[Burnett:] Breaking news, Republican Senator Mitt Romney saying the sudden firing of a top prosecutor who led probes into President Trump's allies "looks pretty swampy" that it does as the White House struggles to explain who and what was behind the removal of Geoffrey Berman as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
[Unidentified Male:] Why was Mr. Berman being dismissed in the first place?
[Mcenany:] Because Mr. Clayton wanted to go back to New York City. We wanted to keep him in government and therefore he was given the position at
[Sdny. Collins:] But why did the President say he wasn't involved in the firing of Geoffrey Berman when the Attorney General said the President was the one who fired him?
[Mcenany:] Because the Attorney General was taking the lead on this matter. He did come to the President and report to him when Mr. Berman decided not to leave. And at that point is when the president agreed with the decision of the attorney general to fire Mr. Berman and to promote Mr. Clayton.
[Collins:] So he was involved in it then.
[Mcenany:] He was involved in the sign-off capacity. He was not A.G. Barr was leading the way. But in a sign-off capacity, yes, the president was.
[Burnett:] Which means President Trump wasn't telling the truth to this question about why he fired the U.S. attorney.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] Attorney General Barr is working on that. That's his department not mine. So that is really up to him. I'm not involved.
[Burnett:] OUTFRONT now, the former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Daniel Goldman, who was also the lead counsel to the House Democrats during President Trump's impeachment inquiry. So, of course, you know his face. All right. Thank you very much, Dan. So, you know, what do you what do you make of this? You know, sort of he was involved or he wasn't involved. Clearly, he was involved. It's a pretty easy thing to check and yet they aren't giving a straight story. Why is that so hard to do, do you think?
[Daniel Goldman, Former Federal Prosecutor, Former Assistant U.s. Attorney:] Well, it's hard to do because of a quirk in the law which actually because Geoffrey Berman was actually appointed by the district court in the Southern District and not confirmed by the Senate, he can only be fired by the president not by Bill Barr. And so that is why Bill Barr wrote the letter on Saturday saying the president has fired you and I'm relaying that message. The president, of course, wants to keep some remove from the termination of a U.S. attorney who is we know conducting investigations into associates of the president, including his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. But he was unable to keep that remove and he clearly didn't understand the legal ramifications of what was going on when he said on Saturday that he has nothing to do with it. Politically it will look very bad if it comes out the reason Geoff Berman was fired was because he was conducting investigations into the president or anyone around the president.
[Blitzer:] Is there how much of a question is there, I mean, that that isn't the motive? I mean, it seems hard to imagine anything else at this point. Why would you go in and fire a guy like that, and they are denying that it's because of those investigations. They're denying it, but does that add up at all?
[Goldman:] Well, their proffered reasons do not add up. The nation that Jay Clayton during a pandemic needs to get back to New York right now makes no sense when everyone is teleworking to begin with. It's also destabilizing to both the SEC and the Southern District of New York. It occurred late on a Friday night. Bill Barr lied about Geoffrey Berman stepping down. And then he changed course and put the deputy U.S. attorney in the southern district in charge rather than the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. There are so many reasons why this smells really bad. But we don't know what actually the conflict was or the reason was why Bill Barr wanted Geoffrey Berman gone and why Trump wanted Geoffrey Berman gone. That is why we really do need congressional hearings with Geoffrey Berman there, with his former deputy U.S. attorney Robert Khuzami testifying, with other people in the Department of Justice perhaps on Mueller's team. We need to understand how politicized the Department of Justice has gotten under Trump and Bill Barr.
[Burnett:] So, you know, I want to ask you about the former national security adviser John Bolton, because, obviously, as you know, you were in the middle of this, right? He resisted House Democrats' efforts to get him to testify during the impeachment inquiry and this morning, he came out this morning and yet again and slammed how Democrats conducted the impeachment inquiry. Here he is.
[John Bolton, Former National Security Adviser:] I think there were a lot of Republicans in the House that might have been open to a more reasoned, nonpartisan effort. They made it a partisan fight in the House. That guaranteed it would be a partisan fight in the Senate. And they lost. That is not a very good strategy.
[Burnett:] Of course you were sitting there day after day making the legal arguments in this case. What do you say to John Bolton?
[Goldman:] I say he's got very good talking points but not very good facts. The fact was this always was a nonpartisan, bipartisan investigation. It was, of course, led by the majority, which were the Democrats. But the Republicans had every right to ask as many questions and they did. They had the right to call witnesses. This was only partisan because the Republicans rallied around president Trump regardless of what his conduct was. So, to the extent it was partisan and that was problematic it was not because we ran a partisan investigation. We called nonpartisan witnesses and we asked them questions under oath and they gave answers under oath. If the facts were unfavorable to President Trump, and the Republicans wanted to defend President Trump, that is not because we ran a bipartisan or a partisan investigation. That is because they were partisan.
[Burnett:] So, why do you think John Bolton didn't testify? I mean, you know, he was subpoenaed and then, you know, said I want to wait for a court ruling. But he's come out and said all the damning things he would have said under oath, you know, to you in Congress there in a book. Why do you think he didn't do it then?
[Goldman:] I think there are a couple possible reasons. One is he saw dollar signs and he wanted to wait and make money off of the information that he had. And I also think John Bolton is part of the Republican establishment and he may have been a little reticent to come in and testify before a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. But that's all speculation. The fact of the matter is John Bolton had no good faith basis, no reason not to testify as was ultimately borne out by the fact that he was willing to testify in the Senate. There is no difference between the House and the Senate in terms of a congressional subpoena. Yet John Bolton's attorney told me directly that they would file a lawsuit in court if he were subpoenaed and we'd still be in court today waiting for a ruling on that lawsuit.
[Burnett:] Even as the book came out. It's hard to understand. All right. Daniel Goldman, thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
[Goldman:] Thanks very much, Erin.
[Burnett:] And next, the D.A. in the Rayshard Brooks case facing pressure to step aside after charging two Atlanta officers in his death. Why? And a New York officer suspended without pay after this video surfaced showing him using an apparent chokehold which has been banned. The attorney for the man you see in this video is OUTFRONT.