Fox: Official Resigned “About a Month Ago”

The original report from Fox News on Michael Battle’s resignation is now up on their website.

In it, Jonathan Hunt reports that Battle is resigning and that he “made that decision and sent out an internal email about a month ago.” Hunt reported that the email had been confirmed to Fox “from three separate sources,” but that the resignation had not been “publicly announced by the Department of Justice.” The AP is reporting that Battle will leave his post March 16th.

Battle, a former U.S. attorney himself, was the DoJ official who actually made the calls to fire six federal prosecutors back in early December. Hunt reports that one fired prosecutor told him “Mr. Battle seemed unhappy about having to make those calls.”

The Washington Post has reported that “Battle was apologetic but offered little in the way of explanations during the calls, telling some that the order had come from ‘on high.'” He told one prosecutor, according to Salon, “It’s hard not to think you did something wrong when you get a call like this, but that’s not always the case.”

A Justice Department spokesman told the AP that Battle “was not involved in the actual decision-making” behind the firings.