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Oh, sounds like a real nice surprise.
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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 know all too well about the public side of the abuses that the Department of Justice has instituted in its policies, legal positions, appointments and more. But we know only snippets of the reaction inside the building, where the ethos of justice without fear or favor and of reverence for the work of career attorneys always reigned until Trump and Bondi came to town. And I've been doing all I can, including with the few survivors I know, to understand the post apocalyptic landscape at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now a friend of the podcast and a friend of mine has written the article I've been waiting for for months, a new piece out a couple days ago on the collapse of the Justice Department as we once knew it. And I gotta say it is, and you see this as a refrain in her really expertly reported piece, Worse than you could have thought. Heartbreaking, infuriating, astonishing and More Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine, where this piece ran Sunday morning. She co hosts Slate's weekly Political Gabfest podcast. She teaches at Yale Law School, where she's the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law, and she's an award winning and bestselling author, most recently of Cast Charged, the New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and mass incarceration. Lots of recent reporting in the magazine about Trump 2.0. But this sweeping account of where things stand and how the DOJ has been hollowed out is drawn from 60 interviews with veterans of the department who recently resigned or were fired from the doj, leaving them free to talk with Emily and her colleagues. And much of the account in the piece is told for the first time. Thank you so much, Emily Bazelon, for joining Talking Feds this time on a one on one.
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B
My pleasure. When I publish stories like these, I always am kind of obsessed with all parts of it and eager to talk about it.
- [03:44]
A
Yeah, well, that's great. And I, and I feel that way completely. As you know, we talk in the abstract unavoidably, but the human cost of people who gave their career happily made less money happily to be able to do the right thing, and now that's been stood on its head. Let's just start about this goes from literally the first day and the infamous pardons of the January 6th offenders that had been the biggest operation in DOJ history, and all the way down to comey Reprisal. You know, very, very new stuff. When did you conceive of the project and how did you identify and get in touch with the 60 people who spoke to you?
- [04:30]
B
I think I had the idea for this over the summer and I was just thinking about how to get my own hands around what is happening in the Justice Department. And I realized that a lot of people were leaving and that gave me a kind of shot at the kind of access that you can see here. But we should just talk about how unusual this is. I mean, career attorneys for career prosecutors.
- [04:54]
A
To talk at all.
- [04:56]
B
Right. So we're talking about career prosecutors, career attorneys here, which means nonpartisan public servants. These are the people who serve from administration to administration. They are not political appointees. They are not loyal to the agenda of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. They're prosecuting crimes, you know, fraud, violent crime, child exploitation, working with FBI agents to do all those things. They also defend the nation's civil rights and do lots of things related to our civil rights laws and, and a myriad other tasks. So it's really unusual. They are really taught and their norms hold that they don't talk to reporters unless they have a lot of authorization or a very good reason. But because what is happening in the Justice Department feels to them like such a seismic change from their point of view, a real unraveling of the department. The people who have left, some of them are willing to talk carefully in ways that don't violate attorney client privilege, but that are very honest and forthright about what it was like for them to be at the department since Trump took office. And you're right, we started with the timeline of the Inauguration day because we wanted to, to take people through these experiences and to make them kind of cumulative so that you would feel the sort of cascade of changes and challenges that these lawyers were facing.
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A
By the way, that impact of that, especially online, is really pronounced. Emily, as you go down and down and down, your heart stinks and your steam comes out of my ears anyway. But it's so true. Alums of the department on both sides say this until they're blue in the face. And having been so either influenced or tarnished by the Trump refrains, people, I think, you know, kind of minimize or temporize it. It's just a place that, over at least a generation since Watergate, had built up an absolute ethos of nonpartisanship and, and almost everything that's happening. Well, let's start. Let's, you know, you know, it's like a spaghetti Western with the bad guys arriving in town on the, at the very beginning and the wholesale pardons. Remember, you know, nearly a thousand biggest operation in DOJ history. But also everyone within the department, everyone in the country had seen it happen. And there's been a really concerted effort, including in the last few days, to just change the history on it to whitewash what had occurred. And, and the prosecutors and judges had been so invested. What's your sense? You have a few people who were directly involved and who are now no longer the department of their, you know, you have people saying, man, I knew was going to be bad. But what sort of, you know, surprise and dismay did this prompt among the people who'd worked on the prosecutions?
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B
Yeah, I talked to a bunch of January 6th prosecutors, and a couple of them were on the record with their names. And what they were saying is like, sure, they anticipated that there would be a more narrow path to prosecuting these crimes. Right. Because, remember, there are people who are still awaiting trial at the time of the inauguration. And yes, they'd heard that there might be some pardons, but the astonishing for them, scope and sweep of, of the pardons and of the decisions to dismiss all the cases. That came as a real shock. I mean, this was the largest, perhaps investigation in the history of the Justice Department.
- [08:52]
A
No prohibiting. I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure, too.
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B
I was, like, not allowed to say that with the fact Checkers, because you never know. But it does seem that way. I mean, these are facts. Thousands of cases and more than 200 people had pled guilty of or been convicted, I should say, of violent crime.
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A
Everyone, everyone who went to trial or plea was convicted. Everyone. And judge.
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B
Yeah, sorry, it's just a really strong record, right. There was a lot of evidence. They had a lot of evidence of people on tape. And, you know, I think it's important too to remember that we are not just talking about, like people who showed up at the Capitol. I mean, there were people who got in trouble for trespassing and vandalism, but there were hundreds of people who. There was evidence of violent crimes and, and some serious, serious injuries to police officers. This is stuff that normally the government takes very seriously because they want to make sure that law enforcement officers are safe. And so to see all of that work, as one prosecutor said, just four years of work wiped away, in his view, for a lie. Because really what's at stake, stake here is President Trump's version of this day as one of, you know, peace or, you know, the good guys. And in order to facilitate that myth, you had to decide that all these people actually were innocent and did not deserve to be punished.
- [10:15]
A
Up to the current recent proclamation, which basically says there was a love in. And everyone was, you know, politicized and mistreated by the Biden administration, et cetera. You do have some people on the record. Mike Romano spoke to you. He was an actual prosecutor who just said, you know, there were some so law abiding. Are they there that just said, this is terrible, but he had the pardon. Power is something he can use. Some people like Mike right away said, man, I gotta go if this is what's happening. The writing is now on the wall. And, you know, indeed it was, well, so much. But it's a fantastic piece, everyone, and so comprehensive. So let's move to the next kind of landmark, which is the arrival of current Attorney General Pam Bondi, who on her very first day, there's been this whole ethos, I gotta say, of speed for the administration sort of throughout the. But she comes out with 14 different kinds of demands, proclamations, change in priorities. People who were still there referred to this, as you were now reported. I never saw this. Pam Bondi's mixtape. Can you explain?
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B
Yeah, I mean, partly it was the blizzard of different orders, but also one of the orders was about the, the forced procurement of paper straws. So there was also a kind of edge of humor and a kind of gallows Humor. I think that set in that, like the attorney General would be bothering with straws in the middle of what were much more serious. I think from the point of view of the attorneys, blows to how they do their job. So a kind of change in how the department sees zealous advocacy in a way that for a lot of lawyers, really brought them up short. It no longer seemed clear that the United States, rather than the President, is the client, in their view. And also, there had always, or for a long time, I should say, been a kind of norm in the department that if you objected to a particular brief or an argument, you could just kind of take a seat and it wouldn't be your name going forward. So that's no longer possible in Bondi's universe. And I think that really dismayed a lot of lawyers because they also anticipated that they might be soon asked to do things that they thought were unethical or in some ways violated their professional responsibilities and. And could risk their bar licenses. So you see a sort of beginning of that set of concerns when Bondi takes office.
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A
And maybe the high watermark of it happens not that long after you have again new reporting on this. To me, dramatic as to feel like fiction, but it really happened. Meeting that then principal Associate Deputy attorney general, now 3rd Circuit Judge Emil Beauvais, convened in for the Adams case to, after the U.S. attorney had resigned, rather than execute what she saw as a mendacious command to say, you know, we want to dismiss this case. It doesn't have merit, when she believed it did. The entire Public Integrity Section is herded at Bove's command into a room. You have details, including the sort of creepy kind of clicking of the camera and such. We've heard this only in broad strokes. Tell us about this really kind of horrifying, not in a democracy, but it happened scenario, please.
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B
Yeah. So this is at this moment where Beauvais ordered. This has already happened. He's ordered the Acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose name is Danielle Sassoon. He ordered her to dismiss these charges against Adams. She said no, and she resigned. Other people in this other district also unwilling to sign this memo. So then Bovet turns to the Public Integrity Section in Washington, which had not previously handled the case. It's not their case case. And he, as you said. Well, first he asks the chiefs.
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A
The two of them, right? Yeah.
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B
Yes. First he asks the chief to resign. The chief says no. And then the next morning, there's this meeting with everybody in the section where he is telling them to sign the order. And, you know, he could sign the order himself. And in fact, in the end did. But presumably from their point of view, he wants their imprimatur because their kind of the sign of normalcy. Right. If they go along with this, then that means, like, maybe Danielle Sassoon was just kind of being unreasonable in some way. And they collectively huddle after this meeting. They decide, almost all of them, that they're willing to resign rather than sign it. And they're trying to figure out, like, what this means for, you know, their future security clearances. Are they going to jeopardize their ability to get private work going forward? And then one older person in the office who feels like he is close to retirement, he steps forward and says, you know what? I'll sign this. And they all see that, as one of them said to me, as a kind of act of heroism in the moment. He was not doing that, in their view, to advance his career. He was doing it to, like, let everybody else off the hook.
- [15:49]
A
Yeah. Although they immediately put him in charge. Right now, I believe that that most kind of jewel in the Crown of the DOJ of 30 people is down to two. But the whole feel of it is like really something out of. Out of, you know, the annals of Nazism or other autocracy where, you know, you're, you're really, you know, somebody in here is going to sign it or everyone's going to lose their job. That kind of very extreme leverage. Okay. You know, and so it goes on and on. Let's. And when in the. Shortly thereafter, part of the whole assault on civil society by Trump universities, media, law firms, and basically. So there's a. We hadn't. I hadn't heard of this before. The involvement of the DOJ with it and with the universities, they were basically, you know, the communication was made to, you know, this was the position you were going to take. And as they said kind of creepily, we have to feed something to the wolves. So it had became clear to them that somebody is going to have to be. Get DOJ to, To, you know, to call them out for supposed unconstitutional conduct. And it's like the lesser of. Of two evils. I wanted to generalize from that and like that. Did you. Did you have. When you talk to these 60 people who @ least at first were thinking, you know, maybe I go along a little and it'll stop after that and it won't be so bad. Only of course, to discover there is no stopping point.
- [17:40]
B
Yeah, I think that was really common. I talked to so many people, as did my colleague Rachel Posner. And so many people said to us, this was my dream job. I love this job. I worked so hard to get it. I wanted to stay forever. I wanted my whole career to be in the Justice Department. And at first, I really tried to imagine that there was a way to stay also. You know, people know that if they leave and their seat is empty, they could be replaced by someone who's just gonna, like, go along and do the bidding of. Of people they don't trust. Right. Because, like, who's going to take these jobs right now? So I think people really genuinely felt a sense of moral and ethical dilemma. And of course, there are still good lawyers in the department who continue to try to do the best they can. But in this group of people who left, there was just a sense where they were either asked themselves to do something they felt could violate their professional responsibilities, or they thought that was a possibility. We actually surveyed 100 people. There were about 60 or 70 who had left the Justice Department in the last year. And then there were a group of people who had left many years ago or kind of over the years. And 20% of the people who left in the last year said they left because they were worried about or had been asked to do something that they thought they couldn't do. As a lawyer, that's a lot. 20% to come up with that number. So, you know, I think the sense that it just wasn't tenable was one that for these lawyers who have left, like, really became kind of overwhelming. But it was far from a welcome conclusion and not one they arrived at readily. And also, they had to go find work. Right. I mean, this turns into this, like, real issue for them. We didn't write about this, but especially in Washington and the metro area, the job market's pretty saturated, and there's a glut now. Yeah, people. Some people are unemployed. Some people took a long time to find jobs. So this is like, not something that is not a choice they made lightly.
- [19:49]
A
Yeah. And it just. Look, they weren't simply pressing on ideological buttons of doing the right thing or the wrong thing. You worry, you stand up and tell a lie in front of a court. What, you know, what happens to your license? Can you get a job? I mean, it's a very sort of effective and kind of personal forms of leverage as well. You'd spend a lot of time on the Civil Rights Division in the article. Justifiably, that one seems, you know, as ravaged and hollowed out as as any. There's, you know, at the pivotal time is when Harmeet Dylan arrives. Something you say about her put me in mind of a, of a more general question. So apparently she just doesn't interact. It's not simply, you know, that the, you sort of put the lean on people when you need them to say something, but there's literally no kind of collegiality or respect. Otherwise, she's simply isolated in office. Is that your sense, if you have one, Emily, in general, of the whole kind of Trump crowd? I'll just report that when I was there, you know, you'd walk the halls. It wouldn't be uncommon to see a big shot and try to talk with them or people confer with you. That part, that really enjoyable part of the job seems just completely absent now. Is that, is that your sense?
- [21:15]
B
I think there's less of that, to be fair. When we asked the Justice Department to respond to a bunch of things, one of the things they said about Harmony Dhillon was like, yes, she does meet with lawyers. And I think that the time we were reporting on when the people we talked to said that wasn't happening was probably relatively early on. And now she's been there for several months and like, presumably she's met with some people by now. I do think that when you have political appointees come in and ask for things that the career attorneys are uncomfortable with, there's like a kind of inevitable sense of separation that's going to set in because it's like mutual distrust.
- [21:53]
A
The time that really brought that home to me was Donald Trump's big speech in the Great hall with a full great hall. Oh, and then you find out literally nobody from the department, none of the career attorney is even invited. It's all sort of political folks. Well, you know, you mentioned talking to the White House and you gave them plenty of chances to talk. I'll just say one of their responses because you were good enough to quote it. Abigail Jackson said she's a White House spokeswoman. These are nothing more than pathetic complaints lodged by anti Trump government workers. President Trump is working on behalf of the millions of Americans who voted for him all across the country, not the D.C. bureaucrats who try to stymie the American people's agenda at every turn. So it just seems to me that among the rubs and real frustrations of the people who remain there are that they, on top of everything else, are sort of vilified either for having done their job or, or for, you know, calling it straight now. It's not Simply that the big wigs are changing things around on them, but that literally they are being portrayed as a sort of enemy. Did that, did that come up in that with the 60 who left?
- [23:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, you know, more broadly in the federal government, Russ Vote, who's a powerful Trump administration official, has talked about trying to traumatize federal employees. Like, they're doing lots of rounds of layoffs. They've offered these resignation packages, and you're kind of shoving people out the door, making them feel like they are the, quote, deep state. And I think that has had a real ripple effect through the Justice Department and through, frankly, other federal agencies where the idea that you are an honorable public servant and, you know, for lawyers, you're not making as much money as you could make in the private sector, but you have this job you love, you feel like you're working on behalf of the public, you know, upholding standards for the federal government. It's very prestigious in a lot of cases. All of those things are kind of out the window when the president and his officials are speaking of you with such scorn.
- [24:08]
A
Yeah. And you've mentioned, you know, the people who, that still remain the mainstay of your account is, as I say, new reporting from 60 who have left. Maybe purposely, it's relatively spare on the details of the people who are still there and what it's like. But I wonder if you could, even if you don't give us names and numbers, if you could sort of speak to it generally. What the hell does it feel like to be on the, the third floor of DOJ these days?
- [24:43]
B
I think for a lot of people, it feels really hollowed out. It feels like they're on this ship that maybe it's sinking or maybe it's still afloat. They're kind of trying to still do good work. Right. I mean, you know, it's important to remember the Justice Department includes 93 U.S. attorney's offices around the country. And some of them have been deeply affected by the changes from President Trump and Pam Bondi, but most of them are still like, pretty much normal. I mean, I live in Connecticut, and when I was talking to people here, they are still like business as usual for the most part. The question is, like, when is the hammer going to fall next? Because in places like the Eastern District of Virginia or D.C. or Los Angeles, there have been really serious changes. And I think the, the new focus on immigration enforcement has affected prosecutors and FBI agents all over the country, made it much harder to, to prosecute complex cases of white Collar crime or violent crime or fraud. So that's a change, but it's still sort of a mix. And I think there are people who feel like they are hunkering down. They still feel like their replacement would be worse, and they're hoping to make it through and help rebuild the department on the other side.
- [26:03]
A
So does anybody talk about that part, by the way, that sort of what would remain if, if and when the, the current crowd leaves? It just seems to me that so much of what was, you know, eviscerated and from day one are norms that build up in an inner way over, over years. And, you know, you don't just come in and reinstitute those. It's, it seems to me we're, you know, any, any sort of sober or, or insightful thoughts on a possible future for the doj.
- [26:40]
B
I mean, I hope I get to write about this at some point when it's more like on the horizon. But I will tell you, one person said something to me very early in my reporting that has really stuck with me, which is that, you know, we had this shift toward independence from the White House for the Justice Department after Watergate, right? So like Nixon and his Attorney General all mixed up in this criminal investigation. And that's bad. And nobody wants, the next president does not want to be Nixon. And you have the separation. You have all these like, internal practices and rules that go into place to make that separation. And then, and including the Independent Counsel statute, which like, created a way to have pretty untethered investigations of the President and the President's people. And that was something that really burned a whole bunch of presidents, right, in both parties. You have around Contra for Ronald Reagan, you have the Monica Lewinsky fair and Whitewater for Bill Clinton, like, et cetera. So it is true that the Independent Counsel act, as it then existed, gets dialed back. The special counsel law is more under the, the control of the Attorney General. But still you have this sense, you know, President Biden, like, is it given the things that happened with Hunter Biden, for example, if a president, if the next president doesn't have to maintain this independence, why would they, why would they bring it back? Like, there are a lot of incentives for the President not to have this kind of free reigning Justice Department that is not under his or her control. And so this person I was talking to early on said, you know, it's going to be really hard to reinstate these post Watergate norms as strongly as they existed. And maybe there is a new set of institutional standards and practices that could be an improvement. It's not like things were perfect, but the idea that American federal law enforcement could lose that real buffer between the President and this incredibly powerful agency that can investigate and prosecute people, I mean, that should give us all pause, right? Because it doesn't matter what your partisan affiliation is. If the President can use the Justice Department as a tool of revenge and reward, like, it's then going to flip. And if it. If he can fire everybody who works for him or push all these career folks out the door and they don't really have civil service protections, then we're going to have turnover and retaliation and a kind of cycle every time. And that seems, like, really worrisome.
- [29:19]
A
No kidding. And even if it happens, you know, only once, I'm sure you're right that if you were on a blank slate, although, interestingly, the person who wrote a lot of this on the blank slate was Merrick Garland. As a, as a young kid working for, for Attorney General Civilletti, there might be tweaks you would do that would make it better. But this one that you're mentioning, Emily, is just so axiomatic. Any country where the President can just demand, you take my enemy and prosecute, that's just not a democracy, you know, and so it seems so basic. Man, oh, man. First, everybody read it. It's very good of you to mention your co author as well. We wanted to talk to you, but she did quite a lot. Obviously, I wanted. You have a lot of great and memorable quotes, and I just wanted to take one of them. That was so sobering to me. An alumna, not surprising, of the Civil Rights Division. Dina Robinson says on the record, I wouldn't even call it the Justice Department anymore. It's become Trump's personal law firm. And as an aside, it's remarkable to me the forthrightness with which the higher officials in the DOJ says that that's our job. I think Americans should be enraged. We all deserve better than this. I keep telling my colleagues still working in the division that I'm holding the line with them from the outside, but I feel guilty that I'm not holding the line with them from the inside. As you said at the beginning, you know, you're not going to see, because they're honorable people, some kind of rule breaking by the people inside and leaking and whatever. But this is a kind of initial coming out of many of these 60 folks. And it does seem to me, as I've been, you know, following this stuff, that the level of outrage here as contrasted with maybe some of the immigration abuses. All in all, you know, it hasn't really caught fire as much with the American people. Do you agree? And is it the kind of personal anecdotes like these that need to be done to raise the profile? Is it just too, you know, legal and bureaucratic? What's your thinking about how they can effectively, and we all can effectively get it out there? What's really happening to a formerly, really honorable institution?
- [31:54]
B
Look, I think law can feel abstract and dense and hard to grasp, and sometimes the way lawyers talk about their own code doesn't totally translate. Like, you know, why? What is the big harm here? Why should people care about it? So I really hope that these stories convey that. I mean, that was definitely our intention, was to try to bring this to life from the inside and give really concrete examples from people's experience, experiences about what was troubling them. And we'll see. I mean, you know, the real vehicle for Americans expressing what they think about all this is elections. And obviously, people's choices at election time when they decided to vote for. They hinge on lots of different factors. Democracy, rule of law. Those have not been, so far, the factors that are uppermost in the polls. Right. Understandably, for lots of Americans, this is like something that's happening in Washington or something that doesn't resonate for them as much as, like, grocery prices and affordability. And I completely get that. I do also, of course, as someone who writes about this, think that it's worth paying attention to. So I appreciate your kindness, of course, in having me on. And also, yeah, I hope people read this and I hope the lawyers and it get more chances to speak out.
- [33:17]
A
Yeah. And look, I just want to say it is the most effective thing I've seen. Again, just to sort of the human face, but both the reporting that you guys were able to do, but also as it's presented in a series of vignettes. Each set has a different and to most of us, unknown human face. But the track, the scandals we know that, you know, brings it home in the aggregate, I think, splendidly, if that's the word, horrifyingly. Starting with, of course, something that seems years ago, the January 6th pardons. Anyway, Emily Bazelon, kudos to you. The article is called the Unraveling of the Justice Department. 60 attorneys on the Year of Chaos Inside Trump's Justice Department. And I gotta say, there's no really end in sight. And, you know, more of these personal counsel probably be coming and hope to talk to you then but thanks so much for this valuable article. The Unraveling of the Justice Department, New York Times, Sunday Magazine, everyone. Check it out.
- [34:22]
B
Thank you Harry. Thanks for having me.
- [34:27]
A
Thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or where, wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube where we are posting full episodes and daily updates on top legal stories. Check us out on substack harrylitman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms, norms and the rule of law, and Talking Feds has joined forces with the contrarian I'm a founding contributor to this new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust, just now linked up with an ambitious and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out more@contrarian.substack.com thanks for tuning in. And don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Luke Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hamsa Mahadranathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers. Production assistants by Akshaj Turbailu. Our editorial interns are Bridget Ryan and Troy Neville. Thanks very much to me, Marilyn Fu, for explaining the Privacy Act. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Deledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.