USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Why was prosecutor fired? Public deserves to know
It would be tempting to look at last weekend’s firing of Geoffrey Berman, the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as farce.
The episode was, after all, typical of this administration: full of miscues and people contradicting each other.
In the beginning, Attorney General William Barr announced late on a Friday night, when government officials typically do things they don’t want to call attention to, that Berman had resigned. In the middle, Berman said he had done no such thing. And in the end, President Donald Trump did not even achieve his goal. He forced out one respected prosecutor ( Berman) but ended up with another one ( deputy Audrey Strauss), at least for the time being.
But there is far too much tragedy in this story to dismiss it as farcical.
By way of background, the U. S attorney’s office in Manhattan is one of the most important and respected prosecutorial perches in America. For centuries it has taken on organized crime, espionage, terrorism and numerous forms of corporate fraud.
Bernie Madoff was prosecuted by Berman’s predecessors. And, in pop culture, the job was held by Paul Giamatti’s character in the hit show Billions. Chuck Rhoades is widely believed to be inspired by Berman’s predecessor, Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump in 2017.
As for Berman, he had been doing an outstanding job. His cases included, but were hardly limited to, ones that caused Trump grief. He sent Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, to jail and was looking into the dealings of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, himself a former U. S. attorney for the Southern District. Berman was also looking into whether a bank with ties to Turkey’s leader had violated Iran sanctions.
There is no reason any law- abiding president would want Berman out. There is no justification for any attorney general doing anything but supporting his prosecutor in New York and standing in the way of a president trying to get rid of him.
Why was Berman fired? In the week since the story erupted, Trump and Barr haven’t given an explanation, or even a plausible cover story. Nor can they get their stories straight. Soon after Barr said Trump had dismissed Berman, Trump said he wasn’t involved.
The American people deserve an explanation for the firing, and for Trump’s ongoing efforts to install Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the job.
That proposed move, which requires Senate confirmation, is troubling. While there is nothing particularly untoward about Clayton’s background as a corporate lawyer, two things stand out: He has no prior experience as a prosecutor, and he has a personal relationship with Trump, with whom he played golf earlier this month.
Putting him in Berman’s spot would send the unmistakable message that the office’s autonomy and integrity had been compromised. That was underscored on Thursday, when Clayton was testifying to a House committee and declined to say if he would recuse himself from Trump- related matters if he ultimately ended up in New York.
Barr says he will testify to Congress about the matter, but that is not scheduled to happen until late July, many news cycles from now. That is way too casual a timetable for accountability.
Trump has spent his presidency trying to bend law enforcement to his personal political interests. He began by firing the FBI director who was investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 election. More recently he has begun firing department inspectors general who dare to look into matters that could cause his administration embarrassment.
The Justice Department recently decided to drop charges against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had admitted lying to the FBI. And, according to career prosecutors, Trump officials meddled in the case of Roger Stone, hoping to get a lighter sentence for the longtime Trump backer.
Americans need assurances that law enforcement is being protected from political influence. Coming clean on Berman would be a first step.