Trump personally ordered firings of special counsel prosecutors

Exclusive: move to purge those who worked for Jack Smith came from Trump, sources say, in show of unchecked power

The US justice department fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the criminal cases against Donald Trump hours after the president directly ordered it to take place in the Oval Office, according to two people familiar with the intervention.

The move to purge people who worked for former special counsel Jack Smith had ostensibly come from the acting attorney general James McHenry, who sent the formal termination notices that said they could not be trusted to implement Trump's agenda.