Geoffrey Berman
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Undated:
Geoffrey Steven Berman (born September 12,
1959) is an American lawyer serving as the
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York since 2018.[1]
He previously served as an
Assistant United States Attorney for the
Southern District of New York from 1990 to 1994. In January 2018,
U.S. Attorney General
Jeff
Sessions announced Berman's appointment as interim U.S. Attorney for a
statutory period of 120 days.[2]
On April 25, 2018, the judges of the Southern District of New York, pursuant to
the statute, unanimously appointed Berman U.S. Attorney for an indefinite
period.[3]
Upon
President
Donald
Trump's firing
Preet Bharara as U.S. Attorney, Trump reportedly interviewed Berman among
other candidates for the position.[16]
Berman had performed some part-time volunteer work for the Trump transition.[17]
On January 3, 2018,
Attorney General
Jeff
Sessions announced Berman's appointment as U.S. Attorney, along with sixteen
other former prosecutors, to serve in various offices around the country on an
interim basis until the Senate can permanently confirm them.[18][19]
The Trump Administration never nominated Berman or most of the other interim
appointments. On April 25, 2018, the Chief Judge of the Southern District of New
York entered an order formally on behalf of a unanimous court appointing Berman
United States Attorney pursuant to its authority under 28 U.S.C Section 546(d).
Berman has the appointment indefinitely until someone is nominated by the
President and confirmed by the Senate.
In April 2018, the office of Berman issued a search warrant of the office and
hotel room of
Michael Cohen, former lawyer of
Donald
Trump, for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations.[20][21][22]
Since Berman is recused by the U.S. Attorney General's Office from the
investigation, he was apparently not involved in the decision to
raid Cohen's office.[23]
That search was presumably conducted under the authority of
Robert Khuzami, Berman’s top deputy.[24]
In January 2019, Berman charged
Natalya Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer, with obstruction of justice in
connection with a false and misleading declaration she submitted to a judge in
the
Southern District of New York. Berman said on announcing the indictment:
“Fabricating evidence to affect the outcome of pending litigation not only
undermines the integrity of the judicial process, but it threatens the ability
of our courts and our government to ensure that justice is done.”[32][33][34]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Berman
-- 2018 --
April 10: Chief Manhattan federal prosecutor
and Trump administration appointee Geoffrey Berman, whose office oversees a
federal inquiry into President Trump's longtime personal lawyer, was recused
from the investigation before FBI agents raided Michael Cohen's offices and home,
a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday.
Berman, named in January as an interim replacement to fill the post formerly
held by Preet Bharara, whom Trump dismissed last year, was recused by Justice
Department officials under
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, said the source, who was not
authorized to comment publicly.
Stephen Ryan, Cohen's attorney, said the raid in New York was prompted by a
referral from Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, who determined
that the information related to the attorney did not fall within the direct
scope of his investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016
election.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/10/top-ny-prosecutor-geoffrey-berman-trump-appointee-recused-michael-cohen-inquiry/502367002/
November 19: Geoffrey Berman: At the Helm of
the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of N.Y.
Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, firmly believes that
politics and law enforcement are a dangerous mix. As a young lawyer, Berman, JD
’84, helped investigate potential crimes by President Reagan and his top aides
for illegally selling arms to Iran to finance right-wing militias in Nicaragua.
The investigation of the Iran-Contra affair, which spanned eight years and cost
more than $40 million, was denounced as a partisan witch-hunt; Senate Minority
Leader Bob Dole dubbed the team of investigators “highly paid assassins.”
But Berman stuck to his guns, helping to convict a former CIA operative who was
the only Iran-Contra defendant to go to prison. His tenacity was all the more
impressive to colleagues because of his personal politics: Like Reagan, he was a
Republican.
https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-lawyer/articles/geoffrey-berman-at-the-helm-of-the-u-s-attorneys-office-southern-district-of-n-y/
-- 2019 --
February 19:
Trump’s Efforts to Subvert Justice Reportedly Thwarted by People Just Ignoring
Him
The New York Times on Tuesday
published a massive exposé on President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to
subvert, deflect, and in some cases outright end the various investigations into
his alleged criminal misdeeds. It’s a compelling if exhausting read, which goes
to great lengths to show how Trump—increasingly frustrated by the prospect of
actually facing serious consequences for his actions—has spent the past two
years working to manipulate the levers of the criminal justice system to suit
his own needs.
And yet there’s an undeniable subtext in the Times’ reporting: That
Trump’s worst, most authoritarian inclinations are frequently stymied by the
fact that those around him simply ignore his more outlandish directives.
https://splinternews.com/trump-s-efforts-to-subvert-justice-reportedly-thwarted-1832731169
February 19: President Donald Trump denied
asking then-acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker about putting a sympathetic
U.S. attorney in charge of an investigation into pre-election hush payments to
women who claimed to have had affairs with him.
Trump responded to a New York Times
report that the president asked Whitaker if Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S.
attorney for the Southern District of New York, could oversee the investigation
into the payments made during the 2016 campaign. Whitaker knew he could not put
Berman in charge of the investigation, from which Berman had already recused
himself, the Times reported.
Federal prosecutors at the time of Trump's reported request were investigating
hush money paid by Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to women who
claimed to have had sex with the president. Cohen was
sentenced to three years in prison last year for multiple counts of lying
and tax fraud.
The Times' Tuesday report went on to say Trump grew irritated with Whitaker that
he could not use connections at the Justice Department to put the investigation
into more sympathetic hands. Whitaker denied to the House Judiciary Committee on
Feb. 8 that the White House ever asked him to tamper with an investigation.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/19/trump-denies-whitaker-investigation-1175607
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/trump-investigations.html
February 22: On Tuesday, the New York Times
published
the results of an extensive investigation into Trump's "two-year war on the
investigations encircling him." The paper found that there has been a
"sustained, more secretive assault by Mr. Trump on the machinery of federal law
enforcement" than has been previously publicly known ....
As part of his efforts to contain the ongoing legal crises he faces, Trump
reportedly tried to install a loyalist in New York's Southern District, US
attorney Geoffrey S. Berman, as the new person in charge of the investigations
into Trump's hush-money payments, like the one apparently made to Stormy Daniels
in 2016.
https://sfist.com/2019/02/22/sf-based-irs-agent-stormy-daniels/
-- 2020 --
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