Two senior federal prosecutors have departed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, adding to the mounting upheaval inside the office that recently brought criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey.
Michael Ben’Ary, who led the office’s national security section, was reportedly fired on Wednesday. The move came just hours after conservative journalist Julie Kelly publicly flagged his prior role as senior counsel to former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco during the Biden administration, according to multiple reports citing people familiar with the matter.
Kelly told the Washington Examiner that her post directly contributed to Ben’Ary’s removal. She said President Donald Trump “ran on de-weaponizing and cleaning up the systemically corrupt DOJ, but you can’t do that if you have in powerful positions people who were top advisers to the very architects of the lawfare against the president,” she said.
While Kelly suggested Ben’Ary may have been part of an “internal resistance” to the Comey prosecution, one person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press he had no involvement in the case.
Ben’Ary had served in the Justice Department for nearly two decades and was most recently prosecuting an alleged planner of the 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport, which killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians. The trial for Mohammad Sharifullah, the alleged planner of the attack, is slated for Dec. 8.
Ben’Ary’s firing followed the recent departure of Maya Song, another senior prosecutor who had served as top deputy to former U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert. Song also worked in Monaco’s office during the Biden administration. Her LinkedIn profile indicates she is no longer with the Justice Department as of this week, the Washington Examiner confirmed.
Siebert, a Trump appointee, was removed last month amid reports that his office was reluctant to bring charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in a long-running mortgage fraud probe.
Trump appointed Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide and longtime Trump legal adviser, to lead the Alexandria-based office. Halligan was named on Sept. 20, shortly after Trump publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue cases against his perceived opponent, including Comey.
Halligan’s first major move was securing Comey’s indictment. Comey is charged with lying to Congress about whether he authorized leaks to the media.
Minutes after the indictment was filed, Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards, resigned from his position in the same office. In a brief letter to Halligan, he wrote that he was leaving “to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country.”
In addition to Siebert’s reluctance to bring charges related to the James investigation, allies of Trump, including Kelly, pointed to Siebert’s familial relations as a warning sign while a grand jury was still weighing a prosecution against Comey. Siebert’s father-in-law, Richard Cullen, is a godfather to one of Comey’s daughters, the Washington Post previously reported in June 2017.
Monaco has long been a target of Trump and his allies for her behind-the-scenes role in the early stages of the Trump-Russia investigation. Earlier this year, she was included in a long list of former Democratic officials who lost access to security clearances and classified information.
As former President Barack Obama’s homeland security adviser in 2016, she was part of a small circle of national security officials, including then-CIA Director John Brennan and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who reviewed intelligence related to Russian election interference and discussed potential responses.
According to declassified documents and congressional testimony, Monaco participated in high-level White House meetings where officials considered whether to brief the Trump campaign about potential Russian contacts. Critics argue that those deliberations helped lay the groundwork for the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane inquiry and the broader lawfare campaign Trump has accused his opponents of orchestrating.
As deputy attorney general during the Biden administration, Monaco played a key role in overseeing the start of two federal criminal cases against Trump. She also helped orchestrate the DOJ’s aggressive prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters.
More recently, Monaco drew Trump’s ire again after joining Microsoft as chief legal officer, prompting him to call on the tech giant to fire her in a social media post.
“Lisa Monaco, her dirty fingerprints stretch all the way back to the summer of 2016 as an architect of Russiagate,” Kelly said. “So you can’t have people who worked in close capacity with her—Senior Counsel, Associate Deputy Attorney General—you can’t have them in the DOJ. I mean, they can’t be trusted.”
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Comey has denied wrongdoing and is expected to appear in court next week. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice,” he said in a statement claiming his innocence last week.
He is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Alexandria on Oct. 9.
