posted at 5:01 pm on March 22, 2017 by Jazz Shaw
Very often when you get fired from your old job it can turn into a dark stain on your resume and prevent you from finding new employment. Not so for former US Attorney Prete Bharara who was recently fired from his position by President Trump. In less than a couple of weeks he had already landed a new gig, though it’s not exactly in his old line of work. He will be on the faculty at New York University law school starting next month. (Washington Examiner)
Preet Bharara, the Manhattan U.S. attorney who was fired by President Trump after refusing to resign when asked earlier this month, will join New York University School of Law next month.
In an online post Tuesday, the university said Bharara has been hired as a distinguished scholar in residence and will begin his tenure April 1.
“I am honored to join the NYU School of Law, one of the great educational institutions in America, and I welcome the chance to contribute in such a thoughtful setting. I am thrilled for this opportunity to continue addressing the issues I so deeply care about —criminal and social justice, honest government, national security, civil rights, and corporate accountability, to name a few,” Bharara said in a statement.
The salary for such a position is no doubt pretty good (possibly even better than he is making working for the government) but I have to wonder if that’s really what he wants to do. Bharara brings with him a wealth of valuable experience from the field, but after all the battles he’s been through it just seems as if he might miss being in the thick of the action. Sadly, his former path upward is probably blocked since it seems rather unlikely that he would be moving up the United States Justice Department after the events of the past month or two.
It’s not unheard of for someone in a prosecutorial position like that to go to work for a large private firm as a defense attorney, but that seems out of character with his stated goals. But might there be something else on the horizon? One way to clean up government is to attack corruption from the outside as Bharara did over the course of his career. The other might be reforming the system from the inside. Is it even conceivable that after spending so long locking up politicians Preet might want to become one?
I’m not the first one to bring this up. Speculation actually began brewing as soon as Bharara was fired. There’s been talk of a run at the Attorney General’s office or even taking on Andrew Cuomo himself for a shot at the governor’s mansion. A separate school of thought suggested that he might even want to consider challenging Bill de Blasio to become mayor of New York City. If he wants to go that route he’ll need to move fast because election season will be heating up quickly.
It would be sort of ironic, wouldn’t it? The guy who spent most of the last year investigating both the mayor and the governor over possible incidents of corruption turning around and taking one of their offices. There was a time I would’ve found the idea rather ludicrous, but having lived through 2016 I don’t think we can write anything off entirely.
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