US attorney agrees to end messy standoff with Barr
Prosecutor’s office’s probe into Trump allies will continue
WASHINGTON — An unusual standoff between Attorney General William Barr and Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor ended Saturday when the prosecutor agreed to leave his job with an assurance that investigations by the prosecutor’s office into the president’s allies would not be disturbed.
U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman announced in an early evening statement that he would leave his post, ending increasingly nasty exchanges between Barr and Berman. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, had 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 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.
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 the state-owned Turkish bank in an effort to cut deals with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In a letter made public by the Justice Department on Saturday, Barr said he expected to continue speaking with Berman about other possible positions within the department and was surprised by the statement he released.
“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.”
“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,” he wrote. “This is obviously false.”
Although Barr said Trump had removed Berman, the president told reporters before leaving for a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma: “That’s all up to the attorney general. Attorney General Barr is working on that. That’s his department, not my department.” Trump added: “I wasn’t involved.”
Barr offered no explanation for his action. 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.
People familiar with the matter in the Southern District could point to no clear reason for Berman’s removal.
In his statement Friday, Berman challenged Barr’s power to remove, given that Berman was appointed by federal judges, not by the president, and the White House never formally nominated him. Under federal law, a U.S. attorney who is appointed by district court judges can serve “until the vacancy is filled.”
But the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel argued in a 1979 opinion that the “power to remove a court-appointed U.S. attorney rests with the president.”
Federal prosecutors in New York have overseen numerous prosecutions and investigations with ties to Trump in recent years. That includes an ongoing investigation into Giuliani’s business dealings, including whether he failed to register as a foreign agent, according to people familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The office has also prosecuted a number of Trump associates, including Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who served a prison sentence for lying to Congress and campaign finance crimes.
Berman has overseen the prosecution of Florida businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were associates of Giuliani and tied to the Ukraine impeachment investigation. They were charged in October with federal campaign finance violations, including hiding the origin of a $325,000 donation to a group supporting Trump’s reelection.