Like a bad penny, Andrew Wiederhorn just keeps coming back. 

Wiederhorn, once a high-flying business star in Portland, ended up in federal prison for 14 months after being convicted of paying an illegal gratuity to a co-conspirator and filing a false tax return. 

After prison, Wiederhorn moved to Southern California and became the CEO of a publicly traded company, FAT Brands, Inc, that runs the hamburger chain Fatburger.

In May 2024, he re-emerged in the news when the federal government accused him of taking millions of dollars in bogus loans from companies he controlled — loans which were later forgiven. Over 11 years, the government said, Wiederhorn took bogus loans totaling $47 million for his personal benefit. That income, the government said, should have been reported to the IRS. The government argued he should have paid taxes on the money because it was income. 

Now he may have found a savior. The New York Times reported on Sunday, March 30, that on Friday, March 28, Adam Schleifer, a federal prosecutor working on Weiderhorn’s case, was sitting at his computer in Los Angeles when he received an email from a White House official, Saurabh Sharma, saying that he had been terminated. No reason was cited. 

“Given that the case has drawn headlines recently and that Mr. Wiederhorn has donated to political action committees supporting Mr. Trump, his colleagues suspected that may have played a role in his dismissal,” the New York Times reported. 

UPDATE – New York Times, July 29, 2025

The Justice Department moved Tuesday to end two high-profile criminal cases in Los Angeles whose handling by the Trump administration had been criticized by veteran prosecutors as alarming.

The moves by the leader of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, came on the same day the administration said it would use a legally untested maneuver to ensure that Mr. Essayli remains in charge of the office beyond his interim appointment, which was set to expire Wednesday.

Mr. Essayli filed court papers asking a judge to dismiss pending criminal charges against Andrew Wiederhorn, the founder of Fatburger, who was fighting accusations of wire fraud and other crimes related to the company. While it is ultimately a judge’s decision whether to dismiss charges, a prosecutor’s request to do so makes it nearly impossible for the case to proceed to trial.

The move to end the Wiederhorn case comes months after White House officials fired the prosecutor in charge of it, Adam Schleifer, whom the right-wing influencer and close Trump ally Laura Loomer had publicly attacked on social media.

Mr. Schleifer’s dismissal unnerved Justice Department veterans, who could not recall any similar instance in which a White House staff member directly dismissed a lower-level career prosecutor. Along with Mr. Schleifer, the White House used the same method to fire a career prosecutor in Memphis.