For those just tuning in, this diary was first posted as Breaking w UPDATE: Barr fires US Attorney who was investigating Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer. I’m updating it as new developments happen. Just look for the Update numbers to keep up. I’ve had to keep updating the title as more stuff happens.
The Berman story is proving a problem for the press because there are so many possible reasons Trump might want him gone, they can’t decide which one to pick. Think about that…
One more thing: This diary is getting seriously long — sorry the comments are getting so out of hand. Too bad it can't be serialized like debate coverage. This is like a twisted version of 24 Hours. Make it stop!
6-21-20 Okay — I’m pretty well done updating, but I see this is still trending so one last note. If nothing else, this works as a timeline for Barr’s attempt to gut the investigations to protect Trump. It kept me busy while it was going down, and it’s not over as long as Barr and Trump are still running loose. There’s also a long thread about food and cats in the comments. See Update #9 for the last word on this.
From the NY Times via Benjamin Weiser:
The Justice Department abruptly announced on Friday that it had replaced the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
That’s just about all the detail available; Berman’s replacement is going to be Jay Clayton, the current chairman of the SEC.
A couple of quick hits:
1) This is happening on the traditional late Friday night news abyss, where stories are thrown out to die over the weekend before the news cycle can run with them.
2) Berman must have either been close to something, or they were worried he might be.
The thing to watch is what happens to any ongoing investigations until and if Clayton takes over. If it doesn't kill them, it will probably delay them.
Sounds like time for more testimony requests from the House which the administration will ignore… Let’s see what other details come out.
The AP report here doesn’t have much more… but this detail is interesting:
...The U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Craig Carpenito, will serve as the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, beginning on July 3, Barr said.
...The announcement, made late Friday, came after Barr visited New York City and met with local police officials there.
UPDATE #1:
From Business Insider — Manhattan US attorney says he has 'no intention' of resigning after Justice Department tries to force him out
- "I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was 'stepping down' as United States Attorney," Berman said. "I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York."
- "I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate," he added. "Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption."
- The SDNY is conducting multiple investigations into Trump associates including his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Under Berman's leadership, the SDNY also indicted Turkey's Halkbank even though Barr and President Trump both reportedly tried to intervene to stop the case from moving forward.
This is seriously F***ed up! Are we going to see a revolt in the DOJ among U.S. Attorneys? We’ve been here before, and not just Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. Remember George W. Bush and his purge? One of the goodies at the link is this bit:
They also hoped to take advantage of a loophole in the Patriot Act that allowed the attorney general, rather than the president, to appoint interim US attorneys, thereby bypassing Senate confirmation.
More details from wikipedia.
The credibility of the Department of Justice under Will Barr is one with the snows of yesteryear.
UPDATE #2:
More from Wieser at the NY Times:
But the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, who had been leading the inquiry into Rudolph W. Giuliani, is refusing to leave his position.
This part is fascinating:
Mr. Berman, a Republican who contributed to the president’s election campaign and worked at the same law firm as Mr. Giuliani, was never formally nominated for the position by President Trump or confirmed by the Senate, as is the 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 President 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.
Read the whole thing — it gives a lot of the back story.
There’s this too:
U.S. attorneys are typically replaced by their first assistants, but Mr. Berman is being replaced by an outsider who has never worked in that office. [Except he’s refusing to leave — xaxnar]
Mr. Clayton is not a litigator or a former prosecutor, which often are prerequisites to being named a United States attorney, especially to a post like the one running the Southern District.
Before being named chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission by President Trump, Mr. Clayton had been a longtime corporate lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, where he did work for banks, hedge funds and big corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Alibaba.
Sounds like Trump is looking to toss Berman out for another loyalist. If Clayton has any smarts, he will decline the job.
What is Trump going to blow up next? This would all be more enjoyable from a safe distance, say Alpha Centauri. For now, I’m going to turn in. See you all in the morning — I hope.
UPDATE #3:
Saturday morning, around 0900 east coast time. There are a lot of news stories about Berman refusing to step down; this one from the Guardian was updated 2 hours ago.
Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the University of Texas, said on Twitter it was “clear” that “Barr lied [and] something really stinks”.
“Legally, Barr can’t fire Berman. Berman can be replaced by a Senate-confirmed successor. Not clear: Whether Trump can fire Berman. Whether Barr/Trump can name his replacement without Senate confirmation. Why this happened.”
...Amid huge controversy on Friday night, Vladeck, the law professor, added: “It’s worth not losing sight of the fact that the Attorney General of the United States out-and-out lied in a written statement – and in a context in which there could have been little question to him that Berman would publicly call him out for doing so. And he did it anyway.”
emphasis added
The Guardian speculates the attempted firing may be related to John Bolton’s book. One of the things Berman is reportedly investigating is Turkey, Halkbank, and Erdogan — and Bolton’s book alleges Trump promised Erdogan that he would quash the investigation.
Anything involving Trump, foreign strong men and banks is a target-rich environment for legal pursuits. Trumps’ betrayal of the Kurds and drawing down US forces in the region effectively allowed Erdogan to secure his border, grab territory, and effectively ceded Syria to Russian dominance.
As well, Giuliani’s involvement in Turkey has raised serious questions. From Business Insider, October 2019:
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, repeatedly pushed Trump to hand a controversial Muslim cleric living in the US over to Turkey, The Washington Post reported…
...Giuliani was reportedly so adamant in pushing for Gulen to be turned over to Erdogan that White House aides worried that he was working on behalf of the Turkish government.
Giuliani is not a registered foreign agent and is currently under investigation for violating lobbying laws related to his role in pushing for the ouster of the US's ambassador to Ukraine.
Watch for this story to keep unfolding during the day. The Southern District of New York is noted for being one of the more…. independent US Attorney posts. It has been investigating Trump-related matters for some time and has already sent some Trump associates to jail.
At this point in time, the problem isn’t about a new Trump scandal — it’s keeping track of all the scandals festering in all directions. Any one of these would have brought down a normal president long ago. Barr would have been forced to step down or be fired in a sane world.
The immediate focus is going to be on whether Berman can be fired, by who, and what happens to what he was working on — but the connections look like they reach everywhere…..
UPDATE #4:
Oh, and this:
From the Guardian, April 2019:
Deutsche Bank was embroiled in a vast money-laundering operation, dubbed the Global Laundromat. Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB and its main successor, the FSB, used the scheme between 2010 and 2014 to move money into the western financial system. The cash involved could total $80bn, detectives believe.
And….
Deutsche is also under scrutiny in Washington over its financial dealings with Donald Trump. On 15 April [2019], Democrats from the House intelligence and financial services committees issued a subpoena, demanding the bank provide documents about its lending to the president.
Over two decades, Trump borrowed more than $2bn from Deutsche. In 2008, he defaulted on a $45m loan repayment and sued the bank. Its private wealth division in New York subsequently loaned Trump a further $300m – a move that bemused insiders and which has yet to be fully explained.
If Trump loses on keeping his tax records away from the House, who knows what will be dragged into the light, kicking and screaming all the way? Barr’s move suggests desperation. Bolton’s book is now on the loose too.
Think how convenient it would be for so many if the people around Trump suddenly discovered a reason to use the 25th amendment and they could all say it was time to move on and pretend there was no need to look back…
UPDATE #5:
The NY Times has an update from 1:45pm east coast time. You get an idea how big this story has gotten when you see how many people are working on it now: Benjamin Weiser, William K. Rashbaum, Nicole Hong, Maggie Haberman and Katie Benner
A few nuggets:
...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.
Why Berman is on Trump’s hit list — above and beyond what might be about to come down:
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.
Oh — and let’s not forget to thank Moscow Mitch and his gang:
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.
emphasis added
You know things are bad when Lindsey Graham pretends to have some integrity:
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.
There are over 2,000 comments on the article (comments are now closed) and the gist of them is not good news for Trump, or the path people think America is on.
UPDATE #6:
The latest from the NY Times:
In a statement released on Saturday, Mr. Barr said Mr. Berman had “chosen public spectacle over public service.”
“Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so,” the statement read. He said Mr. Berman’s top deputy, Audrey Strauss, would become the acting United States Attorney.
Can you say Charlie Foxtrot? Barr keeps digging the hole deeper. As has been noted, neither Barr nor Trump may have the legal authority to fire Berman until the Senate approves his replacement, because Berman’s temporary gig was confirmed by the judges of the United States District Court when Trump failed to nominate anyone.
Harry Litman in an Op-Ed at the LA Times makes this observation:
...Berman is unusual among U.S. attorneys in having been appointed by the judges of his district under a statute, 28 U.S.C. 546, that says he may serve until a new U.S. attorney is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
An opinion from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Legal Counsel dating to the 1970s says that the attorney general cannot fire U.S. attorneys appointed that way, but that the president can do so. It seems likely that Barr will now urge Trump to fire Berman, and he probably won’t need much prompting.
But here’s the rub. The courts have never ruled on whether a president can fire a §546 appointee. That sets the stage for a court battle, in which we should expect the DOJ to argue, once again, that the president has to have this power under the theory of a — you guessed it — unitary executive.
emphasis added
Litman expects the courts will likely decide a president has the right to fire a U.S. attorney under these circumstances — but he also foresees an extended legal battle that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. If it can drive a stake through the heart of the unitary executive theory, that might be worth the battle all by itself.
Are we going to see the spectacle of U.S. Marshalls or F.B.I. agents dragging Berman from his office? Nothing is off the table at this point.
Josh Marshall at TPM adds some more interesting bits. As well as noting that Trump may have problems firing Berman and replacing him with his own pick, there’s this:
First, there would be a staff revolt. Second, every criminal defendant indicted under the bogus US Attorney would have standing to seek dismissal because the indictment was not authorized or signed by the lawful US Attorney — and those motions would be decided by the same SDNY judges whose authority Trump is trying to usurp.
Trump may not mind all that chaos as the price for covering up whatever Berman is investigating. But for a guy running a “LAW AND ORDER!!” campaign, allowing a bunch of bad guys to get off just to protect himself may not be a great move.
Unless, of course, they’re Trump’s bad guys…
Note: Barr is proving every bit as bad as some warned he would be. William Barr is a paranoid right-wing Catholic extremist. Trump’s brand of authoritarianism suits him just fine. The Nation has the story — behind a paywall unfortunately — but here’s the opening salvo, from October 2019:
It’s not enough that Attorney General William Barr, whose office is supposed to be nominally independent of the president’s, is busy pursuing Donald Trump’s paranoid global and domestic grudges around the world. Barr is also finding time to denounce his own country. In a histrionic speech at Notre Dame Law School on Friday, he blamed “secularists” and “so-called progressives” for destroying society and precipitating the crises of family dissolution, crime, and drugs, while talking of a war between religious and nonreligious Americans. Scary shit.
“This is not decay,” Barr intoned darkly at Notre Dame. “This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.”
“Virtually every measure of social pathology continues to gain ground,” he continued. “Along with the wreckage of the family, we are seeing record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence and the deadly drug epidemic.” He accused the government, with no evidence, of blocking the “passing on of the faith” from parents to their children, which he called a “monstrous invasion of religious liberty.”
(If you highlight the text, you may be able to copy all of it and paste it elsewhere to read the full story, or you can buy a day pass.)
Any Democrats who voted to approve Barr’s nomination should add it to their list of shame of things on which they gave the Republicans the benefit of the doubt.
UPDATE #7:
Who didn't see this one coming? Trump is saying, nope, he’s not involved. It’s all Barr’s responsibility to fire Berman. He didn’t do it. Via CNN:
...Trump, however, speaking to reporters shortly after Barr's letter was made public, said, "That's his department, not my department." He added: "I'm not involved."
Berman's firing caps a remarkable 24 hours that encompassed a power struggle over the leadership of the most prominent prosecutors' office outside Washington, one that has prosecuted one of Trump's lawyers, is investigating another and has probed the activities of the President himself.
emphasis added
ITNR (I Take No Responsibility) should replace MAGA.
It’s Trump’s real catchphrase.
Between them, Trump and Barr have made sure that no one in the press is getting any time off this weekend. I wonder what else is going down while this sh*tshow is going on? The Trump presidency is falling apart in real time….
Update #8
It now looks like Berman is declaring victory of sorts, and is leaving because now his successor will be his deputy. Charlie Savage at the NY Times is framing it as a win for Trump:
The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan had refused to let the attorney general fire him, but acquiesced after William P. Barr invoked the president.
No definitive and settled Supreme Court precedent exists to look to for guidance, and federal statutes appear to conflict on the question. That set up the possibility of a protracted fight in court until Mr. Barr told the U.S. attorney, Geoffrey S. Berman, on Saturday that the president had fired him, and he acquiesced.
Never mind that Trump himself took no responsibility for the firing, saying it was all Barr’s department. What seems to be a key to Berman’s decision is who will take over for him:
...But Mr. Barr had also backed down on installing someone other than Mr. Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, as his successor, and Mr. Berman essentially declared victory and said he would depart rather than pressing for greater clarity.
Berman leaves, apparently trusting that Strauss will carry on the cases his department has been building while avoiding a protracted legal battle that could have interfered with them. That remains to be seen. However,
Kelly T. Currie, a former acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said Mr. Berman had “called the attorney general’s bluff” because only the president, not Mr. Barr, had the power to remove him.
“It’s telling that Berman’s statement following Barr’s attempt to oust him by press release explicitly defended ongoing investigations in that office,” Mr. Currie said, adding, “It’s hard not to suspect that Barr’s move is anything but an effort to thwart investigations that could be damaging to the president or his associates.”
So, Berman is gone, but the investigations go on; Barr is revealed as the corrupt toady he is, Trump dodges any responsibility and can get on with his mass infection rally tonight in Tulsa (Make America Sick Again), and the press may get to enjoy a quiet Father’s Day tomorrow.
But I wouldn’t bet on anything, not while Trump still infests the presidency.
Update #9:
I’m going to give the last word to Josh Marshall at TPM
We’re deep into the worst crisis in the history of the Justice Department, and it keeps deepening. This isn’t alarming for what it signifies or for what it suggests might happen next or because it raises vague future concerns. It’s alarming because this is the corruption and the wrongdoing and the malfeasance. Right here, right now. Not some theoretical future threat. This is the nightmare of a president run amok with a captive Justice Department. We’re there. We’re living it.