New U.S. attorney taking on cases eyed by Trump
Audrey Strauss takes over one of the most high-profile prosecutor jobs in America with a lot on her plate.
The 72-year-old former deputy to Geoffrey Berman is taking the reins as acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York after an unusual shu±e — her boss refused to leave his role until Attorney General William Barr respected “the normal operation of law” and put her in charge. Strauss has been Berman’s second in command since April 2019, but her history in the Manhattan office stretches back more than four decades.
The position is the most important federal law enforcement role outside Washington. With a territory that encompasses lower Manhattan, it can strike at the heart of the financial industry with headline-grabbing cases. Previous officeholders have included Preet Bharara, Rudy Giuliani and James Comey.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia Law School, Strauss first became a Southern District federal prosecutor in 1976. She served in the office until 1983 and then worked in Washington as a staff lawyer in the independent counsel investigation into the Reagan-era Iran-Contra affair.
“She is a prosecutor who was raised in the tradition of SDNY independence,” said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in the office who’s running on the Democratic ticket for district attorney in Westchester County, N.Y. “She has total integrity. She will not tolerate inappropriate interference.”
Before rejoining the Southern District in 2018, Strauss had a long career in the private sector, including stints as a partner at New York law firm Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson and as chief legal and compliance officer at Alcoa Corp., where she oversaw the aluminum producer’s $384 million settlement in 2014 of federal probes into whether it paid bribes to members of Bahrain’s royal family and officials at a state-owned company.
Antonia Apps, a another former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who oversaw several big insider-trading cases and worked with Strauss at Fried Frank, described her as a faithful public servant who’s able to bring nonpartisan leadership to the office. She said Strauss rose from line prosecutor to the chief of what is now called the Securities and Commodities Task Force — the first woman to hold that post.
“Geoff Berman would not have stepped down on Saturday but for AG Barr’s commitment that Audrey Strauss would remain at the helm of the office and continue with ongoing investigations ‘without fear or favor,’ ” said Apps, now a partner at the law firm Milbank in New York.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday asked the Department of Justice’s inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate Berman’s removal, saying the move had left the impression Trump was interfering with criminal probes of the president and his associates. Barr has said all criminal cases would be handled “in the normal course.”
Among the cases Strauss will now oversee are some of keen interest to the Trump administration. Some of these investigations have moved forward, while others have seemingly gone dormant for years.
They include:
◆ An ongoing probe into Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and political ally, examining his efforts to secure political dirt in Ukraine on Joe Biden.
◆ A long-running investigation with the Justice Department into whether Deutsche Bank — Trump’s biggest lender — violated money-laundering laws.
◆ The prosecution of Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank for allegedly helping Iran evade sanctions on billions of dollars in oil funds.
◆ Probes into how donations to Trump’s inaugural committee were spent and whether Trump’s companies were involved in facilitating hush-money payments to alleged Trump mistresses.