Manhattan U.S. Attorney Berman went away, but suspicion about firing won't

Flails of Justice

With Democrats demanding investigations of the sudden removal of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose probes have reached into President Donald Trump's inner circle, the White House is offering a more innocent explanation. That's not to say it's a great one.

As press secretary Kayleigh McEnany spun it Monday, the president was just trying to help out Jay Clayton, a golfing buddy and the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman. She said, "Mr. Clayton wanted to go back to New York City. We wanted to keep him in government. And therefore, he was given the position at SDNY." McEnany added that Attorney General William Barr "was working on a smooth transition" to replace Geoffrey Berman.

Here's how that went: Barr met with Berman Friday and pressed him to resign, suggesting he'd be offered another job. Berman declined. Hours later, Berman said, he read a news release from Barr that he was "stepping down." That was false. Berman shot back: "I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning." The standoff lasted until Saturday, when Trump fired Berman because Barr's authority to do so was doubtful. But Clayton's nomination looks like it will be going nowhere fast after a very unsmooth transition.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday issued a letter to top internal watchdogs at the Justice Department, calling for an “immediate” investigation into whether Berman "was removed for partisan political purposes, to influence an investigation or prosecution, or to retaliate for his actions in any specific investigation or prosecution."

Schumer asked Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Office of Professional Responsibility director Jeffrey Ragsdale, both of the DOJ, to investigate jointly, reports Newsday's Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

As Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Berman led a number of high-profile probes into Trump associates, including Trump ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations in August 2018. On the latter charges, which involved payoffs to porn stars for Trump, a memo from prosecutors described an "Individual 1" — meaning Trump — as essentially an unindicted co-conspirator.

Berman also brought a grand jury indictment against Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two former business associates of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney. Giuliani himself has been under investigation over his business dealings.

Janison: Elephants' graveyard

Trump has made history in an exotic way — as the first Republican president to habitually target his own GOP appointees for public abuse, writes Newsday's Dan Janison. The Barr-Berman dramedy is the latest example of the perils that can befall officials who hoped they'd be left to do their jobs.

Starting more than 30 years ago, Berman served other Republican administrations without blowback. He was a partner at the firm Greenberg Traurig alongside ex-U.S. Attorney Giuliani, who reportedly recommended him to be U.S. attorney in New Jersey. Berman even served on Trump's presidential transition team. 

But in doing his job as Manhattan U.S. attorney, Berman brought discomfort to Trump's orbit. He joins other Republican casualties from Trump's presidency, including former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russia investigation special counsel Robert Mueller. 

Perhaps no Republican "law-and-order" candidate ever tried to soil the reputations of as many Republicans in law enforcement as the current president.

Lined up for a smell test

Coronavirus tests are not 100% accurate. Neither are at least some of the explanations offered Monday at the White House about Trump's remarks at his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally, during which he said he instructed his staff to slow down COVID-19 testing. (To recap, Trump said: "When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’ ”) 

McEnany said at her afternoon briefing that Trump had not, in fact, ordered a coronavirus testing slowdown and that his comment to the contrary in Tulsa had been made "in jest." Vice President Mike Pence told governors on a conference call that Trump's rally comment Saturday was just "a passing observation." He did not call it a joke, CBS News reported.

Trump did not deny asking his staff to slow down testing when questioned during a Monday interview with Scripps’ TV stations. “If it did slow down, frankly, I think we’re way ahead of ourselves, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “We’ve done too good a job.” In another interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, he said the comment was "semi-tongue-in-cheek." So there wasn't an order to slow down? "No, but I think we put ourselves at a disadvantage."

Tweet on mail voting is a riot

Among Trump's latest arguments against mail-in voting is that if you can riot and loot, you should be able show up in person. 

His exact tweet: "If people can go out and protest, riot, break into stores, and create all sorts of havoc, they can also go out and VOTE — and keep our Election Honest. With millions of mail-in ballots being sent out, who knows where they are going, and to whom?" The president doesn't appear to allow for the possibility that law-abiding voters just would rather not go to a polling place this year.

In another tweet, Trump declared without evidence that foreign countries will manufacture fake mail-in ballots in order to rig the 2020 election.

That echoed a comment, also offered without evidence, a day earlier by Barr that "a foreign country could print up tens of thousands of counterfeit ballot" and it would be "very hard for us to detect" which were authentic or fake. No, it's not, say current and former election administrators, because of numerous safeguards, including that election officials know who was sent ballots.

A fact-check from NBC News makes the case on why mail-in balloting, used by more than 32 million Americans in 2016, is secure. By the way, Barr voted by absentee ballot in Virginia in 2019 and 2012, according to The Washington Post.

Tulsa in the rearview mirror

McEnany, who pledged at her first news briefing last month that "I Will Never Lie to You," said Monday that Trump "was very pleased with the rally" in Tulsa.

That's the event where vast expanses of empty seats — and an overflow area where 40,000 people failed to show up — prompted furious blame-casting by campaign officials exaggerating troubles with protesters and media-driven fears of the coronavirus.

Two more Trump campaign staffers who worked on preparations for his Tulsa rally tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total confirmed cases in that advance group to eight. The latest two also were at the rally. A campaign spokesman said they "were wearing masks during the entire event."

Trump, who boasted before the tepid turnout that he never has had an empty seat at a rally of his, was still steaming on Monday about how it played. The campaign played up numbers on home viewership.

"WOW! The Trump Rally gives @FoxNews the ‘LARGEST SATURDAY NIGHT AUDIENCE IN ITS HUSTORY,’ ” Trump tweeted, and yes, that's his typo. "Isn’t it amazing that virtually nobody in the Lamestream Media is reporting this rather major feat!"

Trump problem: Biden harder to hate

One complication for Trump's hope of repeating his 2016 victory: Joe Biden is not as widely and viscerally disliked as the last Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis.

Trump's best — and possibly only — chance of winning a second term is making Biden seem the more unpalatable of the two. But despite his gaffes and a political record dating to the 1970s to pick apart, Biden is "not a good enough bad guy” to make the focal point of a negative campaign, said longtime Republican operative Ed Rogers.

As for Democrats, there is anxiety about overconfidence even as polls show Biden with a sizable lead, The Washington Post reports.

They worry about voter turnout during the coronavirus crisis. They fear a coming misinformation campaign. They say the party risks underestimating Trump’s ability to turn the country against their nominee. They also worry their party still does not fully understand what led voters to Trump in the first place. 

More coronavirus news

See a roundup of the latest pandemic developments from Long Island and beyond by Newsday's reporting staff, written by Bart Jones. For a full list of Newsday's coronavirus stories, click here.

What else is happening:

• The White House on Monday scaled back its own coronavirus testing, and it's no longer conducting temperature checks except for people in close contact with Trump or Pence. The District of Columbia is now in Phase 2 of reopening, and with more White House staffers returning to their offices, checking everyone would have meant long lines at entrances, officials told The New York Times.
• Trump tweeted without context the words "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!" on Monday afternoon. Usually, there's an apparent reason, such as last fall's impeachment investigation. But Trump's 37th "presidential harassment" tweet since 2018 is a mystery.
• A U.S. soldier plotted with a neo-Nazi cult to launch a "mass casualty attack" against his own unit, federal prosecutors in Berman's former office charged in an indictment unsealed Monday.
• Trump increasingly has been preoccupied with perceptions of his mental and physical health, The Washington Post reports. At a recent meeting with White House aides and campaign officials, he spoke at length about his performance in a 2018 cognitive screening test, such as being able to repeat five words in order. That meeting was before his ramp-and-water-glass monologue in Tulsa.
• Pence voted by mail in Indiana's June primary, using an address he has not lived at since 2017 — the Indiana governor’s mansion, according to Business Insider.
• Republican strategists see Trump's deficit with women voters getting worse, most notably among non-college educated women and older women, The Washington Post reports.
• Congressional Republicans and some White House aides are wary of the cost involved in sending another round of stimulus checks before the election even if Trump supports it as a way to help him win.
• Trump will sign an executive order extending pandemic-sparked restrictions on foreign-worker visas through the end of the year, the White House announced.
• Trade adviser Peter Navarro walked back his earlier comment that an export deal with China is "over," apparently to suggest talks on a second round of stronger measures have stalled rather than eliminating marginal changes already in place. Markets dipped on his earlier statement.
• Fiona Hill, the National Security Council's former Russia expert who testified in the impeachment hearings, spoke at length to The New Yorker about her experiences and indicated that Trump's 2018 lovefest news conference in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin was a low point. “I just sat there and thought, ‘Maybe I should just fall over backward onto the media behind me and fake a medical emergency just to stop this agony,’ ” Hill said.