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 allies and Trump himself. When Bill Barr became Attorney General, Berman hoped things would get better, but to his shock they got much worse. The heart of Holding the Line is his never before told account of the lengths Barr went to in corrupting the independence of the office, and the lengths Berman had to go to push back. Finally, after two and a half years, Trump and Barr, fed up with Berman's priorities, summarily fired him. Berman's courageous and principled defence of the values of judicial independence, without fear or favour, made him a hero to his colleagues, and to everyone who shares those values. Holding the Line also tells stories of the remarkable casework of the Southern District in his time there, including taking down notorious sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Nygard, Big Pharma CEOs, vicious criminal syndicates, and malign titans of international finance, and repatriating Nazi-looted art.
