The last time Geoffrey Berman generated national headlines, it was in the wake of his firing. In June 2020, the then-U.S. attorney in Manhattan was ousted under highly unusual circumstances, which then-Attorney General Bill Barr and the Trump White House struggled to explain.
There was no obvious reason to fire Berman — a longtime Republican lawyer, a Donald Trump donor, and an official who served on Trump’s presidential transition team — especially with just five months remaining before national elections. The move led to unavoidable questions about improper political considerations at the Justice Department.
Two years later, as The New York Times reported, Berman has written a new book and is speaking out in ways he has not before.
A book by a former top federal prosecutor offers new details about how the Justice Department under President Donald J. Trump sought to use the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to support Mr. Trump politically and pursue his critics — even pushing the office to open a criminal investigation of former secretary of state John Kerry.
Though I have not yet read Berman’s book, the Times described it as painting a picture of Justice Department officials “motivated by partisan concerns in pursuing investigations or blocking them; in weighing how forthright to be in court filings; and in shopping investigations to other prosecutors’ offices when the Southern District [of New York] declined to act.”
The former U.S. attorney has apparently described an almost cartoonishly corrupted process in which officials tried to hide relevant references to the then-president in court filings, targeted the White House’s perceived political rivals, and sought prosecutions of Democrats for purely partisan goals.
Berman’s book, the Times added, argues that during Trump’s term, Justice Department officials made “‘overtly political’ demands, choosing targets that would directly further Mr. Trump’s desires for revenge and advantage.”
To be sure, the allegations are extraordinary. They are not, however, altogether surprising.
As a separate New York Times report added last month, we already knew that Trump and his team “tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power” to carry out the then-president’s wishes.
Indeed, it’s a subject we’ve discussed on multiple occasions throughout his term. There were far too many examples of the Justice Department taking extraordinary steps to intervene in cases of interest to Trump, as then-Attorney General Bill Barr tried to steer prosecutorial decisions in ways consistent with the White House’s political wishes.
The result was a dynamic in which there were two parallel systems: one for cases that the then-president cared about, in which Barr played a direct and personal role, and another for the rest of the justice system.
A Washington Post analysis went on to highlight not only the many instances in which Trump leaned on the Justice Department to follow his wishes, but also Trump’s efforts to push federal law enforcement to validate the Big Lie in the wake of his election defeat.
Much of this was done out in the open. The then-president even had a habit of using his Twitter account and media appearances to lobby prosecutors to go after his political foes in the hopes of advancing his electoral interests.
Berman’s observations are certainly provocative, but given everything we witnessed, they’re also incredibly easy to believe. And yet, despite all of this, congressional Republicans — who said nary a word about any of this during Trump’s presidency — have spent the last month screaming bloody murder, accusing the Biden White House and Attorney General Merrick Garland of politicizing federal law enforcement. It’s a problem, of course, that these allegations are baseless, with GOP officials failing to even try to substantiate the claims. But it’s a bigger problem that these same Republicans couldn’t be bothered to care when Biden’s predecessor actually did the one thing Republicans are complaining about now. Exactly one month ago today, for example, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida wrote via Twitter, “Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships. But never before in America.” The Florida Republican was complaining, of course, about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago — which in no way reflected corruption — though Rubio had no comparable concerns when Trump tried desperately to use government power to persecute his political opponents. The GOP senator has “never before” seen such wrongdoing in the United States — except for the misconduct toward which he turned a blind eye two years ago. Trump politicized the Justice Department. He fired FBI officials and federal prosecutors when they resisted his partisan schemes. He handed pardons to political allies like party favors on his way out the door. He did all of this while occasionally throwing around phrases like “law and order” and “rule of law” as if they were punch lines to sad jokes. If GOP officials even pretended to care about any of this during the former president’s term, they might at least have some shred of credibility while throwing around odd and unsubstantiated allegations now. But they sat on their hands, indifferent to the actual corruption unfolding before their eyes.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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