NEW YORK: President Donald Trump ordered removal of Preet Bharara, the district attorney of southern New York, to stop a potential corruption investigation, the Huffington Post reported on Monday.

The online magazine said Congressman Elijah Cummings suggested that in an interview on a TV channel when questioned about Trump’s motives to fire Preet Bharara, the powerful district attorney of New York.

The dismissal of Mr Bharara was especially surprising because in November Mr Trump had said he would like him to stay on.

“Just not very long ago, the president was saying that he was going to keep the US attorney there in New York. And then, suddenly, he’s, I guess, changed his mind. I’m just curious as to why that is,” Cummings said. “And certainly, there’s a lot of questions coming up as to whether Mr Trump is – President Trump is concerned about the jurisdiction of this US attorney and whether that might affect his future.”

A group of ethics watchdogs sent Mr Bharara a letter recently, asking him to investigate Trump’s conflicts of interest: Democracy 21, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the Campaign Legal Centre request that you undertake an investigation to determine if the Trump Organisation LLC, the Trump Organisation, Inc., and any related Trump businesses based in the Southern District of New York are receiving payments and financial benefits from foreign governments that benefit President Donald Trump and that do not comply with Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, the “Foreign Emoluments Clause.”

Cummings confirmed on Sunday that he believed there could be a connection between this call for an investigation and Trump’s decision to get rid of Mr Bharara, who is known as an aggressive prosecutor, the Huffington Post said.

“When they asked about emoluments clause and possible violations of it and the US attorney’s relationship to that, I think perhaps that had perhaps something to do with it,” Cummings said. Mr Bharara received a call from Trump’s assistant on Thursday, which he reported to the Justice Department because there are protocols in place about the contact a US attorney can have with the president.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2017