As Donald Trump and his various scandal-embroiled cohorts claim the Justice Department is acting politically in various investigations, a new book by a former US Attorney in the Trump DOJ alleges Trump and his numerous and sundry Attorneys General pushed front-line federal prosecutors to chase wisps of allegations against Trump’s political opponents to aid his political standing, the New York Times reports.
Geoffrey S. Berman, the US Attorney for the influential Southern District of New York from January 2018 to June 2020, writes in his upcoming book “Holding the Line” that Trump wanted SDNY to undertake a criminal investigation into former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry for his work to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran’s arsenal, a mission Kerry continued on after Trump unilaterally violated the multinational Iran nuclear deal President Barack Obama had negotiated.
In other cases–such as the conviction of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and an investigation into the former White House Counsel for Barack Obama–DOJ officials pressured Berman to file court motions to influence the outcome of the 2018 midterm elections.
Berman writes that he got a number of communications in May 2019 from Justice Department officials pressuring him to file charges against Kerry after Trump started tweeting about Kerry’s efforts to preserve aspects of the Iran deal between Iran and the other co-signers. While Kerry never presented himself as a representative of the US government, Trump wanted Kerry prosecuted for violating the Logan Act, which prevents private citizens from representing themselves as official US government emissaries.
Trump likely wanted Kerry charged because one of Trump’s allies, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was forced from the job after about 2.1 Scaramuccis–23 days–when it became known that he had instructed Russian officials to ignore sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama Administration in December 2020 for interfering in the 2020 election. In a potential violation of the Logan Act, Flynn had told Russian officials in a phone call that Trump would reverse the sanctions when he took office so Russia should not retaliate; Flynn later lied to the FBI about having that conversation. Trump pardoned Flynn in December 2020 after Flynn had pleaded guilty–twice–to charges relating to lying to the FBI, before retaining Sidney Powell as his lawyer and changing his plea.
After Trump tweeted about Kerry’s “possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy” on May 7th, 2019, Berman says he got a call from DOJ officials in Washington pushing him to publicly announce an investigation into Kerry. It was a continuation of Trump’s public pressure campaign, which included an April 22, 2019 tweet: “Iran is being given VERY BAD advice by @JohnKerry. Big violation of Logan Act?”
Besides Kerry, Trump and then-AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III pushed SDNY to charge former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig with violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act prior to the 2018 midterms even though an internal investigation into Craig’s work as legal counsel for Ukraine in 2012, two years after leaving his White House post, didn’t violate the law.
Craig was eventually indicted in 2019, following the Mueller investigation, with the DOJ claiming Craig was working with Trump advisor Paul Manafort and had lied to investigators about it. (Manafort had taken tens of millions of dollars from Russian-back Ukrainian politicians; he was convicted of various counts of money laundering, tax evasion and failure to register as a foreign agent, but also received a Trump pardon.) Craig was acquitted of all charges in a 2019 trial.
Regarding the Cohen case, after Bill Barr became Trump’s Justice Department lackey, Berman says his deputy who was handling the case was summoned to Washington in February 2019, days after Barr took office, to defend the investigation into Cohen, even though Cohen had pleaded guilty six months earlier.
Barr wanted SDNY to reverse the guilty plea and let Cohen walk, Berman claims in the book. Barr instructed the New York USA to stop all investigations into Cohen and demanded to know the justification for Cohen’s guilty plea and “the reasoning behind pursuing similar campaign finance charges against other individuals.” Barr ultimately dropped the review, allowing Cohen’s guilty plea to stand.