administration has no clear plan to shrink the federal government, nor is it considering students with disabilities.
“This dismantling of our government right now is just being done with a sledgehammer without thought of what are the implications be to the individuals who are serviced by these agencies,” she said.
That sentiment is echoed by Butler.
“It takes a while to build a government system, but when [you] tear it down this quickly, it can cause a lot of damage,” she said. “The progress feels slow. This could take 100 years for us to rebuild.”
(WASHINGTON) — Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to pass the House-approved deal to fund the government, heightening the alert for a potential government shutdown at the end of the week.
If a deal isn’t struck to bring over some Democratic support, the government will shut down at the end of the day Friday.
Two days is a long time on Capitol Hill, so there is still plenty of time for a deal to emerge, but Schumer’s statement certainly heats up shutdown fears.
Schumer pointed the finger at Republicans for leaving Democrats out of the funding negotiations.
“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path drafting their continuing resolution without any input any input from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said on the floor Wednesday.
Unlike in the House, where Republicans can act unilaterally to pass legislation, the Senate needs Democrats to pass a funding bill.
At least 60 votes are needed for a funding bill to clear key procedural votes, called cloture votes, which means at least seven Democrats would be needed to pass any funding bill through the Senate.
Schumer made clear on Wednesday that right now, Democrats won’t provide those votes.
“Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR,” Schumer said.
For several days, Democrats have been grappling behind the scenes about whether to furnish the requisite votes to pass the funding bill approved by House Republicans Tuesday. On the one hand, many Democrats say this bill gives President Donald Trump and Elon Musk unilateral power to continue slashing the federal government. On the other, some Democrats understand that a decision to vote against the bill could likely force an undesirable government shut down.
After days of closed-door meetings and tight-lipped interaction with the press, Schumer said Democrats will instead advocate for a 30-day clean stopgap bill meant to buy more time for appropriators to complete full-year funding bills.
“Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” Schumer said.
Just because that’s what Democrats want, doesn’t mean it’s a vote Democrats will get.
They are the minority in the Senate, and they do not have control over what bills are brought to the Senate floor for a vote. There’s nothing that Democrats can do to force a vote in the Senate on a 30-day clean stopgap measure, but they may be able to wheel and deal with Republicans to get a vote on it.
With Schumer saying that Democrats are not ready to proceed, the Democrats hold the cards. If they do not furnish the votes to clear this procedural hurdle and get on to the bill, things could be at a stand still, and a shut down could be on the horizon.
Meanwhile, House Democrats are urging their Senate colleagues to vote no on the funding bill they almost unanimously opposed when it passed through the House on Tuesday evening.
“House Democrats are very clear. We’re asking Senate Democrats to vote ‘no’ on this continuing resolution, which is not clean, and it makes cuts across the board,” said Vice Chair Ted Lieu, flanked by five other members of House leadership at a press conference at the Issues Conference at the Lansdowne Resort. Lieu’s comments came before Schumer pushed for a 30-day clean stopgap bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that conversations are “continuing” with Schumer all the way down to rank-and-file Democratic members about keeping the Democratic caucus united against the bill.
“The House Democratic position is crystal clear as evidenced by the strong vote of opposition that we took yesterday on the House floor opposing the Trump-Musk-Johnson reckless Republican spending bill,” Jeffries said.
Late Wednesday, Democratic House leaders called on House Republicans to return from recess to Washington to “immediately” take up a short-term measure that would fund the government through April 11.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
Preisdent Donald Trump attends a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, June 12, 2017. (Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump held the first Cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday and In the room, and at times taking center stage, was Elon Musk.
For little more than an hour, Trump sought to tout his administration’s work so far and fielded questions on everything from the status of Musk’s efforts to force federal firings to negotiations to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Despite not being a member of the Cabinet, Musk has outsized influence in the administration as he oversees the Department of Government Efficiency’s work to reduce the size and scope of the government.
“We put together a great Cabinet,” Trump said as he began the meeting. “And we’ve had tremendous success.”
Here are key takeaways from the gathering.
Elon Musk in the spotlight
Musk was the first to speak at the meeting after Trump’s introduction. Donning a “Tech Support” t-shirt and a black “Make America Great Again” cap, Musk stood in the corner of the room to talk about DOGE.
Musk defended the entity’s controversial actions, saying the overall goal is to cut the deficit and warned if cuts aren’t made the country will “become de facto bankrupt.”
“That’s the reason I’m here. And taking a lot of flack, and getting a lot of death threats, by the way,” he said.
His presence among Trump’s agency heads came amid confusion stemming from a Musk-directed ultimatum to federal workers to list their weekly accomplishments or possibly face termination. Senior White House officials were initially caught off guard, ABC News reported, when Musk first posted about the directive and it’s since created tension among Cabinet members as multiple agency heads told employees to hold off on replying.
When Musk was asked by a reporter if any Cabinet members were unhappy, Trump interrupted.
“Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Trump said to the group, many of whom started laughing.”If you are, we’ll throw him out of here. Is anybody unhappy? They have a lot of respect for Elon and that he’s doing this,” as members started applauding.
1 million workers ‘on the bubble’
Trump said federal employees who didn’t respond to Musk’s email are on a firing “bubble.”
“I’d like to add that those million people that haven’t responded though Elon, they are on the bubble. You know, I wouldn’t say that we’re thrilled about it,” Trump said. He went on to claim, without evidence, that maybe those employees “don’t exist.”
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked Trump about his interest in doing another round of emails demanding federal workers’ accomplishments and what the requirements would be.
“I think Elon wants to, and I think it’s a good idea because, you know, those people, as I said before, they’re on the bubble,” he responded, emphasizing his desire to find out if workers exist,” Trump said.
Not ‘much’ in security guarantees for Ukraine
Trump signaled the United States will not be providing much in security guarantees to Ukraine — a key factor for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in any agreement to bring the conflict to a close.
“Well, I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond, very much,” Trump said. “We’re going to have Europe do that because it’s in you know, we’re talking about Europe is the next-door neighbor, but we’re going to make sure everything goes well.”
Trump later said the mineral resources deal between the U.S. and Ukraine will be “automatic security” because the U.S. will be investing in the nation, suggesting that would be a barrier to Russia.
“Nobody’s going to be messing around with people when we’re there,” Trump said. “And so we’ll be there in that way.”
Trump says Putin will have to make concessions
After weeks of public statements on what Ukraine will likely have to sacrifice in negotiations, including their goal of returning to pre-war borders, Trump indicated for the first time that Russia’s Vladimir Putin may have to make concessions.
“Yeah, he will. He’s going to have to,” Trump said of Putin.
Notably, he did not elaborate on what those would be.
When later asked what concessions Putin would have to make, Trump shifted toward Ukraine and said they could “forget” about NATO membership.
Medicaid and Social Security to be left ‘untouched’
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked Trump about the budget bill that passed in the House Tuesday night — which includes a goal of at least $2 trillion in cuts to mandatory federal spending — and whether Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would be cut.
“I have said it so many times … This won’t be read my lips anymore. We’re not going to touch it,” Trump responded, echoing the statement George H.W. Bush famously made about “no new taxes” and then later had to reverse.
Trump claimed that there would be a reduction in fraud in those programs. Trump has echoed false claims stemming from Musk that dead Americans are receiving Social Security.
Experts told ABC News that is not true, and that Musk is misreading Social Security’s network of databases when he claims 200-year-olds are in the system.
Trump vows tariffs on the European Union
Trump stressed that he is still planning to push tariffs on foreign countries to improve the economy and claimed the European Union in particular left the U.S. with billions in debt and was formed to “screw the United States.”
“We have made a decision, will be announcing it very soon and it’ll be 25%, generally speaking, and that’ll be on cars and all other things,” he said.
Trump said the tariffs against Mexico and Canada are expected to go into effect next week on April 2, after a monthlong pause.
But then Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested another pause may be possible based on fentanyl prevention and progress on the border.
“If they can prove to the president they’ve done an excellent job,” Lutnick said. Trump quickly jumped in: “It’s going to be hard to satisfy.”
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira and Emily Chang contributed to this report.
