In trying to fire Manhattan's court-appointed US attorney (Geoff Berman) — is AG Bill Barr furthering Il Duce Trump's suspected corruption?

20 June 2020

More partisan folk than I, spotted Attorney General William Barr . . .

. . . as President Trump's tummy-rubbed lapdog long ago.

Arguably slow to reach an assessment, I only lost legal patience with Barr, when he ordered the un-Constitutional clearing of Lafayette Square at the beginning of June.

That astonishing violation of the AG's oath to uphold the Constitution, coming so as to facilitate President Trump's equally un-Constitutional overhead Bible-waving.

Yesterday . . .

. . . Barr arguably completed his transition from once-lawyer to metaphorically floaty gutter turd.

The following showed up in the US Justice Department's news publication:

Attorney General William P. Barr has released the following statement:

“I am pleased to announce that President Trump intends to nominate Jay Clayton, currently the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to serve as the next United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York . . . .

"I thank Geoffrey Berman, who is stepping down after two-and-a-half years of service as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

"With tenacity and savvy, Geoff has done an excellent job leading one of our nation’s most significant U.S. Attorney’s Offices, achieving many successes on consequential civil and criminal matters. I appreciate his service to the Department of Justice and our nation, and I wish him well in the future.”

Laughably . . .

. . . Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman had not (he implied) been told of his termination:

“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said in a statement, adding that he had learned that he was “stepping down” from a Justice Department news release.

The president and attorney general can typically dismiss United States attorneys, but Mr. Berman was not ultimately appointed by the Trump administration — he was named by a panel of federal judges.

The New York Times analyzed what had happened this way:

Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign, but he refused, so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr.

Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said.

Mr. Trump has been upset with Mr. Berman ever since the Manhattan prosecutor’s office pursued a case against Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Berman’s office has taken an aggressive approach in a number of cases that have vexed the Trump administration, from the prosecution and guilty plea obtained from Mr. Cohen to a broader investigation, growing out of that inquiry, which focused on Mr. Trump’s private company and others close to him.

Over the last year, Mr. Berman’s office brought indictments against two close associates of the president’s current lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and began an investigation into Mr. Giuliani himself, focusing on whether his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on the president’s political rivals violated laws on lobbying for foreign entities.

Mr. Berman’s office also conducted an investigation into Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, subpoenaing financial and other records as part of a broad inquiry into possible illegal contributions from foreigners.

We can infer (from all this) that our American Il Duce does not want . . .

. . . any more of his coterie's alleged illegalities surfacing, just before November 2020's US presidential election.

We can further surmise that Attorney General Barr is:

not bothered at all by

overtly generating the reasonable inference

that

he is energetically trying to interfere

with an in-progress

and

inferably legally defensible

(given Berman's preceding success with imprisoning Michael Cohen)

investigation

into allegedly more Trump-associated illegality —

presumably this time

in the form of Rudy Giuliani

or something equally juicy.

Tasty, no?

Il Duce Trump and his gravitas-simulating Law Poodle strut destructively boldly across America's legal landscape.

The moral? — William Barr, close friend to Toddling Donny's effulgently full and diapered behind

I see why so many former Department of Justice lawyers hold our brown-nosing Attorney General in profession-based disrespect.

PeteFree.com

In trying to fire Manhattan's court-appointed US attorney (Geoff Berman) — is AG Bill Barr furthering Il Duce Trump's suspected corruption?