It was early March and a Newark police detective had just been shot. Desiree Leigh Grace, then the criminal division chief at the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, went straight to the hospital. She spent the night there, sitting on the floor outside the detective’s room, figuring out how to charge the suspect, a 14-year-old, with a federal crime.
That evening, Ms. Grace found suitable statutes and had her case theory approved by higher-ups in the Justice Department, according to two law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. They said few other prosecutors could have done the same in such a short amount of time.
By pursuing the teenager in federal court, Ms. Grace could aim for a penalty far more severe than he would have faced at the state level. But she would not have the chance to oversee the case.
Last month, she was abruptly fired, a casualty of the struggle between a White House intent on keeping a loyalist, Alina Habba, in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office and a panel of federal judges who had appointed Ms. Grace to take her place.
From afar, Ms. Grace’s career would seem to resemble the Trump Justice Department’s prosecutorial ideal. Her time working as a leader in the New Jersey office has coincided with a sharp drop in shootings in the state, and Ms. Grace spent much of her time prosecuting members of violent gangs, including MS-13.
Ms. Habba, by contrast, had no criminal experience before she was appointed interim U.S. attorney this year. She had previously served as a personal lawyer to President Trump.
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The post A Prosecutor Took on MS-13 and Violent Crime. Trump Fired Her Anyway. appeared first on New York Times.
