Deep Sh!t State: Trump’s Retribution Campaign

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Hey, everybody.
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Welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart.
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We are coming to you, oh, on a beautiful August.
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Mugginess day. The humidity is 180%. It is Wednesday, August 13th.
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What are we doing? It's the middle of August. You
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don't want to hear me. You want to be sitting
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somewhere with your feet in the water, sipping yourself a nice,
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what do they call it there? Aperol spritz? Or perhaps
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maybe knowing our audience a little better, a little Meisterbrow
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and a bong hit. Whatever it is that you want
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to do to get yourselves through these August dog days
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of summer, we're going to be talking about for our
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final episode of the summer, a little thing called the
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deep state. I don't know if you guys are familiar
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with the deep state. It's the part of the state
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that's very, boy, it's embedded in there. You can't get it.
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There's a splinter there. in the heart of the body
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politic that is corrupting all of it. And we've got
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two guests who are gonna be discussing the deep state
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in the Department of Justice and the FBI, one of
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whom actually has worked at the FBI for 16 years
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and was just let go because he was friends with
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someone that the Trump administration doesn't like. And the other
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is a reporter on the Department of Justice on the
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deep state. And so we're gonna dig into it all today.
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And it's the deep state, deep in the heart of August,
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deep in the heart of summer. Let's get right to it.
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We're going to get to our guests. We've got Michael Feinberg,
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who I assume we would say a former FBI agent.
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We've got Devlin Barrett, who is a New York Times
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reporter on FBI, Department of Justice, all these types of issues.
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I want to thank you guys both for joining us here.
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Devlin is, for those of you who are watching this
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on YouTube, in a secure location. I don't know where
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in the bowels of the Department of Justice. Michael Feinberg,
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I'm going to start with you, Michael. Okay. Since you
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are in many ways at the top of the news,
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you just resigned. How long ago? Two weeks ago?
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No, it was– I sent the letter of resignation on.
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June 1st, I believe.
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June 1st, okay.
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It was either May 31st or June 1st, whichever was
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the Sunday of that weekend.
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So you resigned from the FBI rather than, and I'll
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let you tell the story, rather than have to testify
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under oath about your relationship with a friend of yours
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who used to work at the FBI. Yeah.
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Yeah, so it's a little bit more complicated than that.
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I hope so.
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Yeah, I have zero problem whatsoever testifying about anything in
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my life, whether it's social relationships, personal life, professional work, whatever.
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I've nothing to hide or be ashamed of. But Dan Bongino,
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the current individual occupying the office of the FBI's deputy
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director– found out somehow, I'm still not exactly quite sure
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of the mechanics, that I was friends with Pete Strzok.
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Pete Strzok is a former FBI agent who is famously
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on Trump's shit list.
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Yes.
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Along with his, I guess, former girlfriend of his, Lisa Page.
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Is that correct?
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Yes.
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And somehow Dan Bongino discovered this and it was made
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very clear to me through a series of phone calls
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with my special agent in charge that who was in
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direct communication with Bongino, then my career was essentially over.
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I was in for a number of promotions to the
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senior executive service.
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How long had you been with the FBI, Michael, if
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you don't mind me asking?
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16 years.
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So you'd been there 16 years. And in those 16 years,
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I'm assuming you had a lot of commendations. You had
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worked your way up through the process there.
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Yeah, I was what we refer to as a senior leader.
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I was the number two in charge of one of
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our field offices. I've received the FBI's highest investigative commendation,
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the Director's Award for a major Chinese counterintelligence case.
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Now, this was with Huawei? Is that the case that
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you had done?
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Yeah, so I was sort of the overall architect of
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that investigation. I've received a number of commendations from the
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Director of National Intelligence and other FBI awards. My career
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was going very well, and I was sort of on
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a glide path to a senior executive position. When Dan
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Bongino discovered that I was friends with Pete, I was
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told those promotions are never going to happen, that I
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should prepare to actually be demoted, which usually means a relocation.
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And my wife was in her seventh month of a
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high-risk pregnancy. And also that I was going to at
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the very least be polygraphed about the nature of my
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relationship with Pete. And given all that and given what
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was going on in my personal life, as heartbreaking as
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it was, to quote the Stones, I decided to walk
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before they made me run. Right.
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Resigned. How many FBI agents do you think quote the
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stones on their way out the door?
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Probably not that many. I'm guessing although crossfire hurricane, you know,
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the investigation, which sort of started this all does come
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from a jumping Jack flashlight.
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It all goes back to the stones. Devlin Barrett, I'm
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going to ask you to jump in here. So Michael
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basically relaying a story of an exemplary FBI agent, one
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who has been commended at the highest levels of service
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and He is on his path, on a track, moving up.
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This is the kind of institutional knowledge and skill that
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any organization would need to function at the highest level,
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who has been suddenly demoted based on, and I hate
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to throw this back, but some sort of middle school,
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you're friends with a kid that we don't like. So
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now we're going to remove you from law enforcement. Devlin,
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how insane- Not to pejoratize the question. How insane is this?
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This is a problem that exists now that has not
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existed in the FBI in the entire post-Watergate era. Like
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what you're seeing, Mike's case is an important example, but
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there are lots of other important examples where senior or
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low-level FBI agents get letters saying, under the president's constitutional authority,
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you're out.
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These letters are from Kash Patel, who is the head
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of the FBI, or Dan Bongino, who is the deputy?
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Because in Michael's case, it was Dan Bongino and the
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other are these usually from.
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Cash patel i've seen both versions i've seen some from
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cash and i've seen some from bongino um these fly
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in the face of civil service laws these fly in
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the face of how the the rules have always worked
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at the bureau it.
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Is it is so cute it is so cute to
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me that you would you would say hey this is
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This is civil service.
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Right. But here's why it matters. Right.
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Like, yeah.
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All due respect to Mike. Like, it's not really about
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Mike's career. It's about all the other agents at the
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bureau who see what happens to Mike and are and
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now have to worry. Wait, if I catch a case
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that like pisses somebody at headquarters off, am I like,
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I'm not just in trouble.
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I'm done.
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And to be to be clear, like Mike didn't catch
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such a case. Mike just knows a guy socially that
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they don't like. That's a different issue. But the lesson
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that keeps these firings, I often have this discussion with
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people who are like, look, so they're firing federal workers.
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There's a lot of people in this country who would say, good,
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fire more federal workers. We don't care. But here's the
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thing about firing federal workers. Whatever you think the size
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of the federal government should be, whatever you think the
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size of the FBI should be, it's important for these
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institutions to have some walls around them so they can
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do their jobs and do difficult things. Well, difficult things
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like investigate corruption, difficult things like investigate spies. And if
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what you're doing in these firings is you are sending
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a message to the workforce, not Mike, the people who
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are still there, that if you cross the people who
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are running the show, if you cross them, you will,
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your career is dead.
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Well, I think it's also a question of, you know, look,
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any organization has when a new administration comes in, there's
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going to be a different set of metrics that are
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going to go for promotions or for demotions. There's going
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to be a different culture that's been instituted. I think
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the question here is that these people aren't being fired
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for incompetence. They're not being fired for bloat. Let's say it's,
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you know, organizational bloat. They are being fired vindictively based
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on through no fault of their own, that they worked
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on cases that the present administration thinks they shouldn't have
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worked on. Would that be correct? Yeah.
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I mean, they're firing people for a lot of different reasons,
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but that is one of the primary reasons they are
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firing people.
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Michael, are you still in touch with, you know, when
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Devlin talks about this isn't so much about the people
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who've been fired, although I think, you know, for the
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people that are fired, they probably feel that way. But
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Are you in touch with people who say, yeah, this
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changes the way we do our or can do our jobs?
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Oh, absolutely.
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It's been really interesting in a very sorrowful way for
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me to go through this process because I'm in this
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odd situation where in the week or two after I left,
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I lost 90% of my close friends. I'm talking about
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people who are at my wedding. I'll explain.
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I'll explain.
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People who are at my wedding, people who are at
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my bachelor party, people with whom I vacationed, celebrated the
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holidays with, they're afraid to be associated with me now.
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They've got mortgages. They've got tuition payments. They've got families
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they need to take care of. They can't afford to
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get fired simply because we're friends. With the spate of
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polygraphs and weird social First Amendment Association oversight that's going on,
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they're really afraid to be in touch with me. But
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at the same time, I'm getting contacted over Signal or LinkedIn.
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Oh, by Pete Hegseth giving you details.
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Of the next– very anomalous situations with ambiguous authorities in
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which they're being told to do things they're not entirely
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comfortable with.
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Without giving away names or necessarily how that goes, but
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when you say anomalous situations, can you be more specific
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on that? Yeah.
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I'll just pull one from the news in the past
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few days. Like, It is not normal for FBI special
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agents to be doing street patrols in the District of Columbia.
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It's only happened once in history. That was also during
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the first Trump administration, during the civil unrest and protests
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that occurred after the death of George Floyd. This is
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not something FBI agents are trained to do. It's not
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something they have practice with. It's not something they really
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have a lot of legal authorities or a use of
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force continuum to which they can look to moderate how
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they act with the public. It's just not normal in
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the scope of American history to have them doing this.
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And a lot of them are really concerned. All right,
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we get that we're being ordered to do this now.
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But eventually, assuming democracy does not collapse, which I think
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is an open question, like there's going to be a
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change in administration or there's going to be a change
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in congressional minorities, majorities, and there's going to be oversight
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hearings or inspector general investigations. And what's going to happen
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to the people who are doing things that are clearly
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going to be politically disfavored by the next administration?
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Well, that gets us into– Devlin, that's– look, we've talked
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a little bit about– You know, a new administration comes in,
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they fire people that worked on cases that they disfavored,
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and it puts a chilling effect on there. Are we now, Devlin,
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entering a cycle, a sort of Maoist cycle of purges
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and retribution on the change of every administration? Or is
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this so particular to this one administration who's, I mean,
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let's face facts, the fuel at the The nuclear core
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of this administration is vengeance and vindictiveness. Right.
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This is a lot about retribution. And this is a
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lot about going after the institutions that Trump blames for
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the case against the cases against him. You know, I
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think one of the ways to understand what's happening right
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now is this is actually a very human story, which
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is I don't know a single person who's ever had
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their home searched by detectives, agents, whatever. no matter what
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the evidence showed, I don't know a single person who's
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gone through that experience and does not come out of
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it deeply, deeply, deeply bitter against the people who did that.
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And what you're seeing is, I think, a very human
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retribution campaign against all of the people that he's mad
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at or even thinks he's mad at.
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I think that's the nicest way I've ever heard that
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put in terms of excusing. But I would suggest that
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Trump his original before anybody had ever searched his house, uh,
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was a locker up guy. He gave speeches in 2015,
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like he wanted to jail political opponents. He wanted to
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be the strong man. He always seems to have admired.
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He used to talk about Victor Orban and Erdogan and Putin.
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Is this really a question of a guy who's been,
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you know, emotionally scarred by, law enforcement overreach because it
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doesn't feel that way. Hey, everybody. And I know most
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of you are probably just fast forwarding through the pod
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to get to these ad reads because they are delightful
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and you love them. And today's episode is brought to
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00:18:08.410 --> 00:18:10.369
you by Ground News. If you didn't fast forward through
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the podcast to get to the Ground News, then you
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00:18:12.490 --> 00:18:14.710
don't know what you're talking about. Ground News is this website.
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and it's an app. And they're on a mission. They're
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giving readers an easier, more data-driven way to read the news.
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00:18:21.069 --> 00:18:24.430
So they, unlike the way that I read in a
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00:18:24.569 --> 00:18:28.109
completely discombobulated fashion, they will organize articles from around the
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world by story and provide breakdowns of political bias to
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help you understand what you're reading. And we all know
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00:18:33.819 --> 00:18:36.440
most of the headlines out there designed to provoke what
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we like to call fear and anger. You got to
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get the reptile brain engaged. You got to get the clicks,
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my brothers. Well, rest assured, ground news is the response
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00:18:48.130 --> 00:18:52.640
to that. Prioritizing media literacy, helping readers sort through the noise,
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00:18:52.700 --> 00:18:54.460
get to the heart of the news. It is a
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00:18:54.559 --> 00:18:57.599
great resource to get clear information and help you form
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00:18:57.640 --> 00:19:02.180
your own, oh, God bless them, independent opinions. What the?
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00:19:03.440 --> 00:19:06.299
So no more blaming your bad opinions on me or
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00:19:07.700 --> 00:19:14.809
being ill-informed. Go to groundnews.com slash Stuart. Subscribe for 40%
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off the unlimited access Vantage subscription that brings the price
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down to about $ 5 a month. Well worth it. That's groundnews.com
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00:19:22.630 --> 00:19:26.200
slash Stuart or scan the QR code on screen.
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So two things.
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Yeah.
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One, I joke with sources all the time. It is
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not 2025. It is 2016 part nine. We are still
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trapped on the hamster wheel of 2016 politics. And I
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don't know when we're getting off it. So that's one.
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I take the point. but I will say most of
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the people I cover and talk to, and I'd be
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very curious what Mike's thinks of this. Most of the
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people I talk to and cover say that this administration
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is profoundly different in how it approaches and manages the
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justice department than the first Trump administration, that what is
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going on now is deeply, deeply different and more damaging
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than what happened in the first one. And that's not
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to say the first one was all like sunshine and flowers,
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but this is different and this is much more alarming
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to a lot of the career agents and prosecutors who've
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been through both.
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Michael, you were there for both of those. What's your thought?
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Yeah.
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So I think the main difference is that during the
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first Trump administration, you still had institutionalists being appointed to
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cabinet level positions. Jeff Sessions had been a U.S. attorney.
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William Barr had been an attorney general beforehand. They were
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certainly more aggressive on the right-wing side of things, and
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they were larger believers in the unitary executive theory than predecessors.
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But they still had a respect for the norms largely
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of the Justice Department. Say what you will about the
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Federalist Society– when Leonard Leo was picking nominees for positions,
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you knew they'd at least been through certain schools, held
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certain jobs, gone through– they'd trod a certain path that
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made them familiar with the organs of US government and
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they had a knowledge of the history of those particular
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buildings and cabinet departments. Now, you've got a criminal defense team. Yeah,
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Emil Bove and Todd Blanch were AUSAs. That's not really
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a high-ranking position at DOJ.
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Well, they were more personal lawyers for Donald Trump.
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Yeah, they were his criminal defense team. I mean, same
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with– I don't think Pam Bondi ever held a federal
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government position. These are people who have no reverence for
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the norms and traditions of the Robert F.
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Kennedy building. These are people who.
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View- Let's talk about that. Let's do a defense of
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norms and traditions.
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I will happily do that.
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Because in my mind, I hear this a lot about
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these guys are violating norms and traditions. That's not, by definition,
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a bad thing. And we can talk about the FBI. Look,
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there is a strong history within the FBI. Obviously, J.
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Edgar Hoover most famously weaponized it, not necessarily for a
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particular executive, but for J. Edgar Hoover. So he used it,
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you know, they just released the MLK files where it
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was very clear the FBI attempted to drive him to
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madness and suicide based on that. It's not as though
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even the reports about the Russia investigation into Trump or
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Comey's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails are rife with. all
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kinds of instances of overreach. So the question isn't necessarily
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that the norms and traditions are so pristine. It's that
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this is abjectly corrupt and personal. Wouldn't that be the case?
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I would take slight issue with your characterization.
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Somebody's got to. Yeah.
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Just, I think the narrative you just provided.
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Yeah. is 100% true basically up until 1974, 75, and 76.
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And then in the aftermath of Watergate, the FBI and
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the intelligence community is subject to a number of congressional hearings,
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most famously the Church Committee.
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Right.
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But also the Pike and Rockefeller commissions. And out of that,
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you get a new statutory framework and you get a
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new tradition of independence of the Justice Department from the
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White House, which I really think does hold for the
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next roughly 40 or 50 years. But a lot of
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it's not codified. The notion that presidents don't take a
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personal role in prosecutorial decisions or sentencing memorandums or things
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of those nature, it's really held, but it's entirely by
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a respect for the norms that happened after Watergate and
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a recognition by– largely responsible presidents and officials, regardless of
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their politics, that Watergate was.
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A bad thing.
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It's not something we want to repeat.
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And that's just gone. That's just gone.
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Talk about that framework. Yeah, because I want to talk
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about that framework that was established and whether or not
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it was followed through. And go ahead.
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So here's how I would characterize it. And I would
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actually kind of disagree with both of you a little
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bit in this sense. Hey, what the heck? Since 2016,
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there has been this long running political debate about the
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rule of law, right? We have to uphold the rule
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of law. We have to protect the rule of law.
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And I think the mistake that a lot of liberals
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made in sort of talking about and defending the Justice
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Department and the FBI, which are not perfect places, they
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make mistakes. But they are ideals that people try to uphold.
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And in talking about the rule of law, the argument
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was always made. The rule of law is above politics.
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The rule of law protects the political system. And I'll
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be honest, as someone who has been covering this world for,
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you know, since the late 90s, I just never have
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believed that to be true. The political system is above
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and protects the rule of law. And I think what
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you are actually seeing and what we've been experiencing through
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this whole arc, whenever you want to start the clock,
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is that the rule of law system, these institutions tried
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to assert dominance over the political system. And the political
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system said, no, we will not allow that. And so
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what you have now is you have a Congress that
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is not going to save the FBI. You have a
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Congress that is not going to save the Justice Department.
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Go back to this, Devlin. So you say that the
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justice system tried to assert dominance over the political system.
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In what sense?
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So look at it. I don't mean they deliberately set
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out to do that. What I'm saying is if you
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look at what Comey did, not to harp on an
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old thing, but if you look at what Comey did
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in 2016, Comey had an outsized influence on that election.
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And I think the sort of behavioral lesson that everyone
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took from that.
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Now to go back, to give context to that, I
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think what you're referring to is in the, so there,
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there's the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Uh, there's the thought
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that Russia has, I mean, this, this is sort of,
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if we go back and unravel the whole original sin
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of this story arc, at least, uh, it, it kind
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of begins with the meetings at Trump tower, uh, where
447
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supposedly Russian, uh, influencers, agents said, or we have information
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on Hillary Clinton, or we'll get information, or they were
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asked by the Trump administration to get information. And this
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has kicked off this cycle, which goes into Trump has
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a server in the basement where he's connected to banks,
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which turns out not to be true. The Steele dossier,
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which turns out to be filled with falsehoods. But ultimately,
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the real lever moment that you're talking about, Devlin, is
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a few weeks before the election, Comey says, I'm reopening
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an investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails and her numbers plunge
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three to four percentage points immediately.
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Correct.
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Would that be accurate? Yes.
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And I think that essentially opened Pandora's box for everything
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that has happened since. That's my whole theory of the case.
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Michael, in terms of being at the FBI in that moment,
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as Devlin is talking about, how aware is the rank
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and file about this email investigation, the Russian... What is
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the conversation around all these issues that's going on in
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the FBI at 2015, 2016?
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So, it's a little difficult for me to generalize because
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at that time, I came to headquarters as a supervisor
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in the counterintelligence division in the end of 2015 when
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a lot of this stuff was going on. And as
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a result, like.
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The people who were working on the Hillary Clinton email investigation,
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the people who were working on the Russia investigation in
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its really nascent stages, these were all friends of mine.
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These are the people I socialized with, the people I
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carpooled with, the people with whom I got beers after
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work or coffee during the workday.
478
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How big is this? I mean, give us a sense
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of how big this system is.
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It's huge. By virtue of these sort of social connections
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and the people with whom I worked, I had inklings
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of what was going on. But despite what the public
483
00:29:19.029 --> 00:29:22.099
perception is, it's not like the entire FBI or even
484
00:29:22.119 --> 00:29:27.859
all of headquarters– was aware of every step in these cases.
485
00:29:28.460 --> 00:29:31.500
They were pretty locked down. Like I said, I had
486
00:29:31.660 --> 00:29:34.569
inklings because I knew people, but they weren't giving me
487
00:29:34.650 --> 00:29:38.390
details on a day-to-day basis remotely of anything that was
488
00:29:38.450 --> 00:29:43.779
going on. So, most of the FBI, certainly everybody in
489
00:29:43.819 --> 00:29:47.640
the field offices outside of DC and everybody outside of
490
00:29:47.660 --> 00:29:52.880
the counterintelligence division at headquarters was not really tracking. We
491
00:29:52.960 --> 00:29:56.880
all knew that the Clinton email investigation was occurring because
492
00:29:56.960 --> 00:30:00.440
that was a matter of public record. The Russia investigation,
493
00:30:00.519 --> 00:30:05.359
people forget, was pretty locked down until after the election,
494
00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:09.609
or at least until after the intel community assessment about
495
00:30:09.680 --> 00:30:16.289
Russian interference came out. These investigations are what we would
496
00:30:16.329 --> 00:30:20.970
call restricted, which means I can't even go into FBI
497
00:30:21.029 --> 00:30:24.230
systems and look things up if I'm not a member
498
00:30:24.269 --> 00:30:27.509
of the case team. They did a really good job
499
00:30:27.990 --> 00:30:32.589
of locking down the details of the Clinton email investigation
500
00:30:32.609 --> 00:30:35.750
because everybody knew it was going on because the Justice
501
00:30:35.789 --> 00:30:39.059
Department had announced so. It was a public referral that
502
00:30:39.190 --> 00:30:45.029
originally led to the opening. The Russia investigation– We knew
503
00:30:45.089 --> 00:30:48.710
there was something going on because there were these previously
504
00:30:48.869 --> 00:30:51.970
unused rooms that now had people going in and out
505
00:30:52.009 --> 00:30:55.009
of them, and people were pulled from their original assignments
506
00:30:55.069 --> 00:30:57.990
to go sit other places. So we knew there was
507
00:30:58.069 --> 00:31:01.119
something in the air, but we had no idea what
508
00:31:01.150 --> 00:31:05.740
it was. The fact that there was an investigation into
509
00:31:06.539 --> 00:31:10.660
members of the Trump campaign and potential connectivity to the
510
00:31:10.720 --> 00:31:15.640
Russian intelligence services was not something the general workforce knew
511
00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:16.019
at all.
512
00:31:16.900 --> 00:31:17.099
All right.
513
00:31:17.119 --> 00:31:20.609
So Devlin, you know, what are the rules in place?
514
00:31:20.619 --> 00:31:25.589
So this is all taking place, uh, that certain members
515
00:31:25.650 --> 00:31:28.710
of the FBI are off on the Hillary Clinton investigation.
516
00:31:29.150 --> 00:31:36.279
Certain members of the FBI are simultaneously investigating, uh, connections
517
00:31:36.359 --> 00:31:42.339
between the Trump campaign and, and Russia, uh, You just
518
00:31:42.380 --> 00:31:46.380
said you don't really buy the idea that politics and
519
00:31:46.779 --> 00:31:50.269
law enforcement are these two separate entities, but that law
520
00:31:50.289 --> 00:31:54.109
enforcement kind of inserted itself into this political scene. And
521
00:31:54.190 --> 00:31:58.369
this is the blowback from that. Is that what's happening
522
00:31:58.410 --> 00:32:00.529
in that moment? Yeah.
523
00:32:00.609 --> 00:32:07.869
I mean, look, I think the public sort of election turmoil,
524
00:32:07.910 --> 00:32:13.500
let's say, that the FBI created or participated in in
525
00:32:13.500 --> 00:32:16.539
2016 was really about Clinton email, right? Because most of
526
00:32:16.579 --> 00:32:20.200
the details, most of our understanding of the Russia investigation
527
00:32:20.460 --> 00:32:24.089
prior to the election wasn't known to the public at
528
00:32:24.130 --> 00:32:28.150
that time. We could see little bits and pieces, but
529
00:32:28.309 --> 00:32:29.990
I think in some ways the public was even more
530
00:32:30.029 --> 00:32:33.670
in the dark than Mike was in terms of like
531
00:32:33.789 --> 00:32:37.230
what this Russia investigation was about until well after the election.
532
00:32:39.529 --> 00:32:42.670
I think, like I said, no institution is perfect. There
533
00:32:42.730 --> 00:32:46.430
were significant errors of judgment made in, I would say,
534
00:32:46.630 --> 00:32:51.190
both the Russia investigation and the Clinton email investigation. And
535
00:32:51.670 --> 00:32:54.349
they are both sort of cautionary tales in why it
536
00:32:54.410 --> 00:32:58.309
is very dangerous to pick up a radioactive, highly political
537
00:32:58.450 --> 00:33:02.599
presidential campaign related investigation and expect to come out of
538
00:33:02.630 --> 00:33:07.009
that unscathed. I think the FBI leadership in that moment
539
00:33:07.150 --> 00:33:10.609
misjudged how much credibility it had with the American people
540
00:33:11.410 --> 00:33:15.470
and misused its position at key moments, particularly on the
541
00:33:15.509 --> 00:33:18.609
announcement of the Clinton email case. But at the end
542
00:33:18.630 --> 00:33:22.730
of the day, you need a good, well-functioning FBI. At
543
00:33:22.769 --> 00:33:25.210
the end of the day, you need a good, well-functioning
544
00:33:25.289 --> 00:33:28.920
Justice Department. And I think what you're seeing now As
545
00:33:28.960 --> 00:33:31.869
we come to like more and more iterations of this
546
00:33:32.069 --> 00:33:36.529
political fight around DOJ, you're seeing a less and less
547
00:33:36.630 --> 00:33:39.650
functional version of those institutions. And the joke I always
548
00:33:39.670 --> 00:33:42.369
have made is like, look, I cover federal law enforcement.
549
00:33:43.150 --> 00:33:45.609
If I'm on the front page of the paper on
550
00:33:45.690 --> 00:33:49.160
any particular day, you know, that's just a regular day.
551
00:33:49.839 --> 00:33:51.660
If what I cover is on the front page of
552
00:33:51.700 --> 00:33:55.180
the paper, maybe two different stories, maybe three different stories
553
00:33:55.220 --> 00:33:59.069
the same day, like the country's got a problem. That
554
00:33:59.109 --> 00:34:01.210
is not a good place for the country to be
555
00:34:01.289 --> 00:34:03.609
in if what I do for a living is that
556
00:34:03.690 --> 00:34:06.170
front and center to sort of the public discussion of
557
00:34:06.230 --> 00:34:08.579
what's happening in this country. And we've been in that
558
00:34:08.619 --> 00:34:09.840
situation now for years.
559
00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:19.119
All right, folks. We're in the middle of summer. And
560
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I know you're probably throwing a lot of your money
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down on what you call sunscreen, maybe a little shark repellent,
562
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maybe one of them funnel hats. to wear down on
563
00:34:28.860 --> 00:34:33.340
the boardwalk. And of course, overpriced wireless bills. Big Mobile,
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who shall not be named, is ruining your summer. They're
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taking the fun out of it. And that's why, da-da-da-da,
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00:34:41.150 --> 00:34:43.389
you make a little switch to Mint Mobile. With Mint,
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Speeds may slow above $ 35. gigabytes on unlimited plan taxes
580
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and fees, extra cement mobile for details. The strange thing
581
00:35:38.489 --> 00:35:41.550
is Devlin, and we'll get to sort of where Michael
582
00:35:41.590 --> 00:35:45.090
then fits into that is without any kind of a
583
00:35:45.170 --> 00:35:49.659
reckoning over how the justice department and the FBI handled
584
00:35:49.699 --> 00:35:53.380
those radioactive cases in 2015 and 2016, there was no real,
585
00:35:53.699 --> 00:35:57.289
you know, church committee. There was no memorandum that went
586
00:35:57.389 --> 00:36:00.409
out that talked about the various things. It was Comey
587
00:36:00.449 --> 00:36:02.369
came out and wrote a book about how he was
588
00:36:02.429 --> 00:36:06.690
wronged and all these different things. It wasn't addressed. What
589
00:36:06.730 --> 00:36:09.690
the Trump administration is doing now with Bongino and Patel
590
00:36:10.010 --> 00:36:15.099
for their audience, for the MAGA audience, is the corrective.
591
00:36:15.559 --> 00:36:20.579
What we're seeing now is, you know, phony news is
592
00:36:20.699 --> 00:36:25.679
news that hurts Trump. A corrupt media DOJ and FBI
593
00:36:25.800 --> 00:36:29.360
is a DOJ and FBI that investigates Trump. It's all
594
00:36:29.420 --> 00:36:34.119
now just related not to any norms, not to any memoranda,
595
00:36:34.300 --> 00:36:38.989
not to any best practices. Everything in our government is
596
00:36:39.050 --> 00:36:42.570
now related to one man. It's as though our government
597
00:36:42.670 --> 00:36:47.510
is a subsidiary of the Trump organization. Is it not, Devlin?
598
00:36:48.309 --> 00:36:50.820
I think it is. And I think that that works
599
00:36:50.860 --> 00:36:52.940
in two ways. One, that has long been essentially a
600
00:36:52.980 --> 00:36:56.260
conservative argument about executive power, right? There are ways in
601
00:36:56.300 --> 00:36:59.360
which what Trump is doing fits into a broader argument
602
00:36:59.400 --> 00:37:02.239
that conservatives have made in this country for years. But
603
00:37:02.280 --> 00:37:04.110
there are some parts of this that are unique to
604
00:37:04.230 --> 00:37:08.469
Trump's desire for total control and Trump's desire for revenge
605
00:37:08.489 --> 00:37:13.150
and retribution. And, you know, I was saying when the D.C.
606
00:37:13.230 --> 00:37:15.840
takeover of the, when the federal takeover of the D.C.
607
00:37:15.880 --> 00:37:18.559
police force happened, you know, one of the things I
608
00:37:18.639 --> 00:37:20.800
said to a colleague is like, look, And many days
609
00:37:20.840 --> 00:37:22.929
he tries to be the mayor of the United States.
610
00:37:22.989 --> 00:37:27.730
He is a incorrigible micromanager in that sense. And I
611
00:37:28.449 --> 00:37:31.869
think there are ways in which these institutions were not
612
00:37:31.949 --> 00:37:35.460
designed for that. These institutions don't work well in that environment.
613
00:37:35.500 --> 00:37:38.139
I think the FBI is certainly one of them. You've
614
00:37:38.179 --> 00:37:41.519
got just to Mike's point about, you know, agents being
615
00:37:41.559 --> 00:37:44.679
out on the street, you know, lost in all this
616
00:37:44.719 --> 00:37:47.429
is like agents don't carry tasers, like forget the training
617
00:37:47.489 --> 00:37:50.320
for a second. If an agent encounters a problem on
618
00:37:50.340 --> 00:37:54.159
the street, one, most of those agents have never done
619
00:37:54.300 --> 00:37:57.280
street law enforcement and they have one tool at their
620
00:37:57.320 --> 00:38:01.550
disposal and that's a gun. That is not smart. That
621
00:38:02.210 --> 00:38:04.630
has risks with it. Now, I think FBI agents are
622
00:38:04.650 --> 00:38:07.610
pretty smart. I think FBI agents understand what they don't
623
00:38:07.670 --> 00:38:09.929
know and are careful in that way, most of them.
624
00:38:10.530 --> 00:38:14.500
But the way these institutions are now being used at
625
00:38:14.539 --> 00:38:17.500
Trump's direction are not the ways they were designed to
626
00:38:17.539 --> 00:38:19.579
be used. And there are risks in that that I
627
00:38:19.679 --> 00:38:21.630
don't think are immediately obvious to the public.
628
00:38:22.429 --> 00:38:26.969
Is that, Michael, is that the worry for you with those? Like,
629
00:38:27.010 --> 00:38:29.590
for instance, you're a guy who is you've worked on
630
00:38:29.630 --> 00:38:34.179
all these cases, espionage cases with China. You speak Mandarin.
631
00:38:34.840 --> 00:38:37.599
And by the way, let's be clear with the audience.
632
00:38:38.320 --> 00:38:41.019
Michael is not a dyed in the wool, bleeding heart
633
00:38:41.079 --> 00:38:43.280
liberal that's been removed for his things. You were a
634
00:38:43.380 --> 00:38:46.929
member of the Federalist Society of Northwestern. Consider yourself a conservative,
635
00:38:46.949 --> 00:38:51.630
a constitutional conservative, which is, I think at this point,
636
00:38:51.730 --> 00:38:58.500
a relatively unique creature. But is that your concern that
637
00:38:58.780 --> 00:39:04.539
he's basically using really specialized tools as hammers?
638
00:39:05.559 --> 00:39:08.510
I have a lot of concerns. That is certainly one
639
00:39:08.550 --> 00:39:13.619
of them. Devlin is very correct. The FBI– I mentioned
640
00:39:13.639 --> 00:39:15.800
this earlier, but I realized I should probably explain what
641
00:39:15.840 --> 00:39:17.400
I mean by it because a lot of people in
642
00:39:17.420 --> 00:39:20.599
the audience have never worked in law enforcement. If you
643
00:39:20.679 --> 00:39:26.030
are a patrol officer for a state or local police department,
644
00:39:26.469 --> 00:39:28.690
you have what's called the use of force continuum.
645
00:39:28.710 --> 00:39:28.809
Right.
646
00:39:30.050 --> 00:39:34.449
The person you're talking to punches you, you can maybe
647
00:39:34.530 --> 00:39:37.590
use a chemical agent. If they continue to fight you,
648
00:39:37.650 --> 00:39:41.260
you could escalate to a baton or a taser. Those
649
00:39:41.300 --> 00:39:43.849
may not be the exact examples, but it's like there
650
00:39:43.889 --> 00:39:45.070
are steps you can take.
651
00:39:45.090 --> 00:39:45.929
Rules of engagement.
652
00:39:46.230 --> 00:39:46.730
Exactly.
653
00:39:47.349 --> 00:39:53.469
The FBI, because traditionally we're only dealing with our subjects
654
00:39:53.550 --> 00:39:57.750
when we're doing an arrest or a court-ordered search or
655
00:39:57.769 --> 00:40:02.829
an interview, we don't have that. We have a set
656
00:40:02.869 --> 00:40:05.789
of rules for what to do if our life is threatened.
657
00:40:06.710 --> 00:40:07.070
Okay.
658
00:40:07.329 --> 00:40:13.139
But we don't carry tasers. it's pretty rare to carry
659
00:40:13.179 --> 00:40:15.090
a baton or a chemical agent.
660
00:40:15.530 --> 00:40:16.309
You have a Glock.
661
00:40:17.250 --> 00:40:20.789
And if there is an imminent threat to your life
662
00:40:21.190 --> 00:40:25.269
or a civilian's life, you're authorized to use it. But
663
00:40:26.250 --> 00:40:32.019
we're not trained for dealing with protests in the street
664
00:40:32.360 --> 00:40:34.800
or crowds of people getting unruly.
665
00:40:35.500 --> 00:40:37.679
Well, even a chain of command, Michael, I'm just curious.
666
00:40:37.820 --> 00:40:42.929
Now we're just talking– you know, logistically. So let's say
667
00:40:42.929 --> 00:40:47.619
500 FBI agents are deployed onto the streets of Washington, D.C.
668
00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:51.840
in support of maybe National Guard, which has also been deployed,
669
00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:57.119
or maybe Metropolitan Police, which are, I think, normally deployed.
670
00:40:57.460 --> 00:41:01.519
What is the chain of command? Who would your, is your,
671
00:41:02.400 --> 00:41:05.199
I guess, authority still Kash Patel?
672
00:41:05.599 --> 00:41:11.469
So it's weird. And When we very suddenly were ordered
673
00:41:11.530 --> 00:41:15.920
into the streets in 2020, that was a question a
674
00:41:16.199 --> 00:41:19.760
lot of us were asking. What is our statutory authority
675
00:41:19.820 --> 00:41:24.179
for doing this? What are the legal violations we're investigating?
676
00:41:25.829 --> 00:41:28.590
We were just sort of told, and never in writing,
677
00:41:29.670 --> 00:41:32.769
that the Attorney General of the United States has authorized
678
00:41:32.809 --> 00:41:36.010
you to do this. We were deeply uncomfortable with that.
679
00:41:39.360 --> 00:41:44.940
The only thing that really kept us within the boundaries
680
00:41:44.980 --> 00:41:49.909
of what's acceptable in American civic culture is, frankly, the
681
00:41:49.989 --> 00:41:53.829
good judgment of the squad supervisors. I'm not just saying
682
00:41:53.849 --> 00:41:55.789
that to puff myself up because I was one at
683
00:41:55.829 --> 00:42:00.369
the time, but you had squads of agents led by
684
00:42:00.409 --> 00:42:05.610
a supervisor walking the streets in DC. Those supervisors were
685
00:42:05.639 --> 00:42:10.400
making judgment calls in every tricky situation about how to
686
00:42:10.460 --> 00:42:13.159
handle it. And in general, I think they acquitted themselves
687
00:42:13.219 --> 00:42:18.639
very well. But even that's not enough for this administration.
688
00:42:18.519 --> 00:42:21.710
Because there was one group.
689
00:42:21.449 --> 00:42:24.909
Of squads that got surrounded by protesters who were yelling
690
00:42:24.969 --> 00:42:27.610
and shouting at them, and they decided to take a
691
00:42:27.670 --> 00:42:31.369
knee to de-escalate the situation. Now, we can debate about
692
00:42:31.409 --> 00:42:33.570
whether that was the right course of action. There is
693
00:42:33.610 --> 00:42:36.760
certainly a wide variety of opinion within the FBI itself
694
00:42:36.780 --> 00:42:40.760
about But all of those agents, as of a few
695
00:42:40.800 --> 00:42:43.260
weeks ago when I left the FBI, they were being
696
00:42:43.360 --> 00:42:48.320
punished for something that occurred five years ago. So every
697
00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:49.079
agent who.
698
00:42:48.980 --> 00:42:51.670
Took a knee- Wait, they were being punished for.
699
00:42:51.849 --> 00:42:56.730
Every agent who took a knee in 2020, in 2025,
700
00:42:56.730 --> 00:42:59.050
was removed from their position of leadership.
701
00:43:00.530 --> 00:43:05.420
Whoa. So wait, what are the- So right now within
702
00:43:05.460 --> 00:43:08.780
the FBI, if you're an FBI agent, up until now,
703
00:43:09.000 --> 00:43:13.440
what are the offenses that you could have committed that
704
00:43:13.519 --> 00:43:17.869
would get you removed? So it's being friends with an
705
00:43:18.130 --> 00:43:22.849
agent who worked on or is an enemy supposedly of
706
00:43:23.329 --> 00:43:27.309
the president. Is it anybody who worked on these Russia investigations?
707
00:43:27.329 --> 00:43:30.309
It's simpler than that. It's simpler than that. What is
708
00:43:30.469 --> 00:43:34.869
really happening is they are trying to turn over as
709
00:43:35.010 --> 00:43:40.670
many leaders and line personnel as humanly possible so they
710
00:43:40.710 --> 00:43:43.420
can replace them with people who are inculcated in their
711
00:43:43.460 --> 00:43:44.039
own values.
712
00:43:45.619 --> 00:43:47.420
Most of the special– Ideologues.
713
00:43:47.619 --> 00:43:50.579
Ideologues on the line. Yeah.
714
00:43:50.719 --> 00:43:55.230
Every special agent in charge who's been removed or told
715
00:43:55.269 --> 00:43:57.449
they're going to be transferred if they don't retire or
716
00:43:57.530 --> 00:44:00.889
what have you, like The overwhelming majority of these people
717
00:44:01.190 --> 00:44:04.030
just had the misfortune to be appointed by Chris Wray
718
00:44:04.070 --> 00:44:08.269
during the Biden years. There's no real allegation of impropriety.
719
00:44:08.289 --> 00:44:09.289
Well, that's what I was going to say.
720
00:44:09.349 --> 00:44:10.829
They're just cleaning the decks.
721
00:44:11.269 --> 00:44:14.590
There may be plenty of people who agree wholeheartedly with
722
00:44:14.639 --> 00:44:18.260
Donald Trump who were working on the Russia investigation because
723
00:44:18.320 --> 00:44:22.039
that was their job, not because they were ideologically opposed
724
00:44:22.079 --> 00:44:22.320
to him.
725
00:44:22.420 --> 00:44:25.980
Yeah, we never got to pick the investigations on which
726
00:44:26.039 --> 00:44:28.059
we worked. We were assigned them.
727
00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:31.880
So what is that, Michael? Let me ask you, what
728
00:44:31.940 --> 00:44:37.659
does that do to the nation's law enforcement, institutional knowledge
729
00:44:38.219 --> 00:44:44.369
and readiness if the first order of hiring is purely
730
00:44:44.429 --> 00:44:48.860
that you are ideologically in line, that you pledge your
731
00:44:48.949 --> 00:44:54.250
fealty to Donald Trump? How do you can they fill
732
00:44:54.409 --> 00:44:58.309
out an organization of competent people who also do that.
733
00:44:58.429 --> 00:45:02.539
No, the integrity of the organization is totally destroyed. If
734
00:45:02.719 --> 00:45:09.380
your number one priority is ideological rigor or political loyalty,
735
00:45:10.079 --> 00:45:13.500
by definition, there are going to be certain cases you
736
00:45:13.579 --> 00:45:17.199
choose to pursue and certain cases you choose not to pursue.
737
00:45:18.829 --> 00:45:21.130
I don't think it's a coincidence that we've seen the
738
00:45:21.389 --> 00:45:26.789
gutting of the DOJ and FBI's public corruption program both
739
00:45:26.849 --> 00:45:30.650
domestically and internationally under the Foreign Corrupt Practices.
740
00:45:30.260 --> 00:45:32.199
Act since this administration came about.
741
00:45:32.500 --> 00:45:36.599
Talk about specifically what– when you talk about the gutting
742
00:45:36.900 --> 00:45:40.820
of corruption agencies because that's something– look, the Supreme Court
743
00:45:40.860 --> 00:45:46.719
has issued decisions– that it's almost impossible to get, I
744
00:45:46.739 --> 00:45:49.659
would think, corruption convictions anymore because there has to be
745
00:45:49.880 --> 00:45:54.820
explicit quid pro quo. And in terms of executive privilege,
746
00:45:55.380 --> 00:45:59.929
there is almost total immunity. So even forget about what
747
00:45:59.969 --> 00:46:03.829
they're doing with the ideological function within the FBI. What
748
00:46:03.889 --> 00:46:10.469
about just the legal framework around getting corruption cases going
749
00:46:10.489 --> 00:46:11.449
and convicting.
750
00:46:11.630 --> 00:46:14.409
So the only area in which the Supreme Court has
751
00:46:14.510 --> 00:46:18.630
really spoken extensively about this in the past few years
752
00:46:19.250 --> 00:46:23.489
is with respect to executive power under Article 2 to
753
00:46:23.530 --> 00:46:27.280
the president. It's important to note that the overwhelming majority
754
00:46:27.320 --> 00:46:30.679
of public corruption prosecutions have nothing to do with the
755
00:46:30.739 --> 00:46:32.320
White House or the executive court.
756
00:46:32.590 --> 00:46:35.070
Well, let's go– do you remember the governor of Virginia, McDonnell?
757
00:46:35.090 --> 00:46:37.349
I don't know if you worked on that case at all,
758
00:46:37.369 --> 00:46:39.909
but do you remember that corruption case in Virginia? I do, yeah.
759
00:46:40.469 --> 00:46:43.920
So he was convicted of getting a gold watch and
760
00:46:44.039 --> 00:46:47.460
all these other things for favors. There was a Supreme
761
00:46:47.500 --> 00:46:51.980
Court case that basically said, well, we don't find, I guess,
762
00:46:52.039 --> 00:46:56.300
explicit quid pro quo, so that's fine. Doesn't that change
763
00:46:56.380 --> 00:47:00.239
the bar of corruption for what FBI agents would investigate?
764
00:47:00.719 --> 00:47:06.869
It does and it doesn't. In most public corruption cases,
765
00:47:07.630 --> 00:47:10.670
there's not a lot of gray area. The quid pro
766
00:47:10.769 --> 00:47:16.780
quo is pretty explicit. There was a decision involving, I
767
00:47:16.820 --> 00:47:20.579
think it was Rob Blagojevich, that there used to be
768
00:47:20.599 --> 00:47:25.630
something called the Honest Services Statute. And That basically said
769
00:47:25.889 --> 00:47:29.130
it was a real malleable law, which basically said if
770
00:47:29.150 --> 00:47:34.050
you're depriving the people of honest services, you can go
771
00:47:34.090 --> 00:47:36.630
to jail for public corruption. And this is sort of
772
00:47:36.690 --> 00:47:41.210
famously when Rod Blagojevich attempted to auction off essentially Barack
773
00:47:41.230 --> 00:47:41.969
Obama's Senate seat.
774
00:47:41.989 --> 00:47:43.590
Right, his Senate seat, yeah.
775
00:47:44.590 --> 00:47:49.530
That ruling had a lot of effect on how easy
776
00:47:49.610 --> 00:47:54.860
public corruption prosecutions. simply because that was an easy law
777
00:47:54.940 --> 00:47:58.739
to leverage precisely because it was so vague. And there's
778
00:47:58.760 --> 00:48:04.719
a very colorful argument that it was too vague and
779
00:48:04.940 --> 00:48:07.469
the court was right to narrow it down a little bit.
780
00:48:08.320 --> 00:48:10.929
I generally think we want our laws to have as
781
00:48:11.030 --> 00:48:15.949
much specificity as possible because I don't want– as an
782
00:48:16.070 --> 00:48:18.869
FBI agent, I'm not an elected official. There is no
783
00:48:18.949 --> 00:48:23.420
real democratic accountability for me with the electorate. So I
784
00:48:23.559 --> 00:48:28.360
want very specific laws that take away my discretion, just
785
00:48:28.539 --> 00:48:32.340
as a member of a functioning democracy. The quid pro
786
00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:36.900
quo thing, I would say in the overwhelming majority of
787
00:48:36.960 --> 00:48:41.079
public corruption cases, you do have that quid pro quo
788
00:48:41.159 --> 00:48:43.860
happening to such a degree that it's not going to
789
00:48:43.880 --> 00:48:47.539
be an issue. So I'm much less concerned- You don't.
790
00:48:47.400 --> 00:48:50.650
Think this then will have a chilling effect on the
791
00:48:50.710 --> 00:48:54.210
ability to bring public corruption, forget about the politicized nature
792
00:48:54.250 --> 00:48:57.150
of it, but even when the president says we're going
793
00:48:57.170 --> 00:49:03.889
to make it legal to bribe foreign governments for corporate entities.
794
00:49:04.010 --> 00:49:07.510
That's a different thing. The quid pro quo decision, I'm
795
00:49:08.670 --> 00:49:11.769
less concerned about, largely because the quid pro quos are
796
00:49:11.809 --> 00:49:16.610
happening explicitly in most cases. Secondly, if you're engaged in
797
00:49:16.710 --> 00:49:20.539
public corruption- you're also engaged in a whole host of
798
00:49:20.559 --> 00:49:25.780
other legal activity, usually laundering proceeds or committing wire fraud
799
00:49:25.800 --> 00:49:28.500
or what have you, that you could still be indicted on.
800
00:49:29.230 --> 00:49:30.969
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
801
00:49:30.989 --> 00:49:34.239
There are ancillary crimes that go along with some sort
802
00:49:34.260 --> 00:49:36.960
of– because you have to hide the profits of the corruption.
803
00:49:37.039 --> 00:49:37.460
Exactly.
804
00:49:37.519 --> 00:49:42.400
So I'm not super concerned with the quid pro quo decision.
805
00:49:42.920 --> 00:49:49.969
I am immensely concerned with the executive immunity decisions partly
806
00:49:50.030 --> 00:49:52.570
because– I mean it makes it impossible to ever go
807
00:49:52.750 --> 00:49:56.989
after a president for pretty much any conduct whatsoever– But
808
00:49:57.030 --> 00:50:00.170
I also think it's totally at odds with US history
809
00:50:00.210 --> 00:50:01.289
and founding ideals.
810
00:50:02.590 --> 00:50:04.670
You know, one person, one DOJ person said to me
811
00:50:04.690 --> 00:50:09.230
years ago, you know, Trump is going to do a
812
00:50:09.289 --> 00:50:11.510
lot of cases that are good for Trump and bad
813
00:50:11.530 --> 00:50:13.449
for the country. That's just how this is going to
814
00:50:13.489 --> 00:50:15.769
play out. And if you look at the immunity decision,
815
00:50:15.789 --> 00:50:17.889
for example, one of the things I think is amazing
816
00:50:17.949 --> 00:50:20.849
about the immunity decision that the Supreme Court handed up
817
00:50:22.110 --> 00:50:25.739
is that under the terms of that decision, The Mueller
818
00:50:25.780 --> 00:50:28.099
investigation would basically never happen.
819
00:50:28.119 --> 00:50:31.159
There'd be no way to have any information.
820
00:50:30.820 --> 00:50:34.920
That the the premise of it wouldn't fly. And the
821
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:38.780
factual gathering of the information would also not fly. And
822
00:50:38.860 --> 00:50:41.960
so there's almost no way to sort of imagine a
823
00:50:41.980 --> 00:50:46.219
Mueller investigation in this environment. And honestly, I don't think
824
00:50:46.260 --> 00:50:51.340
that's an accident. I think that is the significant number
825
00:50:51.389 --> 00:50:54.809
of conservatives on the Supreme Court. expressing their dismay and
826
00:50:54.829 --> 00:50:58.030
distrust of how the DOJ has done this in, in
827
00:50:58.090 --> 00:50:58.750
recent years.
828
00:50:59.230 --> 00:50:59.469
Right.
829
00:51:05.340 --> 00:51:08.340
Hey, what do you got there? Business? You realize your
830
00:51:08.360 --> 00:51:11.460
business needed to hire someone and you needed them yesterday. Well,
831
00:51:11.480 --> 00:51:12.639
how are you going to find him? How are you
832
00:51:12.659 --> 00:51:15.230
going to find amazing candidates fast? What are you going
833
00:51:15.250 --> 00:51:20.230
to walk outside? Ask people directly that just use indeed.
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840
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Look, I am a conservative. I studied constitutional law literally
859
00:52:58.239 --> 00:53:02.079
under one of the founders of the Federalist Society, Steve Calabresi.
860
00:53:04.179 --> 00:53:08.739
But the unitary executive theory, that's pretty far afield from
861
00:53:08.780 --> 00:53:12.420
what any of the founders ever intended the president to be.
862
00:53:12.460 --> 00:53:15.659
The whole point was to place restrictions on the operation
863
00:53:15.679 --> 00:53:19.320
of government, not to create an expansive executive power.
864
00:53:20.119 --> 00:53:21.840
So- this is.
865
00:53:22.320 --> 00:53:24.739
My see that seems to be the you know this
866
00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:27.820
gets us to maybe the fundamental contradiction at the heart
867
00:53:28.119 --> 00:53:32.519
of the maga movement which is it is a movement
868
00:53:32.920 --> 00:53:39.730
that absolutely cloaks itself in constitutional rhetoric and almost fetishizes
869
00:53:39.829 --> 00:53:41.210
you know how many of the guys i got the
870
00:53:41.250 --> 00:53:44.570
constitution here they wrap their buses and yeah we the
871
00:53:44.610 --> 00:53:50.469
people but it is if anything It's better with the
872
00:53:50.670 --> 00:53:54.550
it's it's anti-federalist. It's more articles of Confederation. It doesn't
873
00:53:54.590 --> 00:53:58.860
appear to be in any way have any fealty to
874
00:53:58.909 --> 00:54:04.599
constitutional principles of free speech, you know, checks and balances,
875
00:54:04.699 --> 00:54:05.340
any of those things.
876
00:54:05.670 --> 00:54:09.170
Yeah, I would humbly suggest if your devotion to the
877
00:54:09.250 --> 00:54:13.929
Constitution is largely manifested through a We the People tattoo
878
00:54:14.460 --> 00:54:18.719
and an affinity for the Gadsden flag, your understanding of
879
00:54:19.119 --> 00:54:21.679
Federalist principles is probably not.
880
00:54:21.679 --> 00:54:23.280
As deep as you think it is.
881
00:54:24.599 --> 00:54:25.900
I mean, I'm just going to be like.
882
00:54:26.369 --> 00:54:28.550
You're saying they may not in fact be tread on.
883
00:54:28.750 --> 00:54:29.550
Is that what I'm hearing?
884
00:54:29.809 --> 00:54:33.750
As somebody, like I really do consider myself a philosophical
885
00:54:33.929 --> 00:54:35.699
and constitutional conservative.
886
00:54:36.050 --> 00:54:36.280
Right.
887
00:54:36.360 --> 00:54:39.340
But that requires a lot of thought and a lot
888
00:54:39.380 --> 00:54:44.309
of penetrating discussions about what words mean. And like, Were
889
00:54:44.349 --> 00:54:48.460
the founders looking at Locke and Mill or Burke or
890
00:54:48.579 --> 00:54:50.820
what have you when they were coming up with these systems?
891
00:54:51.619 --> 00:54:54.920
It's not simply saying, I don't like what you're doing,
892
00:54:54.960 --> 00:54:59.340
therefore it's unconstitutional. You have to actually engage with these
893
00:54:59.449 --> 00:55:02.550
ideas on a regular basis in a way that even
894
00:55:02.610 --> 00:55:06.130
makes you question your own beliefs or the project has
895
00:55:06.190 --> 00:55:12.170
no intellectual integrity. When I was coming of intellectual age
896
00:55:12.230 --> 00:55:16.369
in college and law school, The conservative movement, I think,
897
00:55:16.449 --> 00:55:19.610
was very into that. Your audience would probably disagree with
898
00:55:19.630 --> 00:55:22.510
a lot of the conclusions we came to, but there
899
00:55:22.570 --> 00:55:27.179
was an honest rigor of thought that is totally lacking.
900
00:55:26.800 --> 00:55:27.659
In the MAGA movement.
901
00:55:28.739 --> 00:55:31.500
Well, because I think what they've done is they've sort
902
00:55:31.639 --> 00:55:38.500
of ceded any kind of that rigor to the emotional
903
00:55:38.719 --> 00:55:42.849
kind of impulse of one individual. Yes. That they believe
904
00:55:43.230 --> 00:55:46.469
stands above kind of all of it. And they've even,
905
00:55:46.489 --> 00:55:50.650
I think, infused him with a sort of religious fervor.
906
00:55:51.130 --> 00:55:56.239
But Devlin, you know, you've got these organizations, you know,
907
00:55:56.280 --> 00:55:59.119
the DOJ, the FBI. I mean, we're talking about law enforcement.
908
00:55:59.900 --> 00:56:04.119
Trump's influence writ large has been enormous. But if he
909
00:56:04.300 --> 00:56:10.989
rewrites the purpose and principle of all those organizations– Have
910
00:56:11.070 --> 00:56:15.539
we lost the one thing that maybe made America exceptional,
911
00:56:16.639 --> 00:56:21.159
which is the stability of these institutions? Are we now
912
00:56:21.460 --> 00:56:28.320
in a kind of retribution cycle? Because if I'm the Democrats,
913
00:56:29.659 --> 00:56:33.210
I'm watching Donald Trump and going, oh my God, he's
914
00:56:33.269 --> 00:56:39.949
just exposed a whole host of levers of power. that
915
00:56:40.050 --> 00:56:43.530
we never exercised, that now we will.
916
00:56:45.150 --> 00:56:47.130
I think that's right. And there's a couple of ways
917
00:56:47.170 --> 00:56:50.570
of thinking about that. One is the Kash Patel selection
918
00:56:50.710 --> 00:56:53.550
as the FBI director. I think it's safe to say
919
00:56:53.670 --> 00:56:57.969
that whenever a Democrat comes into power, Kash Patel will
920
00:56:58.010 --> 00:57:00.340
no longer be the FBI director. And you will have
921
00:57:00.429 --> 00:57:05.800
lost one of the sort of, you know, institutional sandbars
922
00:57:05.840 --> 00:57:09.840
that protected that institution from political changes. Now, some people
923
00:57:09.880 --> 00:57:12.699
will say, certainly some people in the Bureau will say,
924
00:57:13.139 --> 00:57:16.579
it's a good thing if Democrats replace Kash Patel when
925
00:57:16.619 --> 00:57:19.730
that situation comes to pass. But the other way to
926
00:57:19.769 --> 00:57:22.570
think about this problem, and again, I am a Justice
927
00:57:22.590 --> 00:57:25.829
Department reporter. I do not cover politics, but politics has
928
00:57:25.949 --> 00:57:31.480
swamped the Justice Department, clearly. And politics, to me, it
929
00:57:31.539 --> 00:57:33.519
seems pretty clear that politics is less and less about
930
00:57:33.559 --> 00:57:36.000
what people believe, and it's more and more about who
931
00:57:36.039 --> 00:57:40.670
people hate. And so in that model, in that model,
932
00:57:40.929 --> 00:57:44.010
places like the Justice Department and places like the FBI,
933
00:57:44.050 --> 00:57:47.989
which investigate politicians, are going to be under greater and
934
00:57:48.030 --> 00:57:52.150
greater pressure. And I think, you know, after 9-11, there
935
00:57:52.170 --> 00:57:54.949
was a significant debate about should we, you know, abolish
936
00:57:54.969 --> 00:57:57.010
some part of the FBI and reconstitute it in a
937
00:57:57.110 --> 00:58:02.340
different way. I think the FBI, if you destroyed it tomorrow,
938
00:58:02.400 --> 00:58:04.440
not saying that's going to happen or should, but if
939
00:58:04.460 --> 00:58:07.260
you destroy the FBI tomorrow, it would be rebuilt in
940
00:58:07.300 --> 00:58:10.159
some form because the American people still on some basic
941
00:58:10.199 --> 00:58:12.949
level believe there should be an entity like the FBI.
942
00:58:13.570 --> 00:58:17.110
But at the same time, it has to be a credible, reliable,
943
00:58:17.190 --> 00:58:21.309
trustworthy institution for it to do its job well. And
944
00:58:21.409 --> 00:58:23.909
that is the part that is really difficult right now
945
00:58:24.050 --> 00:58:27.090
for a whole host of reasons. You know, one of
946
00:58:27.110 --> 00:58:28.230
the biggest ones being Donald Trump.
947
00:58:28.989 --> 00:58:29.230
Right.
948
00:58:29.590 --> 00:58:32.269
I mean, I would say so this gets us back
949
00:58:32.329 --> 00:58:36.570
to sort of the character, the characterization of those institutions
950
00:58:37.510 --> 00:58:43.670
as the deep state. You know, Trump came in and
951
00:58:43.829 --> 00:58:48.349
he basically characterized any of these sort of organizations within
952
00:58:48.389 --> 00:58:51.789
the government that may not have expressed loyalty to him
953
00:58:52.130 --> 00:58:54.989
as the deep state. So now it's in the minds. Look,
954
00:58:55.010 --> 00:58:58.789
there's always been a distrust, I think, through civil libertarians
955
00:58:58.889 --> 00:59:02.210
or through different political groups of law enforcement, of DOJ,
956
00:59:02.230 --> 00:59:07.989
of FBI. After 9-11, the Patriot Act supercharged certain kind
957
00:59:08.050 --> 00:59:10.809
of digital espionage and all kinds of of other things
958
00:59:11.329 --> 00:59:15.679
that people, I think, were very, and rightfully so, uncomfortable
959
00:59:15.719 --> 00:59:18.659
with how it was going to be exercised. But this
960
00:59:19.179 --> 00:59:25.900
concept of deep state is a really powerful one and
961
00:59:25.960 --> 00:59:30.179
can be utilized by anybody who has some concerns about
962
00:59:30.219 --> 00:59:34.340
how government is going to use its authority. And Michael,
963
00:59:34.380 --> 00:59:38.539
I'll ask you because, look, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino
964
00:59:38.800 --> 00:59:41.760
are deep state guys. They're the ones who are like,
965
00:59:42.320 --> 00:59:45.000
the deep state is a problem. When we get in there,
966
00:59:45.320 --> 00:59:47.659
we're going to expose the deep state. We're going to
967
00:59:47.780 --> 00:59:52.159
expose that Ray Epps is a plant and a fed.
968
00:59:52.460 --> 00:59:55.539
We're going to expose the Epstein files. And then they
969
00:59:55.579 --> 01:00:01.139
get in there. and bupkis. So what happened there?
970
01:00:01.619 --> 01:00:05.239
So there's a real irony here in that the deep
971
01:00:05.320 --> 01:00:09.659
state never existed. The notion that the FBI as an
972
01:00:09.800 --> 01:00:15.340
institution was a hotbed of anti-Trump activity in 2015 and
973
01:00:15.340 --> 01:00:18.340
2016 is pretty ludicrous. I don't think it's going to
974
01:00:18.380 --> 01:00:21.570
come as a shock to anybody who that most FBI
975
01:00:21.630 --> 01:00:26.289
agents probably lean right. Despite what people think, we don't
976
01:00:26.329 --> 01:00:29.150
really talk about it at work. It is a pretty
977
01:00:29.190 --> 01:00:32.829
apolitical place. But most people who choose to go into
978
01:00:32.869 --> 01:00:36.570
law enforcement for a career are the sort of people
979
01:00:36.610 --> 01:00:40.789
who are rooting for Javert when they read Les Miserables.
980
01:00:40.809 --> 01:00:45.690
It's a certain mindset. So there never was a deep state.
981
01:00:45.789 --> 01:00:50.650
But ironically, what Patel and Bongino are doing in terms
982
01:00:50.710 --> 01:00:53.989
of trying to root it out, are actually creating it.
983
01:00:54.789 --> 01:00:59.900
They're getting rid of people who really value political independence,
984
01:01:00.059 --> 01:01:06.340
institutional integrity, ideological blindness. The only people that are going
985
01:01:06.360 --> 01:01:09.019
to be left by the time they're done three and
986
01:01:09.039 --> 01:01:12.820
a half years by now are people at the executive
987
01:01:12.840 --> 01:01:16.460
levels who are willing to bend their principles for the
988
01:01:16.519 --> 01:01:17.360
party in power.
989
01:01:17.980 --> 01:01:23.079
How cynical was this, Michael? So all this stuff about
990
01:01:23.159 --> 01:01:26.260
Ray Epps being a Fed and January 6th being a
991
01:01:27.079 --> 01:01:32.699
government op that was a bunch of Feds urging on
992
01:01:32.940 --> 01:01:36.099
Antifa to storm the Capitol and get it done, or
993
01:01:36.579 --> 01:01:40.900
that the deep state was protecting the Epstein list because
994
01:01:40.920 --> 01:01:44.099
of that. How much did they believe that? How cynical
995
01:01:44.179 --> 01:01:48.530
was that? And what is the process– why is this
996
01:01:48.750 --> 01:01:52.050
Epstein thing suddenly now? Oh yeah, no. I mean, if
997
01:01:52.130 --> 01:01:56.579
anything looks like deep state, it's the president's personal lawyer
998
01:01:56.679 --> 01:02:01.679
going to interview Ghislaine Maxwell. And then a week later, right.
999
01:02:01.880 --> 01:02:05.360
And then a week later, her being transferred to a
1000
01:02:05.380 --> 01:02:08.300
minimum security prison where sex offenders are not allowed to
1001
01:02:08.320 --> 01:02:09.480
be transferred to. Yeah.
1002
01:02:10.219 --> 01:02:12.849
It's, I mean, there, there's a couple of things to
1003
01:02:12.909 --> 01:02:15.449
unpack there. First of all, in terms of the cynicism,
1004
01:02:16.630 --> 01:02:20.449
There's probably a lot of people throughout the country who
1005
01:02:20.590 --> 01:02:25.599
really do believe that January 6th was some sort of
1006
01:02:25.679 --> 01:02:29.400
inside job. I think it's a ludicrous belief, but I
1007
01:02:29.500 --> 01:02:32.219
don't doubt that there are massive numbers of people who
1008
01:02:32.280 --> 01:02:35.280
sincerely hold that belief.
1009
01:02:35.900 --> 01:02:38.059
But were Patel and Bongino amongst them?
1010
01:02:38.820 --> 01:02:43.000
The notion that anybody who was involved in the Stop
1011
01:02:43.059 --> 01:02:47.260
the Steal rally, any of the organizers, they know that's horseshit.
1012
01:02:47.280 --> 01:02:48.510
I mean, are.
1013
01:02:48.409 --> 01:02:52.030
You really telling me that the PhD holders at the
1014
01:02:52.110 --> 01:02:58.030
Claremont Institute or various professors across the country, including some
1015
01:02:58.070 --> 01:03:03.420
at Ivy League universities, they know they're peddling bullshit to
1016
01:03:03.469 --> 01:03:07.670
the masses? So there is an immense amount of cynicism
1017
01:03:07.710 --> 01:03:11.409
at the top levels and a lot of gullible people
1018
01:03:11.429 --> 01:03:14.059
at the lower levels who are being taken advantage of.
1019
01:03:15.130 --> 01:03:16.969
And I don't know how a country survives that.
1020
01:03:18.210 --> 01:03:22.409
Devlin, how does– when you talk about– how many times
1021
01:03:22.449 --> 01:03:24.889
have I read Ray Epps? If you look at Ray Epps,
1022
01:03:24.949 --> 01:03:28.150
the whole thing unravels from January 6th. It was all
1023
01:03:28.949 --> 01:03:32.809
an inside job by the feds or when we get
1024
01:03:32.869 --> 01:03:35.250
in there day one. You're going to see all the
1025
01:03:35.289 --> 01:03:38.269
names on the Epstein client list. And you're going to see, well,
1026
01:03:38.309 --> 01:03:41.710
now we know Trump is on the list or allegedly
1027
01:03:42.210 --> 01:03:45.300
on the list. And Ghislaine Maxwell, after talking to the
1028
01:03:45.340 --> 01:03:49.800
president's personal lawyer, is transferred to a minimum security prison.
1029
01:03:50.440 --> 01:03:54.659
And I'm assuming getting surf and turf like Devlin. Is
1030
01:03:54.699 --> 01:03:56.880
there a deep state? Was there not a deep state?
1031
01:03:56.920 --> 01:03:59.800
Was this all cynical bullshit? So.
1032
01:04:01.070 --> 01:04:02.849
There is a lot of cynicism to many of the
1033
01:04:02.909 --> 01:04:05.869
things you describe, but there are also some human behavior
1034
01:04:05.909 --> 01:04:08.889
issues that I think are important. Like in the darker
1035
01:04:08.929 --> 01:04:11.070
moments at the Justice Department and FBI, I think I
1036
01:04:11.110 --> 01:04:13.570
don't really cover law enforcement. I don't really cover crime.
1037
01:04:13.699 --> 01:04:17.079
I cover human behavior. And so let's take the J6
1038
01:04:17.539 --> 01:04:20.219
issue because I think that's an important example. You know,
1039
01:04:20.579 --> 01:04:22.739
there is an argument that is made that if you
1040
01:04:22.780 --> 01:04:26.199
just put enough facts on the table, you will show
1041
01:04:26.219 --> 01:04:28.599
the reality. And even the people who don't want to
1042
01:04:28.639 --> 01:04:31.610
believe you will accede to your reality. based on the
1043
01:04:31.650 --> 01:04:34.130
facts you have shown them. To that, I would just
1044
01:04:34.150 --> 01:04:38.960
say simply, January 6th was the most videotaped, most recorded,
1045
01:04:39.539 --> 01:04:44.239
most well-documented crime to ever occur in human history. And
1046
01:04:44.280 --> 01:04:47.360
there are still a very significant number of people in
1047
01:04:47.380 --> 01:04:50.030
this country who believe it was some kind of con.
1048
01:04:50.469 --> 01:04:52.849
There is a smaller group of people who say they
1049
01:04:52.889 --> 01:04:55.329
believe it was a con, but I am skeptical that
1050
01:04:55.349 --> 01:04:58.510
they really believe that. And I think we are dealing
1051
01:04:58.530 --> 01:05:01.559
with a human behavior problem, not a fact problem.
1052
01:05:02.159 --> 01:05:07.159
But what about then, Devlin, if it's the most videotaped
1053
01:05:07.199 --> 01:05:09.900
and some people still think it's a con, but the
1054
01:05:09.960 --> 01:05:14.909
people that thought it was a con viewed Trump's reelection
1055
01:05:15.710 --> 01:05:18.250
as the moment, sort of like in a cult when
1056
01:05:18.269 --> 01:05:20.909
they say like the world will end May 17th, but
1057
01:05:21.829 --> 01:05:27.099
they viewed his election as finally, the con will be exposed.
1058
01:05:27.679 --> 01:05:32.590
What happens when the con isn't exposed?
1059
01:05:33.150 --> 01:05:37.369
Well, I think you're seeing this plays out multiple ways. One,
1060
01:05:37.829 --> 01:05:42.289
you're seeing a constant demand from Trump's own supporters for
1061
01:05:42.349 --> 01:05:45.050
that to happen. You're seeing demands for indictments. You're seeing
1062
01:05:45.090 --> 01:05:49.929
demands for the classic demand for, you know, frog march
1063
01:05:49.949 --> 01:05:53.070
them out of the building. You know, that exists in
1064
01:05:53.090 --> 01:05:55.860
the January 6th space that exists and certainly in the
1065
01:05:55.960 --> 01:06:00.760
Epstein space. And the, one of the things that happens,
1066
01:06:01.000 --> 01:06:04.119
I think with this war on the deep state, this
1067
01:06:04.440 --> 01:06:08.059
professed declared war on the deep state is one of
1068
01:06:08.099 --> 01:06:09.980
the features of it as a human behavior function is
1069
01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:14.670
you're constantly promising the future retribution. And I think one
1070
01:06:14.690 --> 01:06:17.590
of the challenges that the Epstein thing in particular shows
1071
01:06:17.610 --> 01:06:20.050
is is that there's a real potential price to be
1072
01:06:20.110 --> 01:06:24.050
paid for never delivering that even when you are in charge.
1073
01:06:24.610 --> 01:06:27.550
There is a challenge to having someone like Kash Patel
1074
01:06:27.829 --> 01:06:30.280
in charge of the FBI, which makes arrests when you
1075
01:06:30.360 --> 01:06:34.019
don't arrest the people who rooted for Kash Patel. When
1076
01:06:34.039 --> 01:06:36.320
Kash Patel does not make a lot of those arrests,
1077
01:06:36.780 --> 01:06:39.760
there is a potential political price to pay for that.
1078
01:06:40.139 --> 01:06:42.760
And I think we are just sort of starting to
1079
01:06:42.840 --> 01:06:45.719
test the limits of that. And I think it's going
1080
01:06:45.739 --> 01:06:47.920
to be a very interesting, like one of the ways
1081
01:06:47.960 --> 01:06:50.389
to measure this, right, is when the Epstein stuff was
1082
01:06:50.550 --> 01:06:53.070
in a really bad place, put the administration in a
1083
01:06:53.150 --> 01:06:56.289
really bad place a few weeks ago, there was a
1084
01:06:56.429 --> 01:07:01.809
very quick, amping up of the talk about retribution for
1085
01:07:02.289 --> 01:07:03.369
the Russia investigation.
1086
01:07:03.409 --> 01:07:06.809
Right. Obama, Clapper, they were all going down. Yes.
1087
01:07:07.050 --> 01:07:09.909
And you have seen an increase. If you think about
1088
01:07:09.949 --> 01:07:14.519
levels on a soundboard, you saw them try to turn
1089
01:07:14.539 --> 01:07:17.139
down the levels on Epstein and try to turn up
1090
01:07:17.559 --> 01:07:21.719
the levels on the Russia retribution stuff. And I think
1091
01:07:21.820 --> 01:07:24.880
that is part of a general process, a part of
1092
01:07:24.920 --> 01:07:27.920
a general behavior of a lot of folks who think
1093
01:07:27.980 --> 01:07:31.840
this is their season of retribution. But at the end
1094
01:07:31.860 --> 01:07:33.800
of the day, if you're going to arrest people, if
1095
01:07:33.820 --> 01:07:36.599
you're going to indict people, I talk to people who
1096
01:07:36.760 --> 01:07:39.320
are in the crosshairs of that all the time. And
1097
01:07:39.429 --> 01:07:41.989
one of the things they say, and I think I
1098
01:07:42.030 --> 01:07:44.090
take them at their word, is, look, at the end
1099
01:07:44.110 --> 01:07:46.550
of the day, I still have some faith in the
1100
01:07:46.590 --> 01:07:50.489
criminal justice system. That in theory, could you investigate me?
1101
01:07:50.530 --> 01:07:52.469
In theory, could you indict me for something?
1102
01:07:53.510 --> 01:07:53.849
Sure.
1103
01:07:54.190 --> 01:07:57.030
But I think no judge and jury would buy that.
1104
01:07:58.980 --> 01:08:01.800
maybe they're wrong. I want to be clear. There's a
1105
01:08:01.800 --> 01:08:02.960
world in which that's not true.
1106
01:08:03.239 --> 01:08:06.579
Michael, you're there. When you're at the FBI and you're
1107
01:08:06.639 --> 01:08:10.320
seeing online, Ray Epps is a Fed and that's why
1108
01:08:10.969 --> 01:08:16.229
January 6th. What is the recourse within the FBI to
1109
01:08:16.329 --> 01:08:19.840
disprove that? Is there any kind of energy to disprove it?
1110
01:08:19.869 --> 01:08:21.569
Does everyone just have to hold their powder?
1111
01:08:22.430 --> 01:08:22.949
So this is.
1112
01:08:24.960 --> 01:08:29.829
This actually raises a larger issue with whether the FBI,
1113
01:08:30.109 --> 01:08:36.229
as it's historically been constituted, is able in our current
1114
01:08:36.270 --> 01:08:41.409
political moment in an age of mass media to maintain
1115
01:08:41.449 --> 01:08:47.060
the trust of the American people. Traditionally, the FBI, with
1116
01:08:47.100 --> 01:08:50.399
a few exceptions, Comey's press conference on Clinton being one
1117
01:08:50.439 --> 01:08:55.409
of them, but I'll defend even aspects of that. You know,
1118
01:08:55.430 --> 01:08:59.970
the FBI has spoken through indictments and through criminal complaints.
1119
01:09:01.399 --> 01:09:04.979
We have not generally– I apologize. I still say we.
1120
01:09:07.619 --> 01:09:12.520
They have not generally done pressers. They have not met
1121
01:09:12.739 --> 01:09:17.750
off the record or one-on-one very frequently with journalists. They
1122
01:09:17.789 --> 01:09:21.960
only talk through indictments. So there's never really been a
1123
01:09:22.220 --> 01:09:28.079
way for the FBI to push back against the conspiracy
1124
01:09:28.159 --> 01:09:33.539
theorists or to try and argue its own case outside
1125
01:09:33.560 --> 01:09:38.109
of the prosecutorial process. And that was particularly true under
1126
01:09:38.890 --> 01:09:44.029
Director Wray, who was temperamentally loathe to do anything like that.
1127
01:09:46.430 --> 01:09:48.810
And that's never really been an issue because you've always
1128
01:09:48.850 --> 01:09:53.300
had adults in the White House. We don't have that now.
1129
01:09:54.409 --> 01:09:57.279
We have an attorney general. We have a president. We
1130
01:09:57.319 --> 01:10:00.979
have an FBI director, an FBI deputy director who spent
1131
01:10:01.199 --> 01:10:05.479
eight years trafficking in conspiracy theories as a way of
1132
01:10:05.560 --> 01:10:11.449
consolidating their own power. So I don't know how you
1133
01:10:11.510 --> 01:10:18.140
ameliorate that situation. People have asked me, friends, family, other interviewers,
1134
01:10:19.079 --> 01:10:22.460
how does the FBI come back from this? I'm pretty
1135
01:10:22.520 --> 01:10:28.380
pessimistic about it. If we started fixing things today, six
1136
01:10:28.460 --> 01:10:31.319
months after this administration came into power, seven to eight
1137
01:10:31.359 --> 01:10:34.420
months after this administration came into power, I think it
1138
01:10:34.439 --> 01:10:38.279
would take a memo of a decade. We are not
1139
01:10:38.550 --> 01:10:42.949
in for an easy road to rebuild what's being lost
1140
01:10:42.989 --> 01:10:43.329
this year.
1141
01:10:44.060 --> 01:10:47.199
Well, and now what the courts are doing is they're saying, actually,
1142
01:10:47.220 --> 01:10:49.979
you know what? Take what you want. We're actually done.
1143
01:10:50.260 --> 01:10:51.060
We're too tired.
1144
01:10:51.539 --> 01:10:54.149
Part of my point before when we were talking about,
1145
01:10:54.270 --> 01:10:57.609
you know, the rule of law versus the law of
1146
01:10:57.689 --> 01:11:02.210
politics is that that relationship is actually the opposite of
1147
01:11:02.250 --> 01:11:05.390
what a lot of people think. And the courts are
1148
01:11:05.590 --> 01:11:08.869
especially the Supreme Court. This administration has has a lot
1149
01:11:08.970 --> 01:11:12.750
riding on the Supreme Court conservative majority agreeing with them
1150
01:11:12.810 --> 01:11:15.680
most of the time. And I think that is something
1151
01:11:15.760 --> 01:11:19.420
that a lot of the public probably doesn't hasn't digested
1152
01:11:19.460 --> 01:11:22.159
or considered very much because it's pretty.
1153
01:11:22.520 --> 01:11:24.090
The interesting thing is going to be how is the
1154
01:11:24.130 --> 01:11:29.210
Supreme Court going to flip over on its back when
1155
01:11:29.270 --> 01:11:32.329
a Democrat is in office and wants to exercise that
1156
01:11:32.449 --> 01:11:36.510
same level of executive control? If the unitary executive only
1157
01:11:36.569 --> 01:11:39.649
works in Republican administrations, that's going to seem like a
1158
01:11:39.880 --> 01:11:41.359
larger issue than anything else.
1159
01:11:42.239 --> 01:11:45.869
Right. And and look. what is happening in the country?
1160
01:11:45.930 --> 01:11:47.729
I would say in the government, let's, let's just stick
1161
01:11:47.750 --> 01:11:50.010
with the government. What is happening in the federal government
1162
01:11:50.750 --> 01:11:53.750
long-term big picture is that power is bleeding away from
1163
01:11:53.810 --> 01:11:56.850
Congress and bleeding away from the courts and it's pooling
1164
01:11:56.949 --> 01:12:00.329
into the executive. That has been true for decades, but
1165
01:12:00.649 --> 01:12:04.390
Trump is essentially an accelerant to that and an aggressive
1166
01:12:05.869 --> 01:12:09.029
power grabby kind of accelerant to that. And that's going
1167
01:12:09.050 --> 01:12:09.750
to keep happening.
1168
01:12:10.250 --> 01:12:13.880
Well, I imagine what, What you're seeing now is what
1169
01:12:13.939 --> 01:12:20.060
you see in the countries that have a more autocratic bent.
1170
01:12:20.979 --> 01:12:24.239
And what you see then is the law enforcement arms
1171
01:12:24.300 --> 01:12:31.560
being used explicitly for vengeance, for consolidation of power, and
1172
01:12:31.930 --> 01:12:36.210
for all those different elements. Or you see somebody running
1173
01:12:36.430 --> 01:12:39.609
to say, again, I'll weed out the deep state. And
1174
01:12:39.630 --> 01:12:42.500
we're just in this bizarro deep state cycle.
1175
01:12:42.680 --> 01:12:45.560
We get in a cycle, yeah. You know, and I've
1176
01:12:45.579 --> 01:12:47.720
got a lot, like, I don't have a lot of
1177
01:12:47.779 --> 01:12:51.399
worries about the FBI workforce. The average agent is somebody
1178
01:12:51.470 --> 01:12:53.789
whose integrity I trust implicitly.
1179
01:12:54.949 --> 01:12:58.449
What worries me- But you've said yourself that they're concerned about,
1180
01:12:58.789 --> 01:13:02.229
you know, they've got families and lives and kids and
1181
01:13:02.529 --> 01:13:04.949
they may have to go along to get along. And so,
1182
01:13:05.250 --> 01:13:06.310
shouldn't you worry about them?
1183
01:13:06.529 --> 01:13:11.970
There's ways to sort of put sand in the gears
1184
01:13:12.069 --> 01:13:17.909
if you're really uncomfortable doing something. What concerns me more
1185
01:13:19.489 --> 01:13:23.270
are the people who are now getting promoted to SAC,
1186
01:13:23.869 --> 01:13:26.810
who have been explicitly- What's SAC? The special agent in charge.
1187
01:13:27.069 --> 01:13:29.960
I'm sorry, the head of a field office. There's 55
1188
01:13:29.960 --> 01:13:32.680
of them throughout the country. The people who are being
1189
01:13:32.720 --> 01:13:37.399
made division heads, they're explicitly being told, and I've heard
1190
01:13:37.439 --> 01:13:39.909
this from some of them, that like, you are not
1191
01:13:39.970 --> 01:13:43.270
going to criticize the director, you are not going to
1192
01:13:43.329 --> 01:13:46.109
criticize the deputy director, and you are not going to
1193
01:13:46.170 --> 01:13:49.970
push back against administration priorities. And if you do, you're
1194
01:13:50.010 --> 01:13:54.069
going to be removed. People who are willing to make
1195
01:13:54.109 --> 01:13:56.260
that sort of compromise can't stay.
1196
01:13:56.819 --> 01:14:01.340
Now, but wouldn't you normally say that in an organization,
1197
01:14:01.539 --> 01:14:04.979
that sounds like, I don't know many organizations that would say,
1198
01:14:05.409 --> 01:14:07.810
Your job is to push back against our priorities.
1199
01:14:07.909 --> 01:14:12.359
No, I would argue what I just described is totally
1200
01:14:12.439 --> 01:14:14.359
antithetical to the FBI.
1201
01:14:14.079 --> 01:14:15.720
I knew for the better part of two decades.
1202
01:14:16.220 --> 01:14:18.000
It is not unheard of.
1203
01:14:18.220 --> 01:14:20.100
For example, there is– I'm not going to get into
1204
01:14:20.140 --> 01:14:20.779
the specific details.
1205
01:14:20.800 --> 01:14:22.600
You don't mean publicly. You mean internally.
1206
01:14:22.939 --> 01:14:23.680
Internally, yeah.
1207
01:14:23.760 --> 01:14:28.359
I mean it's not– it was not uncommon under Mueller
1208
01:14:28.579 --> 01:14:33.659
or Comey or Ray for a special agent in charge
1209
01:14:33.840 --> 01:14:38.359
or an assistant director to vociferously push back against them
1210
01:14:38.430 --> 01:14:43.069
to the point of raising voices, almost yelling about their decisions.
1211
01:14:43.770 --> 01:14:45.949
There was a give and take. There was an understanding
1212
01:14:45.970 --> 01:14:49.710
of like, look, the only way this organization works is
1213
01:14:49.750 --> 01:14:53.569
you hire smart people with a good moral compass and
1214
01:14:53.609 --> 01:14:56.060
you give them a voice. And at the end of
1215
01:14:56.069 --> 01:14:58.100
the day, it is a chain of command. So what
1216
01:14:58.140 --> 01:15:00.899
the director says is going to go. But if we're
1217
01:15:00.920 --> 01:15:03.720
going to be effective, you need to have an environment
1218
01:15:03.739 --> 01:15:08.310
where where you allow people to voice their honest opinion
1219
01:15:08.359 --> 01:15:09.109
and push back.
1220
01:15:09.970 --> 01:15:11.949
It's the only way this works. Generally, is the pushback, Michael,
1221
01:15:12.409 --> 01:15:18.170
is it generally a pushback on norms and morality? What
1222
01:15:18.210 --> 01:15:21.140
would pushback look like? We can't do that because that's
1223
01:15:21.239 --> 01:15:25.520
interfering in a political process, or we're substituting our judgment
1224
01:15:25.779 --> 01:15:30.050
for the judgment of our leadership? What would that pushback
1225
01:15:30.069 --> 01:15:30.350
look like?
1226
01:15:30.550 --> 01:15:31.489
All of the above.
1227
01:15:31.710 --> 01:15:35.010
I mean, the FBI was in a really tricky situation
1228
01:15:35.050 --> 01:15:40.890
with the Clinton email investigations and the Russia investigation in
1229
01:15:40.930 --> 01:15:45.439
the sense that there was literally nothing the organization could
1230
01:15:45.500 --> 01:15:49.180
do that was not in some form or fashion going
1231
01:15:49.199 --> 01:15:53.979
to put a thumb, however slight, on the scale. Not intentionally,
1232
01:15:54.039 --> 01:15:56.939
just like We were investigating both candidates.
1233
01:15:56.960 --> 01:15:59.140
Would the alternative have been not to investigate them at
1234
01:15:59.260 --> 01:16:00.699
all or to have.
1235
01:16:00.239 --> 01:16:03.590
Them– Which you can't do either. Right.
1236
01:16:04.670 --> 01:16:05.989
But the reason I bring it up is I can
1237
01:16:06.050 --> 01:16:09.770
tell you I know for a fact that there was
1238
01:16:09.789 --> 01:16:12.829
a lot of dissent up until the very last moment
1239
01:16:12.970 --> 01:16:17.829
in both those investigations about what steps should be taken. Right.
1240
01:16:18.170 --> 01:16:21.449
And I think a lot of people have issues with
1241
01:16:21.489 --> 01:16:24.449
both of those investigations. Right. But trust me when I
1242
01:16:24.489 --> 01:16:28.670
say they could have been so much worse if people
1243
01:16:28.750 --> 01:16:32.449
did not have the freedom to honestly voice their opinion
1244
01:16:32.489 --> 01:16:33.449
about what should be done.
1245
01:16:38.609 --> 01:16:40.350
Look, folks, I don't know where you're getting your comfort
1246
01:16:41.449 --> 01:16:44.569
during these difficult times, but I'm telling you, man, the
1247
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good comfort is this, cuddling up on the couch with
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01:16:47.199 --> 01:16:49.380
your cat. Now, I don't have a cat, but it
1249
01:16:49.420 --> 01:16:51.319
does sound pretty nice right now. I have had cats
1250
01:16:51.899 --> 01:16:56.250
and they will contrary to their reputation, cuddle you pretty hard.
1251
01:16:56.569 --> 01:17:01.710
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As someone who had cats, Elizabeth C., I feel you
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plus free shipping. Again, Smalls.com backslash TWS. Devlin, in your
1276
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reporting throughout the Department of Justice and all these different areas,
1277
01:18:42.300 --> 01:18:47.109
I would imagine there's a healthy proportion of people who think, yeah,
1278
01:18:47.130 --> 01:18:49.609
it's about time, you know, somebody took control of this
1279
01:18:49.670 --> 01:18:53.279
or this. but there's also a contingent of people that
1280
01:18:53.359 --> 01:18:57.779
are fearful of what's going to happen, but also want
1281
01:18:57.859 --> 01:19:02.859
to keep their jobs. You know, how pliable, you know,
1282
01:19:03.050 --> 01:19:08.949
on a scale of law firms that completely that imploded on,
1283
01:19:09.170 --> 01:19:13.260
on one day, or Harvard that tried desperately to hold
1284
01:19:13.460 --> 01:19:18.289
on before whatever payment they're going to fork over. What
1285
01:19:18.390 --> 01:19:20.710
is the rank and file of our Justice Department in
1286
01:19:20.770 --> 01:19:22.970
terms of bending to the whims of a strongman?
1287
01:19:24.210 --> 01:19:26.649
So I think a lot of people at the Justice
1288
01:19:26.689 --> 01:19:31.659
Department this term have been shocked by how much different
1289
01:19:31.739 --> 01:19:34.479
this Trump term has been than the first Trump term.
1290
01:19:34.920 --> 01:19:37.960
I think you see that in the way that hundreds
1291
01:19:38.420 --> 01:19:42.659
of civil rights lawyers left the department earlier this year
1292
01:19:44.000 --> 01:19:46.260
just said, this is nothing like what we imagined it
1293
01:19:46.300 --> 01:19:49.619
would be. I can't stay here and use the civil
1294
01:19:49.659 --> 01:19:54.359
rights laws of America this way. I think there is
1295
01:19:54.399 --> 01:19:58.340
a desire on the part of many people to dig
1296
01:19:58.399 --> 01:20:02.770
in and hold on. If you think back, This was
1297
01:20:02.810 --> 01:20:03.979
a big deal at the time, but it's sort of
1298
01:20:04.020 --> 01:20:07.880
forgotten now because there's always so much chaos in this space.
1299
01:20:08.300 --> 01:20:10.460
But if you think back to– there was an email
1300
01:20:10.479 --> 01:20:12.300
that the head of the New York FBI office sent
1301
01:20:12.359 --> 01:20:16.689
out early on in the Trump administration that basically talked about, look,
1302
01:20:16.750 --> 01:20:19.890
we're dealing with problems. I understand that. I'm telling you
1303
01:20:20.050 --> 01:20:22.630
as a former Marine, when things get bad, you dig
1304
01:20:22.750 --> 01:20:24.810
in and you dig a trench and you keep your
1305
01:20:24.829 --> 01:20:26.069
head down and do your job.
1306
01:20:26.140 --> 01:20:26.340
Mm-hmm.
1307
01:20:26.659 --> 01:20:28.380
And I think a lot of people at the time
1308
01:20:28.460 --> 01:20:31.079
covered that email as if it was, you know, this
1309
01:20:31.159 --> 01:20:34.739
call to arms. And I actually read that email completely
1310
01:20:34.779 --> 01:20:36.729
differently because I thought he was saying something much more
1311
01:20:36.779 --> 01:20:41.409
sophisticated and thoughtful, which was that dig a trench, like
1312
01:20:41.489 --> 01:20:46.529
dig a foxhole, get in it, stay down. And that
1313
01:20:46.630 --> 01:20:47.229
is how.
1314
01:20:47.069 --> 01:20:49.140
You live to fight another day.
1315
01:20:49.340 --> 01:20:51.760
Correct. And I think that is that is the view
1316
01:20:51.779 --> 01:20:54.880
of a lot of people, obviously. Hundreds of lawyers have
1317
01:20:54.899 --> 01:20:58.899
left the DOJ. Obviously, people like Mike are getting fired
1318
01:21:00.039 --> 01:21:05.279
for reasons that don't pass the smell test. But there
1319
01:21:05.310 --> 01:21:07.590
are still many more people I can tell you because
1320
01:21:07.630 --> 01:21:09.850
I talked to a fair number of them who are
1321
01:21:09.909 --> 01:21:12.909
like they will have to give me that letter. They
1322
01:21:12.930 --> 01:21:15.869
will have to make me go because I believe.
1323
01:21:15.949 --> 01:21:18.810
And I don't want to misrepresent the scale of of
1324
01:21:19.250 --> 01:21:21.909
the problem. I don't have that much of a sense
1325
01:21:21.949 --> 01:21:26.560
of how large. The DOJ, FBI. I imagine it's massive.
1326
01:21:27.220 --> 01:21:28.020
So here's the thing.
1327
01:21:28.079 --> 01:21:30.680
And are we talking about like a few people around
1328
01:21:30.720 --> 01:21:34.149
the margins and there's generally this large ball of knowledge
1329
01:21:34.199 --> 01:21:37.020
that stays or what? Or does that ball just like
1330
01:21:37.930 --> 01:21:40.170
it goes to wherever it's forced?
1331
01:21:40.449 --> 01:21:42.189
There's a couple of ways to think about this. For
1332
01:21:42.210 --> 01:21:46.130
the Justice Department, the most important people, I would argue,
1333
01:21:46.229 --> 01:21:49.829
in the system historically have been the layer of senior
1334
01:21:49.909 --> 01:21:53.260
career officials. Those are not people that change over during administrations.
1335
01:21:53.319 --> 01:21:56.500
Those are people who have worked, for example, terrorism cases
1336
01:21:56.840 --> 01:21:57.880
or supervised.
1337
01:21:57.939 --> 01:22:01.279
So they have an institutional knowledge of decades, the security
1338
01:22:01.300 --> 01:22:01.720
of the country.
1339
01:22:02.359 --> 01:22:05.159
Exactly. And one of the first things the administration did,
1340
01:22:05.840 --> 01:22:09.000
they pushed out all those people. So they just scraped
1341
01:22:09.060 --> 01:22:13.100
that layer off. And again, I think sometimes that stuff
1342
01:22:13.119 --> 01:22:15.199
gets covered as like, you know, oh, what a tragedy
1343
01:22:15.220 --> 01:22:18.340
for these people. And I do not discount in any
1344
01:22:18.399 --> 01:22:21.909
way the personal impact. strife that that has brought to people.
1345
01:22:22.489 --> 01:22:25.100
But the real issue is that all the careers under
1346
01:22:25.140 --> 01:22:28.560
them see which way the wind is blowing and see
1347
01:22:28.600 --> 01:22:31.640
that there is no choice but to do exactly what
1348
01:22:31.680 --> 01:22:33.560
you are told, exactly the way you are told to
1349
01:22:33.619 --> 01:22:36.239
do it, and being told to do it by people
1350
01:22:36.279 --> 01:22:41.079
who have not done this before. There is a great
1351
01:22:41.539 --> 01:22:46.319
scraping that has happened within these institutions of institutional clout
1352
01:22:46.600 --> 01:22:51.420
and knowledge and experience, and Those have, you know, the thing,
1353
01:22:51.520 --> 01:22:54.100
the word that gets expressed to me all the time is, look,
1354
01:22:54.380 --> 01:22:56.460
we can go out and walk a post for 30 days.
1355
01:22:56.520 --> 01:22:59.140
Like we're not, we're not babies. We don't have glass jaws,
1356
01:22:59.239 --> 01:23:03.960
like fine, whatever. But like I have guys cracking phones
1357
01:23:04.119 --> 01:23:05.399
in child exploitation cases.
1358
01:23:05.460 --> 01:23:07.619
What are we taking our eyes off of?
1359
01:23:07.680 --> 01:23:09.090
What are we going to miss? Where are we going
1360
01:23:09.100 --> 01:23:12.520
to get caught, caught out because we're not on the
1361
01:23:12.600 --> 01:23:15.789
stick of all these very specialized things that we normally
1362
01:23:15.829 --> 01:23:16.369
would be doing.
1363
01:23:17.050 --> 01:23:19.050
Right. And you won't know till you know.
1364
01:23:20.029 --> 01:23:21.109
And you won't know until you know.
1365
01:23:22.850 --> 01:23:24.590
I think I think we lost Devlin.
1366
01:23:24.710 --> 01:23:25.729
Yeah.
1367
01:23:26.270 --> 01:23:29.229
So, Michael, is it your sense that the DOJ operates
1368
01:23:29.989 --> 01:23:33.229
or had operated similarly or other? You know, I don't
1369
01:23:33.869 --> 01:23:36.470
I don't know if you have much contact with CIA
1370
01:23:36.550 --> 01:23:41.020
or Homeland Security or NSA or any of the other
1371
01:23:41.020 --> 01:23:45.939
800 organizations currently tasked with watching us and arresting us,
1372
01:23:47.560 --> 01:23:53.939
you know. Or the deprioritizing of ATF, the various things there.
1373
01:23:54.399 --> 01:23:56.439
Is it your sense that this is a process that's
1374
01:23:56.479 --> 01:24:00.819
going on throughout all of this infrastructure?
1375
01:24:02.060 --> 01:24:06.220
Yes and no. FBI and DOJ are unique in that
1376
01:24:06.260 --> 01:24:11.380
their mandates are incredibly broad. There are very few criminal
1377
01:24:11.439 --> 01:24:14.880
laws or national security priorities that the FBI and DOJ
1378
01:24:14.899 --> 01:24:19.439
do In an organization like ICE, they're really only doing
1379
01:24:19.659 --> 01:24:20.760
one thing. Right.
1380
01:24:21.659 --> 01:24:25.479
Well, now FBI is working with ICE.
1381
01:24:26.039 --> 01:24:28.300
Yeah, it's insane.
1382
01:24:29.060 --> 01:24:31.520
And this is a much longer conversation about why that's
1383
01:24:31.560 --> 01:24:35.659
a terrible idea. But I think in a functioning democracy,
1384
01:24:35.770 --> 01:24:41.869
you actually want prosecutorial enforcement powers dispersed. You don't want
1385
01:24:41.890 --> 01:24:44.090
to centralize them. That's how you get a police state.
1386
01:24:44.710 --> 01:24:47.310
So it was always a good thing that these agencies
1387
01:24:47.449 --> 01:24:51.350
were working on separate matters. Now that you're unifying them
1388
01:24:51.390 --> 01:24:56.050
into these weird homeland security task forces where everybody is
1389
01:24:56.109 --> 01:25:02.710
involved in immigration and violent gangs, the ones being chosen
1390
01:25:02.729 --> 01:25:06.409
to prosecute, I'm sure coincidentally all come from South America.
1391
01:25:09.479 --> 01:25:10.380
It just so happens.
1392
01:25:10.899 --> 01:25:12.260
Yeah.
1393
01:25:12.600 --> 01:25:17.899
This sort of centralization– of law enforcement authority and operations
1394
01:25:18.819 --> 01:25:24.050
is something that we've seen. I'm not going to violate
1395
01:25:24.090 --> 01:25:25.189
Godwin's law here.
1396
01:25:25.210 --> 01:25:29.449
Please don't. Please don't go there.
1397
01:25:29.710 --> 01:25:32.840
There are eras of history where this has happened and
1398
01:25:33.020 --> 01:25:36.960
countries where this has happened, and they're generally not things
1399
01:25:37.020 --> 01:25:38.060
we want to emulate.
1400
01:25:38.539 --> 01:25:43.739
Right. Have you through, you know, and obviously you're a
1401
01:25:44.750 --> 01:25:47.810
not just an agent, but also it seems a historian
1402
01:25:48.489 --> 01:25:51.380
of a lot of this. Have you seen those moments
1403
01:25:51.460 --> 01:25:58.140
where countries move into more authoritative states and these things get,
1404
01:25:58.180 --> 01:26:01.779
you know, look, we still do at present time have elections.
1405
01:26:02.319 --> 01:26:06.020
This still can be undone. At present time, this will
1406
01:26:06.060 --> 01:26:12.729
be the last Trump administration, at least constituted by what
1407
01:26:12.770 --> 01:26:17.310
we presently think of as the laws against running for
1408
01:26:17.550 --> 01:26:23.579
another term. Is it the kind of thing that a country,
1409
01:26:23.600 --> 01:26:27.140
in your experience, can find its way out of?
1410
01:26:27.859 --> 01:26:29.079
Yes, absolutely.
1411
01:26:29.140 --> 01:26:33.920
I mean, you look at, look, Japan and Germany are vibrant,
1412
01:26:34.199 --> 01:26:38.229
functioning democracies. South Africa, post-apartheid, had the.
1413
01:26:38.239 --> 01:26:43.090
But even both of those countries have made recently, I mean, Japan...
1414
01:26:43.189 --> 01:26:45.609
has an ultra-right party that's gaining tremendously. It does.
1415
01:26:45.689 --> 01:26:48.989
And you have alternative for Deutschland and Germany. But they
1416
01:26:49.029 --> 01:26:54.649
don't run the country. And there is significant pushback about them.
1417
01:26:54.989 --> 01:26:59.380
Neither of those parties have the broad-based support that the
1418
01:26:59.420 --> 01:27:02.779
MAGA movement has in the United States. But to answer
1419
01:27:02.800 --> 01:27:09.439
your question, if and when this ends, absence some sort
1420
01:27:09.979 --> 01:27:16.100
of national reconciliation process, where we really do this sort
1421
01:27:16.119 --> 01:27:19.079
of internal searching about how a lot of this consolidation
1422
01:27:19.100 --> 01:27:23.119
of power and destruction of norms happened, I don't know
1423
01:27:23.260 --> 01:27:25.779
how we come back. I know that sounds really negative.
1424
01:27:26.319 --> 01:27:29.460
It is. I'm in near despair about the future of
1425
01:27:29.520 --> 01:27:33.979
our country. What makes me even more worried is half
1426
01:27:34.020 --> 01:27:36.779
the nation isn't going to want to have that reconciliation
1427
01:27:36.819 --> 01:27:38.840
because they see nothing wrong with what's happening.
1428
01:27:40.960 --> 01:27:43.960
I would say not only nothing wrong, but they see
1429
01:27:43.979 --> 01:27:45.079
it as finally.
1430
01:27:45.119 --> 01:27:45.420
Good.
1431
01:27:45.680 --> 01:27:45.899
Yeah.
1432
01:27:45.960 --> 01:27:48.220
Finally, this is what we're doing. Yeah.
1433
01:27:48.380 --> 01:27:51.159
I mean, like, look, I don't want to take like
1434
01:27:51.199 --> 01:27:55.539
an overly Calvinist view of humanity or get too Hobbesian here,
1435
01:27:55.560 --> 01:27:55.920
but like.
1436
01:27:56.079 --> 01:27:59.460
It's been done here before. Yeah. I mean, like, I.
1437
01:28:00.199 --> 01:28:03.359
Do think human beings just in general, like we don't
1438
01:28:03.399 --> 01:28:04.680
know as much as we think we do.
1439
01:28:05.010 --> 01:28:09.210
We're pretty craven. We're pretty tribal.
1440
01:28:09.430 --> 01:28:14.300
And like, For about 250 years, we had a really
1441
01:28:14.340 --> 01:28:18.460
good system of checks and balances that tamped down on that.
1442
01:28:18.819 --> 01:28:22.180
It never got rid of it. There are very dark moments, obviously,
1443
01:28:22.220 --> 01:28:23.119
in American history.
1444
01:28:23.140 --> 01:28:26.779
Look, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most progressive amongst us, interned
1445
01:28:26.800 --> 01:28:27.260
the Japanese.
1446
01:28:27.380 --> 01:28:28.279
All the Japanese Americans.
1447
01:28:28.300 --> 01:28:30.970
We somehow got back from that. Yes, exactly.
1448
01:28:31.130 --> 01:28:36.409
But we needed to have honest conversations afterwards about why
1449
01:28:36.470 --> 01:28:39.270
that was wrong. And I don't know that a lot
1450
01:28:39.310 --> 01:28:39.970
of the country is.
1451
01:28:40.100 --> 01:28:41.520
Interested in those conversations.
1452
01:28:41.560 --> 01:28:44.899
Not only that, they're removing those conversations from our historical record.
1453
01:28:44.920 --> 01:28:46.460
I mean, when you think about- Yeah, the Smithsonian is
1454
01:28:46.500 --> 01:28:47.460
going through an audit.
1455
01:28:47.539 --> 01:28:49.060
It's insane. That's right.
1456
01:28:49.159 --> 01:28:49.300
Yeah.
1457
01:28:49.819 --> 01:28:52.989
And also, they seem very particularly concerned with how the
1458
01:28:53.050 --> 01:28:57.689
country is presented through its racial history. Segregation and slavery being, hey,
1459
01:28:57.770 --> 01:29:01.479
we shouldn't teach that because- That's not patriotic or that's
1460
01:29:01.539 --> 01:29:04.869
not– we are starting to go through different processes, not
1461
01:29:04.909 --> 01:29:08.510
just with law enforcement, but with the historical records of
1462
01:29:08.590 --> 01:29:09.470
who we even are.
1463
01:29:09.489 --> 01:29:13.899
Yeah, and look, even the notion that we shouldn't be
1464
01:29:13.960 --> 01:29:18.220
debating and even now atoning for the sin of slavery.
1465
01:29:19.100 --> 01:29:22.119
Even Thomas Jefferson, who most of the MAGA movement tends
1466
01:29:22.159 --> 01:29:25.659
to like, famously said, I tremble for my nation when
1467
01:29:25.729 --> 01:29:30.829
I reflect that God is just, specifically in reference to slavery.
1468
01:29:32.189 --> 01:29:37.050
You need to have a serious intellectual honesty and an
1469
01:29:37.229 --> 01:29:43.550
ability to confront uncomfortable truths to really know and in
1470
01:29:43.590 --> 01:29:47.619
that knowledge, love your country. And that is something– that
1471
01:29:47.699 --> 01:29:51.300
what passes for the conservative movement today is not willing
1472
01:29:51.340 --> 01:29:51.600
to do.
1473
01:29:53.500 --> 01:29:57.210
Well, it's, you know, I do wonder if maybe the
1474
01:29:57.390 --> 01:30:01.989
answer is, you know, look, it is, there is something
1475
01:30:02.050 --> 01:30:06.210
appealing about the great man theory. There is something appealing
1476
01:30:06.289 --> 01:30:10.029
about a hero will rise amongst us. And we always
1477
01:30:10.069 --> 01:30:12.109
do sort of celebrate that in the United States, you know,
1478
01:30:12.529 --> 01:30:15.850
Abraham Lincoln, the great man stood up and, held the
1479
01:30:15.859 --> 01:30:19.890
country together through the Civil War. And it does. There's
1480
01:30:20.010 --> 01:30:25.210
almost a wish fulfillment of, well, maybe the bizarro Trump
1481
01:30:25.369 --> 01:30:28.770
will rise and that will be the person. But there's
1482
01:30:28.909 --> 01:30:33.989
very little faith that the system will self-correct. That's the
1483
01:30:34.029 --> 01:30:37.170
part that seems highly unlikely.
1484
01:30:37.409 --> 01:30:40.869
Well, our system has a fundamental flaw. And not to
1485
01:30:40.930 --> 01:30:44.149
keep going back to the founders, but as a good.
1486
01:30:43.890 --> 01:30:46.489
Philosophical– Those bastards, what did they do here?
1487
01:30:46.510 --> 01:30:47.909
No, no. I'm about to praise them.
1488
01:30:48.189 --> 01:30:48.710
All right.
1489
01:30:48.750 --> 01:30:52.189
Fair enough. There was a very clear recognition in all
1490
01:30:52.210 --> 01:30:56.569
of their writings that the system we set up is
1491
01:30:56.899 --> 01:31:00.520
only going to work as long as it is populated
1492
01:31:00.579 --> 01:31:05.100
by men of virtue. And we don't have that now.
1493
01:31:05.140 --> 01:31:07.460
I mean, let's expand it to men and women of virtue, obviously,
1494
01:31:07.500 --> 01:31:11.680
but like– Right. The system was premised on a notion
1495
01:31:11.720 --> 01:31:18.470
that there would be disinterested, selfless patriots who placed the
1496
01:31:18.649 --> 01:31:22.710
well-being of their country above themselves, which is what patriotism
1497
01:31:22.750 --> 01:31:28.130
is supposed to be. We don't have that. We talked
1498
01:31:28.369 --> 01:31:33.149
earlier in the podcast about the situation the FBI found
1499
01:31:33.189 --> 01:31:39.079
itself in with both Clinton and Trump investigations. and how
1500
01:31:39.100 --> 01:31:43.560
that caused the FBI to lose trust, to lose the
1501
01:31:43.579 --> 01:31:47.520
American people's trust. It's deeper than that, I think. I
1502
01:31:47.720 --> 01:31:53.680
think regardless of your political views, in terms of a
1503
01:31:53.779 --> 01:31:59.930
lack of self-interest and altruism, neither Hillary Clinton or Donald
1504
01:32:00.020 --> 01:32:03.109
Trump were really exemplars of people who were willing to
1505
01:32:03.149 --> 01:32:03.949
put aside.
1506
01:32:03.750 --> 01:32:05.029
Ambition for the greater good.
1507
01:32:06.340 --> 01:32:10.659
And we were confronted in that election with two people
1508
01:32:11.340 --> 01:32:14.289
who thought the rules didn't apply to them. Now, I
1509
01:32:14.329 --> 01:32:19.149
think in– like Clinton maintaining an email server– Yeah.
1510
01:32:19.189 --> 01:32:20.869
It's just a slightly different order.
1511
01:32:20.930 --> 01:32:21.909
Yeah, it's different.
1512
01:32:21.949 --> 01:32:22.470
Yeah. Right.
1513
01:32:22.729 --> 01:32:23.909
But like it's still– Different.
1514
01:32:23.729 --> 01:32:27.399
Than like getting people to storm the Capitol to prevent– Exactly.
1515
01:32:27.460 --> 01:32:31.039
Or talking to a foreign intelligence service. But like it's
1516
01:32:31.140 --> 01:32:35.350
still indicative of people who thought– in some measure, admittedly
1517
01:32:35.449 --> 01:32:41.050
very different degrees, that the normal rules that govern politics
1518
01:32:41.170 --> 01:32:46.510
didn't apply to them. Unfortunately, the only organization that was
1519
01:32:46.569 --> 01:32:49.130
in a position to push back against either of them
1520
01:32:49.569 --> 01:32:53.869
was the FBI. I will make a much less lofty
1521
01:32:54.020 --> 01:32:57.750
quote than– I have before. I'm going to quote the
1522
01:32:57.789 --> 01:32:59.310
tagline for Alien vs.
1523
01:32:59.390 --> 01:32:59.810
Predator.
1524
01:33:00.689 --> 01:33:01.289
Whoever wins, we lose.
1525
01:33:01.310 --> 01:33:04.060
I thought we were going Burke. No, we could.
1526
01:33:04.649 --> 01:33:05.479
No, no.
1527
01:33:05.859 --> 01:33:08.479
We're going Weaver? We're going Weaver? Yeah.
1528
01:33:09.319 --> 01:33:11.300
Not even Weaver. We're going with one of the bad
1529
01:33:11.359 --> 01:33:16.239
knockoff sequels 20 years later. Alien vs. Predator. Whoever wins,
1530
01:33:16.319 --> 01:33:19.699
we lose. If Clinton won, there was going to be
1531
01:33:19.800 --> 01:33:23.930
some form of retribution for the email investigation. Trump won.
1532
01:33:24.069 --> 01:33:29.250
There were forms of retribution for the Russia investigation. There
1533
01:33:29.310 --> 01:33:32.850
was no way the FBI was going to come out
1534
01:33:32.869 --> 01:33:37.510
of 2016 and its aftermath intact. The only thing I'm
1535
01:33:37.550 --> 01:33:41.409
amazed about is that nine years later, it's still happening.
1536
01:33:42.130 --> 01:33:42.350
Right.
1537
01:33:42.590 --> 01:33:45.810
And that it's still going. Well, we so appreciate you
1538
01:33:46.020 --> 01:33:50.140
taking the time to speak with us. I also want
1539
01:33:50.180 --> 01:33:53.600
to congratulate you. I know that you just had a
1540
01:33:54.670 --> 01:33:58.250
little baby boy and that, and certainly in this time you,
1541
01:33:58.409 --> 01:34:00.939
you stepping away for a bit. I should have, what
1542
01:34:00.979 --> 01:34:02.680
I should have done is forget about the podcast. Just
1543
01:34:02.720 --> 01:34:05.539
let you nap for an hour. And that way you'd be,
1544
01:34:06.260 --> 01:34:07.020
you'd be ready to go.
1545
01:34:07.300 --> 01:34:08.859
I'm sure in a couple of years, that will be
1546
01:34:08.899 --> 01:34:09.250
an option.
1547
01:34:09.899 --> 01:34:13.479
Have you thought about your next sort of step? Have
1548
01:34:13.510 --> 01:34:15.569
you been in touch with some folks that are still
1549
01:34:15.630 --> 01:34:17.430
allowed to talk to you? Yeah.
1550
01:34:17.470 --> 01:34:20.130
So I'm doing a couple things like I still this
1551
01:34:20.189 --> 01:34:22.270
is going to sound very cliche and cheesy.
1552
01:34:23.210 --> 01:34:24.069
My oath to.
1553
01:34:24.029 --> 01:34:27.609
The Constitution did not come with an expiration date simply
1554
01:34:27.649 --> 01:34:31.060
because I left government. I'm working with a number of
1555
01:34:31.149 --> 01:34:35.380
organizations that are still fighting for national security at the
1556
01:34:35.460 --> 01:34:39.159
rule of law and the area of the Venn diagram
1557
01:34:39.199 --> 01:34:43.479
where those two things connect. I'm on the advisory committee
1558
01:34:43.560 --> 01:34:47.840
for a group called Justice Connection, which provides free legal
1559
01:34:47.880 --> 01:34:52.380
representation to DOJ and FBI employees who are put in
1560
01:34:52.439 --> 01:34:55.859
positions because of their political beliefs or asked to do
1561
01:34:55.880 --> 01:35:00.300
something illegal. I'm going to be starting a fellowship with
1562
01:35:00.359 --> 01:35:03.039
a website called Lawfare, where I'm going to be writing
1563
01:35:03.100 --> 01:35:04.640
about the same issues for.
1564
01:35:04.520 --> 01:35:05.399
The general public.
1565
01:35:05.819 --> 01:35:06.060
Right.
1566
01:35:06.600 --> 01:35:11.840
Well, we certainly appreciate your service over all these years, uh, and,
1567
01:35:12.060 --> 01:35:16.229
and definitely find it hard to imagine the injustice of
1568
01:35:16.289 --> 01:35:21.350
having that all, uh, be erased based on, you know, look,
1569
01:35:21.409 --> 01:35:23.670
it'd be one thing if, you know, they said, you're
1570
01:35:23.710 --> 01:35:25.689
a spy, but you know, you're friends with a guy
1571
01:35:25.710 --> 01:35:29.739
we don't like, uh, But we really appreciate you being here.
1572
01:35:30.060 --> 01:35:33.550
Michael Feinberg, former FBI agent, been there for many, many
1573
01:35:33.590 --> 01:35:36.970
years and let go for the most ridiculous of reasons.
1574
01:35:37.109 --> 01:35:40.550
And Devlin Barrett, who we had on from the New
1575
01:35:40.590 --> 01:35:42.869
York Times who reports on these things, was at the
1576
01:35:42.890 --> 01:35:48.449
DOJ and had his connection, I'm going to say, mysteriously cut.
1577
01:35:49.630 --> 01:35:51.569
That's what I'm going to say. I'm going to stick
1578
01:35:51.609 --> 01:35:56.380
with the deep state ended up cutting Devlin Barrett's feed
1579
01:35:57.050 --> 01:35:59.550
And that's why he was no longer. We hope he's okay.
1580
01:36:00.350 --> 01:36:03.050
That's what I'm going to say. Michael, thanks again.
1581
01:36:03.069 --> 01:36:04.189
Thanks for having me.
1582
01:36:04.609 --> 01:36:11.149
All right. Bye-bye. I thought that was excellent, but I
1583
01:36:11.189 --> 01:36:13.850
have no idea what it's going to sound like because
1584
01:36:14.569 --> 01:36:18.619
it was like we did an interview and Michael was
1585
01:36:19.180 --> 01:36:23.420
literally at a bris for his newborn son. And it
1586
01:36:23.500 --> 01:36:27.729
turns out at the Department of Justice, They have shitty Wi-Fi.
1587
01:36:27.970 --> 01:36:30.050
Like there was so much shit going on there. I
1588
01:36:30.090 --> 01:36:32.140
don't even know. I have no idea what that is
1589
01:36:32.149 --> 01:36:32.689
going to sound like.
1590
01:36:32.770 --> 01:36:34.460
No one's doing it like us. Yeah.
1591
01:36:34.520 --> 01:36:35.619
This is my Super Bowl.
1592
01:36:35.819 --> 01:36:38.899
Lauren, this is, I like, and by the way, for
1593
01:36:38.920 --> 01:36:41.840
the people at home, like they've got three hours. Like
1594
01:36:42.039 --> 01:36:46.640
they've got Nicole, Rob, Lauren, like they've got three hours
1595
01:36:46.699 --> 01:36:51.069
to make this thing sound like something coherent.
1596
01:36:51.569 --> 01:36:52.569
Superstar team.
1597
01:36:53.550 --> 01:36:56.159
It really is. It is a superstar team. I feel
1598
01:36:56.199 --> 01:37:01.550
so badly for Michael. Like, talk about a, like, warrior
1599
01:37:01.609 --> 01:37:07.090
philosopher dude, like, quoting Weber and Burke and on the
1600
01:37:07.149 --> 01:37:13.270
line and removed because he still is friendly with a
1601
01:37:13.369 --> 01:37:14.310
guy they don't like.
1602
01:37:14.949 --> 01:37:16.930
I love how he thought he was the first person
1603
01:37:16.970 --> 01:37:22.159
to wax poetic about John Locke on this podcast. Sir,
1604
01:37:22.460 --> 01:37:23.659
you have no idea.
1605
01:37:23.680 --> 01:37:25.119
Join the club.
1606
01:37:26.180 --> 01:37:28.880
You do not know what you're dealing with, my friend.
1607
01:37:30.380 --> 01:37:33.579
But he's one of the few guys who had quoted,
1608
01:37:33.960 --> 01:37:36.380
I guess it was Weber, but then also where did
1609
01:37:36.420 --> 01:37:38.010
he pull up? Was it something from Star Wars or
1610
01:37:38.020 --> 01:37:38.479
was that me?
1611
01:37:38.619 --> 01:37:39.569
Oh yeah, Alien vs.
1612
01:37:39.609 --> 01:37:45.609
Predator. Rolling Stones, Alien vs. Predator. That is a dude,
1613
01:37:46.210 --> 01:37:49.130
if he had been in your dorm in college, you'd
1614
01:37:49.170 --> 01:37:52.369
have just been like, I want us to sit here forever.
1615
01:37:53.670 --> 01:37:54.520
A deep thinker.
1616
01:37:54.880 --> 01:37:57.180
I don't, I don't, I don't ever, I don't know
1617
01:37:57.220 --> 01:38:00.720
what's going to happen when the gummy wears off, but
1618
01:38:00.800 --> 01:38:04.399
right now you're my favorite person in the world. All
1619
01:38:04.439 --> 01:38:07.819
good stuff. Brittany, before we go off for summer, is
1620
01:38:07.840 --> 01:38:11.579
there anything anybody wants to know before we're, we're gone there?
1621
01:38:11.979 --> 01:38:12.840
Always there is.
1622
01:38:13.359 --> 01:38:14.399
All right. What do they got?
1623
01:38:15.300 --> 01:38:18.699
John, what lessons should Chuck Schumer learn from Joe Biden's
1624
01:38:18.760 --> 01:38:21.199
decision not to step aside earlier?
1625
01:38:21.220 --> 01:38:26.010
That's exactly right. Schumer has to learn that you got
1626
01:38:26.029 --> 01:38:30.600
to stay in there no matter what until. one day
1627
01:38:30.659 --> 01:38:33.199
you look up and the angels are either dragging you
1628
01:38:33.239 --> 01:38:37.020
towards the light or towards the darkness. And that is
1629
01:38:37.060 --> 01:38:41.430
the only way that from now on, you can only
1630
01:38:41.520 --> 01:38:44.390
be removed from the Senate or our government by the
1631
01:38:44.569 --> 01:38:48.590
great claw arm in the sky that It's what his
1632
01:38:48.670 --> 01:38:51.890
nipples are for. It comes down. They grab them both
1633
01:38:51.970 --> 01:38:54.210
on the nipple and pull him out of the machine.
1634
01:38:55.800 --> 01:38:56.939
You might not be far off.
1635
01:38:56.949 --> 01:38:58.840
We're about to get an octagon at the White House.
1636
01:38:59.100 --> 01:39:02.739
You never know. Day, man. July 4th. It's not. America
1637
01:39:02.800 --> 01:39:06.619
can't celebrate its glorious history without two people beating the
1638
01:39:06.659 --> 01:39:09.319
shit out of each other in the Rose Garden. It
1639
01:39:09.399 --> 01:39:14.060
is going to be Chuck Schumer. I mean, there was recently,
1640
01:39:14.239 --> 01:39:16.560
I think, a senator might have been Dick Durbin. who
1641
01:39:16.600 --> 01:39:18.859
was like, I've made the decision not to run anymore,
1642
01:39:18.930 --> 01:39:23.710
like 82. And everybody was like, wow, that's incredible. Like
1643
01:39:23.750 --> 01:39:26.529
a guy stepping away in his mid eighties.
1644
01:39:27.210 --> 01:39:27.850
Amazing.
1645
01:39:28.609 --> 01:39:32.090
Why leave so early young man? You know, it's like
1646
01:39:32.109 --> 01:39:34.810
when you read about like an NFL player being like,
1647
01:39:34.909 --> 01:39:39.550
I've decided to retire at 25, like just fucking crazy.
1648
01:39:40.010 --> 01:39:41.130
What else they got? What else they got?
1649
01:39:41.770 --> 01:39:44.859
Um, Do you watch Fox News? Do you have a
1650
01:39:44.899 --> 01:39:45.699
favorite show?
1651
01:39:46.039 --> 01:39:51.359
Do I watch Fox News? Yes. Look at me. Look.
1652
01:39:51.760 --> 01:39:54.920
Would this happen to some... Do you think this erosion
1653
01:39:55.000 --> 01:39:59.640
happens naturally? You think this is just wind, sun, and rain? No.
1654
01:40:00.220 --> 01:40:08.250
This is the corrosive acid rain that flows from... America's
1655
01:40:08.329 --> 01:40:13.130
newsroom on a daily basis and has, look, look, look.
1656
01:40:13.810 --> 01:40:16.649
That's the Jesse Waters glow, I think it's called.
1657
01:40:17.090 --> 01:40:19.760
This is what happens to a human being who is
1658
01:40:19.819 --> 01:40:22.319
exposed to that level of radiation.
1659
01:40:22.880 --> 01:40:29.680
John's skincare routine is the five. All right.
1660
01:40:29.699 --> 01:40:31.720
You guys going to have a good rest of the summer?
1661
01:40:32.619 --> 01:40:34.609
You going to enjoy yourselves? What do we got, like
1662
01:40:34.630 --> 01:40:35.229
three weeks off?
1663
01:40:36.239 --> 01:40:38.560
Yeah, we'll be back the second week in September.
1664
01:40:38.939 --> 01:40:41.220
You guys have crushed it this year, my friends. Please,
1665
01:40:41.239 --> 01:40:44.239
you've earned a wonderful vacation, all of you. I hope
1666
01:40:44.279 --> 01:40:49.630
you all have a great time and come back nice
1667
01:40:49.710 --> 01:40:52.130
and crisp and ready to go. Brittany, how can they
1668
01:40:52.170 --> 01:40:53.630
keep in touch with us while we're all gone?
1669
01:40:54.449 --> 01:40:58.010
Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod. Instagram threads, TikTok, Blue Sky,
1670
01:40:58.069 --> 01:41:01.090
we are Weekly Show Podcast. And you can like, subscribe,
1671
01:41:01.149 --> 01:41:03.229
and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with
1672
01:41:03.250 --> 01:41:03.789
Jon Stewart.
1673
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All right. Lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedovic, video
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editor and engineer, Rob Vittal, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce,
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researcher and associate producer, Jillian Spear, and our executive producers,
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Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Guys, fantastic job. As always,
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have a wonderful summer break. And I look forward to
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seeing everybody in September. Talk to you guys soon. Bye-bye.
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The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast.
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It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.