Preet Bharara joins New York University as a distinguished scholar

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NEW YORK: Preet Bharara, the fired U.S. attorney in Manhattan who made his reputation as a corruption buster and Wall Street enforcer, is joining the New York University School of Law as a distinguished scholar, school officials said.

Bharara, who took on New York state lawmakers, hedge fund managers and Bernie Madoff’s associates, will join the school on April 1. He was fired this month by President Donald Trump after refusing a call by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign. Bharara, the top lawman in the Southern District of New York, was considered the most influential of the 94 U.S. attorneys.

“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 the NYU statement.

Bharara was one of 46 U.S. attorneys appointed by President Barack Obama asked to resign this month. Bharara, who said that Trump asked him in November to stay on, refused to quit and announced on Twitter the next day that he’d been fired.

When he departed, Bharara was investigating the fundraising practices of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Within days, Bharara successor Joon Kim, the acting U.S. attorney, said he wouldn’t bring charges against the mayor or his aides, noting “the particular difficulty in proving criminal intent in corruption cases.”

Another former U.S. attorney who resigned, Paul Fishman in New Jersey, has joined Seton Hall University School of Law as a distinguished visiting fellow.

(Bloomberg)