{"id":176424,"date":"2020-06-19T21:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T02:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/06\/19\/it-always-happens-on-a-friday\/"},"modified":"2020-06-19T21:41:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T02:41:00","slug":"it-always-happens-on-a-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/06\/19\/it-always-happens-on-a-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"It Always Happens on a Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Geoffrey Berman, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/19\/nyregion\/us-attorney-manhattan-trump.html\">just got fired<\/a>. (&#8220;Resigned&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>I wonder which Trump crony pulled some strings when the heat got too intense:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Justice Department on Friday abruptly tried to oust the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump\u2019s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">But Mr. Berman said in a statement that he was refusing to leave his position, setting up a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,\u201d Mr. Berman said, adding that he learned that he was \u201cstepping down\u201d in a press release from the Justice Department.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Attorney General William P. Barr\u2019s announcement that President Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman\u2019s successor Jay Clayton,&nbsp; current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign but he refused so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The announcement came late on a Friday night, a time of day when government officials sometimes release information so that it does not attract widespread attention.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are so many potential conflict of interest and corruption here that it is going to be tough to narrow it down to a specific clause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geoffrey Berman, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, just got fired. (&#8220;Resigned&#8221;) I wonder which Trump crony pulled some strings when the heat got too intense: The Justice Department on Friday abruptly tried to oust the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,573,407,374],"class_list":["post-176424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-justice","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}