Donald Trump’s Presidency Is a Saturday-Night Massacre That Never Ends – By Andy Kroll (Rolling Stone) / June 23 2020
The Trump administration’s assault on judges, watchdogs, and the ideal of impartial justice is ripped straight from the modern autocrat’s playbook, experts say
Attorney General William Barr’s ham-fisted firing this weekend of Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York, bears all the hallmarks of the Trump administration’s shoot-first-aim-second approach to governing. But the clumsiness of Berman’s ouster shouldn’t overshadow the chilling message sent by the firing of a veteran federal prosecutor who was leading possible criminal investigations that could implicate Trump associates, Trump family members, and possibly the president himself.
It’s important to step back and see Berman’s ouster for what it really is: the latest in a series of firings, interventions, and interferences by Attorney General Barr and his loyalists that appear designed to benefit Trump and the president’s political allies. Before Berman’s removal, there was DOJ’s decision to drop its own case against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Before Flynn’s case, there was the DOJ’s last-minute intervention to seek a more lenient sentence for ex-Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was found guilty of lying to Congress and obstructing a federal investigation. Before Stone’s case, there was Barr’s attempt to mislead the media and the public about the conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Current and former prosecutors say they fear that the actions of the Barr-led Justice Department undermine the independence and integrity of the nation’s top law enforcement agency. Career prosecutors have responding by withdrawing themselves from cases, quitting their jobs, or even agreeing to appear before Congress as whistleblowers. On Wednesday, two career prosecutors who worked on the Stone case will testify before the House Judiciary Committee to speak about Barr’s time as attorney general. Jonathan Kravis, a federal prosecutor who worked on the Stone case and quit his job entirely after DOJ higher-ups tried to help Stone, wrote in a recent op-ed that the department’s actions in the Stone and Flynn cases “will do lasting damage to the institution.”
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