A day before Geoffrey S. Berman was axed from his job as head of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, he refused to sign onto a letter crafted by senior officials in Washington lambasting New York’s mayor for putting COVID-19 restrictions on religious gatherings. Berman’s refusal didn’t directly contribute to his ouster. But it was another example of the ways in which he appeared to run afoul of Attorney General William Barr and other high-ranking officials at the Justice Department. According to several people familiar with their relationship, Berman, a political donor to President Donald Trump who investigated and charged some of his allies, wasn’t a team player. He operated outside Washington leadership, and won praise from Trump critics as an independent thinker. And he had refused to even alert Washington to cases his high-profile department was working on. The people were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. As a result, Berman’s job often appeared to be in jeopardy. He was never formally nominated to the post by Trump, despite having been personally interviewed for the job by the president. Instead, he was installed by a federal court. As this year wore on in the wake of the prosecution of Rudy Giuliani’s associates and the probe of the former mayor, his allies in the prosecutor’s office were surprised each time Berman returned from Washington with his job intact. “The most surprising thing is that he’s held on as long as he has,” said Danya Perry, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor who represented California lawyer Michael Avenatti in his recent fraud trial defense. The tensions between Berman and the Justice Department reached a breaking point Friday, when Barr issued a surprise press release saying Berman had resigned and would be replaced by the Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton, a lawyer who has virtually no experience as a federal prosecutor. Berman refused to step down, and went into work Saturday. He eventually consented to leave after Barr said Trump had officially fired him and the second in command of the office would take over. One of Berman’s final acts was to refuse to sign onto a letter criticizing New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for allowing massive police reform protests even though he had cracked down in April on a group of thousands of mourners at a funeral for a Hasidic leader whose death was reportedly linked to the coronavirus, the people said. The Hasidim are an insular, ultra-orthodox Jewish sect in Brooklyn. It is a powerful voting bloc that favored Trump in 2016. “The message to the public from New York City’s government appears to favor certain secular gatherings and disfavor religious gatherings,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. Ensuring religious liberty has been a top priority for Barr, whose office has weighed in on several lawsuits around the country seeking to reopen religious gatherings during the pandemic. The Justice Department sent separate letters last month to the governors of Nevada and California warning that religious gatherings should be held to the same standard as similar secular gatherings when it comes pandemic-related public health orders. The letter sent to California Gov. Gavin Newsom was signed by all four U.S. attorneys in the state. The final straw for Berman, though, remains […]

The post Fired US Attorney Refused To Sign Letter Critical Of DeBlasio Who Allowed Protests But Not Religious Gatherings appeared first on The Yeshiva World.