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Trump DOJ corruption -- There Used to Be Justice. Now We Have Bill Barr.

"Did Bill Barr ‘corrupt’ the Justice Department?"

The attorney general’s intervention in prosecutions of Mr. Trump’s allies is a new low.

May 13, 2020


Attorney General William Barr. Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner

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Ms. Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Posner is a professor of law at the University of Chicago.
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This week, more than 2,000 former officials of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. called on Attorney General William Barr to resign for dropping the prosecution of Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. when he was President Trump’s national security adviser.

“Subsequent events strongly suggest political interference in Flynn’s prosecution,” the former officials said in an open letter published online. They condemned Mr. Barr for having “once again assaulted the rule of law,” in light of his earlier decision to overrule career prosecutors and seek a lighter sentence than what they had recommended for another Trump associate, Roger Stone.

It’s easy to grow numb to the abuses of the Trump era. But Mr. Barr’s intervention in the Flynn and Stone cases is a deviation even from the standards at the outset of Mr. Trump’s presidency. The corrosion at the Justice Department from the beginning to the homestretch of Mr. Trump’s first term illustrates a long-term problem of maintaining the independence of a department with unrivaled powers of investigation and prosecution.

More troubling, as recent history has shown, there are no easy ways to rein in an attorney general whose loyalty to a president stands ahead of his fidelity to the rule of law.

Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trump’s first attorney general, followed the advice of career professionals at the Justice Department by recusing himself from the F.B.I.’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in 2016. He did so because of his own meetings with Russia’s ambassador while he was advising the campaign. Mr. Sessions’s recusal opened the door for his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, to appoint the special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian campaign interference after Mr. Trump fired James Comey, the F.B.I. director. By doing so, Mr. Rosenstein allowed a federal investigation into the campaign of a sitting president to proceed. While Mr. Trump repeatedly inveighed against the Mueller investigation, its work continued, upholding a crucial norm of Justice Department independence, however uneasily.

Then Mr. Barr became attorney general. Establishment figures in Washington hoped he would check Mr. Trump, given his deep experience in the Justice Department, including two years as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. Instead, Mr. Barr muffled the impact of the special counsel’s final report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign by suggesting that it absolved Mr. Trump when it did not. A federal judge later called .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/politics/mueller-report-barr-judge-walton.html .. Mr. Barr’s comments “misleading” and said “his lack of candor” about the report called into question his “credibility.”

Mr. Barr also opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, despite the conclusion .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/barr-durham-ig-report-russia-investigation.html .. of his department’s inspector general that the F.B.I. had adequate reason to proceed. His department declined to investigate the whistle-blower complaint about the president’s phone call last July with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. That decision led dozens of government inspectors general to warn that the Justice Department “could seriously undermine the critical role whistle blowers play.” Then came Mr. Barr’s interference in the long-running Stone and Flynn prosecutions, both times fulfilling Mr. Trump’s stated desires and serving his political interests.

The attorney general, whom the president hires and can fire, is supposed to advise the president and advance his or her policies. But he is also obligated to enforce the law impartially and not to use it to shield the president’s allies or punish his enemies.

After its inception in 1870, the Justice Department cycled between periods of cronyism and professionalism. The problem of cronyism was on full display in Watergate. President Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, was jailed for his role in the scandal. Hoping to clean up the department, President Gerald Ford appointed Edward Levi, the president of the University of Chicago, who was widely regarded for his integrity. Mr. Levi boosted morale and professionalism at the Justice Department and reined in the F.B.I., whose abuses had badly tarnished the reputation of that agency.

But there was no guarantee that attorneys general who followed Mr. Levi would uphold his standards. So in 1978, Congress passed a law that created an independent counsel, whom the attorney general could authorize to investigate top executive-branch officials for wrongdoing. Because the counsel was chosen by a three-judge panel and could be removed only for cause, the counsel operated beyond the influence of the president and the attorney general. The law addressed the competing loyalties inherent in the job of attorney general by walling him or her off from certain investigations.

But Congress let the law expire in 1999 as both parties tired of independent counsels they saw as abusing their powers. Without this external watchdog, the stage was set again for conflict between politics and the rule of law. John Ashcroft, George W. Bush’s first attorney general, resisted some of the Bush administration’s claims to broad executive power in the wake of Sept. 11. But Mr. Ashcroft’s successor, Alberto Gonzales, was a longtime Bush crony who resigned after repeated battles with Congress raised questions about whether his responsibilities to the law took a back seat to his loyalty to Mr. Bush.

President Barack Obama appointed an ally with his own professional reputation, Eric Holder, as his first attorney general, and a career prosecutor, Loretta Lynch, as his second. Ms. Lynch found herself mired in controversy for talking to former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac while his wife was under investigation for mishandling classified information. Ms. Lynch’s breach seems minor now but led her to defer the decision ..https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/us/politics/loretta-lynch-hillary-clinton-email-server.html .. whether to prosecute Hillary Clinton to the F.B.I. and her aides. The norm of independence held.

Now we have Mr. Barr. The next president could reassert that standard by appointing someone in the mold of Edward Levi. But history suggests that too often presidents prefer an attorney general whom they can control.

Will Congress be able to step in? Not fully, it seems.

Democrats in the House investigated Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine when Mr. Barr’s Justice Department declined to do so, but they didn’t have a clear path for compelling witnesses to testify, as a prosecutor would. And if the attorney general is willing to drop charges against an executive-branch official like Mr. Flynn, who lied to the F.B.I., then what’s to stop him from refusing to prosecute officials who lie to Congress? This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases about whether Congress can subpoena the president’s tax returns. The back-and-forth hinted that the court could erect new barriers for Congress when it seeks to keep the executive in check.

This suggests that Congress erred by allowing the independent counsel statute to expire. The potential that political considerations could warp decisions by the president and attorney general require this extra check on the executive branch. The best way to stop the downward spiral of the Justice Department is to protect it from its own boss.

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School. Eric Posner is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the author of the forthcoming “The Demagogues’ Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy From the Founders to Trump.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/opinion/barr-trump-rule-of-law.html

**

Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in book

In memoir, Geoffrey Berman recounts clashes before a botched firing he insists was politically motivated

Martin Pengelly in New York
Thu 8 Sep 2022 02.00 EDT


Geoffrey Berman arrives at his office in New York on Saturday 20 June 2020 – the day he was fired by Donald Trump. Photograph: Kevin Hagen/AP

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Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, is stupid, a liar, a bully and a thug, according to a hard-hitting new book by Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York whose firing Barr engineered in hugely controversial fashion in summer 2020.
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“Several hours after Barr and I met,” Berman writes, “on a Friday night, [Barr] issued a press release saying that I was stepping down. That was a lie.

“A lie told by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.”

Trump’s politicisation of the US Department of Justice was a hot-button issue throughout his presidency. It remains so as he claims persecution under Barr’s successor, Merrick Garland, regarding the mishandling of classified information, the Capitol attack and multiple other investigations.

Berman describes his own ordeal, as Barr sought a more politically pliant occupant of the hugely powerful New York post, in Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, a memoir to be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Berman testified in Congress .. https://judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3124 .. shortly after his dismissal. He now writes: “No one from SDNY with knowledge of [his clashes with Barr over two and a half years] has been interviewed or written about them. Until now, there has not been a firsthand account.”

Berman describes clashes on issues including the prosecution of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, and the Halkbank investigation, concerning Turkish bankers and government officials helping Tehran circumvent the Iran nuclear deal.

Barr was also attorney general under George HW Bush. He has published his own book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, in which he discusses SDNY affairs but does not mention Berman. Promoting the book, Barr told NBC he “didn’t really think that much about” his former adversary.

Berman calls that “an easily disprovable lie”.

In Berman’s book, Barr is a constant presence. Describing the Halkbank case, Berman says Trump’s closeness to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, meant Barr was, “always eager to please his boss, appeared to be doing Trump’s bidding” by leaning on Berman to drop charges.

Berman says Barr told him he, Barr, would be “point person” for the administration on Halkbank, which Berman found “odd”.

“This is a criminal case being run out of New York .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/new-york , right? As attorney general, Barr had a role to play. But why as White House-designated point person? That was problematic.”

Berman says Barr tried to block the SDNY to benefit Trump politically. In June 2019, he says, he was summoned to a meeting where Barr told him the Halkbank case “implicates foreign policy” and, “his voice … steadily rising”, asked: “Who do you think you are to interfere?”

He writes: “I’ve seen bullies work before. In fact he had used the same words with me a little more than a year before” over the appointment of Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, without Barr’s approval.

Berman adds: “I would describe Barr’s posture that morning as thuggish. He wanted to bludgeon me into submission.”

Berman turned Barr down. He also says he told Barr a proposal to offer individuals in the Halkbank case a non-prosecution agreement without disclosing the move would be “a fraud on the court”.

The Halkbank issue eventually dropped away, after Trump and Erdogan fell out over the US withdrawal from Syria. But Barr and Berman’s enmity remained.

Berman also gives his version of events in June 2020, when Barr summoned him to a meeting at the Pierre hotel in New York City.
Attorney General William Barr testifies before the House judiciary committee, in July.

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Berman first delivers a sharp aside about Barr’s ostentatious travel, his apparent ambitions – Berman speculates that the attorney general wanted to be secretary of state in Trump’s second term – and an infamous, secretive meeting .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/22/william-barr-rupert-murdoch-muzzle-andrew-napolitano-fox-news-trump-critic-book .. between Barr and Rupert Murdoch that Berman calls “a scene right out of HBO’s Succession”.

Berman says he did not know why Barr wanted to meet him, but thought it might be because he had refused to sign a letter attacking Bill de Blasio, then mayor of New York, over the application of Covid restrictions to religious services and protests for racial justice. Berman did not sign, he writes, because he could not be seen to act politically.

At the Pierre, he says, Barr, who with his chief of staff was not wearing a mask indoors, said he wanted to “make a change in the southern district”. Berman says he knew what would come next, given changes elsewhere to instal Barr allies and moves to influence investigations of Trump aides including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.

“The reason Barr wanted me to resign immediately was so I could be replaced with an outsider he trusted,” Berman writes, adding that he was not sure he could be removed other than by the judges who appointed him to fill the office on an interim basis in 2018, or by Senate confirmation of a successor.

Berman turned down Barr’s offer. He says Barr then made an “especially tawdry” suggestion: that if Berman moved to run the DoJ civil division, “I could leverage it to make more money after I left government”. Berman says Barr also asked if he had civil litigation experience, a question Berman deems “almost comical”. Then Barr threatened to fire him.

Berman “thought to myself, what a gross and colossal bully this guy is to threaten my livelihood”. He did not budge. Barr said he would think of other jobs. After the meeting, Berman writes, Barr asked if he would like to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berman says that job “was not [Barr’s] to offer”, as the SEC chair is nominated by the president and Senate confirmed.

Berman says he agreed to talk to Barr again after the weekend. Instead, that night Barr issued a press release saying Berman had agreed to resign.

“It was a lie, plain and simple,” Berman writes. “I clearly told him I was not stepping down. Barr [was] the attorney general … in addition to being honest, he should be smart. And this was really stupid on his part – a complete miscalculation … he should have known at this point that I was not going to go quietly.”

William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignored
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/03/william-barr-attorney-general-trump-book

In a press release of his own, Berman said he had not resigned. The next day he showed up for work, greeted by a swarm of reporters. Then, in a public letter Berman now calls “an idiotic diatribe”, Barr said Berman had been fired by Trump.

Barr did drop a plan to replace Berman with an acting US attorney, instead allowing Berman’s deputy, Strauss, to succeed him. Berman says that enabled him to step aside in good conscience. He calls Barr’s move a “surrender”.

Berman describes both his belief he was fired because his independence represented “a threat to Trump’s re-election” and Trump’s insistence to reporters on the day of the firing that he had not fired Berman – Barr had.

“Barr’s attempt to push me out,” he writes, “was so bungled that he and Trump couldn’t even get their stories straight.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/07/donald-trump-william-barr-geoffrey-berman-southern-district-new-york-book