An anonymous DOJ vet shares some key details about Geoff Berman’s unique legal status as US Attorney in the Southern District of New York.

Many others weighing in about the SDNY fiasco, but I’m not seeing this point, which is worth considering.

Even if Trump can ultimately dislodge Berman (under 28 USC 541 he, though not Barr, can likely fire him), he can’t pick the temporary replacement. Until the Senate confirms someone, that choice plainly belongs exclusively to the SDNY judges under 18 USC 846. If Trump tries to ignore that and install his own pick anyway he faces two problems he can’t easily overcome. First, there would be a staff revolt. Second, every criminal defendant indicted under the bogus US Attorney would have standing to seek dismissal because the indictment was not authorized or signed by the lawful US Attorney — and those motions would be decided by the same SDNY judges whose authority Trump is trying to usurp.

A remarkable turn of events last night unfolding in New York City and Washington, DC. As you see in the headline, Bill Barr attempted a Friday Night purge of the Manhattan US Attorney’s office but it seems not to have gone according to plan. (This in itself is evidence of Trump’s ebbing power.) Barr announced that Geoff Berman, the US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, had “resigned” “effective immediately” and was being replaced on a temporary basis by the next door US Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Craig Carpenito. Barr further announced that President Trump would be nominating Jay Clayton, currently the Chairman of the SEC, to become the next US Attorney. There are a million things off about this; scheduling it on an exhausted Friday evening just puts a seal on that reality. But when I left off early yesterday evening I had at least assumed that Barr and Trump had made sure that Berman was going along with this or going quietly.

That turned out not to be true.

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It’s Juneteenth and President Trump is, predictably, handling the day that marks the liberation of slaves in the United States poorly.

The Justice Department’s extraordinary effort to block the publication of John Bolton’s book goes before a judge for the first time at the top of the hour. Full coverage of the hearing right here.

Yesterday was the first day in the history of the COVID epidemic when the percentage of positive tests returned in New York State fell below 1%. You can see the trend here. Red is New York State and blue is the rest of the United States excluding New York State.

When the Justice Department shows up to court on Friday to argue in favor of blocking John Bolton’s book, it will have in front of it a very daunting — if not impossible  — task.

The expectation of loyalty has never been more transparent than now.

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Upgrading to Prime AF is also a great way to support TPM, as I describe below. So even if you’re not sure it’s for you it would mean so much to us if you’d give this free trial a try.

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I have spent a lot of time analyzing the New York COVID epidemic both because it was the center of the storm in the United States and because it affects me, my loved ones and coworkers so directly. The graphed shapes of the New York outbreak and the nationwide outbreak are quite different. The former rockets upward and falls down again at a slower but still comparable arc. Nationwide it’s quite different. The numbers rocket upward and then basically plateau. It’s not a proper comparison. The epicenter of an outbreak has different dynamics than the more rolling spread of contagion in less hard hit areas. This is why the proper comparison is not New York vs the United States or the United States versus any European country, all of which are dramatically smaller than the US, both in geography and population. The proper comparison is the United States (~330 million) vs the EU (~440 million). This brings together hotspots and peripheries, urban and rural and all the mix of population densities into one. As you can see here the progress has been very different and not at all good for the control of the epidemic in the United States.

Another bizarre incident in the evolving story of New York and its relationship with the NYPD. Last night three NYPD officers went to a Shake Shack in Lower Manhattan, got shakes and then became ill after drinking the shakes. They either went to or were taken to the hospital, treated and then released. This quickly led to suspicion that the officers had been intentionally poisoned by one or more Shake Shack employees as part of the purported left-wing, Antifa, civilian “war” on the NYPD. An investigation was commenced. But before anything was established the NYPD’s police unions went into overdrive accusing one or more Shake Shack employees of attempting to assassinate the officers.