US attorney resigns, leaving Columbus County corruption probe in limbo

By Sarah Nagem and Carli Brosseau

On Wednesday, Eastern North Carolina’s top federal prosecutor, Michael Easley Jr., announced his resignation as part of the Trump administration transition.

Easley, who President Joe Biden appointed to be the U.S. attorney for the region in 2021, said he will step down February 3. 

While stepping down has become standard practice when a new president takes office, Easley’s departure brings into question the future of the corruption investigation into the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office.

Federal investigators have been looking into the office since at least December 2022, shortly after the public release of a recorded phone call in which then-Sheriff Jody Greene called deputies “snakes” and “Black bastards.” The FBI and IRS have pursued multiple leads suggesting the misuse of public money, records obtained by The Assembly and the Border Belt Independent show. The probe also scrutinized deputies’ use of force and sought to answer whether Greene was in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, the day a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

Michael F. Easley Jr.

Greene has called the investigation a “witch hunt,” echoing language Trump and his allies have used about investigations into the president’s actions. Since being sworn into his second term, Trump has sought to undo prosecutions stemming from January 6 and signed an executive order promising to end the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement.

In a public statement announcing his resignation, Easley said he “turbocharged white-collar prosecutions” in the Eastern District, which includes Raleigh. During his tenure, the office secured more public corruption convictions than almost any other district in the country, according to an analysis by the Transactions Records Access Clearinghouse, which compiles federal court data.

Easley’s departure doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the federal investigation in Columbus County, said Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who has worked closely with the U.S. attorney’s office on other cases. 

Freeman said the probe has been “closely watched,” along with a separate investigation led by Easley’s office into a domestic violence monitoring program that received millions of dollars in COVID-19 relief funds from the state. “It would be my hope,” she said, “that the people in the department keep the [foot] on the pedal.” 

Jon David, who sought Greene’s removal from office as the district attorney in Columbus, Bladen, and Brunswick counties, did not respond to an interview request.

It’s common for U.S. attorneys to resign when a new president takes office. The attorneys general for both Trump and Biden demanded resignations from most of the U.S. attorneys appointed by the previous administration. 

Easley is the second of North Carolina’s three U.S. attorneys to step down since Trump was reelected. Sandra Hairston, another Biden appointee, resigned from the state’s Middle District earlier this month and said she was retiring from federal service. Dena J. King, U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina who was also appointed by Biden, has not publicly said whether she will step down. 

Ripley Rand, an Obama appointee who served as the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina from 2011 to 2017, said many federal investigations survive a change of guard. But several factors “that don’t have anything to do with the merits of an investigation” can determine whether a probe gets tossed. 

Chief among them, he said, are shifting priorities for the U.S. Department of Justice. Trump’s focus on immigration policy could bog down U.S. attorneys offices and the federal court system, he said, leaving less time for other types of cases. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order that could lead to the removal of more than 1 million immigrants

A new U.S. attorney may also want to review each investigation, which could slow the process, Rand said. But it’s unlikely that every prosecutor in Easley’s office familiar with the Columbus County probe would resign or be let go. 

“It’s not like they’re going to fire everybody in the office and bring all new people in and start over,” Rand said. “That’s just not feasible, and it’s against the law.” 

The press release announcing Easley’s resignation did not say who would take the helm of the Eastern District office after his departure, and a spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions from The Assembly and the Border Belt Independent about succession and the expected case review process.

The Trump administration has signaled that this transition will likely differ from the past. Typically, a U.S. attorney’s deputy will lead the office until a replacement is nominated and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. But the Trump transition team worked to identify career prosecutors loyal to Trump who could step in instead, Bloomberg Law reported

Trump has so far named acting leaders in at least three U.S. attorneys offices, The New York Times reported. Two were respected prosecutors. One was a Trump loyalist who pushed for the release of January 6 defendants.

Freeman said it can be frustrating when federal investigations drag on for years without indictments. But it takes time for investigators to comb through what can be a trove of information. The FBI sent a subpoena to the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office in late 2023 demanding details about financial dealings with 51 businesses and individuals.  

“You feel like you’re pulling the handkerchief out of the clown’s pocket,” Freeman said. 

Easley, whose father served as governor of North Carolina for eight years, said in an interview with the Wilmington StarNews published Wednesday that he hoped he would be succeeded by an experienced federal prosecutor.

He offered one piece of advice: keep politics out.

“You want somebody who’s going to focus on the mission and the people and making Eastern North Carolina a safer place and not let politics get anywhere near this job,” he said.

As one of his last moves in office, former Gov. Roy Cooper appointed 40-year-old Easley to the board of the Golden LEAF Foundation, a nonprofit focused on improving economic opportunity in poor and rural parts of the state. Easley’s father also had close ties to the group.


Sarah Nagem is the editor of the Border Belt Independent. She has worked as a journalist in North Carolina for nearly two decades, reporting and editing stories about education, government, public safety, and more. Reach her at sarahnagem@borderbelt.org.


Carli Brosseau is a reporter at The Assembly. She joined us  from The News & Observer, where she was an investigative reporter. Her work has been honored by the Online News Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and published by ProPublica and The New York Times.

The Columbus County Sheriff’s Office in Whiteville. (Photo by Johanna F. Still)