The Southern District of New York is the most prestigious prosecutor’s office in the country, and also the most independent. It’s a rough and tumble place where the country’s richest and most powerful people are investigated and sometimes charged with serious crimes. To head the office effectively, a person needs a variety of skills and personality traits, and they certainly should have experience running high profile cases. Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, had no prosecutorial experience when Attorney General William Barr sought to put him in charge of the Southern District. That was the first clue that something nefarious was afoot.

The man Clayton was to replace, Geoffrey Berman, refused to step down, and would not accept the Barr’s offer to head the Justice Department’s Civil Division. Nonetheless, Barr sent out an announcement that Barr was resigning, which lead Berman to publicly insist that he had done no such thing. In his written testimony for the the House Judiciary Committee, Berman explained how things transpired:

  • Berman writes that after he signaled to Barr that he would not resign and would need to be forced out, Barr “added that getting fired from my job would not be good for my resume or future job prospects.”
  • Berman writes that Barr told him he was thinking of other jobs for him in the Trump administration and asked whether he’d be interested in becoming Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said no.
  • Berman says he had a short call with Barr was at 7:21pm on Friday June 19th. He asked Barr if he would allow him to wait until Monday to have their final conversation. Barr said no and that he would call him the next day, Saturday June 20. “That is the last time I spoke to the Attorney General or anyone on his staff.”
  • “Sometime after 9:14 pm on Friday I became aware that DOJ issued a press released that I would be ‘stepping down’. That statement was false,” Berman writes.

Barr had a questionable approach to pitching the Civil Rights Division job. He apparently told Berman that “the role would be a good resume builder” that he could use to “create a book of business” once he returned to the private sector. I suppose that’s the kind of unscrupulous frank talk that routinely goes on “the rooms where decisions are made,” but it stinks of base corruption.

The House Judiciary Committee hearing was held behind closed doors, so it will be some time until we have a transcript. It was part of a larger investigation of the myriad ways that Barr has politicized the Justice Department in the lead-up to the presidential election. Obviously, seizing control of the Southern District was a key part of that project, especially because they’re probably pretty far along in an investigation that would ordinarily result in Rudy Giuliani doing some serious prison time.

As with the issue of Trump’s financial records, it’s going to be up to the post-Trump world to figure out how to sift through all the crimes of this president, and that includes the crimes of William Barr.