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- [00:07]
A
Welcome to Talking Feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman. We live in tumultuous times during which history is being made, even as we simultaneously do our best to to absorb the torrents of weekly news. That's nowhere more true than the Department of Justice, where there has been huge news just in the last few days. But as of Today, we've had 500, count them, 500 days of Trump 2.0. And we need to be taking measure of the whole sweep even as we register the daily shocks. So it's great that we now have a book that does exactly that. And from one of the country's most experienced and respected reporters. The book is titled the Department of How Trump Took Control of American Justice. And the author is Devlin Barrett. Devlin's a veteran New York Times reporter who's covered the Justice Department and FBI for more than 25 years. In recent years, he's worked on three Pulitzer Prize winning reporting teams. This is his second book. His first was the excellent October Surprise. How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election. Devlin, thanks so much for joining.
- [01:35]
B
Harry, great to be with you. Good to see you.
- [01:37]
A
So I'm excited to talk with you both about how the department got to this wretched state. I'll editorialize occasionally and as we'll get into later, some of the newest stuff. But let's begin at the beginning. As Trump took office, January 20, 2025. I recall myself, anyway, not really being braced for the pace and the gravity of the changes. Your book opens on January 20, and the speed's kind of breathtaking. Senior officials are fired before Trump even finishes his inaugural address. What moment would you say, Dev, when you realize we are not in Kansas or 950 Constitution Avenue anymore?
- [02:25]
B
I think it was really that first day, that afternoon. And what you saw was a very, I would say, planned out effort to strip out a very important layer of senior career officials. And what I describe in the book is how pulling out those senior career officials, and when I say pull out, I mean they were first assigned, they were first ordered essentially to report to Sanctuary City Working Group, which became known inside the Justice Department as a rubber room, a kind of dumping ground for people they didn't want and people they hoped would leave. But what was really important about that relatively small number of people they took out right away was the extent to which those people held a lot of the reputational gravity in the building. Those people were the kind of people who would try to prevent other firings or prevent more retribution from happening inside either the department or the FBI. And it's fascinating to me to talk to DOJ folks now who experience that day because a number of them will tell you that they, even in the course of watching those people being pushed out, they didn't really understand what that meant. They didn't understand what was going to come. They thought that was the worst of it, some of them. And in fact, when you look at it now from the benefit of hindsight and everything that happens in the following year, what you really see is that that is the beginning. That is the beginning of a very. To your point, extremely fast moving and extremely damaging to most career law enforcement officials, and I will say, extremely effective takeover of the Justice Department.
- [04:19]
A
Yeah, it really did seem strategic part of Project 2025. And it's a point I've tried to make repeatedly that the sheer numbers of people ousted or forced out or who left understates the impact to the doj, which worked disproportionately like many institutions by reliance on a few really experienced people of judgment in different sections. And they had scoped them out and figured out who needed to be removed. So getting to then, the people who were left that you say you've spoken to recently, if you remember back then, you know, you write in the book that, that lawyers and FBI agents, dutiful, both weren't really prepared to understand what was going on. Did anyone try to object or explain how antithetical to DOJ norms? This was in this, these. This early period?
- [05:18]
B
In that early period, there wasn't a lot of pushback. There wasn't a lot of angry confrontation. A lot of people, I think, were sort of focused on the idea that, oh, we have to get the new folks up to speed. We have to brief them on cases, brief them on whatever. And there was not, as been described to me, a ton of confrontations or arguments that. Now, to be clear, I'm talking about at the Justice Department specifically. It's a little different story at the Bureau, where the pressure was on right away to fire a bunch of people. And the people who were temporarily running the Bureau were determined to try to prevent what they felt were completely unjustified firings and protect the workforce. So the FBI and DOJ experience in those early days wasn't exactly the same, but it was very fast for both. And eventually the firings came to each.
- [06:19]
A
You mentioned the FBI. Every time I read this guy's name in a book, and it happened here. My head goes again, sort of 360 degrees. That would be Tom Homan. And I just have a WTF question for you, which is, how the hell is this guy still in government? The new administration, as you describe it, very first meeting with career prosecutors was about burying this case. Can you remind us what Homan did and what the new guard told career staff in terms of just dumping this one?
- [06:58]
B
Right. And I think Homan's a hugely important play, like the handling of the Homan case. It's a hugely important play in terms of what it tells you about what's coming later in the Justice Department. So Tom Homan, senior advisor to President Trump, he's touted both in the first administration to some degree and definitely in the second administration as Trump's immigration czar, essentially. And what happens is there's a relatively unrelated criminal corruption investigation going on with FBI undercovers in Texas through 2025. And one of the people they're investigating says to the undercovers at one point, you know, if you pay Tom Holman money, you might be able to get good contracts from the incoming Trump administration. Now, that happened those, those conversations happened well before the election, but everyone understood in politics and policy that Homan was very close to Trump. So what happens is they set up a meeting between the undercovers and Tom Homan. The undercovers at that meeting give Tom Homan, according to my sources, a bag with $50,000 cash in it. It's a lot of money. It's in a kava bag, the fast food chain. And when Trump is elected, the prosecutors and agents on that case realize they have sort of some important decisions to make here as to what to do next, because it wasn't as described to me. That original meeting wasn't an explicit promise for explicit a particular contract, a particular deal. It was just one person described to me as like, we're paying for a friend money. And so then the question becomes, okay, so now what do we do with this case? I think you would agree, most federal corruption prosecutors would kill for a case in which a guy just takes 50 grand worth of cash. And there's an audio recording of that conversation.
- [09:04]
A
And if I can add a little detail, they let him walk out of the room with the bag of money, which has to this date never been found. That's gobsmacking to me that an arrest didn't follow in short order. Sorry, go ahead.
- [09:18]
B
No, I get it. And so when you get to the transition period, so Trump has been elected, they know Tom Homan is likely to play a significant role in the incoming administration. The Justice Department has some tricky choices to make here about how do they manage this. And they basically decide we need to give the new administration a heads up that there is an investigation going on here. And that heads up comes at the very tail end of the transition period before Trump has been sworn in. But I think what's really telling is that on the very first day of the new administration, the day that President Trump is being sworn into office, one of the very first meetings that Emil Bovey has, the person who's going to be running the department in the short term for Trump, one of the very first meetings he has that day is to get a briefing on the Homan case. And that's a really important moment. I describe it in the book because it's not a contentious meeting. To your question earlier about like arguing and yelling, it's not a contentious meeting. It's a fairly professional and straightforward meeting. But everyone's sort of silently sizing each other up. And Emil Bovey doesn't really show his cards in that meeting. But within weeks, he's basically sending out signals within the department that he views this as weaponization. He views this as anti Trump. This is, you know, the deep state trying to hurt Trump in some ways. And so the yellow lights and the red lights from the senior managers of the department are coming through and the case essentially becomes frozen. This case that had an incredible starting point in terms of evidence, in terms of where you might go with it, is just frozen. And it stays frozen for months and months until eventually the administration's leadership just ended out. Right.
- [11:10]
A
Yeah. As a former prosecutor, let me say I would kill for that evidence. And it's completely inconceivable. They just let it go. Okay, you mentioned the name. You know, some of these are still like, oh, him again. And Emile Beauvais, he is the leading enforcer in the department. He has a non a job that he doesn't have to be confirmed at. He is today a third Circuit judge maybe. The big story, and I want to say you tell in great detail and beautifully, is where he sets his sights on the Public Integrity section. And that involves really some heavy handed tactics with both the Southern District of New York, which had had the case, and the Public Integrity section. Can you just remind us of this episode where basically. Well, I'll stop there. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah.
- [12:07]
B
Right. So this is Valentine's Day of 2025. And the issue that is coming to a Head is the Trump administration wants to kill the indictment, kill the criminal charges that have been filed against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. It's a corruption case. It's essentially a pay for play, you know, trading favors and getting illegal campaign donations case. And the administration wants to kill it. And Bovey is the messenger for killing it. Bovey is the one as the person running the department in large part at that time. Bovey is the one who's delivering the message to kill the case. And he tries first to get the prosecutors who brought the case to kill it. That means going first to put pressure on the Southern District of New York, the Manhattan prosecutors, to kill their own case. And essentially the leadership of that office refuses to. Some people are fired, some people resign. It is very messy and ugly. But having engaged in all that, Bovee then turns to the Public Integrity section lawyers in D.C. to try to get them to do what the Manhattan prosecutors would not do. And he basically holds a meeting. He gives them a one hour deadline and says, I want two people to sign this motion to dismiss these charges. And the two people, the people who sign this motion, will become leaders in the section. And I would argue that's an incredibly important moment because a number of the leaders in the section have already resigned in the face of this demand. So everyone on that call who's hearing Bovey's message, take his point to be that there's a promotion for anyone who's willing to do this. And it's a tough moment in the room. People are very upset. And for the next hour, they debate it out. And there's a really interesting dynamic and really different points of view where a lot of the older prosecutors are arguing like, we need to keep this public integrity work going and to keep the work to preserve the larger interests of fighting corruption, we're going to have to find a way to give him what he wants. And interestingly, the younger and maybe arguably more idealistic lawyers in that section are arguing in the most part, no, we can't bow to this. If the prosecutors who brought the case in New York wouldn't do it, why should we? It's a very tense hour. It's a difficult hour. But eventually, one of the older reporter. Oh, sorry, older reporters.
- [14:44]
A
That's you and me.
- [14:45]
B
Yeah, exactly. One of the older prosecutors essentially volunteers. And not everyone agrees with that decision. It's a debated decision. Even right up until the moment that he has the conversation with Emil Bovey, there are still arguments with Emil Bovey even after he's agreed to do it about exactly what the language should be or shouldn't be. It's extremely contentious process. But what ends up happening in the fallout from all this, the forced dismissal of the case against Eric Adams, the ultimatum delivered to the Public Integrity Section, is that the Public Integrity Section ends up being essentially obliterated. Like it still exists on a door somewhere. It still exists on a nameplate. But for all practical purposes today, the Public Integrity Section is dead. And it died largely as a result of that meeting and that ultimatum. And the one thing I would just flag is that the consequences of that reverberate far beyond just the Adams case, far beyond just the case of other corruption investigations that sort of die on the vine or no longer have the backing of the Justice Department. Even the people who were part of that difficult moment didn't quite understand what all the consequences would be of that, of that confrontation.
- [16:11]
A
That, I have to say, was the point where I said, oh, man, we are really, really in trouble. And of course, that meeting was preceded by two very eloquent letters from the Acting U.S. attorney and the lead prosecutor on the case, making it clear this was such a fundamental violation of the norms of doj, where you bring cases because you have the facts and evidence, or you dismiss them because you don't not make the decision so that some official can, even as they represented it, help along a policy priority of the administration, that being immigration. But I just want to underscore, you make it clear that people at the time didn't quite understand what it meant to destroy public integrity and that the section had been basically there for corruption around the country, and now it was a green light that went from farther than the actual main justice and into really the entire country where the Public integrity did its. Its work. Can you explain a little bit more the consequences of the demolition of that section and the kind of, again, naivete or ingenuousness that the. That the people at Maine seemed to have about what was going on under their noses.
- [17:33]
B
Yeah. So look, I think when it happened, right, this confrontation, this issue with Adams case, a lot of it was reported and a lot of it, I think the public, under the readers understood and the public understood that the danger of killing the Public Integrity Section, which sort of tries to maintain an even standard of corruption prosecutions across the country, so that what's considered corruption crimes in Illinois is not significantly different than what's considered corrupt federal corruption crimes, for example, in Florida, just to pick two places. But everyone understood in real time. I think that that was very ominous for whether or not the Justice Department would go forward with righteous corruption cases, cases that prosecutors themselves believe were worthwhile. What I think even the prosecutors inside the department failed to appreciate even as that was happening, was how much killing the Public Integrity Section would enable the political leadership of the department to pursue criminal cases and pursue criminal charges that otherwise the Public Integrity Section would not have allowed to proceed because the facts weren't right, the law didn't apply. And I'll give you a quick example to just give you a taste of what I mean. So very early in the administration, you know, a senior DOJ official, a new political hire, decides he wants to try and charge Chuck Schumer with making threats against the Supreme Court. Public integrity lawyers, veterans look at that, and they say, the facts here don't apply. You cannot pursue this case. It just doesn't work. And I describe in the book how even then, you know, the senior person, Ed Martin, didn't give up. He tried a different way to do it. He tried a couple other ways to try to like. But in each instance, the Public Integrity Section said, no, that just doesn't fly. It doesn't meet the facts. It doesn't meet the case law. As lawyers, we have to tell you, this doesn't work. And that ended that. But now in the Department as it currently functions, there is no Public Integrity Section to play that role. And so you get things like, just to use one example, the James Comey Seychelles threat case. The James Comey Seychelles threat case is a case in which, in another era, with the Public Integrity Section, you might very well have seen them weigh in and say, you cannot proceed with this. This does not fly as a criminal case.
- [20:04]
A
You would have seen that. I can say with confidence, yeah, right.
- [20:07]
B
I mean, I'm a reporter. I try to stick with what we know as facts and what. What we might be able to surmise is like alternate scenarios. But look, I absolutely take your point. And it's basically the point I'm making, which is that it's not just that killing the Public Integrity Section killed good cases against bad people. It's also that, according to many current and former law enforcement officials, killing the Public Integrity Section enabled bad cases to be brought against people who did not deserve criminal charges. And that's a really important point. I think that, like I said, again, was not readily apparent to even the people, you know being punished as part of this process. Even the people resigning in anger at this time didn't quite grasp all the ways in which the collapse of the Public Integrity Section would have very far Reaching consequences.
- [21:02]
A
It's a great point, and it explains why the section was sort of one of the crown jewels. And of course, the, the reprisal prosecutions have fully flowered since Blanche took the reins and has been unapologetic about it. Man, there's so much Devlin to talk about. I want to commend to listeners, especially all your great stuff on the U.S. attorney in Broglios, especially in New Jersey and Alina Haba. But I want to fast forward to the present if I can, and you've kind of set things up well. So your book is, you must have been working till yesterday because it really goes into 2026, but obviously the last few weeks it doesn't. So. But you've been, you continue to be a very important reporter breaking stories, and lately you've exposed how the 1.776 billion slush fund came to be. Can you, can you tell us that story and what you learned and sort of whose brainchild it was?
- [22:05]
B
Right. So this is sort of the 1.776 billion fund for what the president and Todd Blanche call the victims of weaponization. That was essentially a settlement idea to end Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the government for his tax returns being leaked years earlier. So you had this crazy situation, this crazy basic factual situation of the president of the United States suing his own government to be paid taxpayer dollars to himself for something that he alleged was wrong within the government. He had also filed more than $200 million in claims, by the way, for the federal criminal investigations of him, you know, going back to the classified documents by Jack Smith, going back to the Mueller investigation about R. And those claims are also wrapped up and done away with essentially as a result of this fund. And when the fund was announced, it created a great deal of criticism and controversy and opposition, even among Senate Republicans. And this was, I would say, the product of a couple people more than most. There's lawyers on both sides of this, but both sides of this happen to essentially be the side of the president, meaning there's lawyers in government and there's lawyers who are essentially operating as private lawyers for the president. When it comes to the lawyers in government, the really important one is a guy named Trent McCotter who is a senior official who works under Todd Blanche. And, you know, a lot of this seems to be propelled forward by McCotter as their sort of coming up with this idea for a way to not pay the president directly, but essentially pay people like the January 6th defendants, pay people like, you know, people who argued that, you know, their views of COVID were stifled or censored because of government directives towards social media companies, all the so called or alleged victims of weaponization. And in the context in which the president uses it, he's almost always talking about conservatives who are investigated or believed to be mistreated by the government in some way. So that's a very long winded way of saying they created a deal to pay other people based on the claims that Trump had made for himself. I will tell you that one of the reasons that they had to do that or they felt they had to do that was because I think there was a great deal. I know I should say there was a significant amount of concern within the department and within the Trump administration generally that if they did go forward and just pay Trump money directly, that could be an incredibly problematic thing to do for the lawyers themselves on both ethical issues related to their law license and frankly on a potential fraud criminal issue. Because this is so much self dealing in terms of taking taxpayer money that I think there was some genuine concern within the ranks of government lawyers that if we were to pay Trump money directly, as he is demanded, as he was demanding, we could be in a world of trouble for that down the road.
- [25:35]
A
Of course, as we tape, they've said they're still going to keep the amnesty for any audits that's worth it really is the same. And Judge Williams, who was kind of snookered, as she now seems to think with the voluntary agreement in the first place, is focused on this. There's going to be a brief due June 12th where they're going to maybe try to get out of saying it now, but they either have to say, yes, we're on the same side, meaning it's not a real lawsuit, meaning it's unconstitutional, or no, we're not, meaning they're completely full of it. Because everybody knows that they are, as you say, on the same side of
- [26:16]
B
the V. Well, right. And can I point out one, like fascinating data point from earlier this week on that subject because. So yes, the additional feature, let's say, of this deal is that Trump, his family and his company get what sounds like based on the written version of this, a kind of blanket protection, a kind of broad, sweeping promise not to be investigated or audited or prosecuted for any tax issues. Now, what's fascinating is earlier this week when Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, was in front of Congress, he said that while the fund was dead, that part was going forward. But he also made a very other interesting assertion. I Thought, which was that the condition about the end of tax audits, the end of tax investigations, was not part of the settlement. He argued it was a standalone order from the attorney general himself. Meaning, I assume, the implication of that is that it can't be touched or questioned by a judge because it's not part of any deal. It's not part of any semblance of a deal. And I took that statement to mean that they are determined to try to keep that benefit to Trump and his family away from the scrutiny of the judge or any judge.
- [27:32]
A
I agree, but I think they're in a world of hurt because he said in the same breath, well, this is typical. And what he clearly is referring to, it's not only not typical, it's singular. And what he's referring to is other real cases with real settlement agreements where the taxpayers got something and they, and the IRS in return, which did not sign on to this, agreed not to audit. But let's, let's stick with Blanche for a minute. As we tape, it's been announced that he's going to be nominated. I wanted to get your sense of him, especially as a leader. When I was in the department, there was a, a lot of communication, circulation on the fourth and fifth floor with the big guns. And you at least had the sense under Bondi that that had stopped. There was very frosty and a kind of fear and loathing mutually applied. What's your sense of how people in the department regard Blanche, who on the one hand actually has been in the system, but on the other, and maybe for that reason has shocked people by his departure from the norms that he previously lived by.
- [28:44]
B
I know a lot of current former federal prosecutors who had some hope that Blanche, being a former federal prosecutor himself, would be relatively thoughtful and cautious in how he did the job. I want to take a step back here for a minute and just point out that the person who, who fills the role of the deputy Attorney General in the Justice Department historically plays the role of bad cop. That job is almost by definition the bad cop of the Justice Department. They're the ones who crack the whip when two parts of the department are in disagreement about something. They're the ones that force people to go forward with something. They're the ones who force people to drop things when they, when they decide it's not, it's not going to, they don't believe it's going to fly. But Todd Blanche, even, even for a job whose job description is essentially the bad cop, Todd Blanche is a singularly different deputy Attorney General, in that he had, even when Bondi was there, enormous control over how cases were run and what happened to cases and his staff. But one of the things I talk about a lot in the book is the degree to which his staff was dominated in many ways by pretty young guys, pretty young people who had much less experience than some of the career prosecutors they were giving orders to. And that was a frequent source of frustration and difficulty, because a lot of the instructions they were getting and sometimes just a lot of the rhetoric they were getting out into the field didn't really make that much sense to the career prosecutors who are supposed to carry out these instructions and sort of execute these orders. But the basic reality is, I would just say that in this Justice Department, every critical decision goes through Blanche's office sometimes. That doesn't mean that he has the conversations directly. A lot of times, it's these guys that sometimes derisively get referred to inside the building as Blanche's bros, who relay Blanche's wishes and sort of, you know, so there's resentment and frustration with the bros frequently, I would say. But he's running the show. And I would say even before Bondi left, he had a huge role in most of the decision making in the department. He is a very different deputy Attorney General in many ways. And obviously the changes he has wrought at the Justice Department have made the Justice Department very different in many ways.
- [31:11]
A
Yeah. And witness that Bondi last week stated she wasn't testifying, that basically all the Epstein stuff belongs with Blanche. I mean, normally you wouldn't nominate someone who's been acting because his fingerprints are everywhere, and he can get really examined about it, but here, he's obviously pleased the president. I'm Michael Waldman, host of the Briefing podcast. I'm a former White House speechwriter, a lawyer, and a constitutional scholar.
- [31:44]
B
And I'm president of the Brennan center for Justice.
- [31:47]
A
We work to repair and strengthen American
- [31:49]
B
democracy, from gerrymandering to abuse of presidential
- [31:52]
A
power, from Supreme Court reform to congressional corruption and more.
- [31:56]
B
What fun.
- [31:57]
A
You're going to hear new ideas in
- [31:58]
B
this podcast, and you're going to hear
- [32:00]
A
about the strategies and the legal and
- [32:02]
B
political fights that will shape the next
- [32:04]
A
phase of American politics. If you care about our democracy. The Briefing is a podcast for you, Devin. There is so much in there. I'd like to talk to you for days, but the value that really, really comes through, you know, 25, you've developed all these sources, and without naming them, so much of the narrative really is informed by the conversations. You've had so just a couple questions first with the New Guard, the administration, it seems to me I'm trying not to be tendentious or political here, but you know, I think as a fact, so much of what they do is just anchored in manifest lies. That's that really underlies much, especially the reprisal prosecutions. I just wonder if you ever had have conversations in the New Guard. Obviously, don't name me. We don't want you to get people to get fired. But in which they acknowledge maybe with a wink and a nod, that man, oh man, they've, you know, totally upended everything that the department used to stand for.
- [33:08]
B
I mean, I wouldn't say I've had conversations with people where they acknowledge either or lying or doing bad things inside the department. I think in most instances, in most conversations I have with people, they insist, often till they're blue in the face, that they are fixing a pre existing problem. You have to remember the sort of premise upon which many of those people came into the building. One, you know, obviously Todd Blanche is a noteworthy exception. But a lot of the people coming into the department as part of this administration have little or no prior prosecutorial experience. And a lot of them are coming in in large part because they are very politically loyal to the president. So one of my chapters talks about Alina Haba, who is a longtime Trump advisor and lawyer, becoming the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and how it just sort of wreaked havoc on that office for a period of time because she was so out of her element. I think one of the things that is almost a translation challenge as opposed to a reporting challenge is how do you explain the way Alina Haba thinks of the Justice Department to people who work at the Justice Department? I mean, that in itself was a significant challenge. And then how does a reporter explain this huge clash of belief systems and values? One way I explain it to people is that the people running the Justice Department now are almost entirely focused on outcomes and the Justice Department and I would argue lawyering itself. The very premise of being a lawyer is extremely focused on process. The idea that if you have a good process, you will get to a good outcome. And so much of the conflict you see on a day to day basis within the department since the second Trump administration began is people saying, I want this outcome, make it happen now. And the careers and others and investigators saying, well, we need to have a proper process to see if we can get to that outcome. And those two things often not only don't meet up, they often come into direct conflict with each other.
- [35:24]
A
You know, it's a great point. There seems to be a whole cadre of folks. I'm thinking of Haba or Martin or Lindsey Halligan who, like, they don't even understand for I was a U.S. attorney for Haba, to say, oh, I hope I can help turn New Jersey red. It's like, we gotta rewind this and go back to the beginning. There were so many things like that. Todd Blanche being a signal exception, of course, because he knows what's wrong. Well, then let's move to everyone else, the disconsolate and disenfranchised into many ways former employees. What are the people you speak with who feel that terrible things have happened, say needs to be done in a revived department to return the DOJ to its prior integrity and dedication to justice.
- [36:13]
B
So I'll start my answer by making a confession about my own experience as a reporter. I think one of the mistakes that people sometimes make when they talk about this conflict with within the department, I feel they often gloss over the fact that, like the Justice Department has never been a perfect institution. The FBI has never been a perfect organization. Each of them have had many screw ups over the years, sometimes horrifically, sometimes deliberately. And I don't think this conversation works well. If the premise is everything was great in 2024 and then everything went to hell in 2025, I think that's a non starter. And I think that sort of misses some of the really important dynamics that are happening outside the building. When I think of what's happened at the Justice Department, let's say start from 2015 to now, say the last decade or so, I think you've seen the political tides almost eat away the shoreline of the Justice Department. If you think of it as an island of trust or an island of legitimacy or credibility, the political waves keep crashing into the building and keep eroding that trust and that credibility. And so I think when you talk about, okay, so what would it look like to make this better? A lot of the current and former career prosecutors I talk to talk about, you know, after Watergate, there were a series of laws passed to protect tax information and the antitrust process, oddly enough, which is a kind of nerdy lane within the Justice Department's work. But what's really interesting to me, and one of the things I try to explain in the book is one of the things that the Trump administration did that frankly, no one seemed to care a ton about which everyone's got their lives, it's fine, was they just ended the tax division of the Justice Department. They just did away with it. And you would think that there would be more concern about that, but there's not. But one of the things that was fascinating to me about the reporting for this book is that because there are laws on the books, criminal laws on the books, about what you can and can't do with tax information, the Trump administration has so far been fairly observant of those laws and fairly careful not to run afoul of them in a way that could cause real problems for them. Even though the tax division no longer exists, there are some protections there built into the law to protect misuse of the tax investigative power. Now, I am not in any way suggesting that it can't be misused or it won't be misused. I'm saying you have seen in some ways some erosion proofing being done in that space by Congress from the 1970s. And I think that is a model for how people should think about what would a depoliticized Department of Justice need to function that way. And I just think there's a compelling argument to be made, I think, for trying to get back to some basic principles and trying to. I think the way I say it in the book is the Justice Department needs to speak more clearly and act more cautiously and try to, to some degree, extricate itself from politics. I think one of the ways in which this has all been bad for the Justice Department is people want the Justice Department to act as cops in the political process. And I think they've always played some of that role. But that part of their that that involvement has gotten bigger and bigger in the last decade. And I think that is very dangerous for the department. And I think you see this credibility problem and you see this trust problem getting worse and worse because people both want the Justice Department to be involved in politics and, frankly, distrust the Justice Department when it does get involved in politics.
- [40:17]
A
Fair enough. I will say that some of the problems of the last 20 of Trump 2.0 have involved what we've learned are ineffective ways that Congress in the past try to prove things. This is your book and your time, and we're really grateful for it. The book is Everyone, the Department of Revenge. It came out, you're hearing this, I think, June 11, and it came out Tuesday and is rising up the charts. And I just want to say it's an indispensable volume, Devlin, both for its analysis and comprehensiveness of reporting, but also for the lessons and intersecting lines that you draw. It's a great book to have right now as we're sort of in the middle of things and later on as we try to assess the wreckage. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for the book and good luck with it. Harry.
- [41:15]
B
Thanks a ton. Great to talk to you.
- [41:19]
A
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