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Disgraceful Bob Barr (And His Buddy Trump)


BarryLaverty

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Why this firing should matter: it's a pattern. 


Trump and Barr Discard Law, Morality and Honor

Timothy L. O'Brien
Bloomberg
8da473b4a16e7256396594f2e879cab3

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- As the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman sat atop one of the most powerful and independent perches in federal law enforcement. His office has long held dominion over the most significant white-collar crime cases in the country. It has taken on terrorists and organized crime. And sometimes it has investigated or prosecuted people close to the president of the United States.

Berman’s team took down President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in 2018 on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations involving hush money payments to two women who said they had sexual encounters with the president. More recently, Berman has been investigating Rudolph Giuliani, a ubiquitous Trump lawyer and apologist, for possibly violating lobbying laws related to work he’s done in Ukraine. (That’s the same Ukraine that Trump tried to strong-arm into smearing former Vice President Joe Biden, leading to Trump’s impeachment; Berman’s office has already indicted two Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, as part of that.)

Berman’s office has also been investigating whether Deutsche Bank AG complied with laws meant to stop money laundering. Deutsche Bank has longstanding financial ties to Trump and the family of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. I’ve detailed Trump’s links to the bank previously, here and here. Berman has subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee as part of a probe into how the incoming president’s team spent more than $106 million raised for his inauguration. And John Bolton’s forthcoming book contends that Trump promised Turkey’s president, Recep Erdogan, that he would block investigations into a Turkish state-owned bank, Halkbank. You guessed it; Berman’s office is investigating Halkbank, too.

And so it came to pass that Attorney General William Barr fired Berman on Saturday afternoon, acting, he said, on Trump’s orders. Per the usual carnivalesque doings in Trumplandia, Berman was fired after refusing to resign after Barr announced, incorrectly, late Friday that Berman was “stepping down.”

To his credit, Berman stood his ground, initially saying he wasn’t going anywhere because the Senate had not appointed his successor and he had to look after his office’s investigations. To his discredit, Barr noted in the letter he wrote canning Berman that he was “surprised and disappointed” that Berman had “chosen public spectacle over public service.”

Barr has been around awhile. He surely knows that when someone like Berman learns of his dismissal from a press release distributed into the media’s equivalent of a black hole — late on a Friday night — and the release misrepresents Berman’s understanding of the facts, well, Berman might be unlikely to just play ball.Barr also surely knows that Berman’s investigations all involve sensitive matters touching Trump, and whatever legitimate reasons he might claim to have for helping Trump remove Berman, the atmospherics are beyond bad. The presidential election is less than five months away and cynics like me can be forgiven for thinking that this looks exactly like a housecleaning. Democrats in Congress think so, too, and are already scheduling hearings and calling for investigations.Trump has chosen Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to replace Berman. Clayton has never served as a federal prosecutor. Before heading the SEC, he practiced corporate law in the private sector. One of his clients was Deutsche Bank. Trump and Barr may insist that Clayton’s resume and client list are irrelevant, but, of course, they matter. Clayton faces hurdles getting the job anyhow because Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican overseeing the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would defer to New York’s senators, both Democrats, when considering who should succeed Berman.

Although Barr told Berman that he had asked Trump to fire him, the law is somewhat murky on how much latitude the president has to fire a U.S. attorney. Barr, as is his wont, assumed the most expansive interpretation of presidential authority. The president himself went into bunker mode, however, when reporters asked him at the White House on Saturday if and why he fired Berman. “Well, that’s all up to the attorney general. Attorney General Barr is working on that,” Trump said, trying to distance himself from his administration’s latest dogfight. “That’s his department, not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general. So that’s really up to him. I’m not involved.”

There’s scant reason to trust Barr’s take on matters of the law any more. He misrepresented the conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Trump’s team and Russians trying to sabotage the 2016 election, saying Mueller found no evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice. He’s publicly savaged federal prosecutors who had ample reason to investigate Trump and then launched a witch hunt to discredit them. He’s tried to interfere with or undermine other high-profile cases involving Trump associates or appointees such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. His office soft-pedaled its investigation of Trump’s maneuvers in Ukraine. He supported the use of force to clear peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters from the streets outside the White House so Trump could pursue a photo op in front of a church — and then dissembled about it.

In short, Barr has repeatedly turned his office and the Justice Department upside down to protect Trump from the consequences of his own actions. There’s little reason to believe that Berman’s firing doesn’t fit that pattern.

Barr maintains an imperial view of the presidency and, for the most part, sees presidents as existing beyond the rule of law. He also thinks the U.S. suffers from a morality vacuum. Last October, he delivered a speech at Notre Dame Law School in which he emphasized the importance of religion in society. On his way toward blurring the separation of church and state, he also claimed an assault on religion was afoot in the U.S. – which, he said, not only threatened individual freedom but the need for a “transcendent moral order.”

If Barr cares so much about morality, he could set an example by acting morally. Telling the truth and upholding the law would be a good start.

My father, Arthur O’Brien, was a lawyer in Illinois. He once told me he always felt proud whenever clients signed documents he drafted without reading them closely. They trusted him that much. And I remember him asking me over a backyard grill in the summer of 1974, just after Richard Nixon resigned, if I understood how hard it would be for Nixon’s children to go through life answering for their father’s corruption. “Never do anything in your life that would make your kids ashamed to have your last name,” he told me.

My father would have understood that Trump and Barr have no regard for basic truths about law, morality and honor, as the Berman episode shows. And he would have said that it’s time for them to answer for that and move on.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Timothy L. O'Brien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

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The husband of a Democrat has an impromptu meeting on a plane with an attorney general and Republicans go apoplectic.

A Republican president fires the Attorney General, the FBI Director, the U.S. Attorney and five Inspectors General investigating him and Republicans do nothing.

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1 hour ago, BarryLaverty said:

The husband of a Democrat has an impromptu meeting on a plane with an attorney general and Republicans go apoplectic.

A Republican president fires the Attorney General, the FBI Director, the U.S. Attorney and five Inspectors General investigating him and Republicans do nothing.

hypocrisy wouldn't you say?

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2 hours ago, BarryLaverty said:

Why this firing should matter: it's a pattern. 


Trump and Barr Discard Law, Morality and Honor

Timothy L. O'Brien
Bloomberg
8da473b4a16e7256396594f2e879cab3

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- As the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman sat atop one of the most powerful and independent perches in federal law enforcement. His office has long held dominion over the most significant white-collar crime cases in the country. It has taken on terrorists and organized crime. And sometimes it has investigated or prosecuted people close to the president of the United States.

Berman’s team took down President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in 2018 on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations involving hush money payments to two women who said they had sexual encounters with the president. More recently, Berman has been investigating Rudolph Giuliani, a ubiquitous Trump lawyer and apologist, for possibly violating lobbying laws related to work he’s done in Ukraine. (That’s the same Ukraine that Trump tried to strong-arm into smearing former Vice President Joe Biden, leading to Trump’s impeachment; Berman’s office has already indicted two Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, as part of that.)

Berman’s office has also been investigating whether Deutsche Bank AG complied with laws meant to stop money laundering. Deutsche Bank has longstanding financial ties to Trump and the family of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. I’ve detailed Trump’s links to the bank previously, here and here. Berman has subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee as part of a probe into how the incoming president’s team spent more than $106 million raised for his inauguration. And John Bolton’s forthcoming book contends that Trump promised Turkey’s president, Recep Erdogan, that he would block investigations into a Turkish state-owned bank, Halkbank. You guessed it; Berman’s office is investigating Halkbank, too.

And so it came to pass that Attorney General William Barr fired Berman on Saturday afternoon, acting, he said, on Trump’s orders. Per the usual carnivalesque doings in Trumplandia, Berman was fired after refusing to resign after Barr announced, incorrectly, late Friday that Berman was “stepping down.”

To his credit, Berman stood his ground, initially saying he wasn’t going anywhere because the Senate had not appointed his successor and he had to look after his office’s investigations. To his discredit, Barr noted in the letter he wrote canning Berman that he was “surprised and disappointed” that Berman had “chosen public spectacle over public service.”

Barr has been around awhile. He surely knows that when someone like Berman learns of his dismissal from a press release distributed into the media’s equivalent of a black hole — late on a Friday night — and the release misrepresents Berman’s understanding of the facts, well, Berman might be unlikely to just play ball.Barr also surely knows that Berman’s investigations all involve sensitive matters touching Trump, and whatever legitimate reasons he might claim to have for helping Trump remove Berman, the atmospherics are beyond bad. The presidential election is less than five months away and cynics like me can be forgiven for thinking that this looks exactly like a housecleaning. Democrats in Congress think so, too, and are already scheduling hearings and calling for investigations.Trump has chosen Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to replace Berman. Clayton has never served as a federal prosecutor. Before heading the SEC, he practiced corporate law in the private sector. One of his clients was Deutsche Bank. Trump and Barr may insist that Clayton’s resume and client list are irrelevant, but, of course, they matter. Clayton faces hurdles getting the job anyhow because Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican overseeing the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would defer to New York’s senators, both Democrats, when considering who should succeed Berman.

Although Barr told Berman that he had asked Trump to fire him, the law is somewhat murky on how much latitude the president has to fire a U.S. attorney. Barr, as is his wont, assumed the most expansive interpretation of presidential authority. The president himself went into bunker mode, however, when reporters asked him at the White House on Saturday if and why he fired Berman. “Well, that’s all up to the attorney general. Attorney General Barr is working on that,” Trump said, trying to distance himself from his administration’s latest dogfight. “That’s his department, not my department. But we have a very capable attorney general. So that’s really up to him. I’m not involved.”

There’s scant reason to trust Barr’s take on matters of the law any more. He misrepresented the conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Trump’s team and Russians trying to sabotage the 2016 election, saying Mueller found no evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice. He’s publicly savaged federal prosecutors who had ample reason to investigate Trump and then launched a witch hunt to discredit them. He’s tried to interfere with or undermine other high-profile cases involving Trump associates or appointees such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. His office soft-pedaled its investigation of Trump’s maneuvers in Ukraine. He supported the use of force to clear peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters from the streets outside the White House so Trump could pursue a photo op in front of a church — and then dissembled about it.

In short, Barr has repeatedly turned his office and the Justice Department upside down to protect Trump from the consequences of his own actions. There’s little reason to believe that Berman’s firing doesn’t fit that pattern.

Barr maintains an imperial view of the presidency and, for the most part, sees presidents as existing beyond the rule of law. He also thinks the U.S. suffers from a morality vacuum. Last October, he delivered a speech at Notre Dame Law School in which he emphasized the importance of religion in society. On his way toward blurring the separation of church and state, he also claimed an assault on religion was afoot in the U.S. – which, he said, not only threatened individual freedom but the need for a “transcendent moral order.”

If Barr cares so much about morality, he could set an example by acting morally. Telling the truth and upholding the law would be a good start.

My father, Arthur O’Brien, was a lawyer in Illinois. He once told me he always felt proud whenever clients signed documents he drafted without reading them closely. They trusted him that much. And I remember him asking me over a backyard grill in the summer of 1974, just after Richard Nixon resigned, if I understood how hard it would be for Nixon’s children to go through life answering for their father’s corruption. “Never do anything in your life that would make your kids ashamed to have your last name,” he told me.

My father would have understood that Trump and Barr have no regard for basic truths about law, morality and honor, as the Berman episode shows. And he would have said that it’s time for them to answer for that and move on.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Timothy L. O'Brien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

Another op-ed by the op-ed king--MSM doing it's job for barry--can't think for himself, but then again it is Sunday, the day all the talk shows give him words for the week. SMFH-SSDD!!!!!

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1 hour ago, JETT said:

More BS by the trumplicans, BARR should resign since he don't serve the American ppl he's a minion to trump and should be ashamed SMH

What has AG Barr done wrong? Something YOU don't agree with? Show me proof of illegal dealings and I will call for him to go to jail, otherwise, you're just like Barry, repeating the same op-ed (which means OPINIONS not FACTS) SSDD!!!!!!!

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7 minutes ago, DannyZuco said:

What has AG Barr done wrong? Something YOU don't agree with? Show me proof of illegal dealings and I will call for him to go to jail, otherwise, you're just like Barry, repeating the same op-ed (which means OPINIONS not FACTS) SSDD!!!!!!!

So if Obama's AG done these things you'd be perfectly fine? Doubt it...

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Just now, DannyZuco said:

Obama's AG did worse things and nothing happened--so why deflect? Show proof of anything ILLEGAL and I'll stand right beside you in calling for him to go to JAIL!!!! Again, SSDD!!!!!

I never said go to jail I said resign for not serving the American ppl.... nothing gets done for American ppl they serve whats in the best interests for them selves... America is going down the drain b4 our eyes SAD..... the bar is set for the next administrations to come

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1 minute ago, JETT said:

I never said go to jail I said resign for not serving the American ppl.... nothing gets done for American ppl they serve whats in the best interests for them selves... America is going down the drain b4 our eyes SAD..... the bar is set for the next administrations to come

REALLY downhill for 4 years, I know that being 16-24 during the obama years is a time when most people don't give a rats rear end about politics, but even you should remember how bad the economy was, how it was NOT lifted up, it barely grew--and yet, in less than 4 years, we have had almost total employment for the country, revised trade deals to help ALL Americans, more money than ever given to HBCUs, minority groups with each having their lowest unemployment ever, and a congress that spends more time trying to come up with scandals that are NOT true, and you say we are going down the drain. Good Gosh man--do you want the government to wipe your hinny also? 

Why should someone who is supposedly doing all this bad stuff NOT go to jail? Isn't that what you folks want--jail for the Trump administration? Bring on the PROOF--and I will be happy to stand arm and arm with you calling for resignations and jail time. 

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2 hours ago, DannyZuco said:

REALLY downhill for 4 years, I know that being 16-24 during the obama years is a time when most people don't give a rats rear end about politics, but even you should remember how bad the economy was, how it was NOT lifted up, it barely grew--and yet, in less than 4 years, we have had almost total employment for the country, revised trade deals to help ALL Americans, more money than ever given to HBCUs, minority groups with each having their lowest unemployment ever, and a congress that spends more time trying to come up with scandals that are NOT true, and you say we are going down the drain. Good Gosh man--do you want the government to wipe your hinny also? 

Why should someone who is supposedly doing all this bad stuff NOT go to jail? Isn't that what you folks want--jail for the Trump administration? Bring on the PROOF--and I will be happy to stand arm and arm with you calling for resignations and jail time. 

If they could furnish Proof, don’t you believe they would have, instead of “cooking the books” with the phoney Steele Dossier?

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Geoffrey Berman was a political hack doing the bidding of the left .... he should have been removed long ago ...

AG Barr is a breath of fresh air, he's easily the least partisan AG to hold that office in decades .... that's why the wackturd liberals and the fake news media hate him ....

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