← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Trump’s “Meddlesome Priest”
00:16:48
This week, the former F.B.I. director James Comey testified before Congress about his private meetings with the President. David Grann joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the F.B.I.’s controversial political history, and how a man who prizes apolitical crime-fighting found himself all but accusing Trump of obstruction of justice
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- [00:00]
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Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Friday, June 9th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. A month ago today, Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey. The next day, he said, I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job, then added, I'm not under investigation. Yesterday, Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In his opening remarks, he issued a sharp rebuke to the president for defaming him and the FBI and by saying that it was poorly led and that its employees had lost confidence in their leader.
- [01:59]
James Comey
Those were lies, plain and simple. And I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them. And I'm so sorry that the American people were told them I worked every day at the FBI to help make that great organization better. And I say help because I did nothing alone at the FBI. There are no indispensable people at the FBI. The organization's great strength is that its values and abilities run deep and wide.
- [02:27]
Dorothy Wickenden
David Grann joins me to talk about Comey's threat to the Trump presidency and where it fits in the controversial history of the FBI. David, welcome. It's so good to have you.
- [02:38]
David Grann
Thank you for having me on the program.
- [02:40]
Dorothy Wickenden
You specialize in gripping nonfiction narratives that generally get to the bottom of pretty complex cases that feature extraordinary acts of misconduct. We're living through one of them. Right. And your most recent book, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that it is about the first major case really undertaken by the FBI in the 1920s. Given all the thinking you've done about the history of the organization, what was most striking to you in yesterday's hearing?
- [03:11]
David Grann
The most striking element is the tension that has always existed between the Bureau being underseen by the Justice Department and this tension to have this kind of national police force remain independent. The thing that was most striking yesterday in Comey's testimony was his fear that the Bureau was indeed being politicized and that Trump said to him, I hope you'll drop the Flynn investigation, which he saw as a directive. And there could be great debates about, is this an impeachable offense, Is this obstruction of justice? But what it is clearly and should be universally recognized of is that this is a threat to these norms of having a very professionalized, independent law enforcement agency like the Bureau.
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Dorothy Wickenden
He likes to present himself as an apolitical career prosecutor, as you've just said. And yet here he is at the center of one of the most serious and bizarre political dramas in American history. And it began before the election. It began with Hillary Clinton, not with Donald Trump.
- [04:22]
David Grann
Yeah. So, I mean, the Bureau has had a very checkered history and has always, in many ways, been almost two organizations. One that kind of was a dogged fact finding investigative body, and then a body that also, at various stages in history, particularly under J. Edgar Hoover, was politicized and violated civil liberties, targeted people for politics, was used by presidents for political ends. Comey, in many ways, was striving to keep the Bureau's reputation independence, but he, in some ways, with the Hillary Clinton thing, violated certain norms that had also evolved to try to keep the Bureau from looking like it was interfering with elections. I don't think.
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Dorothy Wickenden
Let's just pause on that for a second because this is still an enormous source of controversy.
- [05:10]
David Grann
Yes.
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Dorothy Wickenden
Among Democrats as well as Republicans.
- [05:14]
David Grann
Yeah. So there are several norms, but one of the important ones is that the Bureau doesn't make announcements about investigations very close to an election for fear of looking like it might influence an election. Now, in this case, for various reasons Comey felt that he needed to do that. And I don't think he did it with any intent to politicize. But there were good reasons why those norms had evolved to keep the bureau from making these kind of announcements.
- [05:44]
Dorothy Wickenden
One of the most extraordinary moments, I thought, concerned his leak, his explanation of how and why he leaked this memo. And he said, you know, he woke up in the middle of the night a few days after being fired and decided that he needed to get his memo about his conversation with Trump out into the public square, thinking, he said, that it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. So that, again, was a very political move.
- [06:08]
David Grann
And I think that gesture can be interpreted two ways. On one level, it shows his savviness. Obviously, he's not some neophyte. It also shows his lack of faith at that point that the Justice Department would be able to conduct an independent investigation, that it had the independence and.
- [06:27]
Dorothy Wickenden
Integrity with his immediate boss being a very close associate of the president.
- [06:35]
David Grann
Yes. And again, Sessions, Jeff Sessions. And this is where there is this inherent tension. When you have a national law enforcement body where the head of it is appointed by the president, which is the Attorney general, how do you try to keep the Attorney General and the president, and not speaking specifically even in this case, but just in general, how do you keep them from doing their bidding? We could look at various examples in the past where that has happened, and obviously that is the concern, and certainly Comey's concern that he was dismissed because of the Russia investigation. So his fear clearly is the Bureau is being politicized in some ways.
- [07:17]
Katie Drummond
What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis, and maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Inter. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative, and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big interview conversations are fun.
- [07:45]
David Grann
I want a shark that.
- [07:46]
Katie Drummond
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid. So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me. One day, at some point, as of yet undefined, in the future, you will Die false. Tell me more. Listen to the big interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [08:28]
Dorothy Wickenden
So let's go back to the early 20th century, when the Bureau was founded. And I want you to talk a little bit about your book, Killers of the Flower Moon, and what it tells us about the early history of the FBI that is directly relevant to what you're talking about right now.
- [08:44]
David Grann
In the 1920s, the Osage Indians of Oklahoma had become the wealthiest people per capita in the world because of oil under their land. And then they began to be systematically and mysteriously murdered one by one, and the case would become one of the FBI's first major homicide investigations. The Bureau was founded in 1908 by President Roosevelt, who wanted to create a national police force, recognizing that as the country became more integrated across jurisdictions, travel became easier, that there was a need to go beyond simply local policing. But from the very outset, there was a great fear what would happen if the government had a national police force. And in fact, when the Bureau was created in 1908, it was kind of done without legislative approval. They kind of circumvented the Congress because they didn't think Congress would approve it. And that tension that's playing out, we would see play out even in those first two decades of the Bureau's history. At the time of the Osage murder case, just before it came to it, the Bureau had just emerged from a colossal scandal with the Teapot Dome, which involved bribes. It involved an Attorney general using the Bureau to surveill politicians who were trying to investigate the administration. And so in 1924, just again, right in the middle of these Osage murder cases, there was a new Attorney General appointed to clean up the Bureau. And he essentially looked at the Bureau as a criminal organization at that point. And he appointed J. Edgar Hoover, who, interestingly enough, he thought would be kind of a reformist, and in some ways early on carried out some of those reforms, but obviously would go on to create great abuses. But at that moment, he was actually very insecure about his power, and he was afraid of a scandal. And he ended up recruiting an old frontier lawman who in many ways embodied the transformation of modern law enforcement. He began his career riding a horse at a time when justice was often meted out by the barrel of a gun and by the.
- [10:50]
Dorothy Wickenden
And his name was White, was it not?
- [10:52]
David Grann
Tom White? Yes. The names are very pinchinesque. And by the time of the Osage murder cases, when Hoover kind of summons him to take over the case and save Hoover's skin. He's trying to learn fingerprinting. He has to file paperwork which he can't stand. And again, these traditions of paperwork, which come back to the Comey memos, really began during this period. I mean, there was this kind of obsessive need to document and file work. Hoover used this case to kind of build up the Bureau to cement his own reputation, and in many ways kind of exploited it. And it showed both the good in the Bureau when it was more kind of a fact based law enforcement agency. And it also showed how then Hoover could corrupt the Bureau later on for political ends.
- [11:34]
Dorothy Wickenden
And then he was in office for what, almost 50 years, serving under, I don't know, half a dozen presidents. What was his relationship like with the presidents he served?
- [11:45]
David Grann
I mean, you need to repeat that nearly five decades. It gave him a almost tyrannical power in many ways because he controlled this very powerful law enforcement body. He collected information in his files about various presidents so that he became immune to oversight, congressional oversight, presidential oversight. And so that gave him enormous power. And then in some ways, he did some remarkable things with the Bureau. But he also was paranoid and a megalomaniac. And he used the Bureau for political ends. He targeted and surveilled illegally Americans. And so many of the norms. And what Comey was struggling with came out of the central question early on, how do we have a national police force that's overseen by a Justice Department? How do we keep it not susceptible to political pressures? Even the things about a 10 year tenure, but limiting and granting that 10 year span was kind of a norm that emerged in response to Hoover.
- [12:50]
Dorothy Wickenden
And Comey, who is, among other things, quite an intellectual and prides himself on that. He mentioned this tortured history in his testimony yesterday, while I think he was describing his first meeting alone with Trump and why he felt he had to assure Trump that the Bureau was not personally investigating him.
- [13:10]
James Comey
Thought it was very important because it was first, true. And second, I was very much about being in kind of a kind of a J. Edgar Hoover type situation. I didn't want him thinking that I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over him in some way.
- [13:24]
Dorothy Wickenden
So what about that, David? What was he alluding to exactly?
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David Grann
So Hoover was a obsessive man of files. He had early on, before he went to the Bureau, worked at the Library of Congress. He had kept and institute in the Bureau a very kind of systematic system of keeping files and reports about cases. But he also kept secret files in his secretary's office. And these files were filled with dirt and gossip and blackmail material about politicians. And, you know, the allegations were that Hoover used this material as leverage over politicians so that he could not be touched. And so that was clearly what Comey was referring to.
- [14:03]
Dorothy Wickenden
Comey used the language of infection a few times. Did you notice that? It seems to reflect his overall concern that the bureau has to inoculate itself against infection of the kind you're talking about.
- [14:15]
David Grann
Comey, I think, is one of the more fascinating individuals in all my years of kind of witnessing Washington, because I guess it's easy to refer to people as Shakespearean. But in many ways, the good things he does and the mistakes he does are kind of of the same piece, a kind of desire to kind of keep this infection out. The bureau needs to be independent, but it cannot be entirely independent either. And that's why the question with the Hillary's emails became so controversial, because norms emerge that the Justice Department has imposed over the last couple decades. And one of those norms was to kind of not make announcements about investigations. I think Comey did that. He was kind of boxed in from some earlier mistakes, and he was at that moment acting independently of the Justice Department because Bill Clinton, in one of the most colossally idiotic moves, he, during the midst of the election season, got on the plane to go see the Attorney General, Loretta lynch, who should have been overseeing Comey. And that was seen as somehow that relationship during the investigation with Hillary's email seemed to be taining it. So, you know, we often argue over what is legal in this country. And so is it abuse of power? Is it obstruction of justice? You know, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know. But what is important is these norms. And because they're norms and not always laws, it's easy to take them for granted. There's a reason why Bill Clinton shouldn't be getting on that plane, even if the conversation was entirely innocuous. And there is an absolute reason why Trump should not be closing the door and asking his attorney General to leave the room to sit down to Trump to talk about a person who possibly is under investigation. These are just things we don't and should not do.
- [16:01]
Dorothy Wickenden
You know, it's interesting thinking about this and your description of the technocrats, you know, fending off the political schemers and where Comey fits in that drama. Yesterday, Senator Angus King of Maine asked how Comey understood Trump's expressed hope that he would drop the Flynn case. And Comey said that he understood it as A directive. And he quoted Henry ii, will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
- [16:25]
David Grann
Yes.
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Dorothy Wickenden
And that's kind of an implic acknowledgement by Comey that he does have this tendency to stir the pot politically.
- [16:35]
David Grann
Yes. And, you know, it's interesting. You know, part of the early bureau in that reform period grew out of progressivism. And progressivism not the way we often think of it as today, but it was a tradition about creating more technocratic institutions, the pursuit of impartial evidence. And those were part of the early efforts to try to reform the bureau, especially after the teapot don't scandal. But part of progressivism was also, and one of its failings as a movement was it also sometimes led the technocrats to think that they were somehow had a certain contempt for democratic processes and they were somehow above it. They thought that their kind of technocratic expertise led them to have a certain superiority. And so that's also a tension about having these kind of technocratic people, which is why, again, oversight is so important. And I, I guess I keep coming back to the importance of institutions functioning in that the struggle to create an effective national law enforcement body has been such an important part of our country and such a troubled part of our country, and one that has evolved over time. It's why it's so important that these norms remain in place and why there be vigorous congressional oversight, because while the bureau should be independent, it shouldn't be able to do whatever the hell it wants to do either.
- [17:54]
Dorothy Wickenden
Do you feel reassuredthis kind of got swept aside in all the events of the last day or two? Trump just nominated Christopher Wray, a white collar criminal defense attorney who previously served under George W. Bush as the new FBI director. Is that a reassuring signal by the president?
- [18:12]
David Grann
I don't know enough about him specifically, but it is encouraging, at least to the extent that some of the other people he was considering nominating were political figures, the very opposite of what the bureau own needs. And so the fact that this is somebody who comes out of law enforcement as opposed to politics, that is an encouraging sign.
- [18:33]
Dorothy Wickenden
Okay, thanks so much, David.
- [18:35]
David Grann
Thank you.
- [18:36]
Dorothy Wickenden
David Grant is a staff writer and the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on newyorker.com feel free to rate and review this podcast on itunes. This podcast is produced by Alex barron for new yorker.com with help from Hannah Wilentz. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [19:14]
Katie Drummond
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director.
- [19:17]
David Grann
I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of Consumer, Tech and Culture.
- [19:21]
Dorothy Wickenden
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspond at Wired. And our show, Uncanny Valley is about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [19:30]
Katie Drummond
And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics.
- [19:39]
David Grann
Right? So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin Doge, or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are.
- [19:47]
Katie Drummond
Affecting Washington and how they affect you. Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [20:00]
David Grann
From PRX.