justice department. his message was unambiguous. it was time for me, jeffrey berman, the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and lifelong republican, it was time for me to take one for the home team. he came into my office and closed the door, quote, you re not going to believe the conversation i just had with o callaghan, before sharing the details. the top leadership at doj wanted me to bring criminal charges against a private attorney who had once been president barack obama s white house counsel and they wanted me to bring those charges before election day. i said, you have got to be f ing kidding me. i wish, he said, but no. doj s rationale for this demand had nothing to do with evidence or law. o callaghan kept reminding him that our office had just prosecuted two high profile trump loyalists, republican congressman chris collins and crump s private attorney, michael cohen. he related that o callaghan told him bluntly, quote, it s time for you guys to ev
we ve got it, we ve got it, it comes out tomorrow, but we ve got it here is how it starts. miley deputy, robert crews, army resolved in urgent phone call from the top of the u.s. services department. the midterm elections were less than two months ago weighing. house and senate, but the next two years of the trump investigations. he spoke with eduardo callahan, a high-level trump political appointees at the justice department his message to cause army was then ambiguous. it was time for me, jeffrey berman, the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and lifelong republican, time for me to take one for the home team. it came into my office, closed the door, quote, you re not going to believe the conversation i had without callahan, he said. before sharing the details of the top leadership at doj wanted me to bring criminal charges against gregory craig, a private attorney who had lunched bennett council. they wanted me to bring those charges before election day i
that s how it starts. that s the very beginning. this was written by jeffrey berman who ran sdny in southern district of new york for half of trump s time in office. he was fired from that job at sdny and fired loudly in a way that made a difference. we ll have more on that in a second. that s important. but now since he is the former u.s. attorney, he has written this book. to put it in the public record how trump and his administration tried to force federal prosecutors to go after trump s political enemies to go after democrats, to help trump s allies. regardless of the law. regardless of the crimes committed or lack thereof. geoff berman was told to bring the prosecution before the midterm elections. told to do so because some republicans had been prosecuted and so now it was time to prosecute a democrat. he was told to even things out. berman refused to do it. he didn t bring that prosecution. so, yea rule of law for a second. what happened after geoff berman refused
instrument for him became information rather than an indictment. berman says, quote, it was about 40 pages long, and it referenced a person identified as individual one, as having acted in concert with cohen. there was zero doubt as to the identity of individual one, it was donald trump. after they sent the information to main justice, quote, the next day, robert kuzami received a call from edward o callaghan. he was aggressive. why the length, he wanted to know? he argued that now that cohen was pleading guilty, we don t need all this description. he responded, what exactly are you concerned about? o callaghan proceeded to identify specific allegations he wanted removed, almost all of which referenced individual one. donald trump. it quickly became apparent that contrary to what o callaghan professed, it wasn t the length or the detail of the document that concerned him. it was any mention of individual one. khuzami and o callaghan went
bill barr and jeffrey rosen and rich donohue and edward o callaghan all participated in these sustained, very improper efforts by the justice department to corrupt federal law enforcement and to corrupt the power of federal prosecution, to help president trump and respond to his whims and hurt his enemies. berman also says he was removed from his office because something about his work as u.s. attorney threatened the re-election of the president in 2020. first of all, what was that? but second of all, what do we do here? what do we do with this? it is a problem for us as a country that we elected a president who wanted to use the justice department like this. we know that s a problem, i think. one could argue, though, it s an even bigger problem that there were all these senior justice department officials who were happy to do it. who did it. who perverted not just investigations but prosecutions and pleadings and sentences. they actually did it.