The day before U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was fired, he wrote a memo to former Deputy Attorney Joon Kim and his chief counsel Joan Loughnane in order to “memorialize certain events of the day.” The White House had called Bharara’s office to set up a conversation between him and Trump. As BuzzFeedNews reports:
“At approximately 4:41 pm, on 3/9/17, I received the following voicemail at work: ‘Hi, Mr. Bharara. This is Madeline Westerhout calling from President Donald Trump’s office. If you could please give me a call back at that would be great. Thanks,’” wrote Bharara — who was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York at the time — in an email sent to Joon Kim, his deputy, and Joan Loughnane, chief counsel to Bharara. He also copied in Hilary Nabhan, the chief of staff for the US Attorney’s office. (Kim was appointed acting US Attorney for the district after Bharara was fired.)
“After receiving that message, I immediately consulted with the Deputy U.S. Attorney, Joon Kim, about the propriety of returning the call. We printed out and reviewed a copy of the May 11, 2009 (as well as he December 19, 2007) Memos relating to Communications with the White House,” Bharara added.
During an interview on the Week, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said that Donald Trump was “trying to cultivate some kind of relationship,” and that it is a “very weird and peculiar thing for a one-on-one conversation without the attorney general, without warning between the president and me or any U.S. attorney who has been asked to investigate various things and is in a position hypothetically to investigate business interests and associates of the president.”
After it came out that James Comey wrote memos on his meeting with President Trump, and now another person fired by the White House did the same, every United States Attorney and member of the intelligence community are likely to do the same. Maybe someone will finally create some tapes.
