Trump’s DOJ Pushed for Prosecution of Political Enemies, Book Claims

Former Southern District of New York attorney Geoffrey Berman claims the Trump administration’s Justice Department pushed investigations into Trump’s critics that “would directly further Mr. Trump’s desires for revenge and advantage,” according to a copy of his new book Holding the Line, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The claim comes as Trump and his allies have accused the Biden administration of politicizing the Justice Department after it executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last month. The FBI recovered a trove of highly sensitive classified documents from the former president’s golf club, including information about the nuclear capabilities of foreign powers.

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Holding the Line reveals that the Trump administration pressured the SDNY to investigate prominent Democratic figures such as John Kerry and lawyer Gregory Craig, in a “clear — and outrageous” pattern of influence peddling against the president’s perceived enemies. Berman indicated that the Justice Department would essentially shop out cases to prosecutors in various districts until they found a taker.

Berman also accuses the DOJ of wielding their influence in an improper effort to protect Trump. As the government prepared to charge former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen with campaign finance violations, the department insisted that the SDNY remove all mentions of “Individual 1,” later revealed to be Trump, from the documents.

Days after a furious tweet storm by Trump, Berman says the department was instructed to investigate former Secretary of State John Kerry’s dealings with Iran, and that the FBI would be assisting on the case. Kerry had opposed Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and “the conduct that had annoyed the president was now a priority of the Department of Justice,” Brennan wrote. The Kerry investigation eventually “quietly died.”

Berman writes that throughout his time as a U.S. attorney “Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining.” Berman was eventually forced from his post by former Attorney General William Barr and the Trump administration in what many believed to be retaliation for his prosecutions of Cohen and other Trump loyalists.

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