Geoffrey Steven Berman (born September 12, 1959) is an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2018 to 2020. He is the Global Chair of the litigation department at the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.
Berman, a Republican, served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1990 to 1994. In January 2018, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Berman's appointment as interim U.S. Attorney for a statutory period of 120 days. On April 25, 2018, the judges of the Southern District of New York, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), unanimously appointed Berman U.S. Attorney for an indeterminate term that extended "until the vacancy is filled", which may or may not include the appointment of a presidential nominee approved by the Senate.
On June 19, 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced in a press release that Berman was "stepping down" effective July 3 and that Jay Clayton, the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, would be nominated as his replacement. Hours later, Berman stated that he had not resigned and would not resign until "a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate." At the time that Trump and Barr sought his ouster, Berman was reportedly investigating Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani for alleged crimes relating to his activities in Ukraine. On June 20, Barr told Berman that he had been fired by Trump at Barr's request and that the deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss would serve as acting U.S. Attorney. Berman then agreed to resign immediately.
Contents
Early life
Geoffrey Steven Berman was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Marie (Edelman) and Ronald Berman, a developer of Trenton real estate properties. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School in 1981. He then studied law at Stanford Law School, where he obtained a Juris Doctor in 1984. During law school, he was the Note Editor of the Stanford Law Review.
Career
Berman began his career as a clerk for Judge Leonard I. Garth of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. From 1987 to 1990 he served as an associate to independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Iran–Contra affair investigation. There, he was part of a team that prosecuted former CIA employee Thomas G. Clines for tax fraud.
Assistant United States Attorney (1990–1994)
Berman served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1990 to 1994. He worked on several tax and fraud cases as a prosecutor, including the Masters of Deception computer hacking case. As a result of Berman’s prosecution of that case, his effigy was stabbed on the front cover of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, a computer hacking magazine.
Private practice (1994–2018)
Berman was subsequently engaged by Mudge Rose and Latham & Watkins, where he worked as a monitor to rid the New York Carpenter’s Union of the influence of organized crime. From 1994 to 1997, Berman represented, pro bono, Maureen and Richard Kanka, defending the constitutionality of Megan’s Law in state and federal litigation. He married Joanne Karen Schwartz on August 20, 1994.
Berman is a resident of New York, where he previously lived from 1984 to 2002. He then moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived for 14 years. Berman was a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig, as was Rudy Giuliani. It was reported that Giuliani supported Berman for U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, but that Giuliani supported a different candidate for U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Berman represented Philip Kwon, the deputy general counsel at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey during the Bridgegate trial. He denied that Kwon was ever told the lane closures were intended to punish anyone.
United States Attorney (2018–2020)
After President Donald Trump fired Preet Bharara as U.S. Attorney, Trump interviewed Berman for the position. Berman had performed some part-time volunteer work for the Trump transition. On January 3, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Berman's appointment as U.S. Attorney, along with 16 other former prosecutors to various offices around the country on an interim basis until the Senate could confirm them.
The Trump administration never nominated Berman or most of the other interim appointments. On April 25, 2018, the Chief Judge of the Southern District of New York entered an order on behalf of a unanimous court appointing Berman U.S. Attorney pursuant to its authority under 28 U.S.C Section 546(d). Berman had the appointment indefinitely, until the Senate confirmed someone nominated by the president. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, often called the "Sovereign District of New York", is known as highly independent. Berman oversaw investigations into some of Trump's associates.
In April 2018, Berman's office issued a search warrant of the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations. Since Berman was recused by the U.S. Attorney General's Office from the investigation, he was apparently not involved in the decision to raid Cohen's office. That search was presumably conducted under the authority of Robert Khuzami, Berman's top deputy.
On August 8, 2018, U.S. Representative Chris Collins, his son Cameron, and the father of Cameron's fiancée, Stephen Zarsky, were arrested by the FBI and charged by Berman with insider trading and making false statements. Following the charges, House Speaker Paul Ryan kicked Collins off of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Collins suspended his reelection campaign. Collins subsequently pleaded guilty to insider trading and lying to the FBI and was sentenced to 26 months in prison.
On October 26, 2018, Berman charged Cesar Sayoc with sending a string of homemade incendiary packages to several present and former federal officials, including former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Sayoc pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
2020 ouster
In June 2020, CNN reported that Trump had been thinking about removing Berman from his position for two years. Under Berman, the SDNY investigated and prosecuted Trump's longtime personal attorney and "fixer" Michael Cohen in 2018. Trump also felt Berman's investigation of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was an effort to damage him politically. That investigation of Giuliani's activities in Ukraine became publicly known in October 2019, and later was reported to include a broad range of potential crimes by Giuliani or his associates. In May 2021, the SDNY publicly disclosed in a court filing that in November 2019 it covertly obtained search warrants for Giuliani's iCloud account, and for that of his and Trump's associate, Victoria Toensing, as part of the investigation. In June 2020, the SDNY was also two months from indicting former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on fraud charges relating to fundraising for the Mexico–United States border wall.
In a late-night news release on June 19, 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced that Berman would step down from his position. He said that Trump intended to nominate Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to take Berman's place as the Manhattan U.S. attorney, and that Trump, on his recommendation, had appointed Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, to serve as the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, effective July 3, 2020, while the Senate takes up Clayton's nomination.
Shortly after Barr's announcement, Berman denied having resigned and said that he had "no intention of resigning", saying that he was appointed by a court, not the president, and that he would remain in office until the Senate confirmed a replacement. He added that he learned about his supposed intention to step down from press reports. He vowed to ensure that the office's "important cases continue unimpeded". Because Berman was appointed by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York under 28 U.S.C. Section 546(d), it was unclear whether either the Attorney General or the President could remove Berman as US Attorney without a Senate-confirmed successor in place. It was also unclear whether Carpenito is legally eligible to replace Berman on an acting basis.
The next day, June 20, Barr claimed that Trump had fired Berman, writing in a letter to Berman, "Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so." Barr wrote in his letter, "Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service". Barr added "By operation of law, the Deputy United States Attorney, Audrey Strauss, will become the Acting United States Attorney." When asked by reporters, Trump said, "That's his [Barr's] department, not mine. ... I'm not involved." Later that day Berman agreed to step down because, he said, Barr had respected "the normal operation of law" by appointing his deputy as interim U.S. attorney. Barr also wrote to Berman, "Your statement also wrongly implies that your continued tenure in the office is necessary to ensure that cases now pending in the Southern District of New York are handled appropriately. This is obviously false."
Return to private life
In December 2020, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson announced that Berman was joining the firm to head its white-collar defense, regulatory enforcement and investigations practice.
In September 2022, Berman published a memoir, Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent US Attorney's Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department. In it he describes numerous instances in which he says the Justice Department took politically motivated actions, such as suppressing investigations into Trump's allies or demanding investigations into people considered Trump's enemies. As one example, he says that in September 2018 a senior Justice Department official told Berman's deputy that because the Southern District had pursued prosecution of two Trump loyalists, the office should issue charges against a prominent Democratic lawyer "to even things out", and should do so before Election Day. The Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans to investigate Berman's allegations that the Justice Department during the Trump administration made politically influenced decisions to initiate criminal investigations against some people and block them against others.
Works
Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent US Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department. Penguin. September 13, 2022. ISBN 978-0-593-30030-5. OCLC 1338025853.