Tag: Barr doing Trump’s bidding

Barr to testify in House oversight hearing next month

The Hill logoAttorney General William Barr will testify before the House Judiciary Committee next month as Democrats on the panel seek to investigate his decision to fire a top prosecutor in Manhattan.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec confirmed on Twitter that the president’s top law enforcement official will participate in a general oversight hearing in late July.

“The Attorney General has accepted an invitation to appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a general oversight hearing on July 28th,” Kupec tweeted. Continue reading.

Stone received ‘favorable treatment’ because of relationship with Trump, former prosecutor will testify

The Hill logoA former prosecutor who worked on the Roger Stone case is expected to testify Wednesday that top officials at the Justice Department (DOJ) intervened on behalf of President Trump to help his longtime friend receive a lighter sentence.

Aaron Zelinsky, who is slated to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, will allege that Stone received more favorable treatment as a result of his relationship with the president.

“What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” Zelinsky wrote in an opening statement released by the panel in advance of the hearing. Continue reading.

The Memo: Storm brewing after chaotic Berman firing

The Hill logoShock over the Trump administration’s firing of a top government prosecutor is reverberating across the political world, but not even the president’s foes are confident he will face consequences.

Legal experts — especially those critical of what they see as President Trump’s erosion of the independence of the justice system — are appalled at the firing of Geoffrey Berman in contentious circumstances.

Berman was spearheading a number of investigations that touched on the president and his circle in his role as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Continue reading.

Nadler to subpoena AG Barr over Berman firing

The Hill logoHouse Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) confirmed Monday night he plans to issue a subpoena to compel Attorney General Bill Barr to testify before Congress on July 2.

“We have begun the process to issue that subpoena. It is very much true. We are doing that,” Nadler said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.” 

Democratic Judiciary staffers also held a conference call Monday and discussed the subpoena, said a source on the call. But Democrats said they expect Barr to ignore the subpoena. Continue reading.

For Barr, Standoff With Prosecutor Adds to String of Miscues

New York Times logoThe attorney general has found himself at odds with the White House on high-profile issues in recent weeks.

WASHINGTON — From the onset of his tenure, William P. Barr has been billed as the attorney general that President Trump was looking for. And Mr. Barr has taken some pride in this role, telling Fox News this past weekend that he speaks with the president “very regularly.”

But for a man who projects unswerving confidence in his political and legal skills, his efforts this month to play presidential intimate have backfired, embarrassing both him and his boss.

The month has brought a string of unusually high-profile miscues for the attorney general. He has been at odds with the White House at critical moments, showing how even top administration officials known for their loyalty can fall out of sync with a president laser-focused on his own political popularity. Continue reading.

James Comey: Geoffrey Berman upheld the finest tradition of the SDNY office

Washington Post logoIn 1906, reform-minded President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to change the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. That office, which in its original form opened in 1789, was older than the Department of Justice itself. The court in which the office’s prosecutors worked was known as the “Mother Court,” because it began operating weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Southern District of New York had been around since the founding of the country, and Roosevelt didn’t like what it had become — a place of political patronage, uninterested in troubling the powerful.

Roosevelt changed that with a single appointment, of Henry L. Stimson, a young, Harvard-educated Wall Street lawyer, who would go on to serve as secretary of state and secretary of war for four presidents of both parties, including a brand-new chief executive, Harry Truman, who needed to know about the atomic bomb. (“I think it is very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter,” Stimson wrote his new boss.)

As the new U.S. attorney, Stimson immediately fired people. They were all hacks, in his estimation, careerist or corrupt or both. He replaced them with recent graduates from top law schools, whom he wanted only for a few years, after which they would go work for fancy law firms and be replaced by other idealistic and talented young lawyers. Continue reading.

Barr says US attorney who refused to resign is now fired — but this is all far from over

AlterNet logoOn Friday night, Attorney General William Barr issued a statement saying that the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffry Berman, had resigned. That was a lie. Not only had Berman not resigned, he had told Barr repeatedly that he would not resign, and had turned down other roles at the Department of Justice. So, about an hour after Barr’s statement, Berman issued a statement of his own, telling Barr to stuff it. Actually, Berman stated that he had been “appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York” and that he would only step down “when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate.” Berman is in the middle of a number of highly sensitive investigations, including an ongoing investigation of Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associates in Trump’s Ukraine scandal. So his removal clearly signals that Barr is, once again, placing Trump’s desires far ahead of such arcane ideas as justice, or the nation.

On Saturday afternoon, Barr produced a new statement. He’s given up the pretense that Berman has resigned. Instead Barr says, “I have asked the president to remove you as of today, and he has done so.” According to Barr, this makes assistant U. S. Attorney Audrey Strauss the new acting U. S. Attorney, but considering Barr’s knowledge and application of the law, odds are he’s simply lying again. Hilariously, Barr claims there’s no danger of there being an issue with ongoing cases because … the inspector general will see to that. As everyone knows, Trump and Barr just respect the hell out of inspectors general.

Trump ousts Manhattan U.S. attorney who investigated president’s associates

Washington Post logoAttorney General William P. Barr said Saturday that President Trump had fired the top federal prosecutor in New York, ending an unprecedented standoff between Barr and U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who had resisted being removed from his post.

Barr informed Berman of the president’s move in a sharply worded letter, explaining that Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, will serve as the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan until the Senate can confirm a permanent replacement. Under Berman, the office managed a number of sensitive investigations involving people close to Trump, including his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Barr wrote that he had hoped for Berman’s “cooperation to facilitate a smooth transition” in the office as Trump nominates the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, to take over the job. Instead, the attorney general wrote, Berman had chosen “public spectacle.” Continue reading.

Nadler: House Judiciary Committee will open investigation into Berman firing

The Hill logoHouse Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) announced Saturday that the committee will immediately open an investigation into the Trump administration’s decision to fire Manhattan U.S. attorney Geoff Berman. 

“The House Judiciary Committee will immediately open an investigation into this incident, as part of our broader investigation into Barr’s unacceptable politicization of the Department of Justice,” Nadler said in a statement.

“On Wednesday, the Committee will hear from two whistleblowers who will explain why Barr’s attempt to fire Mr. Berman is part of a larger, ongoing, and wholly unacceptable pattern of conduct. If the President removes Mr. Berman, then we will take additional steps to secure his testimony as well.” Continue reading.

Barr Says There Is No Systemic Racism in Policing

New York Times logoThe attorney general’s remarks, which mirrored those of other administration officials, came as the president was scheduled to meet with law enforcement officials at the White House

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr said on Sunday that he did not believe racism was a systemic problem in policing, echoing other top administration officials’ defense of an important part of President Trump’s base as protests against police killings of unarmed black people continued across the nation.

“I don’t think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist,” Mr. Barr said in an interview with the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “I think we have to recognize that for most of our history, our institutions were explicitly racist.”

Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made similar remarks on Sunday in an interview with “This Week” on ABC, saying that “systemic racism” was not an issue for law enforcement.