fund its nuclear ambitions. Barr's demand followed a concerted pressure campaign by Erdogan and his close associates, including his son-in-law, Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, and Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, a Trump family friend involved in developing the Trump towers in Turkey; Erdogan himself personally insisted to President Trump that the Halkbank investigation be shut down on at least two occasions, November 1, 2018, at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, and on a telephone call on December 14, 2018. According to former National Security Adviser John Bolton, a first-hand witness of many of the events in question, this sequence of events "does look like obstruction of justice". In a late Friday night statement on June 19, 2020, Barr stated that Berman was resigning and being replaced by Jay Clayton, citing Berman's behavior in the Halkbank episode as a primary reason for his removal. Berman learned of this through press reports and declined to resign; the next day, Barr asked Trump to fire Berman, which he promptly did. Berman was replaced by his deputy, Audrey Strauss. In November 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani figured in an SDNY investigation into multiple possible felonies. Resignation On December 14, 2020, Trump announced via Twitter that Barr would be resigning from his post as attorney general, effective December 23. Barr further confirmed his resignation in a letter to Trump on the same day. In summarizing his tenure, Katie Benner of The New York Times wrote that "Barr brought the Justice Department closer to the White House than any attorney general in a half-century... Barr made decisions that dovetailed precisely with Mr. Trump’s wishes and the demands of his political allies." CNN summarized his tenure similarly, "Barr repeatedly and unapologetically prioritized Trump's political goals while furthering his own vision of expansive presidential power." Ryan Lucas of NPR described Barr as "one of Trump's most loyal and effective defenders". As examples of Barr's actions on behalf of Trump, these critics pointed to the fact that Barr made frequent false claims about the integrity of mail-in voting leading up to the 2020 election, misleadingly summarized Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, harshly criticized those who had investigated Trump, meddled in criminal prosecutions of Trump allies, and ordered the use of force on peaceful protestors across the street from the White House during the George Floyd protests