“Several hours after Barr and I met,” Berman writes, “one Friday night, [Barr] issued a press release saying I was leaving. That was a lie. “A lie told by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.” Trump’s politicization of the US Justice Department has been a hot-button issue throughout his presidency. He remains so as he claims to be under prosecution under Barr’s successor, Merrick Garland, over the mishandling of classified information, the attack on Capitol Hill and several other investigations. Berman describes his own ordeal as Barr sought a more politically flexible tenant of New York’s extremely powerful position in Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, a memoir that will published next week. . The Guardian obtained a copy. Berman testified to Congress shortly after he was fired. He now writes: “No one from SDNY with knowledge of him [his clashes with Barr over two and a half years] has interviewed or written about them. Until now, there has been no first-hand account.” Berman describes clashes over issues such as the prosecution of Michael Cohen, a former Trump associate, and the Halkbank investigation into Turkish bankers and government officials helping Tehran circumvent the Iran nuclear deal. Barr was also attorney general under George H. W. Bush. He has published his own book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorneys General, in which he discusses the SDNY cases but does not mention Berman. Promoting the book, Barr told NBC that he “really didn’t think that much” of his former rival. Berman calls it “an easily debunked lie.” In Berman’s book, Barr is a constant presence. Describing the Halkbank affair, Berman says that Trump’s closeness to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, meant that Barr, “always eager to please his boss, seemed to do Trump’s bidding” relying on Berman to to drop the charges. Berman says that Barr told him that, Barr, would be a “point” for Halkbank’s management, which Berman found “strange”. “This is a criminal case being run out of New York, right? As attorney general, Barr had a role to play. But why as a White House appointee? That was problematic.” Berman says Barr tried to block the SDNY to politically benefit Trump. In June 2019, he says, he was called to a meeting where Barr told him the Halkbank case was “a foreign policy entanglement” and, “his voice … steadily rising,” asked him: “Who do you think should intervene?” He writes: “I’ve seen bullies work before. He had actually used the same words with me a little over a year ago” about appointing Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, without Barr’s approval. Berman adds, “I would describe Barr’s attitude that morning as a thug. He wanted to convince me to submit.” Berman rejected Barr. He also says he told Barr of a proposal to offer people in the Halkbank case a non-prosecution agreement without disclosing that the move would be a “fraud on the court”. The Halkbank issue was eventually dropped, after Trump and Erdogan clashed 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 invited him to a meeting at the Pierre Hotel in New York. Berman first brushes aside Barr’s flamboyant trip, his apparent ambitions—Berman speculates that the attorney general wanted to be secretary of state in Trump’s second term—and an infamous, secret meeting between Barr and Rupert Murdoch that Berman calls “a proper scene outside the HBO succession.’ Berman says he didn’t know why Barr wanted to meet with 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 implementation of Covid restrictions on religious services and protests for racial justice. Berman did not sign, he writes, because he did not appear to be acting politically. In Pierre, he says, Barr, who with his chief of staff did not wear a mask indoors, said he wanted to “make a change in the southern quarter.” Berman says he knew what was coming, given the changes to install 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 that I could be replaced by an outsider he trusted,” Berman wrote, adding that he wasn’t sure he could be removed except by the justices who appointed him to fill the position on an interim basis. position. basis in 2018 or upon confirmation of a successor by the Senate. Berman declined Barr’s offer. He says Barr then made a “particularly dark” proposition: that if Berman moved to run the Justice Department’s political division, “I could use that to make more money after I leave the administration.” Berman says Barr also asked if he had experience in civil litigation, a question Berman finds “almost comical.” Barr then threatened to fire him. Berman “thought to myself, what a gross, colossal bully this guy is who threatens my livelihood.” He didn’t move. Barr said he would consider other jobs. After the meeting, Berman writes, Barr asked if he would like to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berman says the job “wasn’t [Barr’s] to offer,” as the SEC chairman is recommended by the president and the Senate confirmed. Berman says he agreed to speak with Barr again after the weekend. Instead, that evening Barr issued a press release saying that Berman had agreed to resign. “It was a lie, plain and simple,” Berman writes. “I told him clearly that I will not resign. Barr [was] the attorney general… in addition to being honest, he must also be intelligent. And that was really stupid of him – a complete miscalculation… he should have known at this point that I wasn’t going to go quietly.’ In a press release of his own, Berman said he had not resigned. The next day he showed up to work, greeted by a swarm of reporters. Then, in a public letter that Berman now calls “stupid dialogue,” Barr said Berman had been fired by Trump. Barr abandoned a plan to replace Berman with an acting U.S. attorney, instead allowing Berman’s deputy, Strauss, to succeed him. Berman says this enabled him to step aside in good conscience. He calls Barr’s move a “tradition.” Berman describes both his belief that he was fired because his independence posed a “threat to Trump’s re-election” and Trump’s insistence to reporters on the day of the firing that he hadn’t fired Berman — Barr had. “Barr’s attempt to push me away,” he writes, “was so muddled that he and Trump couldn’t even get their stories straight.”
