This is another assault to our system.
Bravo to Mr. Berman for not going quietly into the night!
Barr Abruptly Seeks to Fire U.S. Attorney Who Investigated Trump Associates
But the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, who had been leading the inquiry into Rudolph Giuliani, is refusing to leave his position.
By Benjamin Weiser, William K. Rashbaum, Nicole Hong, Maggie Haberman and Katie Benner
Published June 19, 2020
Updated June 20, 2020, 2:54 a.m. ET
Attorney General William P. Barr on Friday night abruptly tried to fire the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, who has investigated several of President Trump’s closest associates, but Mr. Berman said he would not leave.
The clash focused new attention on the efforts by Mr. Trump and his closest aides to rid the administration of officials whom the president views as insufficiently loyal. It also touched off a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs, at a time when the agency has already been roiled by questions over whether Mr. Barr has undercut its tradition of independence from political interference.
Mr. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his team have been at the forefront of corruption inquiries in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. They successfully prosecuted the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who went to prison, and have been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said in a statement, adding that he had learned that he was “stepping down” from a Justice Department news release.
Mr. Barr’s announcement that Mr. Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman’s successor Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has never served as a prosecutor.
Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign, but he refused, so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said. Mr. Trump has been upset with Mr. Berman ever since the Manhattan prosecutor’s office pursued a case against Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Trump’s purge of officials has intensified in the months since the Republican-led Senate acquitted him in the impeachment trial. He has fired or forced out inspectors general with independent oversight over executive branch agencies and other key figures from the trial.
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“I was appointed by the judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,” Mr. Berman said in his statement. “I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate. Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption.”
U.S. attorneys are typically replaced by their first assistants, but Mr. Trump’s choice to replace Mr. Berman is an outsider who has never worked in that office.
Mr. Clayton is not a litigator or a former prosecutor, which often are prerequisites to being named a United States attorney, especially in a jurisdiction as prominent as the Southern District.
Before being named chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission by Mr. Trump, Mr. Clayton had been a longtime corporate lawyer at the firm Sullivan & Cromwell, where he did work for banks, hedge funds and big corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Alibaba.
It is highly unusual to name an outsider to a prosecutor’s post like the one in Manhattan, but it is not the first time this has happened under Mr. Trump. When Jessie K. Liu left the United States attorney’s office in Washington, she was replaced by an ally of Mr. Barr, Timothy Shea, rather than her first assistant.
Mr. Barr met with Mr. Berman on Friday in New York, according to a person familiar with the matter. It was not clear what they discussed.
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Mr. Barr was visiting New York to meet with senior New York Police Department officials and to talk about “policing issues that have been at the forefront of national conversation and debate,” according to a Justice Department news release.
On Thursday, Mr. Berman sent a message to the office about safety protocols for returning to work, sounding upbeat and giving no indication that he was about to leave, according to a person familiar with the message.
Mr. Barr’s attempt to remove Mr. Berman came two days after excerpts released from Mr. Bolton’s upcoming book described what Mr. Bolton said was Mr. Trump’s willingness to intervene in criminal investigations, including one in Mr. Berman’s office.
Mr. Bolton wrote in the book that Mr. Trump in 2018 had promised the Turkish president, Mr. Erdogan, that he would interfere in an ongoing investigation against a Turkish company accused of violating Iranian sanctions.
“Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Mr. Bolton wrote, according to an excerpt published this week in The Washington Post.
At the time, Mr. Berman was the U.S. attorney overseeing the case. The company, Halkbank, a state-owned bank in Turkey, was indicted in the Southern District last year.
Mr. Berman was also known for his office’s decision last year to bring sex-trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein, who had avoided a similar prosecution in Florida in 2008.
more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/nyregion/us-attorney-manhattan-trump.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20200619&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=headline®i_id=16112385&segment_id=31413&user_id=75ee940ebe2fd3e9d0a6bb93cf283302
DO SOMETHING!
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