Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday asked the remaining 46 U.S. attorneys appointed by President Obama to resign.
According to the Justice Department, those resignations will “ensure a uniform transition.”
“Until the new U.S. attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutions in our U.S. Attorney’s Offices will continue the great work of the department in investigating, prosecuting, and deterring the most violent offenders,” said spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores in a statement Friday afternoon.
According to Flores, both the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations had a similar request at the beginning of their presidencies. President Obama phased out Bush administration attorneys more gradually.
The request came just days after Sessions sent a memo to all of the department’s prosecutors asking them to make fighting violent crime a top priority.
In March 1993, when Sessions was a U.S. attorney in Alabama, Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno asked him to resign.
