Quote (Thor123422 @ Jun 21 2020 11:23am)

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Yeah, looks like he was appointed as a temp guy, Trump forgot about him, and Barr only reminded Trump of his position as a temp guy when he started investigating Trump.

Quote (IceMage @ Jun 21 2020 12:02pm)

SDNY has been involved in Trump-related investigative matters since 2017/2018. There's been no reporting thus far as to why Berman was fired... who knows what they are investigating. The public isn't supposed to know.

Berman in his first response hints at Barr doing this for political and corrupt reasons. Right now SDNY is being run by Berman's #2, who is by all accounts a reputable person.

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But the real question is: Why? Why replace Berman now, just six months before the election?

The answer lies in the firing earlier this year of Jessie Liu, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. By firing Liu, Barr and his team took control of the Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney’s office. Until they did that, the office was following up on various indictments and charges that had been brought against Trump’s associates. Once they seized control, Barr’s team intervened to short-circuit that process. They interceded in the sentencing of Roger Stone, and more recently, they have made an effort to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn. In both circumstances, career prosecutors were so outraged that they withdrew from the case, and some resigned from the Department of Justice altogether.

This is how an authoritarian works to subvert justice. He purports to uphold the forms of justice (in this case, the formal rule that the attorney general and the president exercise hierarchical control over the U.S. attorneys) while undermining the substance of justice. In the Flynn case, for example, Barr has asserted an absolute, unreviewable authority to bring and dismiss cases at will—a power that, even if legally well founded, is a subversion of justice when misused.

That may be the game plan for New York as well. Barr may want Berman out so that he can use his newly enhanced control to dismiss or short-circuit all of the pending cases in Manhattan that implicate Trump or his associates.

We know those are many. We know that Trump’s various organizations, including his inauguration committee, are under investigation. We know that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is under investigation. We know that Trump’s bank, Deutsche Bank, is under investigation.

Since taking office, Barr has repeatedly intervened to protect Trump. In addition to the behavior already mentioned, we might identify his attempt to protect Trump’s tax records from disclosure, or the way he distorted the true contents of the Mueller report. Barr’s actions are more like those of a consigliere to Don Trump than those of an attorney general of the United States, working for the American people.

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[T]wo people familiar with the matter said Mr. Berman’s refusal [to sign the letter] aggravated Mr. Barr, who already viewed Mr. Berman as obstinate and difficult to work with. He had been seeking a replacement for Mr. Berman, and when he learned in recent weeks that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton was interested in the top prosecutor’s job he agreed that putting him in that role was a good idea, people familiar with that decision said.