Attorney General Barr Still Facilitating the Politicization of DOJ

It is still unclear why William Barr was so motivated to remove U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman that he first lied about the fact that Berman had resigned-- which prompted Berman to issue a statement publicly contradicting Barr, saying quite emphatically had not resigned.  Barr then lied a second time—claiming that Donald Trump had fired Berman—only to have Trump soon declare that he was "not involved" in the firing.
Barr's first claim-- that Berman had resigned-- was intended to pave a path for Barr and Trump to install Barr's personal friend Jay Clayton, a corporate attorney with no prosecution experience whatsoever who currently serves as Trump's chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Southern District of New York is currently either prosecuting or investigating a litany of apparent crimes by individuals close to Trump—and potentially by Trump himself.  That would have installed a reliable Barr ally who would be in a position to stifle federal prosecutions of Trump allies.  For quite a while, Trump and Barr have been pressuring the SDNY to end an investigation into Turkish bank fraud and sanctions violations after Trump allegedly sought to quash that probe as a favor to Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan.

According to The Washington Post, Barr met on Friday with Berman, "offering him a new position" heading the Justice Department's Civil Position if he would move from his current role; Berman evidently did not agree to the move.  Clayton, however, could only be legally installed if Berman resigned. Barr did not just want Berman out of his office-- he also sought to install a personal friend in the role, and bypass laws governing who Berman's acting successor would be, and went so far as to invent a resignation when Berman was not willing to go along with the move.

As the Post's Aaron Blake points out, in offering Berman a job within the main Justice Department to convince him to vacate his post, Barr has now demolished any pretense that Barr's move was based on "job performance issues." In the end Berman resigned only when Barr acquiesced to  allowing Berman's deputy (Audrey Strauss) to take over the position as the law indicated. That suggests that Berman's public fight beforehand was not a likely-doomed effort to save his own job, but a move to specifically prevent Barr from installing a handpicked ally.

Clayton may yet be nominated and approved for the post, but Berman was willing to take a stand and prevent a Trump crony from leading the SDNY during the interim period and allow SDNY's investigations to proceed without political interference.  House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler has already indicated that Berman will be summoned to testify on these events, and soon. There still seems no urgency to force Barr's own testimony, however.

To add more fuel to the fire generated by Barr's seemingly corrupt behavior, a DOJ whistleblower will testify tomorrow that top Justice Department leadership put “heavy pressure” on a top federal prosecutor to cut former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone a break in his sentencing.  Aaron S.J. Zelinsky will tell the House Judiciary Committee that acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Timothy Shea, a close associate of Attorney General William Barr, “was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break, and that the U.S. Attorney’s sentencing instructions to us were based on political considerations.”

Another DOJ whistleblower, John Elias, is expected to testify that Attorney General Bill Barr improperly went after cannabis suppliers because of his personal feelings about the industry. "Rejecting the analysis of career staff, Attorney General Barr ordered the Antitrust Division to issue Second Request subpoenas," Elias said, referencing the division's most comprehensive type of merger probe. "The rationale for doing so centered not on an antitrust analysis, but because he did not like the nature of their underlying business."

Elias' will also testify that the Justice Department launched an anti-trust probe in August 2019 after President Donald Trump tweeted his anger over a deal struck between automakers and California to comply with stricter emissions standards despite the Trump administration's plans to roll back the rules.  "The day after the tweets, Antitrust Division political leadership instructed staff to initiate an investigation that day," according to Elias.