For Now, Donald Trump and William Barr Are Losing Their Way

[Boats]

For Now, Donald Trump and William Barr Are Losing Their Way
By: David Rohde - The New Yorker News - 06-23-20
Re: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily...term=TNY_Daily

It seems that on Friday night, William Barr seemed to embrace obstruction of justice as a way of life in his ongoing defense of Donald Trump. It didn’t go well. In an apparent attempt to protect President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani from criminal prosecution, Barr issued a false statement that the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, had agreed to step down. “With tenacity and savvy, Geoff has done an excellent job leading one of our nation’s most significant U.S. Attorney’s Offices,” Barr said, in a press release issued at 9:15 p.m. “I appreciate his service to the Department of Justice and our nation, and I wish him well in the future.” Barr added that Jay Clayton, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a golf buddy of Trump’s, would replace Berman in the powerful post.

In a startling act of defiance, Berman called out Barr’s lie: at 11:14 p.m., he issued his own statement, declaring, “I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position.” (A Justice Department official said that phrases such as “stepping down” are used as a courtesy when officials are removed from their posts.) The federal prosecutor then made a remarkable—and historic—plea for the other two branches of government to confront and restrain an out-of-control President. And, in this case, his out-of-control Attorney General, too. “I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,” Berman wrote. “I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate. Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption.”

The duelling announcements captured the confusing combination of brazen corruption and sheer incompetence that has become a hallmark of the Trump Administration. Barr, surely at Trump’s behest, was attempting to remove a federal prosecutor who has carried out a series of politically embarrassing investigations of Trump allies. The attempted Friday-night firing confirmed allegations in a new book by the former national-security adviser John Bolton—which Trump and Barr unsuccessfully tried to suppress—that the President has repeatedly interfered in criminal investigations into friends, political allies, and, most of all, himself.

A Justice Department official who asked not to be named denied Bolton’s allegations and said that the extent of Southern District investigations that involve Trump associates is being exaggerated. The official added that Clayton is well liked in the Administration and that Barr’s actions are being cast in an unfairly conspiratorial way. “He was planning on leaving the Administration, and he expressed interest in the position,” the official said, referring to Clayton. “The Attorney General thought he would be a good fit to lead the office.”

Berman’s mention of having been appointed by federal judges was a reference to the Trump White House’s handling of his appointment in the first place. Normally, a newly elected President nominates federal prosecutors to serve in posts across the United States, and they are then confirmed by the Senate. Trump interviewed and nominated Berman, who is a Republican, in 2017, but the Administration never formally submitted his nomination to the Senate, fearing that Democrats would block it. After a hundred and twenty days, U.S. federal judges nominated him. But the Administration, for its purposes, appears not to have properly vetted Berman—who, because his jurisdiction includes Manhattan, would inevitably oversee cases involving Trump associates. From the start, Berman signalled his refusal to protect Trump politically; in other words, he would take proper action as a federal prosecutor.

Berman had donated to Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he recused himself from the Southern District’s investigation of Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael D. Cohen. In a case that consumed the headlines for months and infuriated Trump, federal prosecutors in Berman’s office brokered a plea deal with Cohen, in which he confessed to having violated campaign-finance laws by facilitating hush-money payments to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and the model Karen McDougal. Cohen stated under oath that Trump ordered him to make the payments. Trump enjoys immunity from prosecution for as long as he is President, but he was reportedly irate with Berman for not making the politically embarrassing case go away. In 2019, prosecutors working in Berman’s office indicted two Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, alleging that they had made illegal campaign contributions to a U.S. congressman and others. (Parnas and Fruman’s trial is scheduled for next year; both have pleaded not guilty.) Berman’s office is now reportedly investigating Giuliani for potential violations of foreign-lobbying disclosure requirements. (Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged.)

More than a thousand former Justice Department officials have demanded Barr’s resignation, citing his repeated interventions in Trump-related probes, in ways that appeared to aid the President politically. The Attorney General’s likely rationale is his decades-long belief in an extreme interpretation of Presidential power, which gives Trump control of all executive-branch agencies, without restriction. In Barr’s view, this means that Trump would be within his rights to oversee an investigation into his own misconduct. Legal experts have called the interpretation bizarre and dangerous.

In a sign of how quickly Trump and Barr’s political standing is shifting, one of Trump’s most fawning backers in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, indicated on Saturday that he would not support the nomination of Clayton, who has no experience as a prosecutor. Graham is locked in a tight reëlection race with Jaime Harrison, the Democratic challenger, in South Carolina. After other Senate Republicans declined to support Clayton, Barr agreed to appoint Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, as an interim U.S. Attorney, following standard practice. Former federal prosecutors in New York said that Strauss, like Berman, would defy pressure to quash politically embarrassing investigations. “None of the office’s work will be compromised,” Samidh Guha, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the office, told the Washington Post.

Support for Barr among career Justice Department officials appears to be eroding, the Times reported. Since Barr took office, nineteen months ago, he has carried out some of the Administration’s most controversial legal actions, from reducing the sentence requested for Roger Stone to attempting to withdraw charges against Michael Flynn to the so-far-failed effort to block the publication of Bolton’s book. In the past several weeks, three senior department officials have announced their departures: Brian Benczkowski, the head of the criminal division; Noel Francisco, the solicitor general; and Jody Hunt, a career official who runs the civil division.

The Justice Department official whom I spoke with denied any morale problems. The official added that Barr is adhering to legal views that he has held for decades; that the evidence against Flynn, despite his guilty pleas, was thin and the sentence against Stone excessive. Barr is “just doing what is right—he’s going back and fixing things that shouldn’t have happened,” the official said. “And that’s what he’s done consistently.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s handling of the pandemic, the concurrent recession, and the nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd have, for now, driven his poll numbers down. Bolton, the former Defense Secretary James Mattis, and other former senior Administration officials have publicly declared Trump a danger to American democracy. Barr, for his part, continues to double down on enabling and defending Trump. Last Monday, Barr dismissed Bolton’s claim that the President intervenes in criminal cases to aid autocrats and allies. Five days later, Barr tried to remove Berman. On Sunday, Barr again defended Trump, in a Fox News interview, warned of mob rule, and said that mail-in voting “opens the floodgates to fraud.” On Monday morning, Trump tweeted a link to Barr’s interview and then exaggerated his claim, falsely stating that foreign governments are printing millions of fake mail-in ballots, and that the November vote is already “FIXED.”

The Justice Department official told me that the Attorney General is defending the Presidency, not merely this particular President, and that Barr is taking the actions because he feels they are right, not because of pressure from Trump. The official added that Barr has no regrets and intends to serve through the November election, noting that “Bill Barr is his own man. He would not say something that he doesn’t believe.” Who finds Bill Barr convincing? Increasingly, not the judges, not the prosecutors, and not, if one believes the polls, the American public.

About this writer:
David Rohde is an executive editor of newyorker.com. He is the author of, most recently, “In Deep: The F.B.I., the C.I.A., and the Truth about America’s ‘Deep State.’”