Report: Fired US Attorney Was Investigating Trump Cabinet Member

Preet Bharara, the US attorney fired after refusing to resign with dozens of others last week, had been looking into the same stock trades that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was grilled about during his confirmation hearings, a source close to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York tells ProPublica. During the hearings, Democrats called for Price to be investigated for health care stock trades he made while serving in Congress and worked on health care legislation that could have affected the companies involved, though Price insisted that the trades were lawful and many of them had been made by his broker without his knowledge.

Bharara's office is also investigating allegations involving Fox News and, since the district includes Trump Tower, has been urged to look into payments President Trump received from foreign government, ProPublica notes. Bharara's firing raised more eyebrows than the dismissal of scores of other US attorneys because Trump had asked him to stay on, the New York Daily News reports. After his firing, Bharara hinted at corruption, tweeting that he now knows " what the Moreland Commission must have felt like." He was referring to an anti-corruption commission launched by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2013 and then disbanded after allegedly investigating groups with ties to the governor's office. (More Preet Bharara stories.)