Five months before the 2020 election, Bill Barr fired Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York.
Trying to justify the decision, Barr twisted himself into a pretzel. Donald Trump had not nominated Berman. Jeff Sessions, Barr’s predecessor as attorney general, named him to the post on an interim basis and a panel of federal judges kept him on. Barr’s authority to rid himself of this troublesome prosecutor was at best disputable.
