Next stop for Preet Bharara, fired prosecutor? His brother's media firm

As US attorney for Southern District of New York, he was the most powerful federal prosecutor

Since Preet Bharara, the former United States attorney in Manhattan, was abruptly fired in March by President Trump, speculation has swirled about what he would do next. Would he join a white-shoe law firm, as many former prosecutors do? Would he run for office?

As it turns out, Bharara is becoming something of a media Renaissance man. On Monday, he will officially announce that he is joining his younger brother’s media company, Some Spider Studios.

He is writing a book. And he has not stopped tweeting. Bharara will become an executive vice-president at Some Spider, which Vinit Bharara started in 2014. He will also host a podcast called “Stay Tuned With Preet.” 

The podcast, which is scheduled to begin airing in the coming months, will explore justice and fairness issues and provide in-depth analysis on legal cases. Bharara also expects to write articles for Some Spider’s news and entertainment website, Cafe, and he and Vinit Bharara plan to introduce a conference, Cafe Con, next year.

As the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York for more than seven years, Preet Bharara, 48, was perhaps the most powerful federal prosecutor in the country. He prosecuted politicians on both sides of the aisle and earned a reputation for aggressively going after insider trading on Wall Street. He has repeatedly said he has no plans to seek political office, but that has not stopped the murmurings.

So joining an upstart media company and hosting a podcast might not seem the next logical step in Bharara’s career.

Vinit Bharara, 45, said he projected that Some Spider would have more than $12 million in revenue this year and double that next year. And the company has made a bunch of hires in the last several months, including a new creative director who previously worked at BuzzFeed. One of its websites, Scary Mommy, is a hit among the parenting set.

Preet Bharara does have other postprosecutorial plans. In April, he joined the New York University School of Law as a distinguished scholar in residence. He is also working on a book about the search for justice, which the publisher Alfred A. Knopf plans to publish in early 2019.

Bharara acknowledged in a joint interview with his brother at Some Spider’s headquarters in the Flatiron district of Manhattan that joining the company did not represent the typical career path for a former federal prosecutor. But he said he was drawn to Some Spider because it would allow him an unfettered platform to pursue what he has always done: raise issues of justice and hold people accountable.

“It’s an extension of all the things I have been doing, although I no longer have the authority that I had before,” he said. If Bharara’s plans seem unconventional, it is worth noting that his interest in the media is not new. In the past, he has publicly expressed support for investigative journalism and has cited reporters’ work that led to prosecutions by his office.

Some Spider also gives him an opportunity to work not only with his brother but also with their childhood friend Marc Lore, a primary investor in the company. Lore and Vinit Bharara started an online diapers store, Diapers.com, in 2005 and later sold its parent company to Amazon for about $540 million. (Preet Bharara held a small investment in the company.) Around the time that Vinit Bharara founded Some Spider, Lore started Jet.com, an online bulk retailer that he sold last year to Walmart for $3.3 billion.

©2017 The New York Times News Service