Prosecutor Berman Surprised Staff With Independence From Trump

When Geoffrey Berman was appointed to run the elite Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office in 2018, federal prosecutors questioned just how close he was to President Donald Trump, especially after Trump had orchestrated the tumultuous firing a year earlier of the office’s then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Berman had worked on Trump’s transition team and as a law partner of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s ally and personal lawyer.

Over the next two years, Berman showed a surprising independent streak as leader of the prosecutors in New York known for handling some of the nation’s highest-profile white-collar crimes. He paved the way on a series of hard-hitting cases -- including several targeting Trump associates, businesses and interests. Among those was Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, who went to prison after pleading guilty and implicating the president as “Individual-1” in a seamy case over hush-money payments to silence one of Trump’s alleged mistresses. Others included former Trump friend Jeffery Epstein and Trump nemesis Michael Avenatti.

“Berman was a Trump appointee who was unknown to a lot of us,” said Brooke Cucinella, who served six years as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and is now a partner at Simpson Thacher in New York. “From day one, he said it was his intent to uphold the integrity of the office. I think his tenure has done that.”

But Berman’s independence put him at odds with his former patron and led to an ouster from the job even more unusual than Bharara’s.

With no advance word or explanation, Attorney General William Barr announced late Friday night that Berman would step down and be replaced temporarily by the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. Berman responded two hours later that he had no intention of quitting until the U.S. Senate confirmed a replacement, and that his office would continue its prosecutions. The next day, Barr asked Trump to fire Berman and then changed plans and said he’d appoint Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, to serve as the interim replacement in New York, after which Berman agreed to step down.

“It’s in the Department of Justice’s interest to provide full transparency as to how and why this decision was made in such an abrupt manner,” said Samidh Guha, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan for about six years who worked with Bharara. “If there is a proper reason for it, the public needs to know in order to lift the cloud that’s been created by this episode,” said Guha, who is a founding partner at the boutique litigation firm Perry Guha in New York.