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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having.
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Hugh Docherty
No, it's not.
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Ryan Reynolds
It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
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Ann Morris
Hey there. If you've ever felt your confidence slip at work, you're not alone. The good news? Confidence isn't a fixed trait, it's a skill. And like any skill, you can build it with the right tools and practice. I'm Ann Morris, CEO and bestselling author, and together with my wife Frances Frey, a professor at Harvard Business School, we host the TED podcast Fixable. This season we're zeroing in on confidence, what it really is, how to strengthen it, and how to help others see you as the leader you already are. So if you're ready to show up with more conviction, to get promoted, to lead with clarity, to do the best work of your career, join us on Fixable. Wherever you get your podcasts.
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- [01:37]
Shan Wu
What Donald Trump will get is dragging Comey through all the stress, including financial stress of having to defend against this. I think Comey's team has a pretty good shot at possibly getting rid of this, which we can talk about even before it gets to trial. So in terms of the cost, you're easily looking in the hundreds of thousands for a major firm.
- [02:00]
Hugh Docherty
Welcome to the Daily Beast Podcast. Hello, I'm Hugh Docherty, executive editor of the Daily Beast. I'm sitting in for Joanna Coles. To all her fans, you can get your fix of her brilliance on the latest episode of Inside Trump's Head with Michael Wolff. It is absolute must. Listen. If you've not yet heard it, please subscribe. Go back and binge every episode to find out the real truth about this turbulent president from the man who really does know him best. Thank you to everyone who commented on the last episode of the Daily Beast podcast where I was lucky to speak to Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling about that bonkers pair of speeches to the generals by Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. There were thousands of great comments. I just want to highlight one that's very personal from Kate Bergstrom, who said, my mom served under Lt. Gen. Hartling in Heidelberg, Germany. She always said it was an honour to work with him. A good dude, an excellent leader. Kate, everyone who commented it was an honour to speak to him. We hope to have him back. And Kate, thank you for your mother's service. Please keep your comments coming in, even if it's to say you're struggling with my accent. I know many of you have said some very kind things. Thank you to our members, Celtic, Caitlyn and Queen the Genie. But I know Scottish isn't everyone's first language, so thank you for bearing with me. All right, today we are joined by a brilliant guest whose first language, unlike mine, is in fact, the law. Shan Wu is a lawyer. He's a former federal prosecutor. Among other things, he defends free speech on college campuses, which I imagine makes you rather busy, Shan. But the reason I wanted to speak to you today is about a must read column you wrote on the Daily Beast headlined all the fatal flaws in Trump's case against James Comey. Now, just to remind everyone, because let's be honest, who can keep up with all of this? James Comey was the FBI director who was fired by Donald Trump in May 2017. Since then, he's been a thorn on Trump's side, and Trump has been demanding he can be prosecuted for pretty much anything that he can think of. Late last month, Trump finally got his way in the Eastern District of Virginia. A grand jury indicted Comey on two counts, one charge of making false statements to Congress and one charge of obstruction. So, Sian, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your amazing expertise. I've got one question to start with here. Is Donald Trump going to get what he wanted? Is James Comey really going to go to prison?
- [04:21]
Shan Wu
That's pretty unlikely. Even if he got convicted, the jail time would not be that significant. There's a whole matrix involved here. He's a first time offender, the type of case that it is. However, what Donald Trump will get is dragging Comey through all the stress, including financial stress of having to defend against this. I think Comey's team has a pretty good shot at possibly getting rid of this, which we can talk about even before it gets to trial. But I think the triumph for Trump here on the legal side is succeeding in getting an indictment lays a lot of hurt on the target.
- [04:57]
Hugh Docherty
Okay, so let's just unpack that a bit. James Comey is going to be defended by Patrick Fitzgerald and he is. Well, he was one of the most feared prosecutors that the federal system ever had and he has retired. But he is obviously an incredibly distinguished lawyer. He's also one of James Comey's closest friends. How much expense are we really talking about here? I mean, presumably there's more to this than just James Comey bringing in his friend, no matter how ferocious a defender he might be.
- [05:31]
Shan Wu
So in terms of the cost, I mean, obviously it varies a lot and it's not impossible that if someone's a friend, I mean, I've represented people for free in certain investigations, assuming you're paying the sort of normal full freight charge. I mean, you're easily looking in the hundreds of thousands for a major firm because it's not just Fitzgerald's time and sitting next to him at something. I mean, it's the whole team and the preparation, all the pre trial type research that goes on. So I mean, you'd be getting out of the cheap in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range and it could easily go well over that.
- [06:04]
Hugh Docherty
And again, just slightly unpacking what's going on here. James Comey obviously we know is a pretty wealthy guy. He was in private practice for a long time, you know, private, you know, a white shoe law firm. But this is a, this is more about a message, isn't it? That it's not just Comey that should fear that sort of thing, of having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and being shamed in public, but this is a message to loads of other people.
- [06:32]
Shan Wu
Oh, absolutely. And you also see the message in the people that they got rid of at the U.S. attorney's office that actually did the indictment. It seemed like they couldn't find anyone to do it. The original U.S. attorney there, the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, guy named Siebert, had evidently said, no, not enough evidence here. Just like he said, not enough evidence for Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General. So he either resigned or got pressured to quit or was outright fired. And also I think the Washington Post is reporting this morning, they confirmed that his number two also ended up having to leave the Justice Department. So then they had to look around for someone and they came up with this lawyer, Lindsey halligan, zero experience, etc. But the problem there is the career people, people have had experience, are saying this is a no go, there's not any evidence there. So the case starts out in an extremely weak, flawed kind of position.
- [07:34]
Hugh Docherty
Just to explain, you've Prosecuted many federal cases. What is the bar? If you're a career federal prosecutor, what is your duty to do when you prosecute a case? What's the first step?
- [07:51]
Shan Wu
Yeah, it's a really interesting question, Hugh, because it's more than just the legal standard there. The legal standard, theoretically, just to get the indictment is simply probable cause, which is pretty low. There's a joke about, about how get the grand jury to a dye in a hand sandwich. That joke is because it's one sided. The prosecutor goes in, there's no cross examination, there's no opposing counsel. You just put on the case. Sometimes just one question to your age. And that's what makes it relatively easy practically. And legal standards. Well, but before you do that, you need to first present to your supervisors, Typically in a prosecution memo, you lay out the pros and the cons. In a more serious, complicated case, particularly if it's the case involving a very high profile, politically charged situation, you want to run that up to chain, make sure everybody agrees with your assessments of that. And in your assessment of that, it's not even just the evidence. Again, the bare evidence might be okay, sounds like a crime if we prove it. Instead, the Justice Department has a manual that guides U.S. attorneys. You have to be certain that at trial you could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. So even though the legal standard for indictments actually just probable cause, the real standard you're working with is proving this beyond a reasonable doubt. Then you say, yeah, I think we can do this at trial. Here's the evidence, here's why. So those are steps that you'd have to go through. And I'll add one more kind of twist in this tale, which is apparently they presented not two, but three charges to the grand jury, and the grand jury only returned two, meaning they did something called a declination on one of them. I can't tell you how rare that is because you don't bring in charges. Oh, we'll just throw it up in there and see what the grand jury does here. And for them to decline, in my 11 years of DOJ, I only saw one declination and the other piece to it, which I'm not sure we covered as deeply in the piece I wrote is the vote was also very weak. Right. You only need a majority. And they barely got the majority in those two. Those two things would tell a prosecutor, this is a very poor case. I had cases where we had the votes. But back at the office talking to the supervisor, they're saying, you know, you barely got the majority here. We either need to shore this up or is it a signal? It's just not a case worth bringing. So all those are very, very weak signals on this case.
- [10:20]
Hugh Docherty
So normally this would be the subject of lots of discussion. They've got a weak case. But it looks here like the discussion is not about the weak case. The discussion is about going after one of Trump's enemies. Because, as you say, it seems that the career prosecutors who are professionals who, like you, serve regardless of the president they serve regardless of who's holding the Senate or who's holding the House, they are there to serve the Constitution. They're not getting involved. Some of them have either fired or been left or either left voluntarily or been fired. So this is now in the hands of people that are loyal to Trump, I think. Is that a fair summation of this case?
- [11:07]
Shan Wu
Seems more than fair, because also another unusual step was Ms. Halligan, as the new U.S. attorney, apparently personally presented the case to the grand jury. And that's extremely unusual. You wouldn't have, like the top person. I mean, they have a lot of things to do, but they're actually showing up presenting the case. She also went to court when the indictment was returned to the magistrate judge. She had some snafus when she was there, probably due to inexperience and haste makes waste. But the whole point here is how come she was by herself? Maybe she wanted to get the credit of personally being there, but there was nobody else with her. And there is a suggestion there that she's having trouble finding the career people to do it. So that's highly unusual. And you see, you've seen that a lot in the Trump DOJ is top officials actually showing up in court to do the dirty work, the wet work. And that's very odd because usually they're too busy. They're better qualified people who are really up on the case. So it could be a sign that they're really having trouble finding people.
- [12:10]
Hugh Docherty
So just what's the next steps in this case? James Comey has not yet appealed in court, so can you just explain when is he going to be in court and what happens then?
- [12:22]
Shan Wu
Yeah, the next step is something they call an arraignment. And that's where he will show up in court. And I think that's coming up on the 8th or 9th October, and he'll be there with his lawyer or legal team. And it's a pretty straightforward process where the judge is simply letting him know he has these charges. His lawyer will typically waive a reading of the indictment, meaning we don't want to have the whole thing read to the world at this point. I mean, it's fine. There is an indictment, and then he'll plead not guilty. Everybody pleads not guilty the first time up. And then they'll set some schedules which are important for pretrial motions. Maybe they'll pick a trial date, but definitely there'll be a schedule for pretrial motions. And this particular court where they are, the Eastern District of Virginia, is nicknamed the Rocket docket because they move very quickly. So I would watch for the judge to have them on a very tight timetable. We might even see motion filed before then to seek to dismiss the case. But we're going to start to see a big flurry of the legal motions going back and forth now.
- [13:24]
Hugh Docherty
Now, when, when, normally when these are filed, it's up to the judge, but this case may well go elsewhere. Right. This, this is a case that raises a whole load of questions potentially. Is it potentially possible for this to end up in front of the Supreme Court in some shape or form?
- [13:44]
Shan Wu
It's potentially possible. It would be really unusual for the criminal case at this stage to get there. I mean, generally speaking, you need something called a final determination in the case. There's got to be something dispositive in the case that's happened for it to be appealed. If, for example, there's a very nouveau type of argument made of immunity, as you saw in Trump's cases, then it might start to work its way up, because the point would be we can't even get further in the case until we decide this here. The main argument Comey's people are probably going to make is selective prosecution, meaning he was picked out because he opposes Trump, probably not going to go all the way to the court. Usually that would be heard at the district court level. The trial judge and the judge rules one way or the other and is probably not going to keep going at this point. Later, it could be appealed, and I think you saw an example of that with the Hunter Biden situation. We argued select the prosecution, but it'd be very rare to be able to stop the criminal case in its tracks and take it all the way up to the high court before you even finish the case.
- [14:52]
Hugh Docherty
Now, you wrote in your piece, which was a brilliant exposition of this case, about selective prosecution, and you pointed out it's really. It's not something that often gets raised, and even when it gets raised, it's not very likely to be successful. But this, again, seems a bit different.
- [15:13]
Shan Wu
Yeah, Those are very hard cases to prove. I can't tell you how many clients I've had that say, I want this to be argued as selective prosecution. It's really a hard standard to meet because the reason it's really hard practically is you have to show the malicious intent there. You have to somehow have proof that the prosecutors were saying, oh, we're going to pick you and other people. We usually don't pick them for the same kind of crime. And there has to be some idea that it's a little bit different than vindictive prosecution, which is where you've raised some argument and they're making it worse for you. Selective really goes to why they picked you. So you can imagine that prosecutors are not going to write down in their notes or emails to each other, we're going to get this guy. We're going to pick him because we really don't like him. They're not going to say that. But that's not true here because you have tons of statements from President Trump, from his White House officials literally prejudging the case, saying what a terrible guy this is. He's a criminal. We got to get him. Telling Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, you got to get this guy. What's the delay here? That's what makes it such an unusually strong case for selective prosecution is you have all these public statements for them to go with, and that's really kind of unheard of. It's also good news for arguing there's terrible pretrial publicity that could prejudice the case as well, given who's talking about it now.
- [16:39]
Hugh Docherty
Let's just explain pretrial publicity, right? We are talking about this trial or this case. It's getting publicity. There's no reason not to. There's nothing wrong with that. The First Amendment allows that. But why? What's wrong with pre. Or who is it that is forbidden from giving pre trial publicity? Who should not be talking about it?
- [17:04]
Shan Wu
Anyone who can strongly influence the court of public opinion. And here's what I mean by that. There's nothing wrong with publicity. And the key term in judging the fairness of something in legal cases is the word prejudicial. A lot of people will say that certain evidence shouldn't come in as prejudicial. Well, of course it's prejudicial because it helps one side or the other. But it's got to be wrongly prejudicial. It can't be just that. I don't like it. So here people, judges will sometimes say Gag orders. They'll tell the prosecutors, I don't want to have you giving a press conference on the courthouse steps. Same thing with the defense counsel. And if it's a very notorious case, you're in a small town, there's been a murder, everyone's talking about it. And the defense counsel might say, we got to move this someplace else. And this whole community is abuzz with this. We can't get a fair trial here. Here, you'd have to move it, I don't know, some other universe. Because there's no way to find a place where people haven't heard about it. And the problem here with that, you.
- [18:04]
Hugh Docherty
Need to find the place that has not heard of Donald Trump. That's exactly the place. Okay.
- [18:09]
Shan Wu
And if we found that place, we can be sure that Trump would immediately fix that for us.
- [18:13]
Hugh Docherty
I think some people might be moving there. If you find it, I think we could set up. It wouldn't be Colonize Mars. I think there'd be an exodus.
- [18:23]
Shan Wu
But that's right, that will work.
- [18:27]
Hugh Docherty
But that universe doesn't exist. So Donald Trump, all the times that he's called James Comey deranged and crooked and a liar. This is all going to be thrown into the court case is what you would expect.
- [18:40]
Shan Wu
Exactly. Cuz the argument will be this kind of statement from like the world's biggest bully pulpit is going to taint all of the jury pool. And kind of works both ways too. I mean, you certainly could have people who say, I can't stand the President's remarks, I can't stand him. I don't care if it's his doj, I'm voting against them. So it works to both sides. But the defense is going to say these kinds of remarks, telling everybody they're prejudging the case. He's a terrible human being. That makes it impossible to get a fair trial any place on the planet, really. And that's the argument that's going to be made. Not as strong as the selective prosecution case because as you're pointing out, of course there's publicity in this case. And the judge will say, well, we can take care of that in jury selection. We'll ask a lot of questions, try and really ferret out the prejudice, but it's definitely going to be a big issue.
- [19:32]
Hugh Docherty
Sian, hold that thought. Let's hear from the people who pay our bills.
- [19:36]
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- [20:31]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having.
- [20:47]
Hugh Docherty
No, it's not.
- [20:48]
Ryan Reynolds
It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@minmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [20:55]
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- [21:05]
Hugh Docherty
And we are back with the distinguished lawyer Shan Wu. So let's just game plan a bit and let's imagine that this trial is going to take place which you know, as you say, not 100% guaranteed when the trial begins. One of the things that people might be slightly surprised, in fact, Donald Trump might be slightly surprised by. It's not going to be on camera. Federal courts are always held, I was going to say behind closed doors. That's not fair. You can go and watch, but it's not going to be visible to the outside world. And then is it going to sound pretty technical because what James Comey is charged with is that he didn't tell the truth to Congress and that then goes to what he told Congress back in 2017. And it sounds very hard to unpack. How can Lindsey Halligan make it accessible to jurors and also pleasing to Donald Trump, who is, after all, the audience here.
- [22:14]
Shan Wu
Yeah, that's a tall order.
- [22:17]
Hugh Docherty
Is that just an impossible mission?
- [22:20]
Shan Wu
Yeah, I think that's pretty tough for her to do. I mean, in terms of surprises to watch for. Yeah. Most people don't realize that the federal courts, thanks to the Supreme Court, this is one of my favorite things to rag about. They have this ridiculously antiquated notion that we can't have cameras in the courtroom. It'll make people grandstand and play to the cameras. So no federal courthouse has allowed cameras and there's some exceptions. They had some trial programs for it. So this one will be in the dark with it. They'll have the old fashioned runners. They're coming running out of the courtroom to hit the cell phones because you can't have cell phones in there either.
- [22:54]
Hugh Docherty
I was going to say that I've myself as a reporter been the victim of having to run out of federal court, get my cell phone out of the locker and then frantically try to work out, you know, can I find it? Can you get a signal? And you know, nothing works properly and the WI fi is down and it's, you know, it seems like a remarkably old fashioned system for something that is so, you know, so high profile.
- [23:22]
Shan Wu
Oh yeah, absolutely. And it's like we're back in the 1940s and 50s with reporters running out there and then the opening statements won't be that dry. I mean, both sides are going to distill it down to just telling a common sense story. Like we're describing with the case is when you get to the actual presentation documents, the testimony, that may get pretty dry, particularly because as you're pointing out, this isn't the most intuitive kind of case for people. I mean, certainly the prosecution will say this is a case about lying to Congress. The other side will say, no, he didn't lie to Congress. That's about the simplest moment for it. Because when you dive into what is it that he was lying about? Frankly, at the moment, even that's kind of confusing. Just reading the indictment, it seemed like they're basing it on some questions that Senator Ted Cruz asked him, which Cruz seemed to be talking about his conversations with his former Deputy Andy McCabe, and it centered on the question, did you ever leak anything to media? Did you authorize anyone, the FBI to leak? And Cruz set it up as McCabe said, yes, Comey did that, and Comey saying, no, I didn't. When you actually look at McCabe's testimony, not really so clear that those statements are opposed to each other because McCabe was saying that he, McCabe was the leaker and he told Comey about it after the fact. So that really wouldn't mean that McCabe saying Comey leaked and he knew about it beforehand. So that really undermines that aspect of lying to Congress. But to make matters worse, there's now reporting that that's not even the conversation Cruz was talking about. It's not with McCabe. It was with a friend of Comey's who at some point, Comey, I think even his biography said he kind of told that friend to leak some stuff to the media. And it wasn't clear if at that time the friend was even employed by the FBI. They were employed in some capacity at some point, but that timeline is kind of fuzzy. It'll be cleared up by the time the trial. But that's the kind of confusion that's going to have to be unraveled. And a good defense counsel, which I'm sure Pat Fitzgerald will take care of, this is going to completely muddy those waters. It's going to make it super confusing. Comey didn't know which person you were talking about. He didn't know which conversation you're talking about. So that aspect's going to get pretty dry at times and more importantly, pretty confusing for the jury.
- [25:48]
Hugh Docherty
And could we see Senator Ted Cruz called in as a witness? You've just, you know, you've raised the possibility. Many people, I'm sure, would be engaged.
- [25:58]
Shan Wu
To see that, yeah, that can be possible. After all, he's the one in the conversation with him, really, you kind of don't need them because the testimony speaks for itself and it's under oath. But that would certainly be fun. And if I were Pat Fitzgerald, I would definitely be chomping at the bit to have Cruz subpoenaed.
- [26:17]
Hugh Docherty
And I'm sure Ted Cruz would be delighted by to have yet more moment, although no cameras, so might not work out for him.
- [26:24]
Shan Wu
Good point. Good point. Yes.
- [26:26]
Hugh Docherty
Regardless, we were talking a bit about this at the beginning, but regardless of the outcome here, this is not normal. Right? No FBI director has been the personal target of a presidential demand for prosecution. And we've never really seen a president in our lifetimes anyway. And, you know, historically, it, it's not a thing presidents demanding direct prosecutions and certainly not of what appears to be personal enemies. Is our justice system up to dealing with this?
- [27:03]
Shan Wu
The system is up to dealing with it. And it's not just the FBI directors. I mean, it's a sort of constant calling out from the executive branch who should be prosecuted. And Trump likes to keep referring to himself as he's the chief law enforcement officer, which I suppose technically, in some ways he could make that case. But no other president Trump tries to see themselves that way. They were usually satisfied with being merely the commander in chief, not also the top cop as well. The system is set up for some guardrails here. Some of them have failed Already the first point would be that the Justice Department would think twice, weigh the evidence. They don't seem to be doing that. Second would be the career prosecutors doing the same thing. They don't seem to be doing that or they've been fired because they will do that. So now it is up to the adversarial system where you have defense counsel. People still have a right to a lawyer here, and that's one guardrail. They'll mount the defense and then you have the judiciary. What are they going to do? The judge will consider it. And certainly the trial court judges seem fine to take care of that. That's what they do all the time. You've seen in a lot of the non criminal areas all these policy fights about the legality of Trump's policies. Trend seems to be you win at the trial courts, sometimes you win at the court of appeals. It's when you get to the Supreme Court that you tend to be losing all the time. So pretty good guardrails at the trial court level. And then the question will become what the appeal is. But in the criminal case, trial court really counts a lot. They're overseeing the case through the jury verdict. And if there is an acquittal, meaning the defendant isn't found guilty, there is no appeal for the prosecution. If he's found guilty, the defendant can keep appealing. But if there's an acquittal at the trial level, that's the end of the story. So that is a big advantage here for the strength of the guardrail.
- [28:59]
Hugh Docherty
We should say that Trump has already been complaining about the judge in this case because he's a Biden appointee. But just to clear that up, many people probably wonder, how does it, how does a judge get picked?
- [29:16]
Shan Wu
These are random picks. They literally have the equivalent of a lottery wheel. And whoever gets picked out of it. So there really is not a sense of particular judges being assigned to it. That's also true at the court of appeals level, when they have the panels of judges hearing it, that's also a random assignment. There's more room for ideology at the court of appeals. They're writing opinions, interpreting precedent. A little less room for that at the trial court level, where really we talk about judges as either being pro defense, meaning they tend to lean over backwards to give the government a hard time protecting defendants, or pro prosecution, where they tend to give the prosecution a lot of deference. You very rarely hear at the trial level lawyers complaining, this judge and the Democrat or Republican, you know, that ideology is affecting it. It's really more just whether they're pro defense or pro prosecution in the criminal arena.
- [30:11]
Hugh Docherty
Shan, pause that insight and we will take some messages.
- [30:17]
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- [30:47]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk crazy weather we're having.
- [31:03]
Hugh Docherty
No, it's not.
- [31:04]
Ryan Reynolds
It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@minmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [31:11]
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- [31:21]
Hugh Docherty
And we are back talking all things prosecution and James Comey with Shan Wu. In your column, which again I urge people to read, you said that even the price of bringing the case is too much for our country. Can you just spell that out for people? Because you've offered a very positive review, as it were, of the judicial system and the judiciary and ultimately the common sense of a jury. But this is not without price.
- [31:53]
Shan Wu
The price is that the federal prosecution system, which is embodied in the Justice Department, is really broken right now. I mean, this president has succeeded in wiping out the leadership's ability to do anything. He's just taken away leaders that might stand up to him and he's managed. At this point, one can safely say that the DOJ really functions as his personal attorneys. He's got some of his personal attorneys serving in the top positions and they do what he wants to do. And that is a terrible situation for the country. It's completely against the concept of an impartial justice system. And one thing I pointed out in the column was we make a lot of comparisons to the Nixon administration for good reason. But there are also huge differences. And one difference there is in the leadership of the Justice Department and their conscience. Because when Nixon tried to get his attorney general to fire the Watergate special prosecutor who was the bane of his existence, the AG then refused and quit. Then he went to the deputy Attorney general, the number two person who also refused and quit. That's known as the Saturday Night Massacre. That's happening. That could have happened like every day in the Trump Justice Department. And to some extent you're seeing that there are lots of resignations happening, people leaving the department, people being fired, and that's sort of like a massacre of the criminal justice system right now at the federal level that is terribly damaging. It's bad for the, not only real justice, but people's perception of the department, their trust in the criminal justice system. That's all going down the tubes right now. That's going to take a long time to repair. We're not even begun the process of that repair yet.
- [33:40]
Hugh Docherty
So there might be people in the wider world who say, well, you know, James Comey, Hillary's emails, I don't really like him. You know, he messed around with Trump. Oh, well, you know, but this, you know, Trump's got his enemies, but they're not me. Is that enough? I mean, or why should, why should a normal person who's just, you know, walking down a street, living a normal life, going, getting their cappuccino in the morning, why should they be worried about what can seem like a very abstract and far away exercise of rival powerful people?
- [34:24]
Shan Wu
Yeah, it's completely understandable. People think of that in that very removed fashion. And I think it's really important to try to shine the light on that, to point out that the test of justice in a society is usually we often talk about how you treat the most vulnerable. So in the criminal justice system, people don't have resources. They may be minorities, low income, how are they treated really tells you how fair the system is. But equally important is how does the system treat people who are unpopular, People accused of really heinous crime, are they given fair treatment? People who are disliked or controversial, are they given fair treatment? And the reason that's important is because all of us have experienced moments where somebody doesn't like us. That can happen. Schoolyard bullies, whatever it is. The test here is if that bully was in charge of deciding your fate in terms of charging you with a crime, how would you want to be treated? What protections would you want? That's why it's important. No matter how you feel about Comey or anybody else, you have to be concerned. If they have no rights just because a person in power doesn't like them, that can easily happen to any of us.
- [35:37]
Hugh Docherty
I just want to finish on a hopeful note though, Shan. You think that the justice system can survive and be brought back from this.
- [35:48]
Shan Wu
I think it can be. I mean, you'll need, obviously change in administration, wholesale change at the Justice Department. But right now, that particular piece of the foundation, the integrity of the federal Justice Department, that's broken. It's just not working. So it's completely dependent kind of on the judiciary right now. And that's not the way it's supposed to work. I think it can be brought back. I mean, we're only talking, you know, four years here. It can be changed. But what can't be changed, Hugh, is all the damage that's done, not just to the institution, but the actual people, the lack of proper prosecution priorities, the injustices. That's damage that you can't really repair.
- [36:34]
Hugh Docherty
Sean, we can only hope that somebody of your integrity is currently inside the justice system. Well, you are inside the justice system, but inside the federal system. That we can only hope that people of your integrity are there to catch up and make it whole again. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your brilliant insights and we look forward to having you back soon. Although we do not look forward to having more bad news about the justice system, I should say. But I think we are probably going to have lots of reasons to speak to you in the near future. Trump has promised more prosecutions and there's bound to be much to talk about in those two. Sean, thank you for joining us.
- [37:18]
Shan Wu
Thanks for having me. Good to see you.
- [37:24]
Hugh Docherty
Thank you to everyone who's watched and listened. If you enjoyed this podcast, drop us a Like Subscribe. Share it with your friends. Share it with your enemies. It's probably a good idea to share it with Trump's enemies because there's some very good advice from Sian for them here. We couldn't bring you such great guests without the support of our members. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We want to give a big shout out to our beast level members, Karen White, Heidi Reilly, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley, Andrew Hodel, and Free DC if you're not a member yet, there's still time to join before our big October event. Joanna will be hosting a members only livestream on October 16, so get your questions ready and your comments. If you want to be part of that very special live stream, just hit the join button on YouTube. There are many more member benefits and more live streams to come. And to make sure you never miss any of the news, subscribe to the Daily Beast. It couldn't be easier. Go to dailybeast.com thank you to our production crew, Devin Rogerino and Anna Van Olsen, our editor Jesse Millwood. And as to Anna always, always says Please remember Be Beast.
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Ann Morris
Hey there. If you've ever felt your confidence slip at work, you're not alone. The good news? Confidence isn't a fixed trait, it's a skill. And like any skill, you can build it with the right tools and practice. I'm Anne Morris, CEO and best selling author and together with my wife Frances Frey, a professor at Harvard Business School, we host the TED podcast Fixable. This season we're zeroing in on confidence, what it really is, how to strengthen it, and how to help others see you as the leader you already are. So if you're ready to show up with more conviction, to get promoted, to lead with clarity, to do the best work of your career, join us on Fixable. Wherever you get your podcasts.
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Shan Wu
Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast the Last Laugh and our Star Studded the Daily Beast podcast@thedailybeast.com podcasts if you enjoyed this.
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Ann Morris
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