Top federal prosecutor in Manhattan ousted

WASHINGTON — An unusual standoff between Attorney General William Barr and Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor ended Saturday when Geoffrey Berman agreed to leave his job with an assurance that investigations by the prosecutor’s office into the president’s allies would not be disturbed.

Berman announced he would leave his post, ending increasingly bitter exchanges between Barr and Berman. President Trump, meanwhile, distanced himself from the dispute, telling reporters the decision “was all up to the attorney general.”

The whirlwind chain 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 has tried major mob, financial crimes and terrorism cases over the years and 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 a Turkish bank in an effort to cut deals with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a letter released Saturday, Barr said he was “surprised and quite disappointed” by Berman’s statement.

“Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service,” Barr wrote, adding that the idea that Berman had to continue on the job to safeguard investigations was “false.”

The White House announced that Trump was nominating Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton, a wellconnected Wall Street lawyer with virtually no experience as a federal prosecutor, for the job.

But the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen.

Lindsey Graham, RS.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. Schumer said the bid to oust Berman “reeks of potential corruption of the legal process.”

Berman initially planned to remain in his job until a replacement was confirmed, but he changed his mind after Barr said he would allow Berman’s second in command, Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, to become acting U.S. attorney.