Over the weekend, the sky was again falling among mainstream media journalists and the pundit class after President Donald Trump’s administration ordered resignations of 46 U.S. attorneys.
The U.S. attorneys were mostly holdovers from President Barack Obama’s administration. The 46 have remained in the first weeks of the Trump administration, but they were asked to leave “to ensure a uniform transition,” AP reported.
The move, ordered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is not unprecedented or even scandalous. Taking a lesson from very recent U.S. history will reveal as such.
In 1993, when then-President Bill Clinton started his first term in office, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the resignation of all 93 U.S. attorneys, which is more than twice as many as the number Sessions fired. There were only 46 Obama-era appointees to remove because the 47 had already resigned from their posts.
In fact, Sessions himself was among those 93 U.S. attorneys who were fired by Reno. He held the position in Alabama. Most of the attorneys dismissed by Reno were appointed under the Bush and Reagan administrations.
A justice department official told CNBC that Sessions still has the letter Reno sent him regarding his dismissal.
