Jay Clayton — the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission — made the revelation in a congressional hearing.
President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr first learned last weekend that their chosen replacement for the Manhattan U.S. attorney wanted the job, that person told Congress on Thursday.
Jay Clayton — currently the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission — made the revelation in a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, while fielding questions from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.).
Late in the evening on Friday, June 19, Barr announced that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoff Berman, was stepping down, and that Trump would nominate Clayton to replace him. Berman, however, said he had no plans to step down, kicking off a dramatic intra-DOJ standoff that ended Saturday afternoon.
“When did you first discuss the Southern District job with the president, or the Trump administration, and who did you discuss it with?” Maloney asked. “Attorney General Barr?”
“Look, I’m here as the chairman of the SEC to discuss the work of the SEC,” he replied. “What I can say is that, as I said in my opening statement, I need to go back to New York.”
“I was just asking for a timeline,” Maloney replied. “When did you discuss it? Just give me the approximate date, the timeline.”
“What I want to say is, this is something I’ve been talking about for a while, consulting with people as to whether this would make sense for me to continue in public service,” Clayton continued. “This was first raised to the president and the attorney general last weekend. It was something that I had wanted to do, and they first became aware of it last weekend.”
“Thank you, and did you know that Mr. Berman did not want to leave his job in the Southern District when you agreed to accept the nomination?” she asked. “In other words, did you know he was going to be fired to make room for you, instead, for the job?”
“I’m not going to get into that here,” he replied.
Clayton’s statement appears to indicate that within hours of his expressing interest in the job, Barr moved to fire the person who held it at the time — a remarkably quick decision-making process. A spokesperson for the SEC did not immediately respond to a request for more clarification of Clayton’s statement.
The Saturday before last, June 13, Clayton golfed with Trump, according to The New York Times. If that’s when he first shared his interest in the job with the president, the Berman firing still would have come on a truncated timeline —though a slightly longer one.
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President Trump and Bill Barr first learned last weekend that their chosen replacement for the Manhattan U.S. attorney wanted the job, that person told Congress on Thursday https://t.co/uEA8qIg3Wo
— POLITICO (@politico) June 25, 2020
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