Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department

For an ambitious and public-spirited young lawyer, being a prosecutor for the federal court in the Southern District, which includes Manhattan and some of its wealthiest suburbs, is the gold ring. And ascending to the leadership role of US Attorney for the Southern District is a capstone to any career: you have responsibility for guiding a team of the best lawyers in America in deciding what cases to prosecute and then successfully executing on them, cases that often have global stakes and global visibility. Geoffrey Berman began his career as a young lawyer in the Southern District s offices; he was honoured to be tapped by Donald Trump in 2018 to return as his leader. So began one of the most tumultuous two-and-a-half-year stretches in the two-hundred-year history of the court. Almost immediately Berman found himself pushing back on Trump’s Justice Department in DC on their blatant efforts to bring weak cases against political foes and squash worthy cases that threatened to tarnish