Top Manhattan prosecutor ousted by Trump administration details firing

Geoffrey Berman, who was abruptly dismissed by President Donald Trump last month from his post as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, told lawmakers Thursday that Attorney General William Barr tried unsuccessfully to pressure him to resign voluntarily, warning that a firing could ruin his career.

Testifying before a closeddoor hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Berman recounted being summoned with no warning in June to a meeting with Mr. Barr at the Pierre Hotel in New York, in which the attorney general asked him to step down.

Mr. Berman said he rebuffed Mr. Barr repeatedly during a tense, 45-minute discussion, telling him he would not resign and did not want to be fired, according to copies of his statement obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Barr repeatedly tried to change Mr. Berman’s mind, he testified, offering him a job as head of the Civil Division at the Justice Department and warning “that getting fired from my job would not be good for my résumé or future job prospects.”

“I told the attorney general that there were important investigations in the office that I wanted to see through to completion,” Mr. Berman told the committee members, according to the statement.

In his testimony, Mr. Berman did not speculate as to Mr. Barr’s motive for his dismissal as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York or discuss in any detail the highly sensitive corruption investigations of members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle that his office oversaw.

Many of Mr. Barr’s critics have speculated that the attorney general was acting based on Mr. Trump’s distaste for Mr. Berman and the sensitive inquiries he oversaw, ushering him out to put in place a replacement without prosecutorial experience.