It was Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente who informed 46 federal prosecutors on Friday that President Trump wanted their resignations. So when the news popped Saturday that Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was refusing to comply and was willing to be fired, Boente called him in the early afternoon.

“He refused to admit that this applied to him,” an administration official said. “As we talked to him and tried to reinforce that it did, he basically said: ‘I’m interpreting that to mean you’re firing me.'”