U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was pursuing multiple investigations relating to criminal charges against Fox News when he was fired on Saturday, according to Media Matters.
Bharara was reportedly following multiple lines of investigation against the conservative network, including the slew of sexual harassment allegations leveled against ousted CEO Roger Ailes and a pervasive culture of sexual harassment and bullying of women workers by men.
The U.S. Attorney's office for the southern district of New York is one of the busiest and most powerful in the country and was tasked with investigating accusations that the network spied on and surveilled its employees and that Ailes failed to disclose to shareholders that the company was paying millions of dollars to multiple women to keep them silent about their experiences with on-the-job sexual harassment.
The attorney predicted to be nominated for Bharara's position is a , Marc Mukasey. Murdoch is a part owner of NewsCorp, the company that owns Fox News.
Mukasey was one of the crisis team summoned to Roger Ailes' home in upstate New York when news broke of Gretchen Carlson's sexual harassment suit against Fox and its then-CEO.
He and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) accompanied Ailes back to Fox News headquarters for Ailes' meetings with the company to determine the terms of his severance. Mukasey told Vanity Fair that he and Giuliani "provided personal, private legal counsel to Roger, whom we’ve known for years."
Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions fired Bharara on Saturday after Bharara refused to comply with Sessions' order for 46 U.S. Attorneys appointed by Pres. Barack Obama to resign at once. Critics of the Trump administration speculate that Bharara was pursuing cases that would prove "troublesome" to Pres. Trump and his aides if they were resolved.