>> The Trump administration has fired Geoffrey Berman. He was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern
District of New York, and the way he was fired was strange to say the least. It happened
late last Friday night and typically, politicians do things like that when they're hoping that
it wouldn't get much news attention, but of course, the press was paying attention.
And there are questions flying about why he was fired? And what the motivations were of
the Trump administration? So, again, people are asking what is behind this? What's going
on? What's the drama, which means that we're in time for, As The White House Turns.
>> He made some very big mistake.
>> I asked for his resignation. >> Am in the antoney general.
>> So how did we learn about this Cenk? Well, we learned about it through the Justice Department
at first. They announced late Friday night, that Berman would be stepping down only for
Berman himself to issue an extraordinary statement indicating that he had no intention of doing
so.
By Saturday night, after receiving two separate letters from the Justice Department demanding
his departure. At that point, Berman had officially resigned, having secured the appointment of
his chosen deputy as his successor, rather than the Justice Department's preferred pick.
So luckily the person who's serving in his place right now is not a Trump Lackey, is
not a Barr loyalist, is not someone who's looking to and investigations that needs to
be done.
It's actually Audrey Strauss who is again Berman's own chief deputy. And Audrey will
be serving in that role until possibly Trump nominates someone or Audrey gets replaced.
So Trump tried to distance himself from all of this at first, but it was pathetically
obvious that he was lying. The Atlantic reports that Donald Trump declared himself to be "not
involved" just hours after Attorney General William Barr announced that the President
himself dismissed Berman.
Okay, so I want to get to what the possible reasons are, for why Berman was forced out.
But before I get to that I wanted to get your thoughts on how we learned about this Cenk?
>> Yeah, so I wanna go through ___ cuz there's two very, very clear provable lies, which
is then gonna get into a rare agreement that I had with Chuck Schumer, Leader of Democrats
in the Senate.
So, first of all, Barr wrote that Berman had stepped down on Friday night. That's just
a lie. Berman had not stepped down and then Berman publicly said, I didn't step down.
But Barr issued that statement, again inarguable. So he flat-out lied and obviously investigators
should ask why the top law enforcement official put out a lie like that.
And Berman says, I didn't step down. So then Barr puts out a second statement saying, Yeah,
well, then we're firing you and I talked to Trump and Trump fired you himself. Now, why
did Barr have to do that? Cuz the only person who has the authority to fire The U.S. Attorney
in the Southern District of New York or anywhere, is the president.
Barr cannot legally fire Berman. Only Trump can legally fire Berman. And Barr very clearly
said, yes, Trump fired you, okay. Then they asked Trump a couple hours later, as Anna
pointed out, and he's like, no, I didn't. Okay, well in that scenario either Barr lied
or Trump lied?
Now, in that series it's much more likely that Trump lied. Cuz he does not want his
fingerprints on it, and he wants to be able to throw Barr under a bus later, something
he does all the time. He tells him, fire Berman, he is working on a case that could cause me
trouble, and then when they ask him, he is like, I didn't fire him, that's the Attorney
General's job, that's not my job.
Moron, you might have wanted to look into it, it actually turns out, it is your job.
You're the only one legally allowed to fire him. But as usual, even when he's breaking
laws, he's just too careless to bother covering it up in an effective way. And so finally
Berman says, he resigns once he gets that concession that it's gonna be his deputy and
not some Trump Lackey who's going to take over.
But the reality is at that point, he didn't resign. He'd already been publicly fired.
There's no ands, ifs, or buts about it. That resignation means absolutely nothing. You
cannot resign after you've been fired. So, that's more like-
>> Publicly. >> Or move, that's all.
>> Right, Barr already put out a press release saying that he was out and then at that point,
he resigned.
So you're right. It's not really resignation. He was fired publicly before he even had an
opportunity to resign. But I do want to go through some of the potential reasons why
Berman was targeted by the Trump administration. And we'll start with the most benign reason
that's come up in the press, and it has to do with one of Trumps friends Jay Clayton,
who apparently had been eyeing that position.
So the Atlantic writes that according to Barr's original statement, Trump had decided to appoint
Jay Clayton, currently the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission to the
job. Clayton had recently golfed with the president at Trump's club in Bedminster, New
Jersey, and had expressed interest in the U.S. Attorney job.
So let me just stop right there because I described that as the most benign reason,
and that alone under any other administration is a scandal, right? Favor for a favor, like
I'm going golfing with this guy, he's eyeing a job, so I'm just gonna go ahead and push
someone out and give him this job cuz he's my buddy.
Like that in any other administration would not be described as benign. So I just want
to be clear about that. >> Anna, I gotta add one thing.
>> But in the context of Trump administration, go ahead.
>> Sorry, I gotta add one thing to the Clayton part of the story.
So, of course Trump is not doing this for his golf buddy. He's doing it to get rid of
Berman, which we'll talk more about in a second. But when it comes to Clayton, why Clayton?
He's the head of the SEC. So obviously he's a lawyer, but the U.S. Attorney's Office,
they're prosecutors, and unless you've already been a prosecutor, you're almost never appointed
as U.S. Attorney.
And so why is he picking Clayton? One of the banks that Clayton represented as an attorney
was Deutsche Bank. And so he is known to be very soft on Wall Street, and specifically
Deutsche Bank, which the Southern District of New York might have been investigating
and that might have been the reason why Berman was fired in the first place.
So if you're gonna fire a guy like Berman, you need a guy like Clayton to come in, to
clean up and make sure that you and Deutsche Bank are free and clear.
>> Potential investigation into Deutsche Bank could also be one of the reasons, which is
a more nefarious reason to get rid of Berman and then there was also some other nefarious
reasons.
Again listed by the Atlantic, Berman's office was responsible for the prosecution of Michael
Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer, and for the related investigation of figures associated
with the Trump Organization. It also indicted Halkbank, a Turkish government-owned bank
accused of violating Iranian sanctions, causing friction between Trump and the Turkish President.
So, that's one other possibility Trump didn't want to have his relationship with Edogran
damaged through this investigation and so that played into a possible motive for getting
rid of Berman. >> Well, this is where the stories of today
intersects because John Bolton revealed just now that Trump had told the leader of Turkey
Erdogan, Hey those are Obama's people prosecuting your guys in the Southern District of New
York.
I'll get rid of them and put in my people and then you'll be okay. Bolton said it was
actually one of the most shocking things that he heard in his entire time in the Trump era.
He said no president has that he's ever worked with or heard of would make a promise to do
something like that and it is literal obstruction of justice and totally illegal.
And so, right as we're finding that out. Berman's actually fired, just like Trump promised the
Turkish leader. So that's certainly another possibility. In fact, we've got a poll for
you guys to ask you guys, why you might have done it in a second.
>> Right, exactly. And then just to suss that out a little more, Berman's office was investigating
another presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the Halkbank case is still ongoing.
The most acute concern, therefore, is that Berman's firing was not retaliation for something
he had already done, but an effort to prevent his office from doing something in the future.
So the question that we have for you guys in the poll is, what's the real reason? What
do you think is the real reason that Trump and Barr fired U.S. Attorney Berman.
And you have all of the potential reasons in that list, because he prosecuted Michael
Cohen, because he's investigating Giuliani, because he's looking into Deutsche Bank, because
he promised the leader of Turkey, he would fire him. We have a link in the description
box below. So just click on that and you can participate in the poll or you can go to TYT.com/polls/Berman.
>> Yeah and just to be clear, Trump had already tried to stop that investigation of Halkbank
and he was not able to. So, he was stymied by that and they have continued to pursue
that. I don't think it's over Michael Cohen. You do not panic fire the most important U.S.
Attorney outside of the Attorney General, four months before an election for something
he did in the past.
You do it for what he's about to reveal in the next four months. So when Chuck Schumer
says that, he's going to have the Judiciary Committee look into it. The office of professional
responsibility, the DOJ should look into it and the Inspector General the DOJ should look
into it.
He's absolutely right. That is the minimum place to start, but that is where he should
start. And I don't think you could probably be done in a four to six month window, but
if it can, they should definitely impeach Barr. Because, there's absolutely no question
that Barr lied at a minimum once, but probably twice about this incident and by the way,
when asked over and over again.
So, what is your official legitimate reason for firing Berman? Barr has had no comment.
They didn't even bother stating an official reason for firing him. They are so lazy and
incompetent in their corruption. So it's not just Trump, Barr should definitely be impeached
over this.