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- [00:00]
A
Immediately after that interview, she was transferred to a less restrictive, nicer prison. And when he was asked about that, his explanation was, well, she's facing security threats. I will just point out, as someone who again, has covered this stuff for a very long time, when an inmate faces security threats, the Bureau of Prison's most common decision is to, when they move them, move them to a more restricted space.
- [00:25]
B
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the third episode of Is this Really Legal? I'm your host, Liz Oyer. Over the last year and a half, Donald Trump has transformed the Justice Department. So how did this happen? What does it mean? And is this really legal? These are the questions we'll be diving into today. My guest today is Devlin Barrett. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who covers the Justice Department and the FBI for the New York Times. And he has been very busy. Devlin has a new book out called the Department of How Trump Took Control of American Justice. Devlin, welcome to Is this Really Legal? And thank you so much for joining us.
- [01:05]
A
Hey, Liz, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
- [01:07]
B
So I was still at DOJ when Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20th of 2025 to start his second term. And from where I sat, it was a wild day.
- [01:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, I just think day one was super important to understanding what's happening to the Justice Department and even to the people who experienced day one inside the Justice Department. I think a lot of them couldn't quite grasp the extent of what was going on, even for the people living it. I think it was hard to sort of wrap your brain and your arms around everything that happened that first day. So that's why the book sort of starts with day one, because I think so many important themes and important changes at the department are visible on day one. And so the real kicking off point comes at 3pm in a set of emails to very senior people, all in key positions at different parts of the department. And that very small number of humans were incredibly important to how the Justice Department functioned, both as an institution and as a group of people working together to achieve justice. And that small group of people, about 10 or so, were told by email that they were being immediately reassigned to, to something called the Sanctuary Cities Working Group. It was an immigration enforcement themed group that did not exist. And it became clear later that it was never really meant to do very much. It was a dumping ground for people like some of the most senior career officials in the building, whether it's at the National Security Division, whether it's the most senior people handling public corruption cases. Or antitrust cases involving major corporations, all of those people were immediately essentially put in a bin and made irrelevant and out of the chain of command of the Justice Department.
- [03:10]
B
So you're talking about career civil servants, meaning people who have served under administrations of both parties, Republican presidents, Democratic presidents, for many, many years. Is that right?
- [03:20]
A
Right. Hugely important point. Like, these are not the political people running the department with every administration. These are the people who have essentially lived and breathed the department for decades, in most cases, who carry just an incredible amount of institutional knowledge and, frankly, more importantly, carry a tremendous amount of reputational credibility within the building. If there were people who were going to say no to particular things the new administration wanted, these were the people who could have effectively said no, and that those nos might have mattered inside the department, but those people were removed on day one.
- [04:00]
B
What was the goal? Why?
- [04:02]
A
So it's very interesting, at the time, I think even to some of the people being removed, it wasn't entirely clear what the goal was. I think for a lot of people, the Justice Department, even people who were concerned going into, you know, as the day began about, you know, what the administration might do within the Justice Department, even those folks didn't quite grasp the extent of what was about to happen and what was happening to them. Some people took those reassignments, those forced reassignments, as a sign that, oh, the Trump administration is sort of doing it all in one fell swoop, and this will be the end of it, and everything will be allowed to sort of start with a clean sheet, and the most drastic stuff is all going to happen on the first day, and that will be better for the department and the institution. That was completely wrong. It was really just the beginning, and it was really sort of setting the table, really, for what was to come, which was a whole lot more personnel changes, all designed to make sure that every key decision at the Justice Department was made not by Justice Department career officials, but by political officials and, in many cases, officials at the White House.
- [05:23]
B
So that's a really interesting point. You say that the goal is to make sure that decisions are not made by these career experts who are nonpartisan. But there are certain times in which the leadership of the department has wanted the career officials to do something. And, you know, my firing, I think, is an example of that. You were actually, you and I go way back, because you're the first reporter who reported on my firing from the Department of Justice. I was asked as a career official to write a recommendation to the attorney general that she do something and I think, you know, she didn't need my recommendation, but I felt that I was being asked to provide it, to give it an appearance of legitimacy because I was a career, non political official. So it would make it look like it really was based on the merit and not based on politics. There are some other examples of that happening as well where the careers are asked to play a particular role. And you, you cover some of those in your book. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [06:20]
A
Sure. And it's a hugely important point to how, how the Justice Department, you know, changed and now works, because especially at the beginning, especially before there were as many political appointees running the department, the administration really wanted the, what I would call the appearance of credibility for some of their decisions by having career Justice Department officials do these things, to essentially sign off on these things or put their name on these things. And I think one of the big examples of this is what happens with the case against Mayor Eric Adams, the New York City mayor who was awaiting trial. He'd already been indicted when Trump was sworn into office, and he was awaiting trial on corruption charges. And the administration worked very hard to force career officials to withdraw that case and dismiss that case. And what happened in that instance was the career prosecutors in New York who had initially brought it just steadfastly refused to abandon the case or to say that it should be dismissed. They fought very hard on that. Some were fired, some resigned in protest. But those resignations, and as huge a public relations problem, as huge a credibility problem as that created for the administration, they did not let up. They kept going, and they brought that fight, they brought those demands instead to the Public Integrity Section, which is a very important part of the Justice Department. And they essentially made. Issued an ultimatum to the Public Integrity prosecutors that someone had some, some of the careers had to sign a motion for dismissal of Adams charges. The book really gets into sort of the behind the scenes of how that all went down and how difficult that was for those, for those prosecutors, because they felt like they were really in an impossible choice and, you know, the whole debate over to quit or to force them to fire you or to do what you're told because otherwise someone worse may follow you in the job. All those issues that were on display in the public integrity fight have continued all through this administration. And part of the reason why I wanted to do a book about the first year of the Justice Department is I think, I think all the patterns, all the targets, all the intention is crystal clear. After a year, you don't need to know much more about where this administration is taking the Justice Department than what happens in the first year, because they're taking it there very, very quickly.
- [09:11]
B
So, speaking from my personal experience, it is a real dilemma, this idea, do I stay or do I go? How do I deal with a situation where I'm being asked to do something that violates my own idea of ethics and d. And in my case, I was fired, which took the decision out of my hands, and that made it very easy. And I think the people who are actually in a somewhat harder position are the people who are left behind after something like that. I mean, in my case, I was walked out of the building in front of my staff, who were very traumatized by what happened. They didn't understand why I was being fired. They didn't get an explanation. I didn't have a chance to say goodbye. What has been the effect on the morale of the people who are left behind at the Justice Department, the career staff who are still there there of seeing these high profile firings and these events sort of aired in the news that they're observing from inside the Justice Department?
- [10:07]
A
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a surprise, really, that morale is terrible for most parts of the Justice Department, and for that matter, for most parts of the FBI. That doesn't mean that there aren't still people just at both places who can do good work for. On the cases that they have. But it does mean that for every instance like the one you described, you know, there are. You know, you can rattle off a list of other people who faced similar really difficult moments in really difficult situations. And the lesson of that, the thing I try to explain in the book, is the. The greatest harm that sort of confrontation creates is all of these folks who are still there. You know, the Justice Department is a very large place. The FBI is a very large place. They have lots of people. But even the people who have been mostly left alone operate with this sort of daily fear that, you know, as one person described to me, you know, the Eye of Soren could turn to them at any time, and this, you know, malevolent force and demand could suddenly require them to do something that either the ethics of the law, they believe, just simply doesn't allow. And everyone sort of operates with a sense of daily dread that that Eye of Sauron could turn to them at any moment and, you know, wreck their career. You know, you know, forget your week or your month or your year, just wreck your career completely. And so that is. That is sort of the operational issue on a day to day basis. The other issue is so many people have left either on their own terms or, you know, because they've been forced out, that the people who remain are tremendously overworked, tremendously overstretched. And, you know, the result of that, the aggregate result of that is that there's a lot less good work being done inside the department and inside the FBI, and there's a lot more shoddy work being done. You know, one of the things that I try to explain in the book is, you know, part of this taking control means in ways big and small. There's just a tremendous lowering of standards going on inside the department and FBI. And that is not a political issue at core. That is about the types of investigations that you're doing and the way you do them. And while the reasons for those motivate for those, some of those investigations may be political, the quality of the work, the quality of the people, and the quality of just the end product of what the Justice Department is doing is degrading.
- [12:59]
B
Wow. Wow. Well, that's very alarming. I mean, what do you worry could be the consequences of that for either the legitimacy of the justice system or for the safety of Americans or for our constitutional rights? I mean, do you have concerns about what actual damage that may cause the lowering of standards as you described it?
- [13:23]
A
So I think the lowering of standards reflects, can be seen reflected in a lot of different things that happen at the department. For one thing, you know, I write about how there are these weekly calls run by the office of the Deputy Attorney General where prosecutors around the country are urged to, you know, charge otherwise non chargeable conduct. Whether you're talking about protests or whether you're talking about someone who's, you know, tangentially connected to a drug suspect in really novel, and I think civil libertarians would say very alarming ways. Such as, you know, the book opens with a senior official saying that, you know, anyone who loans a car to a drug dealer should be charged with material support for terrorism. That is an incredible change in the application of federal criminal law. It sort of blows past a lot of the, you know, basic protections in the law, and frankly, it blows past the statute. I mean, one of the ways in which some of this stuff can drive career prosecutors to distraction is just, you know, when they get these sort of instructions, they're like, so what are the elements of the crime that we're supposed to be charging here? And the people giving these instructions often don't seem to understand what the elements of a Crime are of a particular crime are. And so it creates a tremendous, I think, potential for abuse. And. And sometimes, like judges have found clear abuse of the law, clear abuse of the process. You know, some judges are rejecting this outright. Some juries and grand jurors are rejecting this outright, which is really unheard, pretty much unheard of in the federal system. And you're seeing more and more of that because the department is now, in its current formulation, is now willing to burn through just a ton of their own credibility to try to create or end up with a political outcome that the White House wants. And that's the damage you're seeing being done, is the degree to which judges and jurors are just saying, no, they don't trust the Justice Department.
- [15:48]
B
So when I was a public defender, I litigated against the Justice Department for 10 years as a federal public defender. And when I walked into court and the federal prosecutor was at the table across from me, it was like their word was gold. And I really had to prove it. I mean, I had to work 10 times harder, harder than they did to prove that what I was saying was true and credible and something the judge should rely on. They would walk in and open their mouth, and it felt like whatever came out was automatically believed to be gospel because they had the credibility of this tremendous institution, the Justice Department, behind them. I get the sense that that is no longer the presumption that federal prosecutors receive when they walk into court. Judges are no longer taking them at face value. They're questioning their credibility in ways that I personally witnessed when I was up against the federal prosecutor in court. Do you think that the. The. The credibility of the Justice Department is being damaged in an enduring way in the eyes of the court? Is this like a temporary thing, or is this something that is going to really change the way the Justice Department is viewed by judges around the country?
- [16:59]
A
I don't think it's temporary only in this sense. I don't think it. I mean, you know, certainly the leadership of the department can change. Certainly the practice of the department can change. If anything, the last year shows how much it can change. But I do think that credibility, once burned, is very hard to build back. And I do think that. And I'll say one other thing about credibility. So to your point about being in court for many years, on the other side of this, I started as a court reporter. I've covered federal law enforcement for, God, more than 25 years at this point. And I will say I totally observe the exact same dynamic you mentioned, which is that prosecutors so often get the benefit of the doubt, even when, just as a reporter trying to, you know, suss out the facts, I wasn't sure that they deserved the benefit of the doubt. The Justice Department was until. Until, you know, early 2025, the Justice Department was not a perfect institution. The FBI was not a perfect institution. They at times did bad things, and they at times made horrible mistakes and sometimes worse than mistakes. But that's a different problem than what's happening now. One of the reasons I wanted to write the book is I really cannot emphasize enough how different the second Trump term is than from the first Trump term. It's just a categorically different enterprise. And I think they are going. They are burning through a lot of credibility in the courts, and they're going to continue to burn through a lot of credibility in the courts. It is a very sort of everybody does it mindset. One of the things I encounter in the reporting for the book over and over again is that every time a senior official says, well, we should go arrest this Democrat, or we should go arrest that Democrat, you know, a career official will often say in. In the moment, you know, we don't have that evidence yet to support that charge. We can keep investigating, but we do not have such evidence right now. And, you know, that that answer is met with derision and, you know, as sort of a belief that, well, everybody does this. This is what. This is what people do when they take over the Justice Department. They go after people that they don't like. And I just think to career prosecutors, that just sounds crazy. That is not their lived experience. Not to say that again, the Justice Department hasn't made mistakes or hasn't gone too far at times.
- [19:37]
B
That's a really important point that you make. I think that one thing that gets lost sometimes in discussions about the damage that's being done to the Justice Department is the fact that it really isn't a perfect institution. It wasn't a perfect institution. There's a lot of nostalgia now for the Justice Department as it used to be. I will say I don't share the nostalgia for the Justice Department exactly as it once was. As a federal public defender, it really felt like a maximalist organization where, you know, there was a tendency to pursue maximum penalties against people who maybe, you know, their culpability really didn't necessarily match the sentences they could potentially face under federal law. And it was always, at the end of the day, a fight over sentencing. What's a fair sentence for this crime? And there was often A precedent prosecutor who thought it needed to be more than I thought it needed to be. And, you know, the judge would decide. And I do think, at the end of the day, the Justice Department is in need of some reforms, and it was in need of some reforms. And it really is only because of that that this administration was able to create this narrative that, you know, every administration does this, and that's just how it goes. And I think in part, that's attributable to the fact that the Justice Department has already always operated based on norms. Like, people who have worked at Justice Department talk all the time about the norms of the institution. Norms are really just like how things have always been done. They're not the law. They're not rules. They're just, this is how we do it. And in fact, they're like things that, you know, we didn't bother to write down because we didn't think we needed to. What do you think are the most significant ways in which the norms of the Justice Department have changed or evaporated under this administration?
- [21:22]
A
Okay, so that's. You're going to bring out a little bit of a rant in me as a reporter. A reporter, a quick reporter rant is that in course of the reporting of this book, I cannot tell you how many people talk to me about norms and sort of the shredding of norms. I will say as a reporter, and again, I want to own what I am. I'm just a guy who's covered this place for a very long time. I think defending norms is probably the worst argument you can make for protecting the Justice Department. I think, one, the public is angry enough at the government as a general baseline level that defending norms sounds like you're talking about just defending the status quo for its own sake, defending norms. I think to a normal person who's not like, you know, soaking in legal issues and arguments, defending norms sounds like everyone should just stay where they are and nothing should change and everything in the government is fine when, frankly, the public simply does not believe that everything in the government is fine. Again, politics aside, the public just does not believe that norms, the status quo, are good. So I think it's a loser of an argument. But to your point, I think practically it's a bad argument as well, because we've always done it this way is, frankly, not the best argument. And I think when you revert to that kind of argument, what you're really doing is you're really not grappling with the real important issue. I wrote a book called the Department of Revenge. That's about the Department of Justice. But I'm not writing about. I don't ultimately care about the building or, you know, the org chart. I care about the principle of justice, the principle of right and wrong. And I think the argument about norms, as important as it is, because those norms are always designed, were originally intended to get you to making right choices and wise choices in the pursuit of justice, in the effort to enforce right and wrong in the country. And I think when you lose sight of that and you sort of get bogged down and like, well, we've never done it this way before, that's not really the conversation that matters. The conversation that matters is, is this right? Is this justice, or is this wrong? Is this injustice? And I think the. The norms conversation, while attractive to a certain type of, frankly, you know, Justice Department lifer, you know, a certain type of politician, a certain type of, you know, advocate or lawyer, I actually think is in some ways a losing argument out of the gate.
- [24:10]
B
Yeah, that's a really good point, and I agree with you. Let me ask you this. Why is all of this happening? I mean, Donald Trump has an entire government of agencies to run many, many agencies that do different things. And it seems like he has taken a special interest in the Justice Department above all others. I still remember last March. I believe it was last March, shortly after I had been fired. Trump actually went to the Justice Department and he gave a speech next to Pam Bondi, who was then the Attorney general. That's very unusual. The president rarely goes to the Justice Department because there's always been, or there has been for many decades, this idea that there should be some independence between the White House and the Justice Department. He seems like he bankromanages the Justice Department in a way that past presidents and that he doesn't with other federal
- [25:01]
A
agencies just to, like, sort of set the state. The thing that I always found fascinating about that speech was there were few, very, very few career prosecutors in attendance of that speech. In fact, they told most of the careers to stay home that day, don't even go into the building today for security reasons. So in many ways, it was not. It was not even meant for that audience. It was a victory lap. And when you ask why, I think the thing I would point to more than anything, and I think the thing that, frankly, I don't think our political life really contemplated sufficiently, is when I covered courts and trials for many years. And one of the things that was always striking to me about covering trials is whether a defendant was convicted, whether they were acquitted, whether they were never indicted. Most criminal defendants come out of that process incredibly bitter and angry at their treatment. There are very few humans who go through that and don't feel like they, that this was fundamentally unfair and, you know, a horrible, a horrible injustice to them personally. And I think, I don't know that the country really contemplated fully or appreciated fully how much different a White House run by a former criminal defendant would be than one that was not run by a former criminal defendant. And he said, you know, in June of last year, he made this comment about how he used to be the hunted and now he's the hunter. And that is how he thinks about this issue.
- [26:50]
B
So do you think he has succeeded in turning the Department of Justice into a department that's more about revenge than justice?
- [26:58]
A
I think he has succeeded in many ways. I don't think that's this total, I don't think that's the total product of what the Justice Department does. Like I said before, I think the Justice Department still does many, many things that are for the public good and are greatly necessary to this country and to enforcing the law. But I think when he wants something, he often gets it out of the Justice Department. And often what he wants out of the Justice Department is for the Justice Department to investigate, charge, and hopefully take to trial people. He's mad at my reporting in the book, sort of walks through the process, the behind the scenes, leading up to different cases against Jim Comey, the former FBI director. Those cases in particular, I think, are a great case study in how this Justice Department is unlike any other Justice Department. I also think when you, when you look at some of the other revenge cases, if you look at, for example, the case against the New York attorney General, Letitia James, even when the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanch, did not want to proceed with the case, it didn't matter. The case was filed because that's what the president wanted.
- [28:17]
B
So let me ask you about Todd Blanche. What role has he played in all of this? He was Trump's personal attorney, his lead criminal defense attorney in several of the cases that were filed against Trump before he won the second presidency. He was then made the deputy attorney general, which is the number two official at the Justice Department at the start of Trump's second presiden, and he served in that role until Pam Bondi departed. He was then elevated to the position of acting attorney general, and he now has a confirmation hearing coming up next week when the Senate will consider him for the role of attorney general on A permanent basis. So he is a very prominent figure at the Justice Department. What role has he played since he. Since he got there? About 15 or 16 months ago, yeah.
- [29:03]
A
One of the points I make in the book is that long before Pambondi left, from the moment Todd Blanche entered the building, Todd Blanche was the most important official in the Justice Department. Now, to be fair to all of his predecessors as the Deputy Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General has always been an important job. I've always thought of that job as sort of the bad cop of the institution, meaning they settle any internal disputes. When an agency or an office or an individual Justice Department official has to be told, no, you can't do X, it's often the Deputy Attorney General who's the one who says it, who, like I said, acts as the bad cop. But Todd Blanche's tenure as the Deputy Attorney General has been very, very different than any other deputy Attorney General, I think, in the modern era. And that's because they have sort of rewired that institution so that all decisions and all decision making goes through his office. That doesn't mean that he specifically handles every issue and every meeting. In fact, I think the book has plenty of instances where he seems to be deliberately delegating someone else to send the message that he wants, sent the decision that he wants made inside the structure of the Justice Department. But, but in many ways, Todd Blanche has already been running the Justice Department this entire time. And he's running it in a way that takes a lot of decision making authority away from the U.S. attorneys and puts it in his office. And he's running in a way that takes a lot of the decision making of the Justice Department and puts it in the White House. And that is what is fundamentally different.
- [30:54]
B
So are there particular decisions that stand out to you or particular things that Blanche has been involved in that jump out as significant as far as his record and his influence on the Justice Department?
- [31:08]
A
Absolutely. I mean, I think the first one that I think the public would be most familiar with is the Epstein files. That whole mess, that whole saga, was really more his to manage than it was the Attorney General's. And that partly that's because the Attorney General at the time, Pam Bondi, you know, had a real love of props and, you know, sort of kept misusing props in the public space to sort of her own to make herself look foolish. I don't know how many people remember it, but there was a very dramatic distribution of binders to a bunch of social media influencers that had this. This crazy Diagonal marking on it that said declassified. And it was all old stuff that had been out for a long time. It meant nothing. None of it. You know, it was no more classified than the Alphabet. Like, it made. No, the whole premise of what she did there made no sense. But it was for show. It was. It was for the cameras. It was for. You know, pr. Blanche has been the one who has actually managed the handling of the actual files. And I don't think anyone would argue that has gone smoothly or well or not been a huge political problem and cost to the administration and to the President himself. You know, the management issues at the Justice Department are tremendous. And when you make your decisions primarily based on what the President or the President's senior advisor is demanding on a daily basis, it turns out that often leads to bad lawyering. And that's what you see a lot in the way the Epstein files and other cases were handled. You know, his confirmation hearing, I expect, will feature quite a number of questions about the Epstein files and, you know, his role in that, because it was his to manage.
- [33:15]
B
One aspect of that that really caught my attention, and I think that of a lot of career lawyers who've worked at the Justice Department and public defenders, frankly, is when Todd Blanche went down to Florida to meet with Glenn Maxwell. He was the Deputy Attorney General then. It just seemed so unusual for the number two official in the Justice Department to personally take this trip to meet with someone who had been convicted of serious crimes personally over the course of two days to interview her. What did you make of Todd Blanche taking that trip? Was it as unusual from your perspective as it seemed to me? And why do you think he handled that himself?
- [33:55]
A
I mean, it is incredible. It's an incredible moment in the whole process. And I think, you know, I think law nerds like me read that transcript and are just sort of baffled at what is the purpose of this interview, actually, because it doesn't read like any other proffer I've ever, you know, encountered before. A proffers a certain type of interview where you're trying to get information from a criminal suspect or a criminal defendant that. That it's a bit of a dance. So there are proffers normally have a bit of coaxing, but also a bit of pushing someone. I think what's so striking to me about that interview is that he did it at all, because the Deputy Attorney General would never, in any other administration, Deputy Attorney General would never take on that responsibility themselves. The deputy Attorney General is a manager, not an investigator. And so that in itself is Very strange. But when you look at the questions, you get some inkling as to why that might be because he repeatedly refers to Ghislaine Maxwell as an accused criminal, an accused sex offender, not someone who's been convicted and is serving like more than a decade in prison, which is an amazing posture, let's say, for someone at the Justice Department to take. And I also think what happens after that interview is super important. Right. I think a lot of people have heard by now that immediately after that interview she was transferred to a lower, a less restrictive, nicer prison. And when he was asked about that, his explanation was, well, she's facing security threats. I will just point out, as someone who again has covered this stuff for a very long time, when an inmate faces security threats, the Bureau of Prison's most common decision is to, when they move them, move them to a more restricted space, not a less restricted space. Because if the concern is threats, putting them in less restricted threat place makes it more likely that some other inmate could hurt them. But here you have the exact opposite. Here you have her going to a place that is less restrictive, where in theory at least, hopefully nothing bad happens to any inmate, frankly, once they're incarcerated. But I think putting her into a less restrictive place, if you're worried about threats, presumably you've just increased the chances that someone could hurt her. So I think those explanations are very unusual and I think that whole sequence of events is very unusual for a deputy Attorney General. But I will say, to get back to your original question, it's not very unusual for someone who is trying above all else to protect the President.
- [36:56]
B
What do you think Blanche's reputation is among the career workforce? I mean, you've persuasively laid out that he's certainly got the trust of the President and he's handling the most sensitive matters because. Because they're the matters that are the most important to the President. But he also supervises a workforce of about 100,000 employees, many of whom are lawyers, many of whom are not lawyers all around the country. How is he perceived among those people?
- [37:26]
A
So I think when Blanche first got into the department as the Deputy Attorney General, when he started in this administration, I think a lot of people among the couriers were cautiously optimistic that he would be the euphemistic adult in the room, the voice of reason, because that's how he was viewed when he was a mid level manager in the federal prosecutor's office in New York, his right hand man was a guy named Emil Bovey, who was viewed much More skeptically, people were much more critical of him. But there was hope. There was a lot of hope among a lot of careers that Blanche would be sort of a calming, steadying hand who would run things carefully. I would say for the vast majority of people who have found their careers redirected or repurposed by Todd Blanche, that hope is all gone. There's a lot of disappointment, there's a lot of anger, and there's a lot of frustration that someone who actually knows the institution reasonably well has done what so many career officials believe are just terrible things to the department. I think there was great hope that he would be a careful steward of the institution. I think that hope is pretty much gone mostly as a result of so many of the things he and his people did in 2025.
- [38:55]
B
So what do you think is at stake as the Senate considers whether to confirm him to keep the position of Attorney General on a permanent basis?
- [39:05]
A
You know, it's a really interesting question and challenge, I think, for both the institution and for the Senate, because I think if I'm being realistic and maybe I could be accused, I guess, of being a little cynical on this point. The reality is if he's not confirmed, just say as a theoretical construct, in some ways, nothing much changes inside the department because in some ways Todd Blanche was the deputy, was the de facto Attorney general, has been the de facto Attorney General already for more than a year, I would argue. And he's likely to, because of the way the federal law works, he's likely to just keep running the department, even if you got a different Attorney general confirmed by the Senate. So in that sense, I don't know that it ultimately matters that much how the Senate votes. But I will say this like one of the things that's. That's been really telling to me in writing the book is how Congress's general corpse like behavior has disastrous consequences for the Department of Justice and the FBI. The fact that Congress doesn't seem to care that much, and to the degree that it does care, want to punish the Department and the FBI means that the administration can do a lot more of what it wants to do with the Department, can make it do a lot more of what it wants to do.
- [40:37]
B
Yeah, that's a really good point. It's in some ways sort of a referendum on what he has done over the last year and a half at the Department. He now has this record, which he didn't have when he went through the confirmation process to become Deputy Attorney General, and he'll have to answer questions about his record at the hearing, and we'll see if it proves to be a benefit or a liability. Yeah.
- [40:58]
A
I mean, honestly, Liz, I think of it as a reconfirmation vote more than a confirmation vote. He's already, in many ways, forget the acting part. He's already, in many ways, the attorney general. The question is, does the Senate ultimately support or is the Senate willing to fight over this type of Justice Department, this type of attorney General?
- [41:20]
B
Right, right. Well, Devlin, I want to close by asking you a question that is slightly more personal, which is what it has been like. What has it been like for you to report on the Justice Department? I know that the leadership changes every four years, and you've got to deal with new staff and new people coming and going and transition. And then that probably takes some adjustment as a reporter, but it sounds like the adjustment has been much more significant in this administration than is typical. And what's it been like from your perspective, covering the Justice Department under the second Trump administration compared to past presidential administrations?
- [42:02]
A
It's been. Well, the thing I always say is, you know, never bored, always tired, because there are a million things going on in any given day inside the Justice Department and inside the FBI. You know, I started out as a crime reporter, and I feel like in the course of my career, crime reporting has become more and more about covering politics, and that is a tricky situation. Look, I think covering the department right now is a hugely important job. I take it very seriously because I think the stakes are quite high for the country in terms of really basic stuff like the Bill of Rights, government power, the right of, you know, so many rights are, you know, the Justice Department is the arbiter of our federal rights in so many ways. The final arbiter is the courts. But the Justice Department makes so many decisions sort of on the front end, let's say, whether you're talking about Minneapolis or you're talking about immigration. The Justice Department makes so many decisions on the front end that define what rights we as Americans have. I am motivated every day to cover it as carefully and as deeply and as, you know, carefully as possible. I'm also tired sometimes. And, you know, I drink a lot of energy drinks. And, you know, I have a real. I have a real love of energy drinks. And, you know, we don't do product
- [43:39]
B
placement on this, so don't know, I can't.
- [43:42]
A
I just, I'm keeping it very broad. But, you know, look, I think it is exhausting but important. And I don't say that because, you know, I think I'm important, or I think the news is important, although I do think the news is important. I say that because I think the issues of justice and right and wrong in this country are important. I say that because I think the people, given the tremendous power of being able to prosecute and investigate Americans, have to be watched. Because this country has always been built around the premise that the American public should have a healthy skepticism of its government. And I think so much of what's happening at the Justice Department is challenging some of our long standing assumptions about what the limits of government power are. And I think, you know, all these things are hugely important issues. So like I said, always tired, never bored.
- [44:54]
B
Well, Jefflin, this has been a really fascinating conversation and I actually feel like that's kind of a hopeful note to end on. I mean, you've made the point that just because things have always been been a certain way doesn't mean that that's the right way. And I think that moment is an important opportunity for us to think about what is the right way for our justice system to function. And I think you have provided some really incredible insight from your deep reporting during this administration and during past administrations. I hope that folks will read your excellent book, the Department of Revenge. The name sounds very dark and sort of pessimistic, but I feel like we're ending on a somewhat optimistic note that we have an opportunity to rethink how our just justice system works. And we're doing it. And we will get to the right place, I hope.
- [45:43]
A
Thanks Liz. It's great talking to you. I really enjoyed it.
- [45:46]
B
It's been a great conversation and thank you for all you're doing to keep all of us informed. And thanks to everybody for tuning into this episode of Is this Really Legal? If you found this episode informative or useful, please share it. Please like it, please leave us a comment and please subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss the next episode. Thanks.