Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said former Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Geoff Berman should testify before Congress because “he has a lot to say.”
Partial transcript as follows:
KARL: Let me start, though, with the breaking news over the weekend, the firing of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman. And we now have heard from the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, you are a member of the Judiciary Committee, saying that they will investigate, the committee will investigate, and has invited Geoffrey Berman to testify. Do you expect that he will actually testify?
JEFFRIES: Well, it’s my hope that at some point the Judiciary Committee will hear from the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mr. Berman, because I think he has a lot to say about a continuing pattern of chaos, crisis and corruption that we have seen from the Trump administration from the very beginning until this very day.
KARL: But at the end of the day, the president gets to hire, gets to choose, nominate, appoint, in the case on enacting U.S. attorneys. He also, doesn’t he, have the right to fire U.S. attorneys?
JEFFRIES: We have a long tradition in this country of there being no political interference between the White House and the Department of Justice, which is the primary vehicle at the federal level for ensuring that there’s equal protection under the law, liberty and justice for all, anchored in the principle that we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not a government of a dictator or a monarch or a king.
That’s why Chairman Adler has indicated, with the full support of Speaker Pelosi, that we are going to have this hearing on political interference between the White House and the Department of Justice and present the facts to the American people and take it from there.
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