Won't be cowed....

Fiercely independent New York prosecutors won't be cowed by Barr and Trump

Opinion by Jennifer Rodgers and Elie Honig

Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump have messed with the wrong prosecutors. The attempt to decapitate the Southern District of New York by removing US Attorney Geoffrey Berman is nothing less than a political assault on a fiercely independent office that poses a genuine threat to powerful interests arrayed around the President.

Barr has, once again, injected partisan politics into the Justice Department to protect Trump. But they won't succeed. We are betting that the SDNY and its work will overcome and outlast the machinations of Barr and the Trump administration.

Barr's late Friday night announcement that Berman would be "stepping down" backfired in spectacular fashion. Berman immediately called out Barr's mendacity, stating plainly: "I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning."

It's bad enough that Barr tried to bury this news by announcing it late on a Friday night; it's even worse that he left himself open to immediate exposure for flatly lying to the public. (That Barr might fudge the truth is, sadly, nothing new. Just a few hours before Barr's announcement, a Republican-appointed federal judge — who had previously called out Barr's "lack of candor" as part of a "calculated attempt" to protect Trump — released newly unredacted portions of the Mueller report that show Trump might have lied to Mueller during the investigation.)

The motivation behind Barr's aggressive move seems clear: As with this administration's other Friday night massacres, the goal was to scuttle investigations into the President and his close associates for their allegedly illegal and otherwise improper conduct. Berman reportedly was offered another position at the Justice Department outside of SDNY, so he cannot have been fired "for cause."

And Barr took the nearly unprecedented and nonsensical step of announcing the appointment of a different district's US Attorney to step in and run not just his own office but also the SDNY as acting US Attorney until a successor to Berman is confirmed by the Senate, instead of allowing the SDNY deputy US Attorney — Audrey Strauss, an impeccably credentialed, highly capable, and very experienced prosecutor — to do so.

Barr responded in a letter on Saturday, writing that Berman's statement "wrongly" implied that his continued tenure was necessary to ensure that pending SDNY cases were handled appropriately. "This is obviously false," wrote Barr. "I fully expect that the office will continue to handle all cases in the normal course and pursuant to the Department's applicable standards, policies, and guidance. Going forward, if any actions or decisions are taken that office supervisors conclude are improper interference with a case, that information should be provided immediately to Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice's Inspector General, whom I am authorizing to review any such claim."

Indeed, even under the Trump administration, with Barr politicizing the Justice Department as never before, SDNY has managed to conduct major investigations of potential crimes committed by Trump and other powerful, well-connected people around him. For example:

• SDNY has indicted two close associates of Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, for fraud and campaign finance violations. The office is reportedly investigating Giuliani for potential violations of laws requiring registration of foreign agents surrounding his work with Parnas and Fruman — who have pleaded not guilty — to dig up dirt on Trump's political opponents in Ukraine. (Giuliani has denied encouraging Ukraine to become involved in the 2020 election.)
• SDNY prosecuted and convicted Michael Cohen (Berman recused himself from the case) for campaign finance violations relating to payment of hush money to two women who allegedly had affairs with Trump. (Trump has denied the affairs). While prosecutors stated that they had completed at least some portions of this investigation, the statute of limitations extends to the fall of 2021, leaving time for Trump to be charged if he leaves office in January of next year. Trump through his lawyers has denied any campaign finance violation.
• SDNY charged Jeffrey Epstein with federal sex trafficking offenses after he received a ridiculously lenient plea deal for a subset of that conduct from former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, and the investigation into co-conspirators of Epstein in that case continues. Moreover, Epstein's suicide, which took place at a federal prison in Manhattan while Epstein was awaiting trial, has spurred its own investigation by SDNY into the conduct of prison officials in connection with Epstein's death.
• SDNY brought a money laundering case against the Turkish government-run financial institution Halkbank for fraud and money laundering despite Trump's attempts through Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to thwart that prosecution. Halkbank has pleaded not guilty to the charges. It is not clear whether any investigation into improper influence is underway, but SDNY would be the likely place for such an investigation. The Justice Department has denied reports that Barr admitted undue influence to John Bolton, and Mnuchin has declined to comment.
• SDNY is reportedly handling part of an investigation into Deutsche Bank, an institution with a long history of ties to Trump, for violations of anti-money laundering regulations related to suspicious transactions tied to Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Both Kushner and Deutsche Bank have disputed the allegations.

By Saturday afternoon, another version of events from Trumpworld: Barr's missive purported to fire Berman on Trump's orders, but conceded that the acting US Attorney will now be Audrey Strauss, and not an outsider. Trump promptly mangled the message and raised new questions when he claimed he was "not involved" in the firing — contrary to Barr's own letter. These two need to get their story straight.

No matter what happens at the top of the SDNY, its cases will not go away. If we know the SDNY — and after a combined 21-plus years there we think we do — our former colleagues will be incredibly busy trying to safeguard their work and ensure that any attempted political sidetracking will not succeed. This may be one unintended consequence of the Berman firing: to actually increase the pace of investigations — and possibly criminal charges — the administration doesn't want to be happening in the first place.

The SDNY has been around since 1789. It has survived for centuries. It will survive the Trump administration, and many more after it. And the SDNY will ensure that those who do wrong are held accountable — without fear, favor, or politics.