Bharara: Trump would have put pressure on me
The Manhattan federal prosecutor fired by President Trump said Wednesday he believes the commander-in-chief eventually would have asked him to do “something inappropriate.”
Preet Bharara described a series of unusual interactions with Trump before he was fired as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in March. He said they were so unprecedented he considered but decided against recording a conversation with the president that ultimately never took place.
“Had I not been fired, and had Donald Trump continued to cultivate a direct personal relationship with me, it’s my strong belief, that at some point, given the history, the president of the United States would have asked me to do something inappropriate, and I would have resigned then,” said Bharara. “I don’t know that for a fact. But that’s my strong belief.”
Bharara offered the most extensive public account yet of his firing in the first episode of “Stay Tuned with Preet.”
In a podcast installment aptly titled “That Time President Trump Fired Me,” the 48-yearold attorney said he did not know the exact reason for his dismissal.
Yet Bharara’s account offers a window into the way he said Trump — who is under investigation by a special counsel for possible obstruction of justice — has approached relationships with senior law enforcement officials.
Here’s the timeline, according to Bharara.
On Nov. 8, when Trump won the presidential election, Bharara said he started making his “bucket list.” New presidents usually dismiss U.S. attorneys from previous administrations, because the jobs are political appointments.
Yet eight days later, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., his former boss, called to tell him Trump liked him, and wanted to meet him. On Nov.
30, Bharara traveled uptown from his Lower Manhattan office to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where Trump asked him to stay.
On Dec. 12, when Bharara was touring a Riker’s Island jail, Trump called him. He chose to return the call, but told the Department of Justice’s transition team — tasked with assisting the incoming administration — that he thought direct and casual phone calls with the presidentelect would not be “the greatest thing in the world.”
When Trump sought to speak with him again in March, Bharara said the circumstances were different. Trump was now the president. “I presume lay people would think, ‘He’s kind of your boss. He asked you to stay. You serve at the pleasure of the president. Why not just call him back?’ ” Bharara said. That’s not how it works at the Justice Department, he said, where it’s important to have “not just independence, but the appearance of independence, and if something is happening behind the scenes ... it can look terrible.”
Bharara called the White House and explained to a presidential assistant why he felt he should not speak directly with Trump. He also wrote a personal memo about the incident.
“It’s not an easy thing not to call back the president of the United States,” said Bharara.
Some 20 hours later, on March
11, he was asked to resign.
“I don’t know if those two events are connected,” said Bharara. “We may never know, but the timing is pretty odd.”