US attorney leaves job after standoff with Barr
WASHINGTON — An unusual standoff between Attorney General William Barr and Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor ended Saturday when the prosecutor agreed to leave with an assurance that investigations by the prosecutor’s office into the president’s allies would not be disturbed.
U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in an evening statement that he would leave his post, ending increasingly nasty exchanges between Barr and Berman. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, had distanced himself from the dispute, telling reporters the decision “was all up to the attorney general.”
The whirlwind of events began Friday night, when Barr announced that Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, had resigned. Hours later, the prosecutor issued a statement denying that he had resigned and saying that his office’s “investigations would move forward without delay or interruption.”
On Saturday morning, he showed up to work, telling reporters, “I’m just here to do my job.”
The administration’s push to cast aside Berman set up an extraordinary political and constitutional clash between the Justice Department and one of the nation’s top districts, which is investigating Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. It also deepened tensions between the department and congressional Democrats, who have accused
Barr of politicizing the agency and acting more like Trump’s personal lawyer than the country’s chief law enforcement officer.
Only days ago, allegations surfaced from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton that the president sought to interfere in an investigation by Berman’s office into the stateowned Turkish bank in an effort to cut deals with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Your statement also wrongly implies that your continued tenure in the office is necessary to ensure that cases now pending in the Southern District of New York are handled appropriately,” Barr wrote in a letter to Berman released Saturday. “This is obviously false.”
Although Barr said Trump had removed Berman, the president told reporters: “That’s all up to the attorney general . ... That’s his department, not my department.” Trump added: “I wasn’t involved.”
Barr offered no explanation for his action. The White House announced Trump was nominating Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer with virtually no experience as a federal prosecutor, for the job.
Berman initially planned to remain in his job until a replacement was confirmed, but he changed his mind late Saturday after Barr said he would allow Berman’s second-in-command, Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, to be acting U.S. attorney.
Berman said that led him to announce he would be leaving, “effective immediately.”
A senior department official said Clayton was planning to leave the administration, wanted to move back to New York and expressed interest in the Southern District position, and Barr thought he would be a good fit.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he was unlikely to proceed with Clayton’s nomination unless New York’s senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, gave their consent to the pick.