Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Justice Department inspector general to examine the “corrupt firing” of Geoffrey Berman, who was forced out of his job serving as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, sent the letter to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Office of Professional Responsibility Director Jeffrey Ragsdale.
Berman left the position after at first refusing Attorney General William Barr’s request late Friday to step down. Trump then fired him, and Berman quit on Saturday. Barr has been criticized for his handling of Berman’s ouster, and Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of removing him to shield Trump from investigations.
“As the Attorney General was not truthful when he initially represented that U.S. Attorney Berman was ‘stepping down,’ this corrupt firing cannot be explained by cause and gives the impression that the President interfered in ongoing criminal investigations into himself and his associates,” Schumer wrote Monday to Horowitz and Ragsdale. “To help restore confidence in and prevent further abuses to the administration of justice, the American people deserve to know the truth.”
Schumer noted in the letter that investigators conducted a similar investigation in 2006 during the Bush administration after several U.S. attorneys said they were forced to resign by senior Justice Department officials.
“At the conclusion of that investigation, your offices found that the removal of these U.S. Attorneys and the controversy it created severely damaged the credibility of the Department of Justice and raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecutive decisions,” Schumer said.
The investigation into the 2006 ouster of the attorneys general, however, found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bush administration.
