Clash Over U.S. Attorney Who Investigated Trump
Associates Sets Off Crisis
Attorney
General William Barr tried to fire the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey
Berman, but he is refusing to leave.
·
Published June
19, 2020Updated June 20, 2020, 1:46 p.m. ET
The top federal prosecutor in
Manhattan, who has investigated President Trump’s closest associates, was
refusing to leave his position on Saturday after Attorney General William
P. Barr tried to fire him, setting up an extraordinary
standoff over the independence of law enforcement and the president’s purge of
officials he views as disloyal.
Mr. Barr abruptly announced the
resignation late Friday night of the prosecutor, Geoffrey S. Berman, United
States attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office has been at
the forefront of corruption inquiries into Mr. Trump’s inner circle. The office
successfully prosecuted the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen,
who went to prison, and has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal
lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
But Mr. Berman then quickly issued a
statement denying that he was leaving. “I have not resigned, and have no
intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said, adding that he had
learned that he was “stepping down” from a Justice Department news
release.
The
clash over one of the Justice Department’s most prestigious jobs came as the
agency had already been roiled by questions over whether Mr. Barr had undercut
its tradition of independence from political interference.
It
also raised complicated constitutional and legal questions because of the
highly unusual way that Mr. Berman received his job. The president and attorney
general can typically dismiss United States attorneys, but Mr. Berman was not
ultimately appointed by the Trump administration — he was named by a panel of
federal judges.
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.
At some point during their conversation, Mr. Barr suggested
to Mr. Berman that he might take over the civil division of the Justice
Department if he agreed to leave the position in Manhattan, according to a
person familiar with the conversation. BARR ATTEMPTS A BRIBE ON RUMP’S BEHALF
Mr. Barr’s attempt to fire Mr. Berman
received unexpected pushback from Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South
Carolina and a close Trump ally.
Mr. Graham, chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee — which would approve Mr. Clayton’s nomination — suggested
in a statement that he would allow New York’s two Democratic senators to thwart
the nomination through a procedural maneuver.
He complimented Mr. Clayton but said he
had not heard from the administration about his planned nomination.
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.
Several dismissals have come late on
Friday nights, a time that many White Houses have used to disclose news that
they would prefer receive little attention.
The highly public tussle between Mr.
Barr and Mr. Berman that unfolded late on Friday was another example of the
tumult that has engulfed the Justice Department in recent months.
The
attorney general’s interventions in high-profile cases involving the onetime
Trump advisers Roger J. Stone Jr. and Michael T. Flynn have prompted
accusations from current and former law enforcement officials that Mr. Barr has
politicized the department.
Mr. Berman’s office has taken an
aggressive approach in a number of cases that have vexed the Trump
administration, from the prosecution and guilty plea obtained from Mr. Cohen to a broader investigation,
growing out of that inquiry, which focused on Mr. Trump’s private company and
others close to him.
Over the last year, Mr. Berman’s
office brought indictments against two close associates of
the president’s current lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and began an investigation into Mr. Giuliani himself,
focusing on whether his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on the president’s
political rivals violated laws on lobbying for foreign entities.
Mr. Berman’s office also conducted an
investigation into Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, subpoenaing financial and
other records as part of a broad inquiry into possible illegal contributions
from foreigners.
A lawyer for Mr. Giuliani, Robert J.
Costello, said he had received no advance notice of Mr. Barr’s effort to oust
Mr. Berman. Mr. Costello said Mr. Giuliani had no role in the matter.
“We certainly don’t know anything about
it,” Mr. Costello said. “This comes as a surprise to us.”
Mr. Barr also announced that on his
recommendation, Mr. Trump had appointed Craig Carpenito, the current U.S.
attorney for New Jersey, to serve as acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan while
the Senate considers Mr. Clayton’s nomination. Mr. Barr said Mr. Carpenito’s
appointment would be effective July 3.
Mr. Barr’s move to dismiss Mr. Berman
came just days after Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton,
alleged in a new book that Mr. Trump sought to interfere in an investigation by
Mr. Berman’s office into a Turkish bank, in a bid to cut deals with the Turkish
president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The
United States attorney’s office in Manhattan is perhaps the most famous federal
prosecutor’s post in the country. The office, through Democratic and Republican
administrations, has long prized a tradition of independence from the Justice
Department and Washington. It has even been nicknamed the “Sovereign District
of New York.”
Mr. Berman worked there in the 1990s as
a prosecutor, but he took over the office under atypical circumstances.
A Republican who contributed to the
president’s campaign and worked at the same law firm as Mr. Giuliani, Mr.
Berman was never formally nominated for the position by Mr. Trump or confirmed
by the Senate, as is normal protocol for United States attorneys.
In 2018, the attorney general at the
time, Jeff Sessions, appointed Mr. Berman as interim United States attorney in
Manhattan.
But Mr. Trump never formally sent Mr.
Berman’s nomination to the Senate. After 120 days, his formal appointment to
the post was made by the judges of the United States District Court.
Mr. Berman took note of the nature of
his appointment to the position in explaining why he was refusing to step down.
“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. RUMP AND BARR ATTEMPT
TO APPOINT ANOTHER BOZO WITH NO EXPERIENCE.
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.
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.
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.
After Mr. Epstein committed suicide
last August, Mr. Berman announced that the inquiry into Mr. Epstein’s sex
trafficking conspiracy would continue and that his office was committed to
standing up for the “brave young women” whom Mr. Epstein had abused.
The office has been investigating
several of Mr. Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators, and it has been locked in a
public dispute with Prince Andrew of Britain about what Mr. Berman has
depicted as the prince’s refusal to assist the investigation.