Barr: Trump fires brazen US prosecutor
But president says move made by attorney general
Donald Trump dismissed Manhattan’s chief federal prosecutor Geoffrey Berman on Saturday after the prosecutor who had launched a series of criminal inquiries targeting the president’s allies refused to resign, Attorney General William Barr said in a letter to Berman.
“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,” Barr wrote.
Barr said Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss would serve as the acting chief of the office until a permanent successor could be seated.
Almost as soon as the letter was made public, however, Trump appeared to distance himself from the attorney general’s statement, saying that the decision to remove Berman was Barr’s to make.
“I’m not involved,” Trump told reporters before departing for a campaign rally in Oklahoma.
The action came after an extraordinary confrontation late Friday night in which Barr first announced that Berman would be “stepping down,” only to have the prosecutor fire back that he had no intention of resigning his post.
“Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service,” Barr said in the letter, referring to the prosecutor’s refusal to capitulate.
“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. This is obviously false. I fully expect that the office will continue to handle all cases in the normal course and pursuant to the Department’s applicable standards, policies, and guidance. Going forward, if any actions or decisions are taken that office supervisors conclude are improper interference with a case, that information should be provided immediately to Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the latest action would represent the final word on the tenure of Berman bePresident cause he was not nominated by a president or confirmed by the Senate.
Berman was appointed as interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions following a purge of federal prosecutors in the early days of the Trump administration.
When the interim term of 120 days lapsed without a formal nomination by the president, the judges in the New York district exercised their authority to make Berman’s appointment official, at least until another candidate was nominated and confirmed.
Berman is now leaning heavily on that rarely invoked provision to maintain control over the Justice Department’s most prestigious office outside of Washington.