Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

America is right to expect the worst of Bill Barr, who has repeatedly interfered in criminal investigations on Trump's behalf. We have a hearing on this topic on Wednesday. We welcome Mr. Berman's testimony and will invite him to testify.
- House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, June 19, 2020

So Attorney General William "Kneepads" Barr has fired the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Of New York Geoffrey Berman. Of course he did. Berman saw his job as Attorney of the people of the United States, not for the republican goons in the White House and Congress. The slime is strong with Barr. Since day one, he has seen his job as to do the bidding of his insane boss of bosses in the oval office. Trump, of course, says he had nothing to do with it. That's the way crime families and their consiglieres operate. Does it make you wonder how long before Trump starts ordering hits on people in his way? Has he done it before. Look who he idolizes, Kim, Putin, and Duterte. One thing's for sure no one in the White House will ever move to stop Trump. Same with all of those corrupt Republicans that currently infest the Hou$e and $enate, made men and women, everyone of them, including Mittens Romney who cagily only voted to remove the orange cancer on one of two articles of impeachment when he had nothing additional to lose by voting for both articles, not that the end result would have been altered.

Obviously, Geoffrey Berman was following the law and wouldn't join Barr in the ceremonial wearing of the kneepads. It's also painfully obvious that Berman was closing in on something either about Trump himself, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, something in Trump's taxes or who knows what. One clue may reside in who Trump and Barr have tried to slot in as Beman's replacement, Jay Clayton, the head of The Securities and Exchange Commision. Clayton has no prosecutorial experience which would make him an exceedingly odd choice for U.S. Attorney. His background is as a corporate lawyer. Ah, but Clayton has the kind of career connections, past and present, that would come in handy if, just suppose, someone in high (on Adderall) office wanted to quash anything to do with Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank is the highly likely doorway to all sorts of things; payoffs, Russian money laundering, unusual purchases of goods and people, the recently departed Jeffrey Epstein, dodgy real estate deals... The possibilities are near endless. Follow the money as they say. But, alas for anyone tied up that sort of thing Barr and Trump blew the transition, at least temporarily; just more ineptitude. The gang that can't shoot straight, in every meaning of the phrase.

Now, according to law, as Berman mentioned in one of his parting statements, his former Deputy Attorney, Audrey Strauss, who's not a Trump appointee, directly or indirectly, is in charge of the investigations, at least for now. The investigations reportedly go on. Word here in New York has it that Attorney Strauss has all the integrity that Berman has and is smarter and more exacting and driven. God, I hope she has some serious bodyguards. Follow the money Audrey Strauss. Follow the money.

There's More To Berman's Firing Than Meets The Eye

What could be a more perfect chief prosecutor (in Trump's own backyard, no less-- where he committed decades of crimes and where so many of his cronies reside) for Trump than one who has never prosecuted a case? Renae Merle, who covers white-collar crime and Wall Street for the Washington Post, noted in a piece yesterday that the Trumpanzee "pick to be the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, is the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a longtime corporate lawyer with deep connections to Wall Street. But he has no experience as a federal prosecutor." Ah... but his lack of experience is just the beginning of why he's not going to be confirmed, not even by this craven Trumpist Senate. (Lindsey Graham, Senate Judiciary Committee chair announced that he would not even open confirmation hearings for Clayton until New York’s two senators support the nomination. They both oppose it and Schumer has already called on Clayton to withdraw his name.) Berman showed up for work Saturday, by the way.

On his 2017 SEC financial disclosure form, for example, Clayton listed Deutsche Bank as a source of compensation “exceeding $5,000.” The bank was a client of his former law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

The German bank has repeatedly run afoul of federal and state laws and was implicated in large money laundering schemes. It is also at the center of a battle between the Trump administration and House Democrats over the release of the president’s financial records. The bank has played critical role in Trump’s real estate business, lending him more than $360 million since 2012.

When he took the job at the SEC in 2017, Clayton agreed to recuse himself from cases involving Deutsche Bank and other clients he had previously represented for two years. While at Sullivan & Cromwell, he advised Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital, among many others.

...Before Trump nominated him to the SEC, Clayton, a longtime partner with Sullivan & Cromwell, had never held a government position. He has represented some of the biggest names on Wall Street, including Bill Ackman of Pershing Capital.

...[C]onsumer advocates say some of his policies have weakened the SEC. The commission has made it easier for companies to raise money without traditional oversight and adopted weak protections for consumers working with brokers, they say. Clayton’s tenure will be known for “shrinking both the scope and the effectiveness of SEC regulation,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group.

Everyone is speculating on why Trump/Barr-- they disagree about who ordered it-- fired Berman. Was it to protect Giuliani? Was it because of Trump's business interests in Turkey? Could be dozens of reasons that impact Trump personally. One perspective worth considering comes from Wall Street on Parade where Pam and Russ Marten explained how Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan were facing uncomfortable criminal probes that Trump and Barr felt could not be permitted to go forward.

Clayton has no prosecutorial experience but what he does have, wrote the Martens, "is a lot of experience representing Wall Street’s largest banks, like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, both of whom are currently under intense criminal investigations by the Justice Department. Clayton was a former partner at Wall Street’s go-to law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, which is currently representing Goldman in the criminal case and representing JPMorgan in various matters. The breaking news last night went downhill from there. Several hours after Barr’s announcement, Berman announced that he had not resigned from his job and had no intention of leaving his post until his replacement had been confirmed by the U.S. Senate-- which could take months. There is also no assurance that Clayton would actually be confirmed, since some Republicans and Democrats believe that Clayton has been a lapdog for Wall Street in his current post.

Even more problematic, Clayton’s family has ties to an opaque company called WMB Holdings, described by David Dayen in The Nation magazine like this:

“This company and its affiliated partners (Delaware Trust Co and CSC) are conduits for creating shell corporations and other sketchy vehicles used in tax evasion and money laundering. Public Citizen found apparent links between these companies and Mossack Fonseca, the notorious Panamanian law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal.”

The timing of the attempted ouster of Berman is suspicious on multiple fronts. Goldman Sachs is under criminal investigation over a multi-billion-dollar money laundering and embezzlement scheme involving the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund known as 1MDB. Goldman Sachs has been fighting the Justice Department’s demand that it plead guilty in order to settle the case, according to media reports.

According to the Sullivan & Cromwell website, Nicolas Bourtin, Managing Partner of the law firm’s Criminal Defense and Investigations Group, “is representing Goldman Sachs in criminal and regulatory investigations in six jurisdictions” involving the 1MDB matter.

At the time of Jay Clayton’s nomination for SEC Chair, he had been outside counsel to Goldman Sachs for years and was married to a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, Gretchen Clayton, who had worked at the firm for 17 years. She stepped down from Goldman after her husband was confirmed.

In 2017, when the 1MDB matter began to intensify, Sullivan & Cromwell partner Karen Seymour left the law firm to join Goldman Sachs as co-General Counsel and partner. She is now the sole General Counsel and earned over $8 million last year for work that included “an active focus on the resolution” of the 1MDB matter.

JPMorgan Chase had multiple traders from its precious metals desk indicted by the Justice Department on RICO charges last year for allegedly running a racketeering enterprise out of the precious metals desk at JPMorgan. The firm itself is now under criminal investigation according to a February report at Bloomberg News.

Another felony count at JPMorgan Chase could be the death knell for the career of JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. During Dimon’s tenure as CEO, JPMorgan has pleaded guilty to two criminal felony counts in 2014 for its role in handling the business bank account for Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. In 2015 the bank pleaded guilty to one felony count for its role in rigging foreign exchange trading. It’s unprecedented for a major Wall Street bank to survive three felony counts. A fourth felony count might be simply too much for even today’s crony regulators.

Mainstream media has made much out of the fact that this U.S. Attorney’s office is actively investigating Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani, and Deutsche Bank, a major financial lender to Trump’s companies. But the fact that Barr, and assumedly Trump, want to replace Berman with Clayton-- a man with no criminal prosecution experience but chummy ties to Wall Street-- suggests this is really about Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

Update:

Berman has changed his mind and decided he will step down after all. The change of heart came after Barr issued another letter to Berman on Saturday, June 20. The new letter stated that President Donald Trump was removing Berman from his job. The letter also indicated that Berman’s Deputy U.S. Attorney, Audrey Strauss, would become the Acting U.S. Attorney. Barr’s earlier statement on Friday evening had indicated that Craig Carpenito, the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, would assume Berman’s post “while the Senate is considering Jay Clayton’s nomination.”

A new embarrassment is emerging for both Jay Clayton and Sullivan & Cromwell. On Saturday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, released a statement indicating that he won’t move forward on Clayton’s nomination without the standard policy of getting a go-ahead from the two Senators of the state where the new U.S. Attorney will serve. That means that Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand would have to give the greenlight to Clayton.

Schumer released the following statement:

“Forty seven years ago, Elliott Richardson had the courage to say no to a gross abuse of presidential power. Jay Clayton has a similar choice today: He can allow himself to be used in the brazen Trump-Barr scheme to interfere in investigations by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, or he can stand up to this corruption, withdraw his name from consideration, and save his own reputation from overnight ruin.”

According to the New York Times, Senator Gillibrand has also stated that Clayton should withdraw his name from consideration.

So what happens when Trump tells Graham that if he doesn't get Clayton confirmed tout suite he'll out him to South Carolina Republicans before the election?

Why Did Trump Order Barr To Fire Geoffrey Berman Friday Night?

Yesterday Neal Katyal, a former Acting Solicitor General, and Josh Geltzer, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, penned a piece for The Atlantic on why Trump keeps losing at a conservative Supreme Court. "The legal reasoning may look like it turns on obscure technicalities," they wrote, "but the administration’s cases are falling apart because of something much more deeply wrong... Trump keeps losing not because of something obscure, but because of something fundamental: his abuse of the executive branch. Much of his administration’s approach to governance rests on attempting executive actions that lack any meaningful justification rooted in expertise, or even rational thought."

Trump’s abuse of the executive branch is one of the most damaging aspects of his presidency, because it rejects a reasoned approach to making government policy. Trump has made clear-- most notably during the impeachment process-- that he disdains the civil servants who bring deep expertise and valuable experience to important policy questions. So it’s not surprising he blew off their advice that adding a citizenship question to the census would not help in any meaningful way and would harm the core enterprise of the census itself. Trump doesn’t care what they have to say, and his Cabinet members—like the commerce secretary-- seem not to care, either. Such disregard is not merely some technical violation-- it’s a body blow in Trump’s assault on civil servants.

This is part of Trump’s bigger disregard for law and process. Trump has made clear time and again that he doesn’t really care what the law says... Trump doesn’t see law as a constraint, but something to be manipulated-- and that’s clearly a message his Cabinet seems to have received. Consequently, they play fast and loose with the law. The Court, in this decision and last year’s, is essentially saying that the law still matters.

Ultimately, that’s precisely what’s at stake as long as Trump is president. If all that matters is a president’s policy preferences, then law-- including judicial review-- is basically a facade: Dress it up enough, and it’ll pass muster. But if law matters-- if building a record and considering facts and providing honest reasons matter-- then Trump is sure to keep losing.

Once Trump realized he couldn't manipulate U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara he fired him and quickly called in Geoffrey Berman-- a long time Republican campaign donor who had maxed out to Trump and who had worked as a volunteer on the Trump transition team-- for an interview. Satisfied that he could manipulate Berman, he had Attorney General Pete Sessions appoint him to head the Southern District of New York-- at the same time he appointed 16 others to head DOJ offices around the country on an interim basis until the Senate could confirm them; Trump never formally nominated any of them and the Chief Judge of the Southern District of New York, acing on behalf of a unanimous court, then appointed Berman U.S. Attorney until the Senate confirms someone nominated by the president.

Berman soon started investigating Trump cronies and allies, including Trump fixer Michael Cohen, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), far right domestic terrorist Cesar Sayoc, Putin assets Natalia Veselnitskaya, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Halkbank, the largest state-owned bank in Turkey-- causing Trump difficulties with Turkish autocrat and Trump briber Recep Tayyip Erdoğan-- and Trump procurer Jeffrey Epstein, whose case resulted in the firing of Trumpist Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. And... Giuliani.

Trump wanted him gone and on Friday night he was preemptively fired by Trump hatchet man William Barr, who called it a "resignation." That sparked this popular meme to start trending on social media:

Barr indicated that Trump intends to nominate the lapdog SEC chairman Jay Clayton to replace Berman-- who has exactly ZERO prosecutorial experience, exactly the kind of prosecutor that would be ideal for Trump's purposes. Meanwhile, Berman at first publicly refused to vacate the office and said that until a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate, the office’s "investigations will move forward without delay or interruption." Presumably, one of those investigations is of great concern to Señor Trumpanzee. By late yesterday, Berman, no doubt under immense pressure, had folded and agreed to step down. Interestingly, Trump claimed he had nothing to do with the firing and Barr claimed that he was ordered to fir Berman by Trump.

Jim Himes is a senior member of the Intelligence Committee and chair of its Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and Advanced Research. Saturday morning he told me that "The AG’s foolish attempt to forcibly 'resign' the US Attorney must be investigated by the Congress. Neither Barr nor anyone in the White House gets the benefit of the doubt anymore. If Barr’s action was designed to protect the President from investigation he should resign."

I look forward to the day that Texas progressive congressional candidate and former Austin City Attorney Mike Siegel is serving on the House Judiciary Committee. I asked him how he reads this DOJ mess. He got right to the point-- and fast-- telling me that "Protecting our democracy can’t wait for the electoral cycle. AG Barr is undermining the rule of law, debasing the DOJ and turning federal prosecutors into Trump’s personal minions. The House should impeach Barr and until then, use every tool at their disposal to impede his corrupt abuses."

Ted Lieu is co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, which helps the House Democrats formulate messaging. I hope his tweets this weekend are indicative of how the whole caucus feels about Trump and Barr firing Berman. Lieu, a prominent member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent his first tweet on the scandal almost immediately after the attempt by Barr to deceive the American people and make it look like Berman had resigned: "Wow, not only is US Attorney for SDNY Geoffrey Berman not resigning, he went out of his way to say that SDNY’s investigations and important cases will continue unimpeded. Was Bill Barr of the Justice Department trying to obstruct an investigation or case by attempting to fire him?"

An hour later he addressed other Department of Justice employees directly, reminding them that "All of you took an oath. That oath was not to Donald Trump or Bill Barr. It was to the Constitution. If Trump or Barr gives you an order that conflicts with the Constitution or statutes, I urge you to follow the example of US Attorney Berman."

Then in the wee hours of the morning he tweeted directly at those same employees again: "There is a 16 alarm fire due to the perversion of DOJ by Bill Barr. I urge you to file motions with the courts ASAP; use whistleblower statutes; report to IG; or contact the House Judiciary Committee. Do everything you can to ensure the rule of law is followed."

After some sleep and, presumably further reflection, Lieu tweeted that "We are witnessing the most corrupt Administration in US history. Donald Trump and Bill Barr have repeatedly fired government officials to protect themselves or their friends. From the FBI Director to multiple Inspectors General to Jessie Liu to the attempted firing of Berman."

Late Saturday, following a day of chaotic Trumpian melodrama, Lieu tweeted "Bill Barr will not investigate himself. But we on the House Judiciary Committee can and will investigate him. The spectacle he created in firing US Attorney Berman is part of a broader pattern of apparently corrupt behavior where Barr has intervened to protect Donald Trump and his friends."