Federal Prosecutors Fired After Refusing to Indict Letitia James

On October 17, 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) fired two career prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia — Elizabeth Yusi, who oversaw major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office, and her deputy Kristin Bird — after Yusi concluded there was "no probable cause" to seek an indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James and authored an internal memorandum documenting that conclusion. The firings followed the September 2025 departure of the office's U.S. Attorney, Erik Siebert, who had likewise declined to bring charges, and the appointment of Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the President with no prior prosecutorial experience, as interim U.S. Attorney. The Department's stated basis for Yusi's removal was an allegation that she had sent investigative files containing James's personal identifying information to her own private email account, in violation of Department policy; Yusi's attorney denied this, stating that Yusi "has no record of any such email" and had "never used her personal email account for any portion of any investigation." People familiar with the terminations told news organizations that the firings were tied to the prosecutors' resistance to bringing charges against James.