Jessie Liu, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has resigned from the Treasury Department after having her nomination to a new post in the department withdrawn by the President, CNN reported citing an unnamed administration official.
Liu’s resignation punctuates a wild, month-long ride for the former top federal prosecutor in D.C.
Trump nominated the prosecutor on Jan. 6 to become Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, while she was still serving as the U.S. attorney for an office handling several high-profile political cases including those of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
Then, on Jan. 30, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that his close adviser Timothy Shea would be taking over as U.S. Attorney on an interim basis, even though Liu had not been confirmed for her new role at the Treasury Department yet. The move came as prosecutors in Liu’s office revised their sentencing recommendation for Flynn, the Trump-allied former national security adviser, telling the court that probation would be sufficient for his offenses.
Several days after Liu’s ouster as U.S. Attorney, career prosecutors in the Stone case recommended he spend 7-9 years in prison — which Trump tweeted at 2 a.m. would be a “miscarriage of justice” for his confidante and which, within hours, was watered down in a new sentencing recommendation pushed by senior DOJ officials. Four career prosecutors withdrew from the Stone case, and one resigned from the Justice Department altogether.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Liu was tapped to a post as senior counselor to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin at the end of January. It’s not clear to what extent Liu served in that capacity before her reported resignation Thursday.
Multiple reports linked the Stone sentencing recommendation and other politically sensitive cases to Trump losing faith in Liu as a nominee.
