President Trump will name a law partner of ally and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) to replace Preet Bharara as the top prosecutor in southern New York, the New York Post reported Wednesday.
Trump will tap Geoffrey Berman as the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the newspaper reported. Berman’s appointment is contingent on Senate confirmation.
Berman served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan from 1990 to 1994, and currently works as a partner at the Greenberg Traurig law firm, where Giuliani is listed as a shareholder.
{mosads}Giuliani was a strong Trump supporter during the 2016 presidential campaign, and had reportedly been considered as a replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Giuliani disputed the reports.
Trump fired Bharara in March after the attorney refused to resign from his post.
Since then, Bharara has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration, and has frequently weighed in on special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Bharara has on social media encouraged Trump to “keep up the tweeting,” suggesting it could be used in Mueller’s probe, and compared the president to Jan Brady when Trump dismissed Democratic complaints about “Russia, Russia, Russia.”