In Five Years in Office, U.S. Prosecutor Touches New York’s Biggest Story Lines

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In Five Years in Office, U.S. Prosecutor Touches New York’s Biggest Story Lines
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/n...89F71ED9C0E38A43590&gwt=pay&assetType=nyt_now

The interview on public radio this April, a long-planned event to discuss a range of topics, seemed like a garden-variety appearance for Preet Bharara, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

The magnitude of the moment, however, came into quick focus. As Mr. Bharara attacked Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s decision to disband an anticorruption commission, five of his staff members and a handful of forensic computer specialists arrived at the commission’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan to copy hard drives and haul out documents through a service elevator.

The sequence of events, unfolding over a little more than an hour, set up an extraordinary public clash between two of New York’s most powerful Democrats.

Mr. Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, later learned that the Cuomo administration had asked some of the commission’s members to issue public statements characterizing the commission’s operation.

“Just speaking broadly, any time there’s a suggestion of political meddling with an investigative body, however that investigative body was set up, that is going to cause alarm and should cause alarm,” Mr. Bharara said in one of several recent interviews coinciding with the fifth anniversary of his taking office on Aug. 13.

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Mr. Bharara, right, who served as chief counsel to Senator Charles E. Schumer, in the senator's Capitol Hill office in 2005. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Bharara directed his office to send a letter threatening to investigate the Cuomo administration for possible obstruction of justice or witness tampering.

Mr. Bharara’s tenure has touched on many of the biggest story lines in New York: Sweeping civil rights violations at Rikers Island. Gang violence and cyberattacks. The terrorism conviction of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law.

On Wall Street, Mr. Bharara secured an 85-to-1 record in pursuit of insider trading. He also indicted Switzerland’s oldest private bank and helped extract a guilty plea from a giant French financial institution.

In Albany, Mr. Bharara has found another generous target: He has convicted more than a dozen lawmakers on corruption charges. “Some of the things that we’ve seen out of Albany and elsewhere are, quite frankly, appalling,” he said.

And now, even though Mr. Cuomo has said that the anticorruption commission was never supposed to be independent because it was an entity he created and controlled, Mr. Bharara has taken the cases the commission was forced to abandon.

Mr. Bharara said that in consultation with Richard B. Zabel, his deputy, he decided to discuss the commission’s closing in some detail on the radio; he said they felt the public had a right to know why Mr. Bharara’s office was seizing the files.

That day in April, Mr. Bharara’s investigators arrived at the commission’s offices in three unmarked cars, parking in a garage out of public sight, according to a person briefed on the matter. They left about 90 minutes later carrying boxes of materials and a formal letter from the commission referring its open cases to his office.

“If it is going to disband, then someone has got to do the work, and it shouldn’t be left to wither on the vine,” Mr. Bharara said, declining to discuss specifics of the investigation. “Speaking mildly obliquely, I don’t see a lot of legislative hearings going on about anything relating to public corruption in Albany,” he added.

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During his tenure, Mr. Bharara has barnstormed the public speaking circuit, accepting invitations to graduate schools and media conferences. Time magazine placed him on its cover with the title “This Man is Busting Wall St.” This March, he attended Vanity Fair’s Oscar party in Los Angeles.

Mr. Bharara’s embrace of the media spotlight has bred widespread speculation about his ambitions — that he might run for public office or agree to be attorney general if asked. At the same time, some of his cases have spurred debate, in the defense bar and judiciary, about whether Mr. Bharara’s office occasionally overreaches in charging decisions and courtroom tactics.

Gerald L. Shargel, a defense lawyer whose clients have included high-profile politicians charged by the office, said Mr. Bharara was “an effective prosecutor” who had “done well” in his job.

“But I think that the complaints about him are rooted in the idea that he’s also done well for himself,” Mr. Shargel added. “People believe that the U.S. attorney position is not at the limits of his horizon.”

In the interviews, Mr. Bharara, 45, ruled out a political future. “I have no interest and desire to seek political office,” he said. Pressed further, he emphasized, “Now or ever.”

The only job he fought for, he said, was an assistant United States attorney’s position in the office he now runs. He took the job in 2000, handling narcotics and organized crime cases, after spending a few years working as a young associate at white-shoe law firms.

“I’m not sure I have a taste for private practice,” he said. “My concern is I’m not sure I have a taste for anything but this.”

As for his trip to Hollywood, he said he attended the Vanity Fair Oscar party because a nominated movie, “Captain Phillips,” was based on another of his office’s big cases: the prosecution of a Somali pirate.

“I was the biggest dork at that event,” Mr. Bharara said.

Mr. Bharara, who peppers his speeches with self-deprecating humor, cracked at another event last year that his recent “undeserving” media attention made him think that “this is what it must feel like to be a Kardashian.”

Even Bruce Springsteen gave him a shout-out at a concert. (Mr. Bharara, who like Mr. Springsteen grew up in New Jersey, is a die-hard fan. The Boss also posed for a photo with Mr. Bharara’s son, an image that is now pinned on Mr. Bharara’s office wall; nearby hangs a picture of Mr. Bharara’s mother with the rocker.)

Mr. Bharara’s friends, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, say he relishes the spotlight. They also note that Mr. Bharara, who has three children, has earned a government salary for 14 years, and could eventually seek a job in the private arena. (His brother and a business partner sold a start-up Internet diaper company for about $540 million to Amazon.com; Mr. Bharara said he held only a small investment in the company.)

“For as long as his family can afford it, his place is at the U.S. attorney’s office,” said Viet Dinh, a former senior Justice Department official under George W. Bush. Mr. Dinh, a friend of Mr. Bharara’s since their first day of college at Harvard, added, “I am confident that Preet has no political aspirations, and I am glad of it for my Republican Party.”