← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
Web exclusive: This is how a prosecutor of organized crime sees Trump's corruption and how to defeat it
00:45:36
Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade talks with Rachel Maddow about her acclaimed new book, "The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government," in which she draws upon her experience prosecuting fraud and organized crime to understand how to defeat Donald Trump's style of intimidation and inflicting pain on others to dominate them and get what he wants.
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So occasionally in this country we are saddled with a really stiff, stupid name for a really serious thing like Teapot Dome, right? I mean Teapot Dome was actually the most lurid freaking scandal you can possibly imagine with like dead bodies and multi million dollar thefts and the Department of Justice almost collapsing and. But it's called Teapot Dome so it sounds like, it sounds like a little mishap with a nice bit of crockery, right? It happens in medical stuff too, you know, rickets, scurvy, pink eye. They sound like candy bars or something, right? Or like something you'd pay an extra $25 to add to your boba, right? They're really bad. As bizarre as it seems, I think this naming problem also sometimes happens with terrorism. Do you remember for example, the underwear bomber? The underwear bomber. Such a stupid name for such a serious thing. It's Christmas Day 2009. It was a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan. Flight was preparing to land in Detroit when passengers on board the plane hear this loud pop. And then smoke and flames start rising from one passenger's seat. Seat. Specifically from that passenger. It's a 23 year old man on board the plane and he had attempted to ignite explosives that had been sewn into his clothes, specifically sewn into his underwear. Hence the lasting term underwear bomber. Instead of setting off an explosion, which is what he was trying to do, which is what the whole thing had been designed to do, the man succeeded in setting himself on fire on the plane. Passengers grabbed him, flight attendants put out the fire. The plane made an emergency landing in Detroit. So that attempted bombing of a US Bound airliner, a packed US bound civilian plane. It didn't work as an attempted bombing because the bomb didn't work. But when smoke started filling the cabin of that plane and it was forced to make this emergency landing, it was, you know, terrifying. This was a deadly serious thing. This happened eight years after 9 11. And it was the first time since 911 that a terrorist group had come this close to downing a US Passenger jet with hundreds of people on board. That case also ended up being a really important, like, threshold level test for the American justice system. Because when this happened, Christmas 2009, it was just under a year into the presidency of Barack Obama and after the legal and moral and strategic message that the George W. Bush administration had made of its war on terror. After 9 11, the next president, President Barack Obama, had come into office pledging that as long as he was in charge from here on out, terrorism cases would once again be handled in regular civilian courts. There would be no more of the disastrous failed Guantanamo military tribunals that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had insisted on. Now, under the Obama administration, terrorists, including the underwear bomber, would be prosecuted the way accused terrorists had been prosecuted before 911 by a civilian prosecutor, before an Article 3 regular federal judge. This guy would not be martyred and, you know, aggrandized as some great adversary of the United States. He would just be prosecuted as a criminal. And because that attempted bombing happened in the skies over Michigan and because that plane made its emergency landing in Detroit, responsibility for prosecuting that case, responsibility for prosecuting that bomber fell to the federal prosecutor in that region, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. And President Obama had nominated a new U.S. attorney to that post. And that new U.S. attorney had just been confirmed to the Senate. I kid you not. On Christmas Eve 2009, on literally the day before the underwear bomber tried to blow up that plane over Michigan, the US Attorney was confirmed. The previous day, that brand new US Attorney, her first case as US Attorney, that was it. And in prosecuting that terrorism case, she not only saw to it that justice was done in that case, but in so doing, she showed at a very fragile moment, at a very crucial moment, that the American justice system was very much up to the task of prosecuting terrorism. We didn't need to destroy our constitutional system in order to defend it. Our constitutional systems work even for the most serious stuff. That prosecutor in her office methodically investigated and built their case. Over the next nearly two years, the U.S. attorney brought that bomber to trial. The prosecution started to lay out its case in federal court, and then two days in, the bomber decided to plead guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison, and he remains today in prison in a civilian supermax prison as I speak to you right now. For seven years of Barack Obama's two terms in office, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan was a woman named Barbara McQuaid. In those seven years, wasn't just the underwear bombing case, that crucial terrorism case. She just had a remarkable run of really high profile prosecutions. Do you remember the Volkswagen diesel scandal? She's the one who took on Volkswagen when VW was cheating on all the testing of how polluting their cars were. She also took on the powerful mayor of Detroit for using his office as a money making machine for himself and his family and his friends. His name was Kwame kilpatrick. And Barbara McQuaid's office charged him with a sprawling corruption scheme, essentially turning the Detroit City government into a criminal enterprise to enrich himself, using the power of his office to extort contractors to take a cut of city money that they arrested and charged 35 different people in that case, including the mayor and the mayor's dad. Barbara McQuaid and her team spent five months prosecuting that case in court. And in March 2013, they got their verdict.
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Well, good afternoon. My name is Barbara McQuaid. I'm the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Thank you all for coming to hear what we have to say today. But no one can speak louder than the jury who already spoke today. And as I'm sure you have heard, the jury has convicted Kwame Kilpatrick of racketeering, extortion, bribery, fraud, and tax violations. Corruption depends on indifference. Corruption occurs when public officials think no one's watching or no one cares or no one dares to challenge authority. And that culture spreads like poison because people figure, well, if other people are doing it, why shouldn't I get my piece of the piece of. In the Kilpatrick administration, 35 different people thought that they deserved their piece of the pie. It was poison, and it spread throughout City Hall. But when officials and contractors realize that there is a heavy price to be paid for getting their piece of the pie, that changes the risk analysis. We hope that this prosecution sends the message that this community cares and will hold public officials accountable for betraying the public trust. The jury has spoken and they have said, the people of Detroit deserve better, expect better, and demand better.
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The people deserve better, expect better, and demand better. So, As I said, McQuaid was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan for seven years until Donald Trump became president and removed her from office. And. And then Donald Trump commuted Kwame Kilpatrick's sentence. He sprung the former Detroit mayor out of prison 20 years before he was scheduled to get out. Because if there is one thing Donald Trump will pardon you for for sure, it is turning a public office into a personal piggy bank. You know, if you watch me on Ms. Now, if you watch MSNow in general, then you know that after she left the Justice Department in 2017, Barbara McQuaid became a legal analyst on our network. And that was a huge loss for the Justice Department. It has been a godsend for us for years. Barb has been helping us understand everything about the legal system and our Justice Department and crime and punishment in this profoundly corrupt and criminal era in our national politics. But now, I gotta tell you, Barbara McQuaid has written one of the single best books that has been written by anyone, anywhere about the way Trumpism works works. You know how people who, like you see on tv, write books all the time, and most of the books aren't that good. This is not a TV book. This is a real book. It's really good. She writes about the costs that Trumpism is extracting from us as a country, and she writes about how to fix it. Honestly, I gotta tell you, I have read a million books on this subject. Barbara McQuaid's book is better than 99.9% of them. It is impeccably researched. It's with like 1600 plus footnotes to prove it. It is three thorough and incisive. It's very, very well written. And, you know, she's not only observing what's going on and cataloging all of it, including a whole bunch of stuff that I had forgotten about. She's also, she's also done the reading, right? She's done her homework to be able to synthesize in really direct terms what it means. And so, you know, as I'm sure you know, there's a lot of books about Trump's bad behavior in office. And there are also a lot of books, particularly a lot of academic books, about how authoritari authoritarianism works and how resistance to authoritarianism can work. Barbara McQuaid's book is the first book I have read that does a best in class job at combining both of those things. And she adds something totally new to it. She calls on her experience as a really accomplished federal prosecutor to paint a picture of this particular variety of authoritarian governance as something that is that doesn't really have much of an ideology. It's like less ideological, less political even, and more just like crime. She makes a case that specifically Trump's form of governance is a lot like organized crime, where there's a boss and there's crime and everybody kicks up to the boss as part of their crimes. And there's a whole territory full of civilians out there who are basically just there to be stolen from and extorted and intimidated and otherwise victimized. Right. That's us. That's America under the mob style government that Barbara McQuaid explicates here. So listen, I'll be totally honest. I really love Barb. I think she's one of the best people on our air on any subject. I really think she's great. I have a lot of admiration for her. And that means, yes, I would probably say good things about her book, even if it wasn't good. But this one is really, really good. It's going to end up being one of the definitive accounts of Trump's return to power. And when we do get onto rebuilding our government and rebuilding our democracy so it can never happen again, I really think that this book is going to be part of that blueprint for doing that. The book is called the Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob Style Government. It's by Barbara McQuaid. It's one really, really, really good. Barbara McQuaid joins us here next. Stay with us. This message comes from the International Rescue Committee in Lebanon.
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Like the head of a crooked political machine or a criminal organization, Trump uses power not just to lead, but to dominate. He makes threats or applies pain to his targets, forcing them to beg for mercy. And once they accede to his power, he controls them. This is a book about power, how it is acquired, how it is abused, and how we the people can take it back. Barbara McQuaid has written a book that is so much better than it needs to be. Honestly, this is the kind of book that makes me want her to run for president or something, or at least for her to be in charge of the Department of Fixing Stuff, the Department of Redemocratizing the Country. Once we get onto the other side of this authoritarian disaster we have sleepwalked into. I can't speak highly enough of it. It's called the Saving America from the Corruption of a mob style gu. Barbara McQuaid, of course, is a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, teaches at the University of Michigan Law School, and she has just written this, like, shockingly brilliant new book. Barb, thank you so much for being here. I'm so, so glad to be able to talk to you about this.
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B
Oh, gosh, Rachel, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be with you. And gosh, what a great introduction. My mother couldn't have scripted it better herself.
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A
Well, I recognize that I am giving you effusive praise, but I really mean it like, this is a real book. And I really have read a lot of books that purport to do something like this. And you are doing. You're doing it better than anybody. And you are combining a really sophisticated, nuanced, clear understanding of authoritarianism in the world with a really specific recounting of exactly how it's working here. And it's just I've never seen anybody do it that well. Can you just describe to me your impetus for writing it, why you wanted to do it, what you thought you wanted to bring to it that other people hadn't.
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B
Thanks. I think that the way I see what is happening in Trump's America is very equivalent to some of the cases I Prosecuted in the U.S. attorney's office. And it is a way of grabbing power from other people. It is by inflicting pain on other people in an effort to get them to bend and give you what they want. It is about using leverage, rewards, and other kinds of power to control behavior. And it's something we certainly saw in public corruption cases like the Kilpatrick case that you mentioned, it's something we've seen in mob cases. You know, organized crime bosses do the same kind of thing. Elements of fraud, you know, lying to people, telling them what they want to hear so that you can deceive them and take things without their really even knowing that you're doing it. And so through that lens, I really see some comparisons to what President Trump and his allies are doing. And I wanted to try to explain it to the American people. But, of course, I also want to propose some solutions to this thing. Just as we prosecuted these kinds of criminals who were fixing the system, were rigging the system, there's a fix for all of these things. And so I wanted to share those perspectives as well, in hopes that we can get out from under these challenging times in American history to restore that power to the people.
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A
Well, let me ask you about the Kilpatrick case. You open the book sort of very dramatically with this testimony of a Detroit contractor who basically had been a straight businessman. But under Kwame Kilpatrick's corrupt administration in Detroit, this guy lost his city contracts because he wouldn't pay kickbacks. And so then he sort of not, I shouldn't say unavoidably, but he, because of that, became corrupt, too. He also started paying kickbacks because that was the only way that you could be in city business. So that contractor's name is Tom Hardiman. I guess I wanted to ask you, what should he have done instead? Because in my mind, I'm extrapolating from him to, like, ABC News having one of those BS lawsuits brought against them by Trump, or, you know, or Tim Cook at Apple or the Paul Weiss law firm. All these people and entities who think of themselves as not corrupt. But in each case, Trump's way of doing business got them to act corruptly themselves. What's the fix to that? What's the way around that?
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B
Yeah, I think there are two lessons to take away from stories like that of Tom Hardiman, who slowly learned how the game was played in Detroit. Unless you were willing to pay kickbacks, you weren't going to get the business. And he had employees and family members and others relying on him, and he felt the need to get this business, so ultimately did agree to enter into these kinds of corrupt contracts. But I think one of the lessons is let's remember who the real wrongdoer is here. These are victims who ultimately decide to bend because they feel that they don't have any choice. So the real wrongdoer here, of course, is the person with power. Who is extorting these bribes out of people, these kickbacks out of people? That's one lesson. But I think the other is don't go it alone. If you want to just quietly go along, you may think that you've gotten this great deal and things are gonna be fine, but ultimately what happens is the extorter owns you. You can't complain to anybody because to do so would be to confess your own crime. You can't get out from under it because now they're going to keep demanding more. If you think the extortion is as happy with one payoff, you're wrong. They'll keep coming back again and again. It's like the bully who steals your lunch money if you give it to him once he knows you're an easy mark. And so the answer, I think is in collective action. The way Kwame Kilpatrick was ultimately taken down is when some courageous business owners came into the FBI and told their stories. And when we had enough of those stories, we realized these weren't one off people with an axe to grind. And this was a consistent story. We began to investigate and an incredible team of FBI agents, agents from other agencies, federal prosecutors, were able to put together this case. And so I think staying quiet in the shadows is not the way to defeat the bully, the power broker, the extortionist. It is to work together with collective action to stand up to them.
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A
And you know, the, the point that you made at the outset there about not about being clear eyed about the extortionist and that being the real bad guy here, I have to say that hit me like kind of a knife to the heart because I'll just, I'll read from what you said. You said. I have learned from extortion cases I've seen that it is important not to blame the victim. It is essential to remember that the real wrongdoer is the extortionist. But appeasing the extortionist rarely makes them stop squeezing. In fact, it usually just leads to more demands. I mean, the reason that that to me is because I, it sort of felt like it called the question for me. Like, I admit I have definitely wanted to blame the victim in some of these cases, as we have seen, you know, big powerful law firms or big powerful media companies or big powerful companies companies or just big powerful politicians. And all of these people, time and time again, as they are pressured or as they are pushed into behaving in ways they would never think of themselves as, as, as doing. I have wanted to blame them. I, I have seen them and I felt like this was like sort of a good corrective to me to have a little mercy in my heart for those folks while also expecting them to do better.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I think we can have some grace for them, but at the same time, I think they've made poor choices. And as I said, that's sort of the second lesson of all of this. You think that you're gonna, you know, enter into this great deal and all will be well. I mean, just thinking about the law firms, for example, Paul Weiss, some of these very powerful law firms, I'm sure they thought they were getting a great deal. All they've promised and is to provide pro bono legal services to the Trump administration, you know, consistent with his priorities. Now they're going to do pro bono legal services anyway. So they probably thought, hey, this is a great deal. We're only paying something we're gonna do anyway. But of course, the real price was in bending to the President was in saying that, you know, admitting to things they didn't do, offering to pay off a debt that they didn't incur. And of course, then the dominoes all fall. Once these big firms fall others, I think we had eight or nine other law firms line up and say we'll do the same because they didn't want to incur that wrath. I think great credit goes to the four who fought back, filed lawsuits, and so far have prevailed in court.
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A
You also point out though, that the, the, the knock on effect of that was really, really materially consequential. You write, during Trump's first term, when lawsuits were filed against Trump's executive orders, the country's largest and most prestigious law firms were involved in those lawsuits 75% of the time. But in his second term, it's fallen from 75% of the time to 15% of the time. Which means his intimidation of big law firms on big law in general has been successful, I think, to the everlasting shame of the very, very powerful, very wealthy, very self righteous industry that is big law in America. What's the corrective for that?
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B
Well, I think you're correct that Trump was able to sideline them from cases challenging acts of his administration, which was a way of neutralizing their power. One of the things that's already correcting, I think we have seen those law firms lose some lawyers. Damian Williams, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, for example, and some of his colleagues left that firm to go to another firm that did not cave in. I have seen law students change their. The job offers that they've taken, leaving the firms that have caved to President Trump and instead moving on to the firms that fought back. And so I think, you know, in the words of Liz Cheney, your shame will live in history. I think people are going to remember that, and I think it has diminished their standing in the legal profession.
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A
Let me ask you about another mob trope that you really made me think about differently, and that is the Teflon Don idea. So you say that Trump, in his second term, has come to resemble a mob boss. That's kind of the overall theme of the book. But when you cited John Gotti. Right, the Teflon Don, I always thought that the Teflon don moniker and that Teflon reputation was something that was sort of bestowed on Gotti by the press and the public. You make the case that guys like Gotti deliberately cultivated the impression that they are Teflon, that they're untouchable. They go out of their way to make everybody think that they have impunity for their actions. And it's part of their con, essentially. It's part of the way they use corruption and intimidation. How does that work exactly? And how do you see Trump doing that as well?
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It's sort of an invincibility theater. I am going to very brazenly break the law in broad daylight. I'm gonna wear the nicest suits and the most expensive silk t, and I'm gonna walk around and essentially brag that I am above the law. And, you know, I think we see this with respect to President Trump and some of the money grabs that he's making. You know, setting up the $1.7 billion slush fund for his cronies, pardoning the insurrectionists, settling claims with other of his allies, and using the law to go after his enemies. I mean, suggesting that he really is above the law. I also think his name and his face, wherever it goes, has certainly some ego behind it. But I also think it goes to this idea that we see in other authoritarian regimes of the leader is everywhere. Everywhere I look, I see an image of the leader, the leader's image. President Trump's image on the building of the Department of Justice is just a disgusting, vulgar symbol to those of us who've worked there. But I think he is putting his face there to show that he's the boss. He's the chief law enforcement officer. He's in charge. And it creates, I think, a feeling that someone is even more powerful than he really is. Lately there have been signs around Washington D.C. i know you've amplified these about thank you, President Trump for these public works projects. I don't know who paid for those signs to thank President Trump. Probably President Trump. But this idea that he's powerful, he's everywhere, he's omnipresent, creates a feeling that he cannot be defeated. And I think it is designed to intimidate and silence critics. But of course, we have the power to overcome that if we can see through it.
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A
Yeah, seeing through it and mocking it. I mean, one of the things that you identify as not just satisfying but utilitarian is satire, mockery and comedy, both as something that unifies people, brings people together in a sort of non political feeling way, but also can be really important in terms of puncturing that kind of theater. Let me ask you about something that's sort of, sort of related along these same lines. And it's again, another one of these things that I feel like I've read, I've written stuff about this, I've read a million academic things about it, I've thought about it in the context of our country, but I feel like you just put it better than I certainly ever have. And that's the issue of oligarchy. So, you know, recently the President just traipsed off to China, brought a bunch of American billionaires on the plane with him. I couldn't believe it when I heard that he actually stopped in Alaska to pick up one of them, to pick up the Nvidia guy on the way. You know, I just think that you, in this book, in the Fix, you have this really good, succinct explanation of why authoritarians do things like that. Why they make their friends and their family members, but often their friends into billionaires, and why they take existing billionaires, existing rich and powerful people, and they make sure that they make them richer and that they, you know, if they're going to rip off the public, they make sure that they're ripping off the public not only for themselves, but also for their billionaire friends. You just articulate really succinctly that the payoff for the leader in doing that is that then these massively rich people who he has helped, they will then use all of their power and all of their resources to prop the leader up and to keep him in power. We've definitely seen it in Russia, we have seen it in Hungary. We are certainly seeing it here in America right now in spades. It just seems very rational to me. Right. You'd take the person with all the political power, and you'd have him essentially leverage for his project all the people with all the other kinds of power, too. And if those people are unprincipled enough to go along with it, it just almost feels like an unbreakable system. And so the reason I wanted to ask you about it is, given that, what do you think does break a system like that? What is the fix for that?
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B
Yeah, well, I know you wrote about Russian power in Blowout as well. The oligarchs of Russia are an interesting model for all of this. And we've seen the same kind of thing where Vladimir Putin has installed people to lead entire industries. And here we've seen people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg really kowtow to President Trump in his second term for this vicious cycle. How do we break it? Boy, I think one of the things we really have to get our arms around is campaign finance. I think about the way that Elon Musk is able to essentially buy elections for President Trump. We're seeing now the defeat of some of President Trump's political rivals because they're getting money from some of these billionaire allies who are willing to buy races to primary people who have opposed President Trump, people like Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie. We saw it with Liz Cheney. And so how do we stop it? I think one of the things is really trying to get money out of politics. There are some ways we can do it, but the Supreme Court has made it very difficult. Since the case from the 1970s of Buckley vs. Vallejo, they've said that money equals speech when it comes to politics. And then, of course, we had the Citizens United case that said, and that right extends to corporations as well. And so we've got all of this big money in politics that makes it very difficult. I'd really love to see the public push back against that in the name of good governance. I think there are things we can do. We are seeing some states already changing the laws of corporations to say that corporations cannot make political donations, that's one way. But of course, corporations can always reincorporate in other states that are friendlier to that. But that's getting citizens involved in taking back some of our power. Jeanne Shaheen, the senator has proposed a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United, to say that equality in voting matters more than speech in voting. And of course, we could have a Supreme Court with justices who will overturn Citizens United. In my view, it's wrongly decided. And I think it is one of those kinds of cases that could be overturned in good conscience on the bases that courts use to overturn precedent. And that is the way that money has grown astronomically, even in those years, since the early 2010s when that case was decided. The other thing we can do is push back. We saw when Elon Musk tried to win through campaigning and funding in Wisconsin, a Supreme Court race, and failed because voters stood up to that and said no. And so I think, although money has a lot of power in politics, if voters get out and vote, there are more of us than there are dollars of them.
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A
Yeah. And with Musk specifically, the Tesla takedown protests, targeting people demonstrating at Tesla dealerships and really personalizing the issue of what he was doing to the government with Doge and as Trump's top campaign donor, being brought in there in the way that he was, that succeeded in forcing Elon Musk out of the government. And it doesn't mean that that stopped the harm that I think he was doing, but it did materially change, I think the way that otherwise sort of synergistic relationship between him and Trump right at the beginning of this term, it changed the course of that, I believe. Yeah.
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B
You know, political protest is something that some people mock, some people certainly get concerned if it becomes violent or property is damaged. But peaceful protest is incredibly powerful. I think it is what ultimately drove ICE out of Minneapolis when we saw those protests after the killing of Renee Goode and Alex Preddy. Those protests were relentless and they ultimately succeeded. There's an interesting statistic I quote in the book from a researcher and scholar named Erica Chenoweth, who says that if you can get just 3.5% of the population to get out and protest, it can have an incredible effect of taking down a leader. And that is because it is difficult for a leader to have the moral authority when that many people in a country are speaking out. When people are protesting, they are encouraging others on the sidelines maybe to feel empowered that other people feel the same way that they do. Sometimes people say, you know, the only people in a protest are preaching to the choir. Well, you know, sometimes the choir needs to hear a good sermon, too. It can be empowering to realize that there are multiple people, thousands, tens of thousands of people who care about this issue as much as I do. And so never underestimate the power of political protests.
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A
Yeah, I feel like I've. I feel like the American people have sort of given us a clinic on that in the past year and a half.
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You know that thing where you get
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A
an amazing pair of shoes at a really great price and want to tell everyone about it? Yeah. So do we here at Designer Shoe Warehouse. We'll give you something to brag about, like the latest styles from brands you love or the trends everyone's obsessing over, or shoes that make you feel like, well, you. So go ahead, show off a little. Buying shoes that get you and prices that get your budget. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today. DSW let us surprise you Barb about DOJ. I feel like it's not getting enough attention that the Trump Justice Department has, has been just a cascade of failures recently. I mean, for everything that we, I think the country, and particularly former DOJ officials like yourself have been horrified by about, about what they're trying to do at doj. We have just seen them, you know, losing in court over and over again, abruptly dropping cases, getting constantly reamed out by judges. Juries are refusing to indict or convict in their cases. Their court filings are filled with errors and even typos. Justice Department lawyers are now starting to get disciplined or referred for discipline by judges. I just wonder how you see all of that. I mean, should we be glad they're not doing a better job given the type of stuff they are trying to do? Or is there a cost to the country to have them be so incompetent, even when the tasks they're setting themselves to are maybe things that we don't hope they succeed at?
- [37:58]
B
I think that the cost to the country is enormous. For those of us who worked the bulk of our career at the Justice Department, it is gut wrenching to see all of the damage and all of the abuse that is happening at the Justice Department. You know, I don't want to belittle the pain, but it's like in the Harry Potter books when the Death Eaters take over the Ministry of Magic. Like, it's. You can't imagine anything worse. This is, you know, to me, an almost sacred institution. People who work there are fond of saying that it's the only cabinet agency named for a virtue. Certainly the Justice Department has had its problems in the past. It's never been perfect, but it has, at least since the Watergate era, been independent of partisan politics. And this acting attorney general is proudly partisan. He embraces the president as the chief federal law enforcement officer. Now, the Constitution says he can wield that power, but since the 1970s, most of us have agreed that he should not that we should instead uphold the rule of law and keep it separate from partisan politics. With regard to the idea of should we be glad they're not more competent? I mean, we've seen, you know, botched indictments of Letitia James and James Comey, and now a second one that seems destined for the same. I suppose so. But it really is one of these ideas of how an authoritarian surrounds himself with sycophants, people who are selected more for their loyalty than for their competence. And sadly, there are people willing, they're so ambitious that even though they don't have the qualifications to serve in these positions, to take them on by pleasing the boss, by being subservient. You know, I believe we see that in Kash Patel. I believe we see that in Todd Blanche, willing to do whatever it is the boss wants so that I can have this cool job. And it is, I think, going to take us, you know, a generation to restore the trust at the Justice Department that has been lost by the people who are running it today.
- [40:04]
A
You do have some concrete suggestions. It's the sort of double entendre of the title of the book, the Fix, in terms of ways to try to bend things back toward the way they ought to be. Sort of what I think of as redemocratization. And I love the idea, which you float in chapter 12 of the book of a New Rule, essentially, that says if you worked on a presidential president's campaign or if you've been a president's personal lawyer, you cannot be an appointee of the government. I love that idea. And you have other suggestions, like that very concrete stuff about having professional qualification and experience requirements for different jobs in doj, but also elsewhere in government. Would there be constitutional barriers to those kinds of reforms.
- [40:54]
B
So I think with this one, it's permissible. Congress has in the past defined some of the qualifications necessary for people to be selected to various cabinet posts. For example, the Attorney General is supposed to be someone learned in the law. According to federal statute, the person who serves as the Secretary of Defense must be someone who's been a civilian for at least the past seven years. So Congress is permitted to put some restrictions on who can fulfill those cabinet positions. So I think those would be fine. I have tried to avoid anything I would recognize as a constitutional problem. You know, it'd be very tempting to, say, make a law that says the president can't control the Justice Department, but I don't think that would survive constitutional muster. I think that would be a violation of the separation of powers. But I do have some suggestions in there that I think could put some guardrails in place that could make it more difficult to abuse the power of the Justice Department. For example, one of the norms. Norms has been to forbid communications between the White House and the Justice Department about specific cases. Certainly they can talk about priorities. They may need to deconflict certain kinds of things. But the president should never be saying, you know, hey, Pam, why haven't you indicted Jim Comey yet? Like, that would be absolutely out of bounds. And so even if you can't restrict it, perhaps you could put reporting requirements in there. The inspector general has to have reporting of every time there is a contact between the White House and the Justice Department and the general nature of it, or perhaps that reporting would go to one of the Senate or House committees. That could be a way of overseeing it. And then if there appears to be problems or too frequent, there could be oversight hearings. Some of the things that the public probably doesn't know much about that are internal norms at the justice department are the FBI's Domestic Investigations Operations Guide and the Federal Principles of Federal Prosecution. These are like the bible of both the FBI and doj. They're filled with really laudable things like not basing cases on partisan politics, not starting an investigation solely on the basis of First Amendment protected activity. But these are just policies and norms that can be violated. And so my proposal wouldn't be to. To etch them into law, which I think could create a separation of powers problem, but at least to make them regulations in the Federal Register, because that would require to change them a notice and comment period that would garner public attention. And if the public was saying, hey, how come you've changed the rules to now permit partisan politics to influence case decisions. I think that could be politically unpopular, which could cause the people to consider their votes or members of Congress to consider oversight.
- [43:46]
A
Yeah, at least they force them to explain it because we'd have to know about it to ask. I'll tell you, I've got a book coming out at the end of the year that's about kind of the history of the Justice Department and why an authoritarian might want to end the Justice Department.
- [43:59]
B
Yeah, I can't wait to read it.
- [44:01]
A
One of the things that I'm sort of batting around at the end of that book is the idea of changing some of the advice and consent strictures in terms of how you. Who. Who needs to get Senate confirmation and what kind of congressional confirmation you should have to go through in order to get an important and decisive job at the Justice Department. So when. I'll want to talk to you about that later on this year when we get there. Because you've more than anybody else, you got to a lot of the same kind of stuff that I was thinking about in terms of those kinds of reforms. And so I'm interested to get your take on that when that comes out. I'll get you a galley as soon as I got him.
- [44:40]
B
Can't wait.
- [44:43]
A
I'd like to end just by going back to where we began this discussion, Barb, which is the idea of, as you say, mob style government. And I feel like you've been a real mob prosecutor. I have been a mob movie watcher. That's basically my level of expertise on this subject. And I feel like in American mythology about the mafia and about organized crime, we are conditioned to thinking about these guys, thinking about gangsters and mob bosses and, you know, characters like Gotti and Tony Soprano and all the rest of them, whether in fiction or real life, we're used to thinking of them as being done in by their own villainy. Right. That either they're rivals within other parts of the organized crime world take them out, or their way of doing business makes them so many enemies that they create traps of their own kind. Or, you know, like we're used to them burning out on their own terms. And I was really interested in the book that you make the case that MAGA may end itself. That essentially that the MAGA movement may weaken and fall because of its own characteristics. Right. It's corruption, its incompetence, its constant purging, its inability to deliver anything in terms of real policy, real positive changes for the country to the people who are supposed to believe in them. That, that, that the movement will have a mortal lifespan anyway, even if there's no great and strategic and sound opposition to them. I have a. You really made me think about this a lot in terms of whether or not we should be able to count on these guys doing themselves in a little bit, or whether this is something that we, the people, that the rest of the country, the people who are not interested in mob style governance are gonna have to grab and do ourselves. And I couldn't quite tell where you come down in terms of the balance between those things and how much you're expect Trumpism and all its failings to do the work of getting rid of Trump.
- [47:10]
B
Well, I think ultimately Trumpism will fail, whether that's with the Trump presidency or somewhere down the road. And that is for all the reasons we just talked about. If you surround yourself with incompetent people, ultimately you aren't able to make things happen. One of the things Trump himself writes in the Art of the Deal is that you can only con people for so long because after a while they get tired of the hyperbole and they expect you to deliver. And I think when people are paying $5 for a gallon of gas and we're at a war with Iran, they realize they are not getting the things that he had promised them. And so I think that is part of it. But I also think that we the people, have the duty and the responsibility to take our power back. And we have the ability to do that. As I learned in those extortion cases, no one can take your power from you without your giving it voluntarily. And we have the ability to insist on taking it back, not giving it freely, and defending this country for the 250 years it has stood and making sure we don't give in to tyrants.
- [48:08]
A
You gonna run for office, Barb?
- [48:10]
B
No, but I like thinking about these things and giving people ideas so that we can continue to move toward a more perfect union, which is what we've always strived to be.
- [48:20]
A
Well, this, I mean, you say you're not gonna run for anything, and this is therefore not a candidate book. But if you were a candidate, this would be the best candidate. It's really, really an impressive achievement. I'm telling you, I read a million of these things and this is absolutely top tier, best in class. The book is called the Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob Style Government. It's really, really good. Barbara McQuaid is the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Barb, congratulations on this. I really hope that it gets read by a gazillion people. Congratulations on it. Thanks for being here to talk to me about it.
- [49:01]
B
Thanks so much. I really appreciate the chance to share the ideas with others.
- [49:05]
A
Thanks. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of angie. When you use ANGIE for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair done well. Kitchen sink install done well. Deck upgrades done well. Electrical Upgrade done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros from for nearly 30 years. So we know the difference between done and done well. Angie the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your project@angie.com.