# Geoffrey Berman **Geoffrey Berman** (born September 12, 1959) was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York whose office prosecuted Trump's former lawyer, investigated Trump's current one, and who was fired in June 2020 in a weekend standoff with Attorney General [[William Barr]]. ## Background Berman was associate counsel to Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh (1987–90) — see [[Iran-Contra Affair]] — and an SDNY prosecutor (1990–94) before joining Greenberg Traurig. [[Jeff Sessions]] named him interim U.S. Attorney on January 3, 2018; the district's judges appointed him on April 25, 2018. He was never Senate-confirmed. ## Cases His office executed the April 2018 search of [[Michael Cohen]]'s premises, charged [[Jeffrey Epstein]] in July 2019, indicted Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (October 2019), charged Turkey's [[Halkbank]] (October 2019), and investigated [[Rudy Giuliani]]. ## The firing On Friday, June 19, 2020, Barr announced that Berman was "stepping down" and that SEC chair [[Jay Clayton]] would be nominated to replace him. Berman replied that he had "no intention of resigning." The next day Barr said Trump had fired him; Trump said, "That's his department, not mine." Berman left once his deputy, Audrey Strauss, became acting U.S. Attorney. Clayton did not take the post at that time. ## *Holding the Line* Berman's 2022 memoir, *Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent US Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department*, recounts, among other things, a Justice Department official urging a charge against a prominent Democratic lawyer to "even things out." **Current status:** partner at Fried Frank (Best Lawyers 2026 listing). ## RWKB angle Berman's firing and memoir are first-hand documentation of attempted political steering of federal prosecutions — and of the Trump–Barr contradiction over who actually fired him. ## See Also - [[William Barr]] - [[Jay Clayton]]