Tag: Southern District of New York

Trump lawyers say they’ll fight subpoena for president’s tax returns

The Hill logoPresident Trump intends to fight a subpoena for his tax returns and financial records from the Manhattan district attorney after the Supreme Court rejected his claim that he’s immune to criminal investigation, the president’s lawyers told a judge on Wednesday.

In a status report filed with a federal district court in New York, Trump’s legal team said it has other objections to the district attorney’s subpoena aside from the one struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this month.

The move will surely draw out the proceedings in the lower court, and the president’s attorneys made clear that they intend to raise issues about whether District Attorney Cyrus Vance‘s subpoenas are overly broad or relevant to a legitimate investigation. They argued that the case requires the two parties to develop a more thorough factual record. Continue reading.

Berman Testifies That Barr Fired Him — And Then Lied

A former top prosecutor testified under oath on Thursday that Attorney General William Barr lied about the events surrounding his departure from his job last month.

Barr had announced on June 19 that Geoffrey Berman would be resigning from his role as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Berman testified in a closed-door hearing of the House Judiciary Committee that Barr had pushed him out of his job in order to install the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, in the position. Continue reading.

Prosecutor spills about Bill Barr’s ‘unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained’ efforts to oust him

AlterNet logoGeoffrey Berman, the man who until recently served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told members of Congress on Thursday about Attorney General Bill Barr’s “unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained” efforts to oust him.

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Berman explained how Barr contacted him and repeatedly pressed him to step down from his position at SDNY to take another high-profile position within the government.

Berman, however, told Barr that he wanted to stay at his current job until a replacement was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the United States Senate. Continue reading.

READ: Ousted Manhattan US Attorney Berman testifies Barr ‘repeatedly urged’ him to resign

The Hill logoGeoffrey Berman, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, on Thursday testified that Attorney General William Barr “repeatedly urged” him to resign before forcing him out in June.

Berman told the House Judiciary Committee that prior to his ouster, he resisted Barr’s urging because “there were important investigations in the office that I wanted to see through to completion.”

Those investigations included whether President Trump‘s personal attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, violated laws on lobbying for foreign interests as it relates to Ukraine. Continue reading.

James Comey: Geoffrey Berman upheld the finest tradition of the SDNY office

Washington Post logoIn 1906, reform-minded President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to change the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. That office, which in its original form opened in 1789, was older than the Department of Justice itself. The court in which the office’s prosecutors worked was known as the “Mother Court,” because it began operating weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Southern District of New York had been around since the founding of the country, and Roosevelt didn’t like what it had become — a place of political patronage, uninterested in troubling the powerful.

Roosevelt changed that with a single appointment, of Henry L. Stimson, a young, Harvard-educated Wall Street lawyer, who would go on to serve as secretary of state and secretary of war for four presidents of both parties, including a brand-new chief executive, Harry Truman, who needed to know about the atomic bomb. (“I think it is very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter,” Stimson wrote his new boss.)

As the new U.S. attorney, Stimson immediately fired people. They were all hacks, in his estimation, careerist or corrupt or both. He replaced them with recent graduates from top law schools, whom he wanted only for a few years, after which they would go work for fancy law firms and be replaced by other idealistic and talented young lawyers. Continue reading.

Barr says US attorney who refused to resign is now fired — but this is all far from over

AlterNet logoOn Friday night, Attorney General William Barr issued a statement saying that the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffry Berman, had resigned. That was a lie. Not only had Berman not resigned, he had told Barr repeatedly that he would not resign, and had turned down other roles at the Department of Justice. So, about an hour after Barr’s statement, Berman issued a statement of his own, telling Barr to stuff it. Actually, Berman stated that he had been “appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York” and that he would only step down “when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate.” Berman is in the middle of a number of highly sensitive investigations, including an ongoing investigation of Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associates in Trump’s Ukraine scandal. So his removal clearly signals that Barr is, once again, placing Trump’s desires far ahead of such arcane ideas as justice, or the nation.

On Saturday afternoon, Barr produced a new statement. He’s given up the pretense that Berman has resigned. Instead Barr says, “I have asked the president to remove you as of today, and he has done so.” According to Barr, this makes assistant U. S. Attorney Audrey Strauss the new acting U. S. Attorney, but considering Barr’s knowledge and application of the law, odds are he’s simply lying again. Hilariously, Barr claims there’s no danger of there being an issue with ongoing cases because … the inspector general will see to that. As everyone knows, Trump and Barr just respect the hell out of inspectors general.

The Memo: Mueller report won’t end Trump’s legal woes

President Trump will not be out of legal peril even after special counsel Robert Mueller delivers his final report — especially given that investigations by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), among others, are pressing in on him.

Legal experts who spoke to The Hill stressed the importance of the New York investigation in particular, which encompasses scrutiny of everything from apparent hush money payments to women to the funding of the president’s 2017 inauguration.

“Trump is not out of the woods and I think the SDNY proceedings are the most dangerous for both him and for members of his immediate family,” said Mark Zaid, a D.C.-based attorney who has represented clients from both major parties. “There is still a lot to be concerned about.”

View the complete February 23 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.

Trump can’t run the Mueller playbook on New York feds

For starters, they have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that executive privilege doesn’t cover.

Even as speculation mounts that special counsel Robert Mueller might be winding down his investigation, a parallel threat to President Donald Trump only seems to be growing within his own Justice Department: the Southern District of New York.

Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t. They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report. From a PR perspective, Trump has been unable to run the same playbook on SDNY that he’s used to erode conservatives’ faith in Mueller, the former George W. Bush-appointed FBI director. Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.

The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.

View the complete February 18 article by Darren Samuelsohn on the Politico website here.

Key Takeaways from the Cohen Filings

Here are key takeaways from the sentencing memos filed by Mueller and SDNY prosecutors tonight:

MORE EVIDENCE OF RUSSIA CONTACTS: Cohen told Mueller’s office about at least two additional contacts he had on Trump’s behalf with people close to the Russian government.

Mueller: “For example, and as described above, the defendant provided a detailed account of his involvement and the involvement of others in the Moscow Project, and also corrected the record concerning his outreach to the Russian government during the week of the United Nations General Assembly.”

Mueller: “The defendant also provided information about attempts by other Russian nationals to reach the campaign. For example, in or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level.’”

Continue reading “Key Takeaways from the Cohen Filings”