The facts, Ma’am….. Just the facts
So Trump is assaulting the independence of the justice system?
Can you say butthurt?
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
(CNN) – The Trump administration’s ouster of one of America’s most powerful prosecutors raises fresh and glaring suspicions about its assault on the independence of the justice system and its respect for the rule of law that underpins constitutional governance.
Attorney General William Barr said in a letter Saturday that President Donald Trump had fired Geoffrey Berman, the powerful prosecutor atop the Manhattan US Attorney’s office who has investigated Trump’s allies, after Berman refused Barr’s effort a day prior to oust him.
“Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so.”
William Barr
US Attorney General
On Friday night, Barr’s declaration that he replaced Berman renewed the debate over the extent to which Barr is acting on Trump’s interests rather than the nation’s. The office of Berman, who had refused to quit, is leading a probe into Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and associates and has also indicted a Turkish state-owned firm involved in an Iran sanctions-busting case which Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has raised with Trump.
Scores of former Justice Department officials had already called for Barr to quit over a series of interventions that appear specifically designed to benefit Trump politically. Berman’s refusal to go quietly meanwhile set off a new crisis and governmental showdown for an already reeling administration that is struggling to cope with a pandemic, a consequent economic crisis and a national reckoning on race.
The President had been thinking of removing Berman for two years and believes that the investigation into Giuliani is an attempt to damage him politically, two sources told CNN’s Kevin Liptak. But Friday night’s dramatic events stoke fresh intrigue of exactly why Barr and Trump are suddenly so keen to oust Berman — a Trump donor who was installed by the Trump administration in 2018 — less than five months before the election.
Berman, before walking into his office in downtown New York Saturday morning, told reporters, “I issued a statement last night, I have nothing to add to that this morning. I’m just here to do my job.”
Fundamentally, the episode reveals the extent to which a President with authoritarian impulses, who has worked constantly to challenge the justice system’s independence and sought to force it to act in his own personal interests, is prepared to act with impunity in the wake of his Senate acquittal by fellow Republicans on impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Read more ….Click on the link if you dare!
Firing of powerful NY prosecutor appears to be latest move to protect Trump
H/T DEFENDER90
Calamity Jane