Geoffrey Berman

Geoffrey S. Berman is an American lawyer who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from January 2018 to June 20, 2020. His office indicted Jeffrey Epstein in July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, eleven years after the non-prosecution agreement negotiated in Florida under Alexander Acosta, and assigned the case to its Public Corruption Unit, a choice Berman declined to explain. After Epstein's death his office charged the two guards on duty that night, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas. On the night of June 19, 2020, while his office was investigating Rudy Giuliani, Attorney General William Barr announced that Berman was "stepping down"; Berman said he had not resigned, and Barr told him the next day that President Trump had removed him. He is not related to Judge Richard M. Berman, who presided over the Epstein case.¹²³⁴

Appointment

Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed Berman acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District in 2018, and the judges of the district later appointed him to the post, under which he said he would serve until the Senate confirmed a presidential nominee. The office he led was prosecuting and investigating a series of cases touching the president's circle, including the conviction of Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen and the indictment of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of Giuliani, on charges of using a shell company to hide the foreign source of a 325,000 dollar donation to a pro-Trump super PAC.⁴⁵

The Epstein Prosecution

Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport on July 6, 2019 on an indictment returned July 2 charging sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy, based on conduct in Manhattan and Palm Beach from 2002 to 2005. At a press conference on July 8 Berman said that "the alleged behavior shocks the conscience," that Epstein "has every incentive to flee," and that "we were assisted by some excellent investigative journalism," a reference to Julie K. Brown's reporting in the Miami Herald. The case was assigned to the office's Public Corruption Unit, which typically handles cases involving public funds or government officials, and Berman declined to explain why. The prosecutors on the case were Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alex Rossmiller, Alison Moe, and Maurene Comey. The office argued that the Florida agreement "didn't purport to bind any other office or district."¹²³

A search of Epstein's Manhattan house turned up a safe holding more than 70,000 dollars in cash, 48 loose diamonds, and an Austrian passport from the 1980s bearing Epstein's photograph under another name and listing a residence in Saudi Arabia. Epstein's lawyers said he had obtained it for protection against hijackers while traveling in the Middle East and that the government had no evidence he used it. On July 17 the office replied that "the passport contains numerous ingress and egress stamps, including stamps that reflect use of the passport to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s," and that Epstein had not said how he got it or whether he was a citizen of another country. Judge Berman denied bail on July 18.⁶

Epstein died in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York on August 10, 2019, and the indictment was dismissed on August 29. On November 19, 2019 the office announced charges against Noel and Thomas for falsifying count and round records the night he died; the charges were later dismissed after deferred prosecution agreements, and the office declined to prosecute other staff who had falsified the same records.¹⁷

Removal

On the night of Friday, June 19, 2020, Barr issued a statement that Berman was "stepping down" and that Trump would nominate Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to replace him, with Craig Carpenito, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, to serve in the interim. Berman answered that he had learned of his departure from a press release: "I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York." On June 20 Barr wrote to him: "Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service... 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." Trump told reporters, "That's his department, not my department... I'm not involved"; a senior administration official told NBC News that Barr had asked Trump for permission to fire Berman and Trump had agreed.⁴⁵

Berman left that evening after Barr agreed that his deputy, Audrey Strauss, would lead the office as acting U.S. Attorney, a condition Berman said safeguarded the district's "tradition of integrity and independence." On July 2, 2020, twelve days later, the office under Strauss announced the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell on charges of conspiring with Epstein.⁴⁵⁸