DOJ fires longtime spokesman who worked on Trump investigations

The Department of Justice on Friday fired a former spokesman for Robert Mueller and Jack Smith, the two special counsels who conducted broad investigations of President Donald Trump for the department.

Peter Carr, who had worked in media affairs at the DOJ since 2007, was fired by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to an email he sent to reporters.

“I have just been informed by the DAG that I have been let go. It’s been a pleasure working with all of you,” he wrote in the email, titled “My last email to you,” NBC News reported.

Blanche previously represented Trump in criminal cases against the president, including the New York state case that ended with his conviction for falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

CNBC has requested comment on Carr’s firing from the DOJ.

The department in late January fired several career prosecutors who had worked on Smith’s investigation of the president.

Carr served as a spokesman for Mueller during that former FBI director’s investigation of Trump and other people during the Republican’s first term in the White House.

Mueller probe focused on the questions of Russian interference in the 2016 election, whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia or its agents, and whether Trump had obstructed justice for allegedly interfering with the investigation.

Mueller charged nearly three dozen people during his investigation, but did not charge Trump.

Mueller’s report found Russia made repeated efforts to interfere in the election, but did not find evidence that Trump campaign affiliates conspired with Russian agents in those efforts.

The report did not accuse Trump of obstruction, but also did not exonerate the president.

“We did not make a determination as to whether” Trump “did commit a crime,” Mueller told reporters in May 2019.

But he also said, “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”

Mueller said he could not consider whether to charge Trump, arguing that it is “unconstitutional” to charge a sitting president.

After Trump left office in January 2021, Carr was a spokesman for Smith, whose investigation led to criminal charges against Trump in two cases.

Trump was charged in one of those cases with crimes related to his attempt to undo his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden.

Smith separately charged Trump with crimes related to his retention of classified government records after he left the White House, and with his efforts to thwart federal officials from recovering the documents, which were stored at his residence in his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Those cases were both dismissed at the DOJ’s request in late 2024, after Trump was elected to a second non-consecutive term, because of department policy barring prosecution of sitting presidents.