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    America Loses Its Soul When It Rejects People Fleeing Danger

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    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be “civilized.” It’s not caring for one’s own; animals do that. It’s not making music and art; cave men drew and sang. It is, I believe, to live with a moral standard that takes into account our fellow man, and to ask: What do we owe one another, and what do we owe strangers?For me, to be civilized boils down to being willing to work against our own lesser interests in order to alleviate greater suffering, no matter the sufferer’s identity or relationship to us. It is a high standard, but it is not heroism, which is putting one’s own life in real danger for another.After World War II, a large group of lawmakers decided to codify this principle of humanitarian duty into international law. Nonrefoulement (from the French “fouler,” meaning “to trample”) is the idea that vulnerable people, once arrived on safe shores, should never be sent back into danger. Put simply, it is the premise that the least we can do is not knowingly send someone out to die. It is this idea that was challenged by the first Trump administration, with its “Remain in Mexico” policy, which denied responsibility for asylum seekers. Now, in his second term, President Trump has not only reinstated that harmful policy but also suspended thousands of existing asylum cases, and canceled appointments and even flights for refugees already cleared to enter the United States. All of this goes against a contract this country signed 58 years ago.One hundred and forty-five countries signed the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention (the United States signed on to the bulk of the convention’s requirements in 1967, including those on refoulement), which states: “No contracting state shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”The language in the treaty was designed to be all-encompassing, and to acknowledge that there will always be refugees fleeing persecution. The vaguest protected category, “particular social group,” was added by a Swedish delegate who worried that some people who deserve shelter would not fit into the existing categories. How could anyone when this language was drafted, just six years after the horrors of the Holocaust, foretell whom the next atrocity would target? “Particular social group,” then, was written as a catchall, to make sure everyone who needed refuge would be covered by the legal language.In 1988, my family fled Iran and landed in the United Arab Emirates. After nearly a year, we were recognized as refugees by the U.N.’s High Commissioner on Refugees and sent to a camp in Italy. There we sat for another six months or so, waiting and submitting to “credible fear” interviews, wherein asylum seekers must prove to an immigration office that the danger back home is real, not imagined. My mother explained to the officers that her Christian conversion was apostasy according to Islamic law, and that before we escaped, she had been imprisoned, interrogated and told she’d be executed. As we told our story, I sensed that our interlocutors’ aim was to save us, not to send us away. Later, too, I saw American neighbors and friends embracing this moral duty, a responsibility and an instinct to protect lives more vulnerable than their own.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-U.S. Attorney’s Book Addresses Pressure to Help Trump Causes

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      Geoffrey S. Berman, who headed the Manhattan office, says in a book the Justice Department pushed cases, against John Kerry and others, to help Mr. Trump.A book by a former top federal prosecutor offers new details about how the Justice Department under President Donald J. Trump sought to use the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to support Mr. Trump politically and pursue his critics — even pushing the office to open a criminal investigation of former secretary of state John Kerry.The prosecutor, Geoffrey S. Berman, was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York for two and a half years until June 2020, when Mr. Trump fired him after he refused a request to resign by Attorney General William P. Barr, who sought to replace him with an administration ally.A copy of Mr. Berman’s book, “Holding the Line,” was obtained by The New York Times before its scheduled publication Tuesday.The book paints a picture of Justice Department officials motivated by partisan concerns in pursuing investigations or blocking them; in weighing how forthright to be in court filings; and in shopping investigations to other prosecutors’ offices when the Southern District declined to act.The book contains accounts of how department officials tried to have allusions to Mr. Trump scrubbed from charging papers for Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer, and how the attorney general later tried to have his conviction reversed. It tells of pressure to pursue Mr. Kerry, who had angered Mr. Trump by attempting to preserve the nuclear deal he had negotiated with Iran.And in September 2018, Mr. Berman writes, two months before the November midterms, a senior department official called Mr. Berman’s deputy, cited the Southern District’s recent prosecutions of two prominent Trump loyalists, and bluntly asserted that the office, which had been investigating Gregory B. Craig, a powerful Democratic lawyer, should charge him — and should do so before Election Day.“It’s time for you guys to even things out,” the official said, according to Mr. Berman.The book comes as Mr. Trump and his supporters have accused the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland of using the Justice Department as a weapon after a judge authorized FBI agents to search his Florida house for missing classified records. Mr. Trump, who is a likely presidential candidate in 2024, has suggested without evidence that President Biden is playing a role in that investigation.However, Mr. Berman’s book says that during Mr. Trump’s presidency, department officials made “overtly political” demands, choosing targets that would directly further Mr. Trump’s desires for revenge and advantage. Mr. Berman wrote that the pressure was clearly inspired by the president’s openly professed wants.In the book, Mr. Berman, who as U.S. attorney did not give news interviews, offers new details about the high-profile prosecutions of defendants like Mr. Cohen; Chris Collins, a Republican congressman from New York; Michael Avenatti, the celebrity attorney and Trump antagonist; and Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier.He says there were cases his office pursued without pressure from Washington, but in others, he makes clear his greatest challenges did not always have to do with the law.“Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney,” Mr. Berman, 62, writes, “Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”“I walked this tightrope for two and a half years,” writes Mr. Berman, who is now in private practice. “Eventually, the rope snapped.”Geoffrey S. Berman, fired as U.S. attorney, said he was naïve about President Trump’s fierce desire to pursue his critics. Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Berman, who in the book describes himself as a Rockefeller Republican, had been a federal prosecutor in the Manhattan office from 1990 to 1994, and went on to become a co-managing partner of the New Jersey office of the law firm Greenberg Traurig.What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6What to Know About the Trump InvestigationsNumerous inquiries. More

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      F.B.I. Official Fired Under Trump Wins Back His Pension

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      Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director, will receive his pension and other benefits after settling his lawsuit with the Justice Department.WASHINGTON — Hours before he was scheduled to retire in 2018, Andrew G. McCabe, then the F.B.I.’s deputy director, was fired by the Justice Department, depriving him of his pension and prompting cheers from President Donald J. Trump, who had been hounding him over his role in the Russia investigation.On Thursday, the department reversed Mr. McCabe’s firing, settling a lawsuit he filed asserting that he was dismissed for political reasons. Under the settlement, Mr. McCabe, 53, will be able to officially retire, receive his pension and other benefits, and get about $200,000 in missed pension payments.In addition, the department agreed to expunge any mention of his firing from F.B.I. personnel records. The agreement even made clear that he would receive the cuff links given to senior executives and a plaque with his mounted F.B.I. credentials and badge.The Justice Department did not admit any wrongdoing. But the settlement amounted to a rejection by the Biden administration of how Mr. McCabe’s case had been handled under Mr. Trump, who perceived Mr. McCabe as one of his so-called deep-state enemies and repeatedly attacked him. A notice of the lawsuit’s dismissal was also filed in federal court.“Politics should never play a role in the fair administration of justice and Civil Service personnel decisions,” Mr. McCabe said in a statement. “I hope that this result encourages the men and women of the F.B.I. to continue to protect the American people by standing up for the truth and doing their jobs without fear of political retaliation.”Mr. McCabe thanked his lawyers at the firm of Arnold & Porter, who will receive more than $500,000 in legal fees paid by the government. The firm intends to donate the money to its foundation, which provides scholarships to minority law students, among other things.“What happened to Andrew was a travesty, not just for him and his family, but the rule of law,” said Murad Hussain, one of Mr. McCabe’s lawyers. “We filed this suit to restore his retirement benefits, restore his reputation and take a stand for the rights of all civil servants, and that’s exactly what this settlement does.”The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, fired Mr. McCabe on March 16, 2018, after the department’s inspector general said Mr. McCabe had lied repeatedly about a leak to a newspaper about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The case was referred to prosecutors, who ultimately decided not to charge Mr. McCabe with making false statements to a law enforcement officer.Mr. Sessions acted a day before Mr. McCabe’s retirement was set to take effect, and after months of public criticism of Mr. McCabe by Mr. Trump.With the lawsuit resolved, the Justice Department and F.B.I. avoid the risk that moving toward a trial could produce embarrassing information through the discovery process and depositions. In September 2020, a federal judge rejected the department’s efforts to dismiss the case, allowing the litigation to move forward.Mr. McCabe’s lawyers had planned to question the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, and his former deputy, David L. Bowdich. The lawyers would have also grilled Mr. Sessions and his deputy at the time, Rod J. Rosenstein, as well as others, including the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz.Mr. McCabe and his lawyers had argued that he was fired because he refused to swear loyalty to the president at the time. He also had been part of F.B.I. leadership that opened an investigation into whether any Trump campaign associates had conspired with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Trump repeatedly called the inquiry a witch hunt and fired the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, after expressing his fury about the investigation.Mr. Trump had urged the Justice Department to get rid of Mr. McCabe. After the news media reported in December 2017 that Mr. McCabe planned to retire, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”Mr. McCabe, a graduate of Duke University and of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, joined the F.B.I. in 1996 as an agent in the New York office and quickly climbed the bureau’s ranks. Mr. Comey appointed Mr. McCabe deputy director in 2016, putting him in charge of operations as the bureau’s senior most agent.Mr. McCabe’s rise in the bureau took a vertiginous turn in January 2018 when Mr. Wray demoted Mr. McCabe without telling him why. Mr. McCabe then elected to take leave until March, when he was eligible for retirement.Nearly a month after he was fired, the inspector general released his findings, issuing a report on Mr. McCabe’s conduct, saying he had failed to be completely honest in answering questions about his role in the news media leak about the Clinton case.Mr. McCabe sued over his dismissal, saying he was a victim of political retaliation. In the suit, he said that Mr. Sessions, Mr. Wray and others “served as Trump’s personal enforcers rather than the nation’s highest law enforcement officials, catering to Trump’s unlawful whims instead of honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution.”Firing Mr. McCabe “was a critical element of Trump’s plan and scheme” to rid the F.B.I. and Justice Department of those deemed not loyal to the president, his lawsuit said. Mr. McCabe accused the department of retaliation and terminating him for political reasons, which violated agency policies. Mr. McCabe’s lawyer also argued that as a career civil servant, Mr. McCabe should have been given 30 days’ notice before he was fired.Indeed, a series of emails raised questions about whether Mr. McCabe’s firing was fast tracked by the F.B.I. or Justice Department. The emails were obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.Just after noon on March 5, 2018, Candice M. Will, who oversaw the termination effort for the F.B.I.’s Office of Professional Responsibility, emailed Mr. Rosenstein to let him know that her office had completed its review and was preparing a recommendation.Later that same day, Ms. Will then emailed Mr. Bowdich: “I let the Dept know that we are doing what should be done, not slow walking — we are following the established procedures.”He responded that they would be “second guessed by some every step of the way however this ends up.”Why Ms. Will made the comment about “slow walking” is not publicly known, but Mr. McCabe’s lawyers intended to find out and depose her if the case had moved forward.On March 7, Ms. Will recommended that Mr. McCabe be fired over the inspector general’s report. In a handwritten note accompanying the recommendation, she advised Mr. Wray and Mr. Bowdich: “It seems unlikely that this will reach final resolution before Mr. McCabe’s March 18 retirement date.” But, she said, it was up to the deputy attorney general.She spoke later that day to a top aide of Mr. Rosenstein, which seemed to set off a flurry of activity — including meetings and sensitive calls — among senior department officials scrambling to make sure Mr. McCabe was fired before his planned retirement date. In one instance, Steven A. Engel, the head of the department’s office of legal counsel, emailed one of Mr. Rosenstein’s aides with the F.B.I. guidelines for removing a senior bureau official.After Mr. McCabe was fired, Mr. Trump celebrated on Twitter, calling it “a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy.” More