Geoffrey Berman
FREE NEWS LINKS

photo of U.S. Capitol Building  
      HOME 
  SEARCH

Updates & changes ongoing ....

---- Although this site is https-secure, we cannot guarantee that it or any provided links are safe; be sure your antivirus and other security systems are up to date.

Also see: Investigation; Legal Issues; Money Laundering; Panama;

          
Jump to:   2018;   2019;   2020; 

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 --

Back to top


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 --

Back to top


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 --

Back to top








 Webpage visitor counts provided by



 

 

copyr 2018 trump-news-history.com, Minneapolis, MN