Inside Barr's Effort to Undermine Prosecutors in New York
Shortly after he became attorney general last year, William Barr set out to challenge a signature criminal case that touched President Donald Trump’s inner circle directly and even the president’s own actions: the prosecution of Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer.
The debate between Barr and the federal prosecutors who brought the case against Cohen was one of the first signs of a tense relationship that culminated last weekend in the abrupt ouster of Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. It also foreshadowed Barr’s intervention in the prosecutions of other associates of Trump.
By the time Barr was sworn into office in February, Cohen, who had paid hush money to an adult film star who said she had had an affair with Trump, had already pleaded guilty and was set to begin a three-year prison sentence, all of which embarrassed and angered the president.
But Barr spent weeks in the spring of 2019 questioning the prosecutors over their decision to charge Cohen with violating campaign finance laws, according to people briefed on the matter.
At one point during the discussions, Barr instructed Justice Department officials in Washington to draft a memo outlining legal arguments that could have raised questions about Cohen’s conviction and undercut similar prosecutions in the future, according to the people briefed on the matter.
The prosecutors in New York resisted the effort, the people said, and a Justice Department official said Barr did not instruct them to withdraw the case. The department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, noted that Cohen was convicted and sentenced in December 2018, before Barr was sworn in, so there was little he could do to change the outcome of the case.
Still, Barr’s unexpected involvement in such a politically sensitive case suggested that he planned to exert influence over prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, long known for operating independently of Washington. Barr and other officials have told aides and other U.S. attorneys that the Southern District needs to be reined in.
Ultimately, Berman was ousted in a dizzying series of events, heightening criticism that Trump and Barr were purging the government of people perceived as disloyal to the White House.
In an interview with NPR on Thursday, Barr said Berman was “living on borrowed time from the beginning” because the president had not appointed him.
And when Jay Clayton, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, indicated an interest in running the Manhattan office, Barr said, it created “an opportunity to put in a very strong person as a presidential appointment to that office.”
“I certainly was aware that given the current environment, anytime you make a personnel move, conspiracy theorists will suggest that there’s some ulterior motive involved,” Barr said.
More than any other federal prosecutor’s office, the Manhattan office had pursued investigations that angered Trump. During the case against Cohen, for instance, prosecutors had indicated that Trump directed the hush money payments, although the office was not seeking charges against the president.
In addition to prosecuting Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, the office has been investigating his current one, Rudy Giuliani, over his actions in Ukraine.
Other points of contention included how to proceed against a state-owned Turkish bank that was eventually indicted in an alleged scheme to avoid U.S. sanctions on Iran, and the Justice Department’s decision to assign the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn to oversee all investigations into matters related to Ukraine. Berman’s office successfully fended off that oversight.
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