(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
It was a wild weekend at the Justice Department, so let’s see if we have this straight, shall we?
Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was such a great guy that the Bill Barr offered him multiple jobs at Main Justice, including head of the Civil Division now that Jody Hunt is leaving. But for whatever reason, Berman thought it was more important for him to stay at SDNY, so he turned Bill Barr down.
But Barr’s good buddy Jay Clayton, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer who heads the SEC and has virtually zero criminal experience, has been saying that he wants to go back to New York, and, now that you mention it, he might like to run one of the biggest prosecutorial offices in the country. Just for funsies, yaknow?
So Bill Barr, who lacks any authority to hire or fire U.S. Attorneys, announced on Friday night that Berman was stepping down and Clayton would be nominated for the job. This despite the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee still honors blue slips from home state senators for U.S. Attorney appointments, meaning that Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand would both have to sign off on Clayton before he could get a vote. Which should happen about the same time that hell freezes over.
But in the meantime, Berman, who was competent to run the Civil Division, needed to GTFO of SDNY immediately because, uhhh, reasons. So Barr planned to move Craig Carpenito, a Chris Christie ally and the current U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, into the top job at SDNY until Clayton’s confirmation. Which is scheduled for the fifth of never.
And none of this had anything to do with the multiple pending SDNY investigations into Rudy Giuliani, Deutsche Bank, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, or Halkbank — that’s the investigation Trump promised the Turkish president he’d disappear, according to John Bolton’s book.
“Trump then told Erdoğan he would take care of things, explaining that the southern district prosecutors were not his people but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton wrote.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight. This all sounds completely above board.
Pretty weird that Berman responded to Barr’s announcement by tweeting that he had not, in fact, resigned and would be staying in the job until the Senate confirmed his replacement.
At which point, AdminLaw Twitter went wild, since Berman’s name was never submitted to the Judiciary Committee in the first place — probably because of the blue slip issue — and he was permanently installed by the District’s judges when his 120-day temporary appointment was about to expire. Did that mean that only the judges could replace him? A bunch of lawyers who haven’t left the house in months spent the night discussing it, which is what passes for fun in the age of covid.
In the end, Barr blinked. But he did it in his usual sanctimoniously aggressive fashion, writing, “Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service. 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.”
Because the honorable thing would have been to acquiesce to Bill Barr’s public lie and allow him to circumvent the nomination process, we guess? What a credit to the profession is our Attorney General!
Presumably, Trump did sign a letter officially firing Berman some time before taking the stage in Tulsa on Saturday for his amazing comeback rally (AHEM). Although, as usual, President Bigly Brain failed to stick the landing.
But buried in the bluster of Barr’s letter was a major concession.
“By operation of law, the Deputy United States Attorney, Audrey Strauss, will become the acting United States Attorney,” he wrote, “and I anticipate that she will serve in that capacity until a permanent successor is in place.”
So, Carpenito won’t be coming in to do, or not do, whatever it is that Barr had planned for SDNY. The AG had already managed to get control of the DC office by pushing out Jessie Liu, the former US Attorney for DC, and replacing her with his good buddy Timothy Shea. After which, the sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone was withdrawn and the Department dismissed the case against Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Which is probably not a coincidence.
But it ain’t happening in the Sovereign District of New York, thanks to lifelong Republican Geoffrey Berman, who announced Saturday night that he accepted the firing and had confidence in Strauss, a career SDNY prosecutor who spent the past thirty years in the office.
Once again, democracy is saved by one person standing up and refusing to budge. Well, that and the Trump administration’s ability to screw up a two car funeral procession. Thank goodness for incompetence!
Geoffrey Berman is leaving office immediately after standoff with Trump administration [CNN]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.