Yet another case of holding the truth for a book deal later

During the Trump administration, Geoffrey Berman was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) until he was abruptly fired in June 2020. It was widely viewed as one of many examples of Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr trying to politicize the Justice Department.

Now, Berman has written a book giving his version of what happened behind the scenes.

  Vox

Everybody wants to tell on Trump when it's too late to matter.

As president, Trump often publicly and privately said he wanted prosecutors to lay off his allies and go after his perceived political enemies.

[...]

Trump’s demands for prosecutions were usually legally dubious if not utterly groundless, and even many of his own DOJ appointees were reluctant to pursue them.

[...]

Once [Berman] concluded no charges were merited, top Trump appointees working under the attorney general simply reassigned each case to another US Attorney’s office in the hope of a different outcome.

Of course, he was the good guy in a pit of vipers.

Back in May 2018, the Boston Globe reported that Kerry, who left public office at the end of the Obama administration, had recently engaged in “some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official” — specifically, he’d met Iran’s foreign minister to discuss Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which Trump was about to withdraw from.

Trump was furious about this report, tweeting on May 7 that this was “possibly illegal” for Kerry to do. Two days later, Berman claims that Justice Department officials assigned an investigation of Kerry to his US Attorney’s office.

[...]

After another Trump tweet on the matter in April 2019, Berman writes that Justice Department officials called members of his team and peppered them with questions about the Kerry investigation’s speed. A few months later, after Berman told DOJ higher-ups that he wouldn’t pursue charges in the matter, he was informed that they would send the case to a different US Attorney’s office, in Maryland (which did not end up pursuing charges either).

[...]

John Bolton wrote in his memoir that Trump was “obsessed” with it, mentioning it “in meeting after meeting in the Oval” to Barr “or anybody listening.” But it was not known that the Department had actually investigated Kerry, or reassigned the case to a separate office.

[...]

Despite Trump’s many efforts to bend the Justice Department to his whims, officials resisted many of his demands. None of his big targets — Clinton, Kerry, the Bidens, Comey, and McCabe — were prosecuted, and the Department largely did not assist him in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result.

But if Trump should return to power after 2024, there’s no guarantee that resistance will continue. He would no longer need to constrain himself for reelection, and after January 6, he’s embittered against traditional Republican establishment forces he believes abandoned him.

So Trump and his team may well become more skilled at identifying and empowering true loyalists who really would act in Trump’s personal interests, defying law or tradition. Indeed, his recent legal peril will make that of paramount personal importance to him.

[...]

Furthermore, Trump allies have recently been floating a plan to purge many career government officials, including at the Justice Department and FBI, should he return to power.

I think we can all agree that a second Trump term would be a Stalinesque revenge tour.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  On the rounds.