“Clearly the attorney general and the President are within their rights,” said GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who added that “the Department of Justice is capable of continuing (ongoing investigations) without Mr. Berman.”
Pressed on whether the public had a right to know why Berman was fired, Cornyn said the best person to ask was Attorney General William Barr. Cornyn added that he did not intend to ask him.
“Everything that happens around here creates a tempest in a teapot. I feel like I’ve got more important things to do,” Cornyn said.
The second ranking GOP senator, John Thune of South Dakota agreed.
“My assumption is whatever investigations are underway, it will be continued by the career staff there. So they’ll go on,” Thune said.
As top congressional Republicans seek to downplay the move, however, congressional Democrats have sounded the alarm over the removal and pushed for investigation into what transpired.
Despite being in the minority in the upper chamber, Senate Democrats may be able to effectively block the Trump administration’s effort to confirm a new US attorney to replace Berman.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said over the weekend that he would honor the tradition in the Senate known as the “blue-slip” process, which means he wouldn’t move on the nominee’s confirmation proceedings until the home-state senators sign off on someone to fill the US attorney post. On Friday evening, Barr said he intends to nominate as Berman’s permanent replacement Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has never been a prosecutor.
In a sign that not all Senate Republicans are aligned with Graham’s approach, however, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN on Monday that he disagrees with Graham’s decision to let home-state senators sign off on a replacement.
“Not really,” Hawley said when asked if he agreed with Graham’s approach. “I don’t know why Sen. Schumer and Sen. Gillibrand, who I respect, I don’t know why they should control the administration’s choice of who the right nominee for that position should be. I don’t particularly agree with that.”
Hawley said he had no issues with the firing of Berman and didn’t think it would impact any ongoing investigations into Trump associates since the probes, he said, are usually led by career prosecutors.
Berman said on Saturday that he would leave his post following a contentious standoff with Barr. Berman’s departure came a day after he refused Barr’s request that he resign.
In a curt letter to Berman on Saturday, Barr told him that Trump had agreed to remove him and conceded that Berman’s deputy would succeed him.
“Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so. … Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service,” Barr wrote in his letter to Berman. He provided no justification for pushing out Berman.
Schumer criticized what he described as a “sordid, ham-handed plot by President Trump and Attorney General Barr to oust a well-respected US attorney.”
The Senate Democratic leader contended that, “There appears to be no legitimate motive to fire Mr. Berman,” adding, “were President Trump and the attorney general trying to remove him for a corrupt motive? Was it because Mr. Berman and the Southern District of New York were pursuing criminal investigations into President Trump and his associates?”
In contrast, Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, said he did not know enough about why Berman was fired to comment but said, “the attorney general has the right to do that.”
CNN’s Chandelis Duster contributed to this report.