Anne Milgram on the Dismissal of Geoffrey Berman

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I mean, you’ve had all weekend to sort of cogitate and think about the meaning and the whys and the wherefores of this latest firing. Why do you think it happened? What do you immediately sort of leaped to?

ANNE MILGRAM, FORMER NEW JERSEY ATTORNEY GENERAL: Yes. I mean, we’re still finding out more. There was an article released by the “Wall Street Journal” that painted a picture of Attorney General Barr being very angry with the U.S. attorney in the Southern District, Geoffrey Berman, over Berman’s refusal to sign a letter criticizing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio related to religious freedom and the existing protest movement. But it’s really not clear to us whether there was one specific thing. And you pointed out to us now that there have been investigations, but there are a lot of investigations that touched the president or the president’s associates, including the president’s bank, Deutsche Bank, including an indictment against the Turkish state bank, including, as you mentioned, Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani and so on. And so, it really does look, with the timing being just five months before the next election, and with somebody who is Berman, the U.S. attorney, who has been involved in all these very high-profile investigations and charges against the president’s associates, it felt very political in the way that it was done and I think raises a huge number of questions that have to be answered by Attorney General Barr.