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Former President Trump is facing a new political quagmire as Senate Democrats open an investigation into allegations that he pressured the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate his political opponents. Former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman wrote in a new book that the Justice Department under Trump pressured his office to pursue criminal cases against former Secretary of State John Kerry and others considered political opponents of Trump.
Democrats who have been happy to extol Trump and his behavior in the wake of an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate will investigate, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced Monday night.
“I welcome the investigation,” Berman said Tuesday morning on MSNBC. “The behavior that took place was so outrageous and unprecedented. A light needs to be shone on it.”
Berman, who served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) from 2018 until he was forced to resign in 2020, claims in his new book that his office pursued charges stemming from a guilty plea from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
He also cited an investigation into former Trump White House official Stephen Bannon, who was eventually indicted and later pardoned before Trump left office.
In another instance, Berman said the DOJ referred a criminal case targeting Kerry to his office days after Trump sent two tweets attacking Kerry for communicating with Iranian officials about the Iran nuclear deal.
The Justice Department suggested the SDNY cite Kerry using a 1799 statute that had never been prosecuted, Berman said Tuesday morning.
The accusations by Berman, who ultimately left his post after then-Attorney General William Barr told him he had been fired at Trump’s request, present the latest headache for Trump as he prepares for a 2024 presidential campaign.
Although Trump has not made an announcement, he is considered more likely than not to jump into the race.
With that political background, Democrats have seized opportunities to lift the former president’s behavior, which has made him unpopular with many independent voters. They have tried to tie him to GOP candidates for the House and Senate — not a terribly challenging task given Trump’s efforts to hold sway over the GOP through primary endorsements.
President Biden gave a speech earlier this month denouncing Trump and the “MAGA Republicans” who align with him as an urgent threat to democracy, and framed the midterms as a matter of protecting democratic values.
Democrats have been happy to discuss Trump’s handling of classified material, which is at the center of a DOJ investigation into dozens of documents the former president took with him to his Mar-a-Lago home when he left office. The FBI searched the property last month after it was unable to get the materials back from Trump.
Trump’s behavior around the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol are likely to be brought back into the public eye in the weeks leading up to the midterms, as a House panel focused on Jan. 6 plans to resume its work.
Trump allies are the focus of an investigation in Georgia into a plan to send alternates to Congress who would support Trump over Biden in 2020, despite Biden winning the state.
Berman’s claims in his new book are the latest Trump-centric controversy that Democrats have said they will look into.
Durbin wrote Monday night to Attorney General Merrick Garland, as first reported by The New York Times, asking the Justice Department to produce documents related to Berman’s allegations, specifically the cases related to Cohen and Kerry.
“The allegations made by former US Attorney Berman indicate stunning and unacceptable departures from the DOJ’s mission to pursue impartial justice — and heighten the already serious concerns raised by then-AG Barr’s 2020 efforts to replace Mr. Berman and install a Trump -loyalis at SDNY,” Durbin said in a statement.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said Berman’s allegations could pose legal problems for Trump if the Justice Department decides to open an investigation based on Durbin’s findings.
Tobias played down any impending investigation involving Barr, noting that the former attorney general is likely more useful as an ally in Democratic investigations of Trump than as a target for one. Barr appeared before the House Committee on Jan. 6, and he has appeared on Fox News in recent weeks to undercut Trump’s defense against the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“At the very least, it will be another political headache for Trump as the allegations continue to multiply,” Tobias said.
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