I am so fucking tired of writing about Trump, but reading Professor Heather Cox Richardson this morning made me laugh, because it’s just becoming a TV comedy show: Trump’s the comedian, and Barr is his ludicrous little sidekick:
Trump tried to fire the US Attorney from the Southern District of New York [SDNY], Geoffrey S. Berman, who has managed a series of cases against Trump and his allies, including Trump fixer Michael Cohen, Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, and Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were indicted for funneling Russian money to Republican candidates for office. Berman is reported to be investigating Trump’s finances, among many other things.
It happened like this: Attorney General William Barr issued a statement announcing that Berman would be stepping down and that Trump would nominate Jay Clayton to replace him. Clayton has never been a prosecutor. He is currently the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but before he took that position he was a lawyer who, among other things, represented Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank is the only bank that would work with Trump after his bankruptcies. It might have given him loans he did not repay, and the Russian money-laundering that landed the bank in legal trouble might have helped Trump.
Legal analyst and Congressional staffer Daniel Goldman noted that this whole scenario was unusual. Normally, when a US Attorney leaves, that person’s deputy takes over. Bringing in a replacement from elsewhere meant that “Trump/Barr did not want anyone at SDNY running the office—likely because there was a serious disagreement.”
But then things got crazier. Berman issued his own statement, saying “I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘stepping down’ as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.” …
What’s Berman saying? Well, it might be that Trump’s preference for “acting,” rather than Senate-confirmed, officials has come back to bite him. Berman was not Senate-confirmed; he is an interim U.S. Attorney. By law, the Attorney General can appoint an interim U.S. Attorney for 120 days. At the end of that time, the court can appoint that person indefinitely.
And SDNY, as Richardson notes, is the location of a number of potentially critical Trump investigations. Is Berman, appointed by Trump, even a donor to Trump during his initial campaign, a member in spirit of The Lincoln Project now? The Trump Administration’s timeline is filled with scandal after scandal, any one of which would have brought down a President with professions of honor; only a man of Trump’s lowly caliber would persevere. But it appears that former National Security Advisor John Bolton also has an opinion:
… but former National Security Advisor John Bolton suggested another reason in his forthcoming book: he apparently claims Trump assured Turkey’s autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan he would fill the SDNY with his own loyalists, which would enable him to do Erdogan a political favor.
Fethullah Gülen
And who is out on the East Coast? Old Erdoğan hated rival Fethullah Gülen, here seen in a separate plot involving Trump and discredited former National Security Advisor and potential prison inhabitant Michael Flynn. I don’t know if SDNY would be responsible for deportation proceedings against Gülen, which is the desire, last I heard, of Turkey and Erdogan, but it makes a lot of sense – if you trust Bolton. I do not.
The question would then be: What’s the payback for Trump? Or does Erdoğan have blackmail material on Trump? There’s still some puzzle pieces missing, and half a paragraph later I’m still not trusting Bolton, but this is certainly a compelling story, from DA Berman’s defiance of AG Barr right down to another attempt on the liberty, and probably the life, of Gülen. I shall be looking forward to the eventual reveal when it comes to his scandal, along with whatever straight line is given Barr. If there’s a God, surely he hates Barr.
And, if indeed Gülen’s fate is where this is heading, the character of the United States takes yet another step down in the eyes of the world.
Means matter.
