D21 Files 7th DOJ Complaint Against AG Barr, Requests Investigation of US Attorney Berman’s Removal
Democracy 21 filed a complaint today with the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice requesting an investigation into Attorney General William Barr’s conduct surrounding his removal of Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
According to the Democracy 21 complaint:
The abnormal manner in which the Attorney General handled this matter raises serious concerns about whether he has complied with Justice Department norms, standards and practices. This includes whether Attorney General Barr’s actions in removing Mr. Berman were taken to improperly suppress investigations reportedly underway in the Southern District involving President Trump’s associates and interests.
Given Mr. Barr’s record of bias in promoting and defending the personal, political interests of President Trump, and given the ongoing investigations that the Southern District of New York is conducting into the activities of President Trump’s associates and interests, Attorney General Barr’s removal of U.S. Attorney Berman raises serious red flags of impropriety that warrant close scrutiny by your offices.
This is the seventh Justice Department complaint filed by Democracy 21 against Attorney General Barr since April 2019. The previous complaints were filed on April 15, May 7, and October 1, 2019, and January 17, February 27, and June 11, 2020.
“The seven complaints we have filed with the Justice Department document Attorney General Barr’s bias towards President Trump and his repeated misuse of his office to protect and promote Trump’s personal political interests,” according to Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer.
“Barr has acted more like Trump’s personal defense attorney than like the nation’s chief law enforcement officer responsible for carrying out the Justice Department’s stated mission ‘to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans,’” Wertheimer said.
The Democracy 21 complaint stated:
The contradictions apparent in the events resulting in the removal of Mr. Berman raise public suspicions and concerns and point to the need for a full investigation of this matter.
The first contradiction is that Attorney General Barr announced on June 20 that Mr. Berman had resigned, only to have Mr. Berman immediately contradict him by announcing that he had not resigned. This raises the question of whether Mr. Barr knowingly misrepresented the situation in an attempt to force Mr. Berman out of office without having to fire him, or whether this was just a misunderstanding between the two men. If Attorney General Barr publicly dissembled about the intentions of a duly appointed U.S. Attorney in these circumstances, that would clearly be improper action by the Attorney General.
The second contradiction is that, on the following day, Mr. Barr announced that the President had fired Mr. Berman, only to have the President immediately contradict him, stating that “I wasn’t involved” in Mr. Berman’s removal and “that’s all up to the attorney general. . .”
Either the President or the Attorney General publicly misrepresented who was responsible for the purported firing of Mr. Berman, and an investigation is needed to get to the bottom of the misrepresentation involved here.
More generally, and more importantly, an investigation is needed to determine if Mr. Berman was removed from office in order to suppress ongoing investigations being conducted by the Southern District of New York relating to President Trump’s associates and interests.
As is well known, the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District on New York prosecuted and convicted President Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for campaign finance violations associated with the payment of hush money to women who claimed to have had sexual relations with President Trump. Prosecutors in the case referred to the President himself in court filings which said that Cohen had “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.” It is widely believed that “Individual 1” is President Trump.
The Southern District is also reportedly conducting an investigation into the activities of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, for potential violations of the lobbying laws. Further, the Southern District initiated prosecution of Halkbank, a Turkish-government owned bank, for violating sanctions against Iran. According to former Trump national security advisor John Bolton, President Trump personally promised Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that he would take care of the case.
It is incumbent on your offices to thoroughly investigate whether Mr. Berman was ousted from his position as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York as retribution for prosecutions brought by that office or to interfere with ongoing investigations of President Trump’s interests and associates, such as Rudy Giuliani, being conducted by that office.
If any such retribution or interference were involved in this removal, it would constitute blatant improper action by the Attorney General and a direct attack on the rule of law.
The circumstances involved here certainly warrant an investigation, given the abnormal, misleading, and inept efforts by Attorney General Barr to remove Mr. Berman from his position.
Your offices have an obligation to the Justice Department and to the American people to fulfill the responsibilities that you have been assigned and to tell truth to power. The institutional integrity of the Justice Department is at stake in the matter set forth above, as it also is in the matters we have raised in our previous six complaints to the Department about the Attorney General.
Democracy 21 strongly urges your offices to conduct a full investigation of the matters raised in this complaint and to take appropriate action to protect the integrity of the Justice Department and the interest of the American people in fair and impartial justice.
