The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Fires Lawyer Who Prosecuted His Allies

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

President Trump has removed a top Justice Department official, Geoffrey Berman, whose office has overseen the prosecutions of several of the president's associates. And the president's Saturday rally was a return to form for Trump, but fell short of expectations set by his campaign.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jacqueline Kiso from Kitchener, Ontario, but I'm originally from the great state of Idaho. While we're all missing out on some of life's greatest moments while social distancing, I couldn't think of a better way to digitally announce my husband and I are expecting our first baby. A little girl will be joining us in a couple months, and we cannot wait for the borders to open and travel to be safe again. A special digital hug to all those also experiencing pregnancy in this strange, strange time. But a huge thanks to NPR for keeping us all connected and informed. This podcast was recorded at 2.10pm on Monday, the 22nd of June. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, enjoy the show. Congratulations. Yeah, really nice.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. So on Saturday evening, President Trump officially fired Jeffrey Berman, a top Justice Department prosecutor whose office has investigated associates of the president, names that will be very familiar when Ryan talks about them. Hey, Ryan, can you tell us who Berman is? Yes, Jeffrey Berman is the, well, Jeffrey Berman was, let me correct myself, he was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is one of the biggest and most

important U.S. Attorney's offices in the country. They tend to lead very prominent investigations, mob investigations, financial investigations. It tends to call itself the Sovereign District of New York. That's kind of its nickname for itself, which gives you an indication as to, you know, how it likes to operate. It likes to view itself as an independent entity that is going to make its decisions without fear or favor or any sort of political interference. And in fact, this office has conducted a number of high profile investigations, some of them past, some of them ongoing, including into Michael Cohen, the president's former personal attorney, and Rudy Giuliani, his kind of sort of current personal attorney. That's right. It was the Southern District of New York that prosecuted Michael Cohen. The president was irate about that investigation

when it first came to light a couple of years ago. Cohen, of course, has since pleaded guilty to a number of financial crimes. He also implicated the president himself, actually, in some campaign finance violations. One big investigation, of course, that is still ongoing is into the president's current personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as you said. There are other investigations that the Southern District of New York is conducting that are also of concern, perhaps, to President Trump. Ryan, so all of these investigations into people in the president's inner circle, by getting rid of Berman, does that mean that these investigations will end or be delayed till after the election? I mean, what's the practical effect of get rid of why he decided to fire Berman. And the concern among, you know, former federal prosecutors from New York, as well as folks in the legal community, was that this was an effort to try to kind of quash these investigations.

Berman certainly suggested as much in a statement that he put out on Friday when he said that, no, actually, he's not resigning, regardless of what Bill Barr says. And Berman said that, you know, the investigations, the cases that the office has underway will proceed, will not be affected by all of this. The big concern among folks watching this was that this was an effort by main justice, by Barr, who, of course, has emerged as a very loyal advisor, loyal attorney general to the president, that this was an effort by Barr to kind of bring all of this to heel. This appears to be part of a trend.

And there's the concern that this was another instance in the eyes of critics of Barr doing something as attorney general to try to help the president. So I think we need to connect a couple of dots here. At the beginning of the podcast, I said that on Saturday, President Trump fired Berman. And then we've been talking about how the attorney general tried to fire him on Friday. Now the White House is sort of saying like, well, yes, the president had to step in and do this. But like, really, it was all bar. It was all on bar. I guess we need to explain that the attorney general couldn't technically fire Berman. And that's why the president had to step in. But why is the president distancing himself? Because it's a political mess? Yeah. For a guy who's, you're fired was his actual slogan when he was on reality TV. He's

very reluctant to actually be seen firing anyone. He went to great lengths to say that the attorney, the justice department is his department as in Barr. It's not my department. It's up to him. I'm not involved. Well, yeah, exactly. And that's part of why this past weekend was so stunning is that you had Barr put out a statement saying that the president has fired you. And then shortly afterward, the president, as you're referencing there, Marr, was asked about it. And he said, nope, that's the attorney general. That's his department. I really didn't have anything to do with it. I'm not involved, which for Barr looked really bad. It looked like he had come out and said something, and the president was now basically contradicting him flat out.

You know, people say this is part of a pattern with Barr. He intervened for Roger Stone, for Mike Flynn. But it's also a pattern for the president because he has removed a lot of people, government officials who were investigating his administration. The IGs in several agencies, the FBI director, now the U.S. attorney. I mean, this is part of a pattern. The president does not like oversight in any form. and forth over the weekend, there was one big change, which in theory may affect whether all of these investigations go forward apace or whether there is a change. And that is that Berman, by refusing to see himself out the door, it seems as though he was able to secure who would fill in for him. This very public dispute with Barr forced Barr essentially

to instead of having his handpicked man, instead what's going to happen because of Berman's pushback is Berman's deputy, his number two in the office, Audrey Strauss, is going to take over on an acting basis, which is how this normally works. And that for folks in the New York legal world, former federal prosecutors in New York, is a big deal. And many of them, with whom I've spoken, are breathing a sigh of relief because of this, because they feel that the office is in independent hands with Audrey Strauss. All right, well, we are going to leave this conversation here for now. Ryan, thank you for being with us. We're going to show you the door.

With a little more ceremony. Thank you. And when we get back, the aftermath of President Trump's restart the campaign rally in Tulsa. This message comes from NPR sponsor Facebook. It's a challenging time for small businesses in communities across the country. Facebook's Business Resource Hub offers free tools to help Hey y'all, I'm Sam Sanders, host of It's Been a Minute. Resource Hub can provide resources. Learn more at facebook.com slash resource. Hey, I'm Sam Sanders, host of It's Been a Minute. There is a lot going on in the world. So on my show, my guest and I make sense of the news and culture through conversation. It feels like we're living in three movies at once. That's a good way to put it.

It feels like a Mike Judge movie. It feels like a Spike Lee movie. And it feels like a Mike Judge movie. It feels like a Spike Lee movie. And it feels like a Michael Bay movie. Every Tuesday and Friday, listen and subscribe now to It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back and we're joined by Aisha Roscoe. Hey, Aisha. Hey. So we're all here because we cover the White House, we cover the campaign, and the president held his first campaign rally since the pandemic took over on Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And he described it as sort of a relaunch. So we begin Oklahoma. We begin.

Thank you, Oklahoma. And thank you to Vice President Mike Pence. We begin. It was supposed to be the big restart of the campaign and there was a crowd, but it was a smaller crowd than expected. So there were a lot of empty seats in the 19,000 capacity arena.

It was not full. And President Trump, I mean, in in many ways it was a typical rally outside of the what seemed to be pretty you know low relatively lower um attendance it was president trump talking about you know what he is upset about talking about the culture wars talking about all of those things um that's known for, but not really talking about what's new and what he's going to do for the next four years. It was the day after Juneteenth. No discussion of that. No talk about racial reconciliation. No talk about George Floyd. No talk about the recession or even much about COVID. But as Aisha

said, lots of personal grievances. So I thought it was an interesting speech. It was definitely well received in the hall. But I wonder how well it fits with this moment. You know, it was a classic Trump rally in a lot of ways. In terms of what the purpose of a campaign rally is in terms of messaging. He did roll out some of his attacks on Joe Biden, though that certainly wasn't the thing that characterized the speech. But he did. He did talk Biden a little. Sure. If the Democrats gain power, the rioters will be in charge and no one will be safe. That was a pretty clear message. If the Democrats gain power, then the rioters will be in charge and no one will be safe and no one will have control. Joe Biden is not the leader of his party. Joe Biden is a helpless puppet of the radical left.

Yeah, they called him a Trojan horse for socialism. He tried to say that Biden, he may not be the radical left, but he will be ruled by the quote unquote radical left. But you know, it was interesting to me, I did a piece on how the culture wars are changing, and raising the question of whether Trump will adjust to the fact they're changing NASCAR is not flying the Confederate flag. The NFL apologized for punishing kneelers, et cetera, et cetera. But you didn't see any adjustment in that speech. He talked about Confederate symbols being, quote, our heritage.

So if you want to save your heritage, you want to save that beautiful heritage of ours, we have a great heritage, We're a great country. You are so lucky I'm president. That's all I can tell you. Who is our exactly? Yeah, it's probably not everybody's heritage. Certainly not.

But the people that he was speaking to in that arena. And so it was a lot of red meat culture war material. And that still gets a big response from the people in his rallies. And if this is a focus group, the focus group said to Trump, keep on doing what you're doing, except this focus group was a lot smaller

than it used to be. Yeah, you know, so I have been talking to people in the Trump orbit, White House official, campaign official. And the message I've gotten is that that they oversold it. They created such high expectations that there'd be this full arena, 19,000 people packed in another 20,000 outside. And instead, depending on whose numbers you believe, it was somewhere between six and 12,000 in the arena. Trump himself said before the rally,

we've never had an empty seat at a rally of mine, and we won't have any in Oklahoma. And there were lots of empty blue seats. I mean, we should say, though, this is one rally. This is one moment, which did seem to, you know, did not meet the expectations that the campaign set, but it is just one moment, which did seem to, you know, did not meet the expectations that the campaign set. But it is just one moment, right? Rallies are very important to Donald Trump. That doesn't mean that rallies are very important to Donald Trump's ability to get reelected. I mean,

he still is the incumbent and incumbents usually win. He has tremendous amounts of money. So he's still got all of the strengths that he had before. He dominates social media. That hasn't changed. And now the question is, do they need to show he can still turn out 20,000, 25,000 people or not? Yeah. And how badly do they need to show it, given everything that's going on? Well, we are going to leave it there for now. More to come, certainly. This Wednesday, we are doing another Facebook Live event. We're going to look at how the national conversation around race

and the ongoing culture wars are impacting the presidential election. And we want your questions. Let us know what you're curious about by emailing us at nprpolitics at npr.org. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aya Shirosko. I also cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.