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Informationen zum Autor Geoffrey Berman Klappentext "The gripping and explosive memoir of serving as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in the face of the Justice Department's attempts to protect Trump's friends and punish his enemies"-- Leseprobe Preface My lead deputy, Robert Khuzami, received an urgent phone call from a top official at the US Department of Justice.The midterm elections were less than two months away. The results would determine not just which party controlled the House and Senate but also if the next two years of the Trump presidency would be dogged by congressional investigations. Khuzami spoke with Edward O’Callaghan, the principal associate deputy attorney general. Despite the convoluted title, O’Callaghan held a powerful position within DOJ. His message to Khuzami was unambiguous: it was time for me, Geoffrey Berman, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and lifelong Republican, to take one for the home team. I had been close to Khuzami since we worked together as young prosecutors in the Southern District in the early 1990s, and when I came back to take the top job, he agreed to join me. He came into myoffice and closed the door. “You’re not going to believe the conversation I had with O’Callaghan,” he said before sharing the details. The top leadership at DOJ wanted me to bring criminal charges against Gregory Craig, a private attorney who had once been President Barack Obama’s White House counsel. And they wanted me to do so before Election Day. Khuzami related that O’Callaghan told him, bluntly, “It’s time for you guys to even things out.” “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said. “I wish,” he said, “but no.” The charges I was told to bring against Craig involved allegations that he had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, while representing Ukraine’s former prime minister. Our office had been investigating the potential FARA violation for months. But DOJ’s rationale had nothing to do with evidence or law. O’Callaghan kept reminding Khuzami that our office had just prosecuted two high-profile Trump loyalists— Congressman Chris Collins, a Republican from New York, and Trump’s private attorney, Michael Cohen. We both understood that O’Callaghan was only the messenger. He was himself an alumnus of the Southern District with a solid reputation. Still, it was galling for those in our office who knew him to learn that he was the one delivering that message. I ignored the edict. We investigated—thoroughly—but there was, at best, a marginal case to be made. Even if we were foolish enough to go forward, I doubted the charges would ever stand up in front of a jury. This episode was not a one-off. It was part of a pattern. Throughout my tenure as US attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining—in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired. I walked this tightrope for two and a half years. Eventually, the rope snapped. The Southern District of New York, known as SDNY, or simply the Southern District, is not just one among ninety-three US attorney’s offices across the United States and its territories. George Washington appointed the district’s first prosecutor in 1789. The SDNY predates the Department of Justice by eighty years. It is sometimes referred to as the Sovereign District of New York, which, as backhanded compliments go, is pretty much a classic of the form. What the moniker signifies is that the office is both admired and envied. Among the criminal class, it is feared. Its stubborn independence is sometimes read as arrogance. But my resistance to Trump’s chosen leaders of DOJ was never a matter of pride or turf. It was about protecting a bulwark of the rule of law, a monument to our nation’s highest values. Part of w...
