How Trump Dismantled the Department of Justice with Carol Leonnig

Summary

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Podcast Summary

On with Kara Swisher: "How Trump Dismantled the Department of Justice with Carol Leonnig"

Date: November 6, 2025
Host: Kara Swisher
Guest: Carol Leonnig (Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, author of "How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department")

Overview of Episode Theme

This episode centers on the erosion of the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a truly independent institution in the United States, largely under Donald Trump's first and current presidencies. Kara Swisher speaks with Carol Leonnig, whose new book examines the damage to the DOJ's norms and structures, the lingering fear among prosecutors and FBI agents, the consequences of leadership choices, and the challenges for those seeking to restore rule of law. The conversation features firsthand reporting, new revelations about decision-making at critical moments, and insight into the dangers of politicized prosecution.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Devastated Department: Trump’s Impact on the DOJ

• Carol Leonnig calls Trump’s impact on DOJ “devastating,” not an emotional assessment, but a structural one:
  • Protection from terror and corruption undermined
  • Created a chilling effect—prosecutors and officials worry about retaliation for following evidence
  • “[Trump] fired enough people that he sent that message.” (05:43)

2. How Four Forces Shaped DOJ’s Collapse

• Leonnig organizes the DOJ’s unraveling into four categories:
  • Noble Intentions: Garland (Attorney General under Biden) tried to restore DOJ independence, but “had good intentions...of an antiquated time and no match for what Trump was throwing...” (07:12)
  • Stubborn Bravery: Prosecutors (notably Matt Olsen’s team) insisted on following evidence—even when that meant targeting Trump regarding classified documents. (08:02)
  • Gutter Politics: Trump’s personal targeting of DOJ/FBI officials (“He essentially put a bullseye on different agents’ backs,” 09:43), retaliatory attacks on individuals by name, weaponization of “gutter politics.”
  • Fear: FBI agents became risk-averse after seeing careers destroyed by Republican investigations post-Trump targeting. “They are stepping over the bodies of FBI agents...whose careers are ruined...” (11:18)

3. Failures Preceding and Surrounding January 6th

• FBI Ignored Threats: Despite copious open-source warnings about violence planned for January 6, the FBI “was almost paralyzed to acknowledge that there was a domestic terror threat.” (21:41)

  • Racial/cultural blind spots: Disbelief that “white guys from Kentucky and Ohio who love the police would beat on them with fire extinguishers...” (23:28)
  • DOJ/FBI leadership weakened by near-purge three days before attack (24:05)

• National Archives Heroes: Waleska McClellan and colleagues flagged fake elector documents and persisted despite being blown off by DOJ prosecutors. (25:17)

  • Initial refusal to take up the case: “They’re not looking into some documents that look funny.” (26:56)

4. DOJ Under Garland: Caution Above All

• Glacial Pace and Missed Opportunities: Garland’s methodical approach slowed investigations of Trump and those around him.
  • He “wanted to turn the page” instead of aggressively investigating Trump’s links to Jan 6 and electoral interference. (29:56)
  • Even House Select Committee was “six months ahead of DOJ”—unprecedented for Congress to lead criminal inquiry pace (32:39)
  • “If we’re gonna say heroes, the investigative team that worked on this [House Select Committee]...they definitely get that label...” (33:00)

5. Special Counsel Jack Smith: Too Little, Too Late?

• Smith’s Dilemma: Raced against election clock; document case strong, election interference case weak/tied up by precedent and SCOTUS delays.
  • On indicting in Florida: Internal disagreements, but Smith believed the law required it. Risks (like drawing Judge Cannon) were known, “an existential threat to the case.” (45:42)
  • “I have never seen a prosecutor on a complex drug case bring an indictment as fast as Jack Smith did.” (43:36)
  • Garland froze investigations before 2022 midterms to avoid political appearance, further shrinking Smith’s window. (43:36)

6. Trump’s Second Term: Systemic Purge and Explicit Politicization

• DOJ under AG Pam Bondi is openly carrying out Trump’s orders, prosecuting enemies, letting allies off the hook. Hundreds fired, including January 6 prosecutors; many more resigned in protest. (49:38)
• “Pam Bondi has said the DOJ works at the directive of Donald Trump. She’s not even pretending.” (49:56)
• Lasting damage: Loss of expertise, collapse of trust, and perilous precedents for future administrations:
  • “I don’t know how this institution is going to recover...the damage is hard to recover from in a generation or two.” (50:23)
  • What happens post-Bondi/post-Trump? If a Democrat is elected, “are they supposed to have a purge of Republicans?” (51:35)
  • When will Americans trust again “that criminal charges are justified, not the bidding of the president?” (52:15)

7. What Next? Can DOJ Be Rebuilt?

• Jonathan Kanter’s Expert Question (53:13): How should DOJ rebuild—restore old norms or reimagine for today’s realities?
  • Leonnig: “There’s going to be some incredible, impermeable line in between the White House and the department and the FBI...” (53:17)
  • Restoring independence and trust will require a post-Watergate scale reform.

8. Final Warnings: The Path to Permanent Authoritarianism

• Without a real DOJ, a president could “remain president permanently, free to manipulate election results with no real threat of being dethroned.” (54:29)
• Leonnig hints at active, ongoing reporting about concrete mechanisms by which Trump could entrench power—declines to specify but signals risk is real and imminent: “It’s the how, Kara. It’s the how. And I promise, when we know the how and what the details are. We’ll be back with you.” (56:11)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “[Trump] fired enough people that he sent that message. Right. So would you put your name on a filing...No, you wouldn’t.”
  — Carol Leonnig (05:43)

• “Stubborn Bravery is a group of prosecutors who insisted that they were gonna do what the evidence required, regardless of the fact that it pointed at...Trump.”
  — Carol Leonnig (07:37)

• “He imitated the orgasm of an FBI lawyer...He essentially put a bullseye on different agents' backs...”
  — Carol Leonnig, on Trump’s attacks (09:43)

• “These agents are afraid. They are stepping over the bodies of FBI agents...whose careers are ruined because they've been under investigation by Republicans after being targeted by Trump.”
  — Alan Koehler, as told to Leonnig (11:18)

• “It's incomprehensible to them [the FBI] that white guys from Kentucky and Ohio who love the police would beat on them with fire extinguishers and flagpoles...And second, they acknowledged that...they were a bit hang dog...dealing with Donald Trump on a daily basis.”
  — Carol Leonnig (23:28)

• “Garland wanted to turn the page.”
  — (29:56), summary of multiple inside sources

• “It's the how, Kara. It's the how. And I promise, when we know the how and what the details are. We'll be back with you.”
  — Carol Leonnig (56:11)

• “Charging people without factual basis based on a politician's wish, this is the hallmark, you know, of a dictatorship.”
  — John Keller, former head of Public Integrity (58:18)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 05:13 — Carol Leonnig summarizes Trump’s “devastating” impact
• 07:12 — Garland’s “noble intentions”
• 11:18 — Fear pervading FBI
• 21:41 — FBI’s failure to pre-empt Capitol attack
• 25:17 — National Archives flagging fake elector documents
• 29:56 — DOJ “turned the page” under Garland, letting key investigations slip
• 32:39 — House Select Committee outpaces DOJ
• 43:36 — Discussion of Jack Smith’s timeline and choices
• 45:42 — Fatal risk of filing in Florida, drawing Judge Cannon
• 49:38 — Consequences of Trump’s second-term DOJ purge
• 53:13 — Kanter's expert question on post-Trump DOJ reform
• 54:29 — Dangers of a DOJ subordinated to the presidency
• 56:11 — Leonnig hints at reporting on “how” permanent power could be seized
• 58:18 — Dictatorship hallmarks: charging people by political instruction

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Conclusion

Through personal reporting, insider interviews, and new revelations, Carol Leonnig sketches a DOJ that has been hollowed out by Trump’s political vendettas, paralyzed by fear, and in critical need of reform. Kara Swisher presses on who is responsible (from Garland to the “heroes” of the National Archives), what might come next, and how America can ever restore faith in “justice without fear or favor.” The episode leaves off with warnings that the path to permanent presidential power is not only imaginable but being actively mapped out.

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For listeners who missed the episode, this summary highlights what’s stake for the rule of law, who tried to hold the line, and the sobering truth of what happens when the department meant to check power is weaponized for politics.

Transcript

[Carol Lennig]

I remember sitting with a source high up in the Justice Department who said, this place is going to get shredded.

[Kara Swisher]

Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. A core principle of the Justice Department used to be the pursuit of justice without fear or favor. Well, those days are clearly over as fear and favor are in vogue. President Trump, together with his Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI Director Kash Patel, is using the DOJ to target his enemies and help his allies. They claim it is retribution for the weaponization of the Justice Department under President Biden. But the erosion of the justice department and the FBI's independence started long before Inauguration Day 2025, way back in Trump. That's what I want to talk about with my guest today, MSNBC's senior investigative reporter, bestselling author and five time Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Carol Lennig. Together with her co author Erin Davis. Lennig is out with a new book called How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department. I have known Carol for a long time. She's an amazing Washington Post reporter. She worked there for 25 years covering the Justice Department and the White House. In 2022, she was part of the Post team that won the Pulitzer for public service for the coverage Capitol Attack. And I want to talk to Carol about a lot of things, including why so many people dropped the ball before or during January 6, how the fear of retribution planted in Trump 1.0 impacted the Biden administration, and how we got where we are now. Our expert question this week comes from former Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust division at the DOJ under President Biden, Jonathan Kanter. Stay with us.

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[Carol Lennig]

It is over.

[Kara Swisher]

Carol, thanks for coming on. On again, I guess.

[Carol Lennig]

Right again. Always good to be with you.

[Kara Swisher]

How's it going?

[Carol Lennig]

I mean, it's crazy. It's fun. We're landing a story, a big book in the middle of a time period when some of the worst things our sources predicted are coming true.

[Kara Swisher]

Absolutely, absolutely. And you yourself have had a big shift in your career, too. Now you're a TV star.

[Carol Lennig]

Well, we all work with facts on.

[Kara Swisher]

Different platforms, that's true. But let's talk about your book, How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department, which is out this week, which is a pretty heady title. It's a whopper. You and your co author, Aaron Davis, interviewed more than 250 people for this book, including senior officials inside both the Trump and Biden administrations. Before we get to how we got here, it's been exactly a year since President Trump was reelected. What's the word you would use to describe his impact on the Justice Department in this administration today?

[Carol Lennig]

Devastating. I don't mean that emotionally, Kara. I mean that in terms of the structural wrecking ball he's taken to. The things that protect Americans from a terror attack, the things that protect us from corrupt public officials accepting bribes, the things he's done to frighten prosecutors from saying the truth in court filings or not.

[Kara Swisher]

Frighten them, just eliminate them. They aren't that frightened to say them. They just have to go then if they do.

[Carol Lennig]

Yeah, well, he's fired enough people that he sent that message. Right. So would you put your name on a filing that says there is no evidence that James Comey lied to Congress? No, you wouldn't.

[Kara Swisher]

But in your book, you chronicle the erosion of the DOJ's independence since the first administration. Recently, in an op ed, you wrote that, quote, a mixture of fear and stubborn bravery, gutter politics, and noble intentions ultimately paved the way for the unraveling of the Justice Department. We are now witnessing for each of those four categories. Fear, stubborn bravery, gutter politics, and Noble Intentions. Who specifically are you thinking of?

[Carol Lennig]

You know, let me start with the best of those. I'm so glad you asked. Noble Intentions. Merrick Garland, the Attorney General for Joe Biden, had a. Had a noble goal when he took over the Department of Justice. He wanted to recover it, essentially, and restore its independence, which had been strained after Trump's first presidency. Trump had tried to get all sorts of enemies prosecuted, called for his attorney general to jail various people that he didn't like. And Biden let Merrick Garland run that show by himself. And Garland, a respected jurist, I think, really did have good intentions. They just happened to be of an antiquated time and no match for what Trump was throwing at his own FBI investigators and agents and prosecutors because he.

[Kara Swisher]

Thought you could go back to normal.

[Carol Lennig]

He actually pulled a playbook, Kara, out of Post Watergate, when he had first been a prosecutor and then eventually a supervisor in the Department of Justice, trying to go back to that time, post Nixon, when the whole country, Republican and Democrat, wanted to stop those kinds of abuses in the Oval Office. Well, we have a very different country now.

[Kara Swisher]

Who is Stubborn Bravery, then?

[Carol Lennig]

Stubborn Bravery is a group of prosecutors who insisted that they were gonna do what the evidence required, regardless of the fact that it pointed at the likelihood that Donald Trump, a former president and likely future candidate, had committed crimes. I mean, that group is very broad, but I'm thinking especially of a team that was under Assistant Attorney General Matt Olson. He is responsible in 2022 for the lead up of the investigation of the mishandling of classified documents. When the Department of Justice and the FBI get this referral from the National Archives saying, hey, there's a lot of classified documents in these boxes that Donald Trump returned, and we're worried that there are more back At Mar A Lago, Olson says to his team, we have to be brave enough to do what we would normally do, regardless of the fact that this is Donald Trump.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay? Gutter politics.

[Carol Lennig]

Donald Trump. This is a person who personalized his attacks in his first presidency on individual agents by name. You know, Carol, maybe people have forgotten, but in the first Trump presidency, Trump was so angry about the investigation of Russian operatives connecting with his campaign. And ultimately, as you know, well, he was so furious at the suggestion that that Russia got him over the line to become president, and he didn't do it all on his own. The way they stoked Facebook, the way they pushed these messages, the way they tried to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign and ultimately released a lot of damaging emails of hers that hurt the Democratic Party when she was running. He was so furious about that campaign. People may have forgotten how much he went into people's lives that were just career public servants. He imitated the orgasm of an FBI lawyer. As you know, as he learned through information that she was having an extramarital relationship with one of her colleagues. He essentially put a bullseye on different agents backs who had been involved in investigating him. He threatened that the deputy director of the FBI who opened an investigation into whether or not Donald Trump was obstructing that Russia probe, Andy McCabe, you know, he basically said, you're gonna indict him. I want you to indict this guy. That we learned, Aaron and I, that just had such a scarring effect on the Department of Justice that we didn't really appreciate at the time. Right.

[Kara Swisher]

What about fear?

[Carol Lennig]

Fear, I have to say, is a combination of people. No one likes to be called afraid, but there was wariness, especially within the FBI. I'll never forget when we sat down with sources who were very pivotal. Let's just say I'm not going to name them, but they were very pivotal in the classified documents case. And we learned about a scene where Matt Olson and his team are pushing and pushing for the FBI to do this search. Merrick Garland, heck, he is pushing for this search. He thinks that it's very worrisome that top secret documents that could put a national security at risk are in the wind. And in this meeting, they're fighting with the head of the FBI's Washington Field Office and saying, you gotta do a search. We got probable cause. Trump is clearly lying to his lawyer. We see the tapes where his valets are moving the boxes of records. We've got the justification to do this. It's totally legal. It's Appropriate. And it's really not just appropriate. It's necessary for national security. And the head of the FBI's field offices. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it unless somebody orders me to. My boss has got to order me to. And as Olson and his team walk out, they confront Alan Koehler, kind of a demigod in counterintelligence investigations in the FBI. He's at this point, the assistant director. And Olson knows that Alan Kohler is on his side. So when they're alone together outside, he says, what is going on? And Kohler says, these agents are afraid. They are stepping over the bodies of FBI agents in their office who went down. Right. Whose careers are ruined because they've been under investigation by Republicans after being targeted by Trump. Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

For doing their jobs. And these are just career officials not running for office or they don't have cushions or anything else. So let's get into more detail, starting with Trump's first administration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions played by the rules by recusing himself from the ongoing investigation, investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Deputy Ag Rod Rosenstein then appointed Robert Mueller a special counsel. But there is still a lot of pressure from the Trump DOJ appointees, including the FBI. Talk about this dynamic in Trump 1.0 between Main justice, as it's called, and the FBI, and how it set the groundwork for what happened later.

[Carol Lennig]

I'm grinning right now because that was, from my perspective, some really satisfying reporting. You know, everyone thinks they know everything that happened with Robert Mueller, and that investigation feels like a million years ago. Right. But what we learned was that Mueller, Mr. Institutionalist, and as he was missing a few steps, getting older, and eventually showing some of the signs of the Parkinson's he would eventually develop, which really nobody knew about until this year, he was offloading a lot of his responsibilities to his deputy, Aaron Zebley. And Aaron Zebley was an institutionalist, too good on him. He was deferring, just as his boss would, to their colleagues at the Department of Justice who worked for Bill Barr. Well, we all know Bill Barr was trying to help Donald Trump get elected and had no apologies or regrets about that. And indeed, his deputies were. Eddie o' Callaghan were also trying to steer the ultimate report to be as mild as possible in terms of finding any wrongdoing by Donald Trump. And they tried to discourage Aaron Zeppeli from including things that were unflattering. Anything to suggest, for example, that Russia may have wanted to help Donald Trump get elected and may have had an impact on the election of 2016. And you asked the question, Mueller and his team's view was, these are our buddies, these are our colleagues. But what they really didn't fully appreciate and what some of them now regret, is that Barr's team was really working against them.

[Kara Swisher]

Right? Absolutely. Do you think his Parkinson's disease influenced the outcome of the report?

[Carol Lennig]

The way that this has been described to us by multiple sources is that Mueller certainly was stepping away, but that his deputy was channeling overwhelmingly the caution and the carefulness and the methodicalness of Mueller. And instead of the firebrand, you know, there are two parts of Robert Mueller. Aaron Zebley and his team were definitely leaning on this other side, which was, let's be careful, let's avoid any drama, let's not color outside the lines. Let's just give what we can give. But, you know, even some members of Mueller's team, as we reveal in this piece, Jeanne Rhee, Andrew Weissman, they were not in agreement with the way he worked.

[Kara Swisher]

Now, Trump publicly and privately reamed Sessions for not doing what he wanted him to do and ultimately, as you said, replaced him with Bill Barr. You write about Barr's swearing in, quote, it was the beginning of a political marriage. And in the very room that both men viewed as an epicenter of unequal power in the US Government, Talk about his understanding the role of Attorney General vis a vis the president and how it impacted the department. His role, because he's gone back and forth on Donald Trump, although mostly he's benefited from the association.

[Carol Lennig]

I think Bill Barr is a fascinating character for lots of reasons, but one of them was he's totally unapologetic about, I'm going to get this guy reelected. It's my job. I'm not supposed to be some Caesar's wife. I'm supposed to be engaged in politics. In fact, Bill Barr goes to Trump in the spring of 2020 and says, you're gonna lose this election. And I'm warning you, you've got to do something different. You've gotta stop going back and forth on vaccines and bleach and hydrochloroquine. And you've gotta really, like, communicate to people what your agenda is and your policies and give them comfort. Cause right now you're freaking them out. These are paraphrases, of course. Barr was really a person in of partisanship and not worried about doing it. However, he had a line, right? He had a line he wasn't gonna cross. He wasn't gonna pretend there was fraud in the election. When he knew there wasn't and ultimately Trump asks in a furious meeting. As you as we all know with Trump in December of 2020 asks for Barr's resignation on the spot.

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Kara Swisher]

You dedicated a portion of the book to the capitol attack on January 6th and the Red flags that were missed or ignored by the FBI. You're part of the Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for your reporting about January 6th. Talking to people in this book, was there anything new that you found out that surprised you? Give me some examples. They should have been flagged and why they weren't.

[Carol Lennig]

You know, when we did our series for the Washington Post, of which I'm so proud about the before, during and after of January 6, I worked primarily with Erin on the series that was about before. What happened before January 6? In the lead up, who was stoking this and what were law enforcement doing or seeing in real time? What's new in our book, Kara, is really shocking descriptions of how much the FBI was warned ahead of time and how almost paralyzed they were to acknowledge that there was a domestic terror threat. Extremely obvious, extremely articulated in open media sources on dark web and they had been flagged repeatedly about people planning where to bring their guns, planning to shoot police, planning to coordinate, because Donald Trump called them to try to block the certification. I think the most shocking things are how bumbling. And I say that carefully, how bumbling the FBI was when you and I know what would happen if they saw radicalized online conversations by Muslim teenagers. We know what would have happened in those situations. And some of these people didn't even get a knock on the door, like, what are you doing? Why are you talking about guns, staging areas, how to get your riot gear into Washington, D.C. so why is it bumbling?

[Kara Swisher]

Or because they just didn't believe they would do that, or because they kind of wanted it to happen?

[Carol Lennig]

I don't think anybody wanted it to happen. I really don't. I don't want to name names here, but FBI agents that we spoke to said it was a combination of things, and they guilt themselves a little bit about this one. It was incomprehensible to them that white guys from Kentucky and Ohio who love the police would beat on them with fire extinguishers and flagpoles. Just incomprehensible to them. And second, they acknowledged that the FBI leadership and the DOJ leadership were a bit hang dog. I hope that's the right word, because they were dealing with Donald Trump on a daily basis. Remember, three days before January 6th, Donald Trump tried to fire his attorney General and replace him with somebody who was going to block the certification of the election by sending a note to Georgia. That was, you know, this attempted coup on a Sunday night. I'm gonna get rid of the new replacement for Bill Barr, Jeff Rosen. I'm gonna put in this guy, Jeff Clark. And that Sunday night, half dozen DOJ officials at the highest levels of that department came to the White House to try to beg Donald Trump not to do it. They succeeded in convincing him. But imagine, like, how do you lead your protest planning when you've just survived that? Right, right.

[Kara Swisher]

So people who were brave, the officials of the National Archives, were sort of unsung heroes in your book. Another example of stubborn bravery. They flagged the fake electors documents as potential election interference even before January 6th. And they kept flagging them despite getting blown off again and again. Why are they dismissed? And who should have been following up on this?

[Carol Lennig]

This is also a new revelatory detail that's never been reported before. And I am, you know, really glad you noticed it. So Waleska McClellan and her team are investigators at the National Archives and a lawyer who's an expert in the elector certificates because the National Archives is responsible for storing these when they come in every four years for presidential election, says to them, hey, I've got like five, now six, now seven certificates that are completely bogus. They're signed by Republican Party officials, but they claim that Donald Trump is the president. And we know that wasn't the result. What's going on? So Waleska McClellan, this investigator for the Archives, doesn't usually investigate electoral politics. Goes to the Department of Justice prosecutors that she has met and knows in D.C. and says, hey, guys, what's happening? Anybody interested in this? It looks coordinated. All these certificates look the same. There's this funny boilerplate. It's like a kid, you know, found them with some sort of app and reproduced them.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, probably they did.

[Carol Lennig]

Prosecutors on January 8th turn her down and say, yeah, we don't know what the crime is here. Maybe have some states look into it. Have those swing states look into it. And again, you gotta. It's sort of a little bit like that January 3rd, January 6th moment. Those prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office all of a sudden have 1,000 potential rioters in a violent bloodbath on the Capitol to investigate.

[Kara Swisher]

And we can't get to that. That's the least of our words.

[Carol Lennig]

They're not looking into some documents that look funny.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, but then President Biden takes office, and you make it clear there were prosecutors in the DOJ who wanted to look at the potential coordination between Trump Sentinel circle and the January 6th protesters from the get go. But there were others who refused to expand their investigations. They're still scared of Trump despite the fact that he was at the lowest point of his political career, who was pushing for investigating and who was against that, and what the crux of both arguments like, move along or he can't hurt us again. What's the diff? Or what?

[Carol Lennig]

Yeah, well, in the stubborn bravery category, I'd put A prosecutor in D.C. federal prosecutor named JP Cooney. He used to work in the Public Integrity section in Main justice, and now he's a supervisor over in the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office. By the way, I should say then he was a supervisor in the U.S. attorney's office in D.C. he was fired by Trump about, I don't know, two weeks into Trump's second presidency. So Couney knows how to investigate, and he sees what everybody sees. And what the Post is reporting at the time and that the New York Times is reporting at the time that it's all this forensic imagery of Roger Stone at the Willard and hanging out with proud boys. Same with some Ali Alexander Stop the Steal protest organizers. And what he wants to do and what he proposes to the FBI team that he works with all the time is let's investigate these people that, yes, they're in Trump's orbit, but they seem to have a link to this violent attack. Were they engaged in starting it? Were they engaged in financing it? And let's figure that out.

[Kara Swisher]

That would be a normal thing to do.

[Carol Lennig]

Totally normal. And follow the money. Also, like classic Assistant U.S. attorney 101. But it makes the interim team before Merrick Garland is confirmed uncomfortable, and it makes the FBI's field office chief in D.C. very uncomfortable. He flags DOJ higher levels and says, I don't like this. My lieutenants don't like this. It looks like we're going after Trump's campaign. That's political free speech. And of course, you know what happens? They kill that plan by Couney. And when Garland is in office and Lisa Monaco is the Deputy attorney general, the U.S. attorney's office tries to bring it up again and also gets batted back like, that's not the course by the FBI. Well, by main Justice.

[Kara Swisher]

By Merrick Garland himself.

[Carol Lennig]

By his team. Yes.

[Kara Swisher]

By his team, including Lisa Monaco.

[Carol Lennig]

Yes.

[Kara Swisher]

Because we don't wanna stir the pot or what's done is done. He won't be back. Same idea that he won't be back.

[Sponsor Voice (Smartsheet)]

Right.

[Carol Lennig]

You know, Monaco and Garland haven't told us personally why they weren't into this idea other than over and over again the people they confided in told us Garland wanted to turn the page.

[Kara Swisher]

Turn the page. That's right. Yeah. Of course. Now Lisa Monaco is getting attacked. But Trump, what a surprise. Biden tapped Garland to renew faith in the Department of Justice as independent, as you said from the executive branch. But it seems like he was almost a dead weight in these. Of all the. I was reading it and someone said, well, who's the villain? I go, kind of Merrick Garland, you know, but he seemed like almost deadweight in these investigations. You describe him as being very methodical, wanting everything to be reviewed and rewritten multiple times. You also were glacial. By all means, move at a glacial pace. When it came to investigating Trump overall, do you think he helped or hurt the DOJ's image as independent? Does he deserve any of the blame for Donald Trump being in office now? Because it feels like you have focused on him quite a bit in this book as the real problem.

[Carol Lennig]

I feel really torn about this as a reporter as opposed to as a human. I used to cover this federal court where he was on the bench and the court below him. He has enormous broad respect among Republicans and Democrats, among a state pantheon of judges. I respect his work. I think he was a stunningly good judge down the middle. Thought about what he was gonna do every time. Methodical. What I have heard over and over again from the people who worked for him is that they adored him as a human being. He's a gentle and a very smart person, a gentleman and a very smart person. But they have also said that they do not think he was the right person for this moment. I wonder who was the right person for the moment, Kara. I really wonder, because I would not, as a journalist, recommend we bust up precedent. I've covered enough federal prosecutors to know that that's not the route. But the method here made it impossible. We will never know what could have happened. But this made it impossible to get close.

[Kara Swisher]

Right? Right. I mean, I think they probably thought again that he was gone. I thought that's. My impression is they thought he was done. And I was like, no, Siratu is getting up again. Like that kind of thing. I kept thinking, like, hey, don't. Like. You don't have to say that. I'm saying that. But what was interesting is when you go back to the House select committee's investigation of January 6th, the DOJ was dragging his feet, and the lawmakers put on a show, and the committee's investigation was six months ahead of the DOJs. Usually these house committees are relying on investigations of the DOJ and of the FBI, not the other way around. Talk about how unprecedented this was that we. Liz Cheney was sort of running the show here and what it said about the state of the DOJ at this point, because they were running circles around the. You know, that was a show. That's the kind of thing you were expecting after an attack on the Capitol.

[Carol Lennig]

Like that, presumably dead on. I mean, I don't like to say villain, but if we're gonna say heroes, the investigative team that worked on this. Dang. They definitely get that label because they dug in. And I think, you know, congressional investigations are often a joke. I mean, they're often like.

[Kara Swisher]

They can be.

[Sponsor Voice (Smartsheet)]

Not always.

[Carol Lennig]

Yeah, not always. But they often can be a joke where it's not very thorough. It's for political theater. A particular party wants a particular outcome. And in this case, a former U.S. attorney comes in as Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson's investigator, Tim Hafey, from the Charlottesville originally, and he Brings in a crop of former prosecutors, some corporate lawyers, but mostly just amazing investigators.

[Kara Swisher]

A little like the Watergate investigation, right? Like that gang, including Hillary Clinton was in that crew.

[Carol Lennig]

That's right.

[Kara Swisher]

Back when lots of people.

[Carol Lennig]

That might be the closest comparison, actually.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, that crew was full of people who later either joined the Supreme Court or became great big lawyers, et cetera, et cetera.

[Carol Lennig]

And this investigative team got right to the point. I mean, within days they were on the fake electors issue, right? And there's one guy who gets hired to lead the team to look at potential interference by Trump and his campaign in the election. And within about five days, he has decided that the fake electors is part of the coordinated plan, it's part of the conspiracy. And that team ends up, you know, embarrassing the Department of Justice. Nobody at justice wants to admit that. Nobody in Garland's office, you know, wants to say, oh, we were embarrassed. But it, we learned that specific things the investigative team for the House did prompted instantaneous action by the Department of Justice. And. Happy to go into those if you want me to.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, please do. I mean, now they're trying to bring it back, right? They're trying to pretend it didn't happen at this point.

[Carol Lennig]

Like the rewrite of history. Right. Well, the televised hearings is one thing, but in terms of the investigation. January 2022, let's go back there for a second. This committee begins putting together the fake elector plot and figuring out that Rudy Giuliani was kind of arm twisting Republicans in different swing states to sign onto this. And this news leaks out in January, January 11, there are a spate of news stories about what this committee is finding. They were a leaky little boat in terms of news things coming out, but whatever, I think that was primarily not their fault. But anyway, January 2022, on the 14th, Thomas Windom, who's the lone prosecutor that the Justice Department has chosen in November of 2021 to start looking around the edges of Trump's world and how they might be connected to the riot. Thomas Windom reaches out to that national archives investigator, Waleska McClellan, and says, Hey, I think we're actually going to investigate this. Can we get together and chat? Because at that point, Kara, the FBI is still resisting investigating Trump's campaign and its role in election interference. So Thomas Windom only has one investigator to turn to. You know, a little known office in the National Archives right now in the.

[Kara Swisher]

Classified documents case, it was again the National Archives officials who flagged Trump had taken the boxes with him to Mar a Lago and who ultimately made the referral to investigate him. Meanwhile, there's a huge dispute, as you said, between the DOJ and Episode FBI over the raid. They were fearful of being made a scapegoat or they didn't want to get in trouble the way previous like Andrew McCabe and others were. And from your reporting and others, it seems they were almost an obstruction to the process. You know, the archives keeps doing the right thing and doing all the correct referrals. Hey, you might want to go get these boxes. The DOJ drags its feet, and the FBI is like, yeah, well, let's hope the Chinese spies don't get down under the pool anytime soon. Right. I mean, that's pretty much it.

[Carol Lennig]

Right.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm the Chinese. I'm, like, thrilled with this entire situation. And whatever reasons Trump had keeping them, you could say all kinds of things. I think he just wanted to have them. That would be my guess if I had to pick of all the different things.

[Carol Lennig]

Right. What is his famous line? These are my documents.

[Kara Swisher]

These are mine. Like, I can see it like, they're mine. And I'm gonna write a book or whatever the heck, I'm gonna make a museum someday or whatever theme park.

[Carol Lennig]

Like, when the investigators from the Department of Justice learned that he's waving them around at a table in Bedminster, saying.

[Kara Swisher]

He wants to show them.

[Carol Lennig]

All right. He. I've got the proof that Mark Milley proposed bombing Iran. Oh, I can't declassify these documents now, but they're really secret.

[Kara Swisher]

Right? Right. So what is the dynamic here with the archives seeming to be the heroes and the others either feckless or sinister almost.

[Carol Lennig]

There were two things that were painful to watch in real time as we're reporting and writing these, I guess, better excavated descriptions of what happened at the time. One of the things that's going on is the classified documents. Investigators at the Department of Justice think this is a big freaking deal. The FBI agents keep referring to it in the Washington field office as, we're not the records police. They think this is about presidential records. Right. And. And the Department of Justice says, no, we think he's still got more classified records. That is the worry. The FBI says, you don't have any proof of that. Well, that all changes on May 18th. The FBI goes down with the Department of Justice lead prosecutor on the case to interview a woman named Molly Michael. And she had been a Trump insider, one of the many very attractive women that work just outside the Oval Office in his first presidency. And in this case, she had gone on to work for him in his post presidential office at Mar A Lago, while they're sitting there in this freezing rented legal office in Lake Worth, talking to her. You know, she's loyal to Trump. She's shivering in the air conditioned cold, but she is not gonna lie for him. And she says, look, there are a lot more boxes of documents, same boxes that we use to pack his stuff. There's a lot more. And then she's got the picture that's worth a thousand words. A picture of 80 to 90 boxes, which tells the FBI and the Justice Department he has so many more records than 15. This still does not persuade the FBI, however, that Washington field office chief Steve Dantuano is like, we don't know what's in them. Like, why do we have to do this? And to his credit, to his credit, Merrick Garland keeps pushing for a search. Here is a place where he's very firm that there is a reason to be concerned about national security information out in the wind. Anyway, eventually they get Chris Wray, the director of the FBI and his deputies to overrule this Washington field office leader and force him to do the search.

[Kara Swisher]

This field office leader just didn't want. What, what's his name again?

[Carol Lennig]

Steve Dantuano.

[Kara Swisher]

Where is he now?

[Carol Lennig]

He's retired. And his view is not cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You know, initially it wasn't crazy to say, how do we know there are classified records? And indeed, you know, there was worry early on. Maybe he has a lot of records, but it's a bunch of junk. The only problem was the National Archives knew things were still missing. Right? They knew things were still missing.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, the archives knows that he's like every FBI director that gets run over by Bruce Willis in a movie and is wrong, like profoundly wrong, and then loses his access to the jet. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Upwork. So you started a business, but you didn't expect to become the head of everything. Now you're doing marketing, customer service, and it with no support staff.

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[Carol Lennig]

Oh my God, we built the entirely wrong product.

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[Kara Swisher]

So after all of Garland's fastidiousness to ensure the investigation didn't appear to be political, which he was very fastidious to do, he ended up putting one man, Jack Smith, in charge of special counsel for both investigations. Even people in the department said it made it look like an anti Trump investigation. Analysts like Ellie Honig and said Smith didn't have a chance because he didn't have enough time. Should there have been two special counsels and I just talked to Ellie about that. What impact did that have, for better or worse, on the investigation?

[Carol Lennig]

You know, I have never seen a prosecutor on a complex drug case bring an indictment as fast as Jack Smith did. So I don't know that appointing two would have changed that. I think he was up against a horrendous clock when he's beginning to look at these. You know, a fledgling election interference case which Merrick Garland froze for two months before the election in a way that Kind of disturbed a few prosecutors because Donald Trump wasn't on the ballot. But Merrick Garland wanted to be very conservative and recognized that he was leading Republican, so he froze the investigation right before the midterm elections. So Jack Smith, what does he have? He has a very early premature election interference case, and he has a pretty well baked classified documents case in terms of evidence when he takes over in November of 2022. It's a sprint, though, because what is he doing? He's got six months, seven months, eight months to bring a case, and there are already primary battles that are being formed. There is a very active election campaign going on in the middle of all this, and that helps enable and propel Trump because it fits beautifully into his narrative, which is, they're prosecuting me now intentionally to hurt my campaign.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. So Smith led to two indictments of Donald Trump, but he also flubbed key decisions. This, when I read this, was just, of course, it was obvious. But when he decided to bring the classified documents case to Florida, where he got Trump appointed Judge Eileen Cannon, now, it was sort of a luck of the draw kind of thing. And they thought, we can't possibly get her, but they did. And they thought it was a real miscalculation not to bring the case in D.C. correct. What was the thinking like, if there's any chance of getting her, like the doormat of all judges for Trump, why even take that very slim chance?

[Carol Lennig]

So Smith's team had a legal analysis done of where is it the fairest and the most appropriate to bring the case. And their conclusion was simply Florida, because some of the withholding classified records evidence was the strongest and the case was stronger in Florida. But that doesn't mean you couldn't bring it in D.C. and it's easy in hindsight for us all to say, why didn't you bring it in D.C. but I'm saying it, it's easy to do. And I'm saying it because I didn't know until we began reporting this book that two critical things happened. One, his team had some dissension about this. You know, a prosecutor with a ton of national security experience from the Southern District of New York basically said, you all are effing insane to go to Florida. That's an existential threat to the case, just as you have outlined, Kara. An existential threat. If you get Cannon, it's over. D.C. judges, no classified records cases. We have a. I mean, say nothing of her doormat.

[Kara Swisher]

She seems incompetent, but go ahead.

[Carol Lennig]

Right, so there's that dissension which we didn't know about, nobody knew about until we began this reporting. And then the second thing we didn't know about was Smith's office had done a calculation. There's a thing called the wheel in every courthouse. Who are you gonna get on the wheel? The judge's wheel.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Carol Lennig]

And on the wheel, they had figured out that it was a one in six chance of getting canon. A little later, after they've already pretty much made the decision but not begun presenting evidence to the grand jury in Florida, they find out it's a 1 in 3 chance. Well, that's pretty existential because you know where Cannon is coming from. She handled the original grand jury search issues, and she leaned heavy for Trump and against all case law.

[Kara Swisher]

Yep. I mean, you know, honestly. And a lucky son of a bitch like Donald Trump who seems to get every turn his way. I would.

[Carol Lennig]

Ah.

[Kara Swisher]

But was there any way to stop that? Was Jack Smith's decision, correct? Fatal. And that's why he is where he is now.

[Carol Lennig]

Jack Smith's decision, he presented it to Merrick Garland, who wanted to vet that, wanted that checked out, but they both concluded, okay, if you think that's where the law favors it, that's fine. He wasn't going to tell Jack Smith. You can't do that because the legal analysis suggested it. I remember a couple people telling us that in the presentation when asked, like, what about Cannon? David Newman, who was a national security prosecutor for the Department of Justice, and in the meeting where Jack Smith's making his presentation for how we're going to indict him, where we're going to do it, and Newman says, your biggest risk is Cannon. You get her and the case is over. What about that? And Smith's response was, I'm not worried about Florida. You know, like, the facts are on my side. Once again, a Justice Department institutionalist saying, you know, this is the way it works and we're gonna be okay.

[Kara Swisher]

Right now he knows. Of course, the last straw was on the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity. In response to the election interference case, the judges overturned decades of precedent. Supreme Court had been dragging its feet, and Justice Roberts signaled the way the wind was blowing. Was there anything that Smith could have done differently? Knowing the immunity ruling was a real.

[Carol Lennig]

Possibility, I can't see another path. The only thing that could have helped Jack Smith is if he had been able to start sooner. You know, I think it's important to underline here. It's possible the immunity decision would have forestalled ever bringing that election interference case in our lifetimes. No matter if Merrick Garland had authorized it on day one in March when he was confirmed, or his his interim had confirmed it on January 21, there's no way to know. But the classified documents case was a slam dunk, and that's where he didn't have the same kind of presidential immunity claim.

[Kara Swisher]

So here you are, back in gutter politics. Even before President Trump returned to the White House, he had vowed to go after his political enemies. He's using the Department of Justice via Pam Bondi to do that. Obviously, there were recent indictments of James Comey, Letitia James and John Bolton, but all year there's been a purge going on at the doj. Hundreds of employees have been fired and including all the prosecutors who worked on January 6th cases, many others have quit in protest. And Bondi has said the DOJ works at the directive of Donald Trump. She's not even pretending. These are just a few touch points. Of all the things Trump has done at the doj, the internal pressure campaigns, attacking his enemies, every week something happens and letting his friends off the hook. What do you think is the most lasting damage on the doj? Like, what's the impact over the long term?

[Carol Lennig]

Two part answer. As a reporter, not as a person, this makes me really sad. I have covered prosecutors, court cases, congressional investigations that stemmed from DOJ work since I was 30 years old. I don't know how this institution is going to recover. And the people who work there and are trying to hold it together, even though they're disgusted by what's happening around them, they tell me the damage is hard to recover from. In a generation or two, not only have you taken away centuries worth of expertise by getting rid of the entire Public Integrity section, by getting rid of some of the most senior representatives at the Department of Justice for fighting counterterrorism. In one fell swoop, Donald Trump and his deputies got rid of everyone at the leadership level of the FBI who know how to oversee complex conspiracies, who understand how to investigate a mass casualty event, who are leaders who've grown up for 20 plus years. That's like, impossible to replace. The second part is that is, and you hinted at it, Kara, when Pam Bondi's gone and there's a Democratic president and a Democratic appointee, how are they now supposed to operate? They're not going to take the Merrick Garland playbook, but what are they supposed to do to affirm trust in this very noble institution? Are they supposed to have a purge of Republicans who've been appointed. And when will Americans believe again, regardless of what side you're on? Right. Politically, ideologically? When will Americans again believe that criminal charges are justified, not the bidding of the president?

[Kara Swisher]

Right, right, right.

[Carol Lennig]

Because he's already, as you said, they're not even embarrassed about it. Donald Trump told Pam Bondi who to indict.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. So every episode we get a question from an outside expert.

[Jonathan Kanter]

Here's your hi, my name is Jonathan Kanter. I was Assistant Attorney General for antitrust at the DOJ from 2021 to 2024. We can all agree that Donald Trump has obliterated the norms that stood as the foundation for the Justice Department since the Watergate era. My question is about what happens next if and when the country decides that it's ready to rebuild the doj? How does it do it? Does it go back to the norms that seemed fit for purpose in the Watergate era? Or do we reimagine the Justice Department for new era post Donald Trump, a new political environment where the Justice Department needs to move more quickly, more decisively and with greater independence?

[Kara Swisher]

There's the perfect question. See and include the FBI in that.

[Carol Lennig]

The only thing I can envision, and I've talked to a lot of people who are DOJ and FBI alums about this, they are envisioning something the same, is that there's going to be a post Watergate like moment and a post Trump moment in which people realize that the trust is so important in this institution, that it's so critical to the principles of the founders about fair and equal justice, and that we need to trust that. That there's going to be some incredible, impermeable line in between the White House and the department and the FBI. You know, in the end of the first Trump presidency, we had sources telling us that Chris Wray had been warned over and over again by Bill Barr, I am protecting you from Donald Trump firing you. He wants to fire you because you haven't indicted, investigated, swooped up this person. And Chris Wray was in a little bit of a defensive crouch. Right. There's gotta be a world in which the FBI director and the attorney general can be impervious from a president who's willing to break the founder's promise.

[Kara Swisher]

So speaking of that, in a recent op ed, you explain all the things that happen to the country without a real Justice Department. At the end, you write, finally, without a real Justice Department, a president holding the reins of a corrupted institution can remain president permanently free to manipulate election results with no real threat of being dethroned you're using obviously a king reference. Is that where you think it's heading?

[Carol Lennig]

I'm not trying to be suspenseful, but there's some really active reporting on this that I don't wanna get into.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, you're being suspenseful then, but go ahead.

[Carol Lennig]

I think that there are reasons that people are quite worried about a permanent non dethroning and I think I should stop there. Meaning.

[Kara Swisher]

And he's mentioned it himself, people want me to stay. And obviously Bannon has mentioned it. There's lots of people who.

[Carol Lennig]

Sure, there are people mentioning it, but what's important. It's important how it could be possible. And I think the how it could be possible is where I have my eye.

[Kara Swisher]

And can you give an idea of that? It is possible, therefore it is possible. If you're looking at it, I mean.

[Carol Lennig]

It'S possible to indict a ham sandwich. We never expected we would be indicting, you know, Letitia James for mortgage fraud based on documents that show she repeatedly said, this is not my primary residence. We never expected somebody would be indicted for that. Except for a president, demanded it, fired everybody who resisted it, installed somebody who would do it. And we never expect that an election can be rigged or manipulated. We never expect that machine.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I expected that one, but go ahead. That one I expected.

[Carol Lennig]

It's the how, Kara. It's the how. And I promise, when we know the how and what the details are. We'll be back with you.

[Kara Swisher]

Will they continue with these ridiculous prosecutions? Because in this case it's a. I mean, he thinks himself, his prosecution were a joke, but these are an actual joke, as you said. With those documents, would Hillary Clinton be in his sights? Would others that he's talked about, Barack.

[Carol Lennig]

Obama, Joe Biden, John Brennan, the list goes on and on. I have seen internal documents about meetings that involve these subjects and where they want to go with these investigations. There have been discussions about Chris Wray and his deputies and his other leaders for allegedly withholding documents or destroying them. No evidence to back that up. There are a lot of people on Donald Trump's target list.

[Kara Swisher]

Very last question. When you look at all this, I mean, you've been covering institutions forever, right? When you look at all this, when you started covering this, did you ever imagine this much shift? Because I think one of the things that goes through this book is, you know, every time Donald Trump does someone, I have some liberal go, can you believe it? I'm like, yes, yes, he's done it 10 times, if I can believe it. And they're like, can you believe it? I'm like, yes, again, can you believe it? As a reporter watching this happen, we.

[Carol Lennig]

Put down the pen on this book, Injustice, in mid April, first couple weeks of April of this year. And I would never have imagined some of the things that have happened. I'll tell you, the sources we talked to warned us that it was possible. They were definitely in your camp. They were like, it's coming. You just wait. I remember sitting with a source high up in the Justice Department who said, this place is gonna get shredded. And I thought it was dramatic, scary, sounding close to possible, but it's all happening months after we put the pen down in such horrific fashion. The idea that US Attorneys offices are being ordered to indict specific people without a public interest and without facts. I'll just quote John Keller, former head of the Public Integrity section, who said when I called him, and by the way, he never talks to the press. But now he was forced out after he refused to get rid of New York Mayor Eric Adams bribery case, refused to dismiss it because he knew the evidence was very strong, wasn't going to do that political errand. And he said charging people without factual basis based on a politician's wish, this is the hallmark, you know, of a dictatorship. And he's totally right. And I never would have thought that I was quoting someone as saying that when we put the pen down to injustice, we were warned by our sources that this was coming. But even some of them, I don't think they knew it would be this bad.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, that's absolutely true. But thank you.

[Carol Lennig]

Thank you for such a thoughtful conversation card.

[Kara Swisher]

Today's show was produced by Christian Castor, Roselle Kateri Yoka, Michelle Eloy, Megan Burney and Kaitlyn Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

[Sponsor Voice (Smartsheet)]

Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester.

[Kara Swisher]

Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you are stubbornly brave. If not yet, you get Judge Eileen Cannon. And good luck with that incompetent jurist. So wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine.

[Sponsor Voice (Smartsheet)]

The Vox Media Podcast network, and us.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be back on Monday with more.

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