Bill Barr: Liar, Thug, Bully, Stupid: New Book By Former SDNY US Attorney Geoffrey Berman
Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, is stupid, a liar, a bully and a thug, according to a hard-hitting new book by Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York whose firing Barr engineered in hugely controversial fashion in summer 2020. “Several hours after Barr and I met,” Berman writes, “on a Friday night, [Barr] issued a press release saying that I was stepping down. That was a lie. “A lie told by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.”
Trump’s politicization of the US Department of Justice was a hot-button issue throughout his presidency. It remains so as he claims persecution under Barr’s successor, Merrick Garland, regarding the mishandling of classified information, the Capitol attack and multiple other investigations. Berman describes his own ordeal, as Barr sought a more politically pliant occupant of the hugely powerful New York post, in Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, a memoir to be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
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Berman also gives his version of events in June 2020, when Barr summoned him to a meeting at the Pierre hotel in New York City. Berman first delivers a sharp aside about Barr’s ostentatious travel, his apparent ambitions – Berman speculates that the attorney general wanted to be secretary of state in Trump’s second term – and an infamous, secretive meeting between Barr and Rupert Murdoch that Berman calls “a scene right out of HBO’s Succession”.
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Berman turned down Barr’s offer. He says Barr then made an “especially tawdry” suggestion: that if Berman moved to run the DoJ civil division, “I could leverage it to make more money after I left government”. Berman says Barr also asked if he had civil litigation experience, a question Berman deems “almost comical”. Then Barr threatened to fire him. Berman “thought to myself, what a gross and colossal bully this guy is to threaten my livelihood”. He did not budge. Barr said he would think of other jobs. After the meeting, Berman writes, Barr asked if he would like to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berman says that job “was not [Barr’s] to offer”, as the SEC chair is nominated by the president and Senate confirmed.
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/07/donald-trump-william-barr-geoffrey-berman-southern-district-new-york-book
= new reply since forum marked as read
he led in July ‘19??
Hope he makes the rounds to talk up his book, would love to see him again!!
RESPECT
