Bharara takes swipe at Trump on sacking

India-born former top federal prosecutor Preet Bharara has termed his firing by President Donald Trump as “deliberate” saying he does not “begrudge” the decision but wants the “record to be clear”

Bharara made his first public appearance on Thursday since being unceremoniously removed by Trump last month as US attorney for the Southern District of New York. Delivering The John Jay Iselin Memorial Lecture at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art here, Bharara spoke for over an hour to a packed hall, opening up about why he thought he was fired taking a swipe at Trump’s penchant for firing people as evident in the real estate tycoon’s TV show The Apprentice.

When asked at the end of the lecture why he was fired, Bharara replied “Beats the hell out of me. He recalled the meeting held with much “fanfare” between him and then President-elect Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan shortly after the presidential elections.

He said Trump had then “explicitly” asked him to stay on for another term. “Then there was this decision to let everyone go, which I don’t begrudge anyone, but I have been around the block a few times. Part of the reason I said I was not going to resign and be fired was because I want the record to reflect for all time that there was a deliberate decision, not just a bureaucratic sweeping away of what had been there in the past.