WASHINGTON – The Justice Department moved to fire the new U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York on Wednesday, Feb. 11, the same day that federal judges unveiled his appointment to replace a prosecutor allied with President Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump has drawn criticism from political experts for what they call his administration’s targeting of political opponents in efforts that have faced legal challenges and protests. In a ceremony on Wednesday, the Northern District of New York Board of Judges appointed Donald Kinsella to replace John Sarcone, who had been serving on an acting basis and was disqualified by a court.
“You are fired, Donald Kinsella,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on X. “Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does.”
The district covers 32 counties and has offices in Albany, Binghamton, Plattsburgh, Syracuse, and Utica.
Who is Donald Kinsella?
Kinsella, who could not immediately be reached for comment, has decades of experience in criminal and civil litigation and was previously an assistant U.S. attorney and the criminal chief of the Justice Department.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that Sarcone was unlawfully serving as the top federal prosecutor in Albany, New York, and blocked his involvement in an investigation of state Attorney General Letitia James.
On Wednesday, Feb. 11, the department’s website showed him listed as the “first assistant U.S. attorney.”
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U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., criticized Kinsella’s firing as “the latest example of the chaos of the Trump administration failing Americans and making New Yorkers less safe.”
“Instead of focusing on public safety and appointing qualified leaders to uphold the rule of law, the Trump administration continues to advance unqualified political loyalists while firing those who are qualified and competent,” Gillibrand said in a statement on Feb. 12.
“Upstate New Yorkers are not political pawns, and they deserve a justice system defined by integrity, not this juvenile nonsense,” she added.
What to know about John Sarcone
The Justice Department used a series of procedural maneuvers to retain Sarcone as acting U.S. attorney for the northern district after a federal court declined to extend his 120-day interim appointment.
Those moves were found to be unlawful in court, similar to other court rulings that rejected appointments in California, Nevada, and New Jersey.
The Trump administration has particularly targeted James, an elected Democrat and one of the Republican president’s top political antagonists, who has said investigations against her are payback for suing Trump’s family business.
Sarcone, a stalwart Republican and Croton-on-Hudson lawyer in heavily Democratic Westchester County, was a member of Donald Trump’s campaign legal team in 2016 and 2024.
Before becoming acting U.S. attorney, Sarcone had never worked as a prosecutor, spending 24 years in private practice. The Northern District nomination is his second appointment under President Trump. He spent two years as regional director of the U.S. General Services Administration, covering the Northeast and Caribbean, in the first Trump administration.
He ran unsuccessfully in recent years for state Supreme Court justice and most recently in the fall for Westchester District Attorney.
The former U.S. Attorney, Carla Freedman, had spent years as a prosecutor in the Northern District before President Biden nominated her for the post in 2021. She stepped down last month and the office has been run by Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Hanlon.
(Includes reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and editing by Clarence Fernandez)
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Justice Department fires new US attorney appointed by judges in NY
Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Reuters and Jonathan Bandler, The Journal News/lohud, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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