TWO UPDATES: The Meaning Of The Berman Firing

Does Bill Barr have a strategy? That question is a bit like asking: Does Donald Trump know who his real enemies are, and why they hate him? The answer to both questions is an unequivocal 'Yes.' Tom Luongo has what seems to me to be a pretty shrewd account of how the Berman firing ties into everything else that's been going down since Trump took aim at becoming POTUS: the Russia Hoax (obviously), the hoax prosecutions in DC, the equally farcical anti-Trump lawfare prosecutions in the SDNY, and now the Soros,Deep State, Globalist Elite backed attempt at a 'Color Revolution' in the US--the Black Revolution. This is why Ukraine matters so much--the same players are at work.

It's a thoughtful piece and it makes clear how high the stakes are for the Deep State: The US Is In Civil War (And Why Berman's Firing Matters). It also may explain why Barr sees the Durham investigation continuing past the election even if 'developments' occur before the end of summer.

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The U.S. is in a Civil War. It began four years ago after Donald Trump’s election and has finally boiled over into open warfare here in 2020.

From the moment the protests against the killing of George Floyd were hijacked into looting and rioting I worried about this turning into something far greater, something with a far higher purpose.

Within a couple of days it was obvious the U.S. was now the subject of a color revolution of the same type and build up that occurred in places like Ukraine, Georgia, Egypt, Serbia and others.

And it’s pretty clear the color for our revolution isn’t orange or brown or violet, it’s black.

The questions I have are why this is happening now? The obvious answer is the full court press to deny Trump a second term. That’s a practically stated goal at this point.

But I feel this is far deeper than that, and likely has to do with knowing that Trump has pieces in place post-Jeffrey Epstein raid/murder to upset the Deep State’s apple cart.

And that brings me to why I’m interested in Hungary again.

I haven’t spoken much about Hungary in recent months but maybe I should have been. For me the two big stories of the week are:

1) Trump explicitly going after the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and the removal of U.S. Attorney Geoff Berman.

2) The European Court of Justice striking down Hungary’s Anti-NGO law which targets George Soros’ ability to fund revolutionary groups within Hungary.

The through line here is that both of these stories attack the heart of the Color Revolution process… the monied interests behind them. Useful idiots shooting each other in downtown Seattle or knocking down statues to Thomas Jefferson are not the story.

They are the means to power to be discarded (they hope).

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Trump and Orban represent leaders who understand this problem explicitly and are trying to dismantle the apparatus arrayed against them.

Let’s start with the SDNY. It is close to the most lawless place in the world for all practical purposes because the highest crimes committed there, those of finance and systemic looting by the banks who are the financiers of The Davos Crowd’s push for transnational control, go unpunished.

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For those wanting Trump to make good on his promises to Drain the Swamp, the SDNY is the source of the Swamp’s lifeblood, money. It allows the worst crimes to go unpunished, fueling the Marxist rants of the Occupy Wall St. crowd who have morphed into Black Lives Matter and are actively moving towards open warfare with the U.S. government.

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Trump removing Berman is a clear case of payback for his string of prosecutions paving the way for the impeachment debacle from this past winter. But, again, it’s far deeper than that.

Trump and William Barr have to go after the funding sources of Antifa, Black Lives Matter and all the other NGO’s operating to funnel money into this brewing civil war. In the process they will rein in the SDNY and create a real climate of fear for those put in power to protect it.

And that’s not going to happen if the SDNY is not under their control. From the outrage and the response from key players like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Jerry Nadler and even Berman himself, it’s clear that’s what is on the table now — they are scared Trump and Barr got close here.

No less than ultimate anti-Trumper, king Neocon himself Bill Kristol tweeted out this tidbit from, of all places, a fact-free screed from The Atlantic:

Bill Kristol
@BillKristol

"Why replace Berman? The answer lies in the firing earlier this year of Jessie Liu, the former U.S. Attorney for D.C...Once they seized control, Barr’s team...interceded in the sentencing of Stone, and made an effort to dismiss the case against Flynn...

Why Bill Barr Got Rid of Geoffrey Berman
This is how an authoritarian works to subvert justice.

By firing Liu, Barr and his team took control of the Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney’s office. ...

That may be the game plan for New York as well. 

This is the Swamp in high gear protecting someone who, until Friday, no one in the U.S. even cared about.

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After a series of setbacks in the Supreme Court, where it’s clear Chief Justice John Roberts is compromised in a fundamental way, Trump and Barr going after Berman makes sense. It was Berman oversaw the raid on Jeffrey Epstein’s home and who is, apparently, still in control over what can be done with the materials gained.

You can see how forcefully this defense of Berman is turning into a circus, quickly, as they flip this into another round of ‘Impeach Trump’ for doing his job.

Nadler’s already saying Berman will testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee. And the Twitterati are spinning this as an own goal strong enough to impeach both Barr and Trump.

That’s nonsense. This was a direct shot at the biggest target and even if it didn’t completely hit the mark, forcing Berman out and having his assistant Audrey Strauss take over in the interim, it did move the ball forward.

Since now a new Senate confirmation process can begin for Berman’s real replacement. This is the third U.S. attorney in the SDNY under Trump. He fired Preet Bharaha which led to Berman’s appointment because the Senate refused to confirm anyone.

They are hoping to play the same game again, allowing the SDNY to set its own rules. Berman was appointed by judicial fiat, not Senate confirmation.

Dismantling the cover of the SDNY is key to uncovering, officially, what’s really going on in the U.S.’s Black Revolution as well as everything else and that’s why they are circling the wagons here.

UPDATE 1: Different in tone, but similar nonetheless, is Kurt Schlichter's The Elites Are Revolting:

Our Establishment is revolting ... What you see out there is our alleged betters struggling mightily to hold onto the power that we Normal people dared to wrest away from them in 2016. One component of their campaign is the burning and looting information operation conducted by black-clad pawns. The other component is the soft power corporate/media/cultural conspiracy to silence dissent and enforce fearful conformity to their narrative. Usually, a revolution is conducted by the peasants to throw off a tyrannical ruling class. Here, the ruling class is waging a political and cultural war to retake and then tighten its grip on the masses. They are no longer even pretending to seek the consent of the governed. And once they retake power, that’s it – they will never give up power again.

UPDATE 2: Per Paul Mirengoff:

The real reason for Berman’s sacking can probably be found in this report by The Hill. Citing the Wall Street Journal, The Hill says that Berman refused to sign a letter criticizing New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for not allowing religious gatherings. The refusal occurred a day before Barr announced that Berman would be replaced. 

Justice Department supervisors asked both Berman and Eric Dreiband, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, to sign the letter. But Berman objected. Eric signed the letter, and it was sent to de Blasio on Friday evening, a few hours before the sacking of Berman. 

The Hill says that Barr views Berman as stubborn and difficult to work with, and that the Attorney General was already looking for a replacement. Apparently, Berman’s refusal to sign the letter was the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Berman’s initial response to Barr’s announcement tends to confirm the attorney general’s assessment. In any event, the conspiracy theory that Barr made the decision to remove Berman in order to protect anyone from investigation appears to be utterly without basis.

This may have been the precipitating incident that led to the firing, but The Hill does also indicate that Barr wanted to get Berman out of SDNY anyway. I still tend to agree with Luongo that there may well be more here than meets the eye.

Shipwreckedcrew offers a very thorough account of all this: Fired US Attorney Berman Mistakenly Believed SDNY Stood for “Sovereign District of New York”. He concludes:

For US Attorney Berman to disagree with the policy priority adopted by AG Barr and President Trump on issues of religious liberty is one thing, but for him to refuse to take steps when directed to do so by DOJ for the purpose of advancing that policy priority is beyond an expression of “independence” — it’s gross insubordination that can only be responded to with termination.  The US Attorney’s Office exists to be the “local” prosecutor of the federal government in each of the 93 federal judicial districts across the country.  But while they have a level of “independence”, that level does not extend to establishing their own individual enforcement priorities, and disregarding the enforcement priorities of the Attorney General and the President. 

Berman was free to refuse to sign a letter he disagreed with.  But because that letter reflected a policy priority of DOJ, his refusal should have been accompanied by his letter of resignation.