January 2001: White House Asks for Resignations of Almost All US Attorneys

The White House requests that almost all of the 93 US Attorneys resign their posts forthwith. Among the few not asked to immediately resign are Robert Mueller, the US Attorney for the Northern District of California, who is soon asked to take over as director of the FBI; Paul Warner of Utah, who will stay in his position until 2006; and Mary Jo White, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who remains in her post until 2002. In 2002, Justice Department official Kyle Sampson will write in an internal email: “[President] Clinton fired all Bush USAs in one fell swoop. Has been described to me as ‘have your offices cleared out by the end of the week.’ We fired all Clinton USAs (except Mueller and Warner), but staggered it more and permitted some to stay on for several months (including Mary Jo White in SDNY who we permitted to stay on for many months).” [CNN, 2/16/2001; US House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, 4/13/2007 ; US Department of Justice, United States Attorney's Office, District of Utah, 2009; Biography, 2013] It is unclear who Sampson may have spoken to about the firings.