#Ex-Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman tells lawmakers about ouster

Ex-Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman was expected to tell lawmakers Thursday that Attorney General William Barr pressured him to resign before he was ultimately canned by President Trump — and that the Justice Department put out a press release saying he had quit when he hadn’t.

Berman was expected to say that Barr warned him that getting fired would not be good for his resume or job prospects and tried to persuade him to take a high-level Justice Department post in the capital, according to Axios, which obtained a copy of his remarks.

Berman was to testify during a closed-door hearing of the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee about his ouster.

In the statement, Berman detailed conversations he had with Barr in the days and hours leading up to Trump firing him from his post as the top prosecutor with the Southern District of New York.

The document said the AG told him he should take a different job, running the Justice Department’s Civil Division, because “the role would be a good resume builder” and would help him “create a book of business” once he returned to private practice.

Berman said in the statement that on June 18, he got an email from a Barr staffer saying the attorney general wanted to meet him the next day at the Pierre Hotel in New York.

“The meeting took roughly 45 minutes and was held in the Attorney General’s hotel suite … There were sandwiches on the table, but nobody ate,” Berman said.

Berman wrote that Barr started the meeting by saying he wanted him to resign and take a job overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Division to clear the way for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to be nominated to replace him.

Berman said he told Barr he liked Clayton but that Clayton was unqualified because he lacked criminal experience.

Berman said he also told Barr “there were important investigations in the Office that I wanted to see through to completion.”

After he expressed his reluctance to resign and said he would need to be forced out, Barr “added that getting fired from my job would not be good for my resume or future job prospects.”

Berman says he had a short call with Barr at 7:21 p.m. Friday, June 19, and asked Barr if he would let him wait until Monday to have their final conversation, the website reported.

Barr said no and that he would call him on Saturday.

“That is the last time I spoke to the Attorney General or anyone on his staff,” he wrote.

“Sometime after 9:14 p.m. on Friday I became aware that DOJ issued a press released that I would be ‘stepping down.’ That statement was false,” Berman wrote.

Berman arrived on Capitol Hill before noon.

Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) vowed last month that the panel would “immediately open an investigation” into Berman’s ouster.

Barr had told NPR that Berman was already on thin ice with Trump.

“Obviously all US attorneys are appointed by the president and can be removed by the president,” Barr said.

“And New York is one of the preeminent offices in the Justice Department. The president had never made an appointment to that office.”

The Southern District has prosecuted a number of Trump associates, including Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who served a prison sentence for lying to Congress and campaign finance crimes, and has also been investigating Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associates.