YouSaid · the spoken record

David Rohde

lines on the record: 51
first: 2024-09-23
most recent: 2024-09-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think there are various proposals by Jack Goldsmith, who I mentioned earlier of laws and different regulations that the president could enact. A new president could enact through executive orders or through legislation that would reinforce and solidify the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI from political meddling. And it's critical that the president do that, a new president saying, I should not have all the powers that the Supreme Court has suddenly given me. We need checks and balances, and I think that that would be a very concrete positive step for the next president, Kamala Harris, or even Donald Trump, to take.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we have to see. And this depends then on who wins in Congress and whether Congress, even when the Democrats had control of Congress under Biden, there weren't enough safeguards enacted to try to prevent a January 6th to make clear the whole process of certifying election results.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, again, prosecutors and look many people and obviously people of color in this country don't trust prosecutors at all or the criminal justice system. But they're ideal. Robert Jackson, the famous former Supreme Court justice who was also a prosecutor at Nuremberg talked about the awesome power of prosecutors and how they had to act in a just way. And so I think these norms should somehow be maybe made laws or somehow made more applicable that they really need to be abided by all people in the Justice Department, by various attorneys general. And I think there's more that Congress can do. And I would hope that as a former prosecutor, you know, Harris would do that. Joe Biden has said he disagrees with the immunity ruling that he says that it's too much power for the president. So I hope that, you know, she would practice what she preaches and make sure there are checks on abuse of prosecutorial power.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, if he was an executive order before he left office where he tried to change the civil service system and remove the really regulations that prevent a president from firing civil service without cause. And he wants to make it easier to fire people and make them political appointees. Again, more court battles ahead, but he's been winning court battles. My concern is whatever the motivation, you know, the sphere among federalist society folks that the presidency is getting too weak, we are seeing an unprecedented concentration of power in the presidency and a lack of transparency. That was another marquee thing of the Trump administration was not releasing documents, not saying what they were doing. And so I fear the concentration of power and the secrecy, again, it undermines our democracy.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of Trump overhauling the DOJ, Garland seems to be hoping that there's enough people on the DOJ who would refuse to carry out illegal and unconstitutional orders. But I've talked to many people and they think there will be lawyers willing to carry this out. Jeffrey Clark, who was the official mid-level DOJ official who Trump tried to place make the acting attorney general on January 3rd would happily serve as attorney general. He would happily throw out all these January 6 cases. He would happily bring charges. And so there will be, he just needs a few dozen people who are willing to carry out his orders and weaponize the Justice Department. Right. And it would fall on.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it is guaranteed in the Constitution a trial by a jury of his peers. A judge could also throughout the charges because they don't think there's probable cause. But it's extraordinary that the president now has the power to call his attorney general and order this. This was not possible. No president has done it since Nixon because they assumed it was illegal and feared the political fallout. And being prosecuted by the federal government is a terrifying thing. I mean, it can destroy your career and everything else. So a wealthy person could withstand it and jurors might reject some of these charges, but it is an extraordinary thing we face that Trump could do thanks to the Supreme Court ruling.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If Donald Trump is reelected, and thanks to the Supreme Court's recent immunity ruling, he would be able to call up the Attorney General and order him to indict certain people. He's talked recently within the last few weeks about Mark Zuckerberg being indicted and potentially spending the rest of his life in jail because Trump thinks he swayed the 2020 election. And if Zuckerberg does it again, he'll put him in jail. And so this is a wider swath than just he's going to jail as political opponents. But the immunity ruling makes it legal. He's absolutely immune if he calls his attorney general and says indict this person. That's his power. No president has had that power until now in American history. The check on that that still exists in our system is that you still need a grand jury to vote for an indictment and you would need a jury to convict the person that he puts on. Mark Zuckerberg would have to.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just one quick fact. On the January 6th prosecutions, the judge that has overseen most of those trials, Royce Lambreth, was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987. He is a conservative judge. And the system's working because he's thrown out some charges against January 6th defendants. You have a jury that needs to find these people guilty. They have zealous defense lawyers. The Supreme Court also ruled to throw out some of the charges that related to obstruction of official proceedings. The system is working and that one dimensional narrative he's presenting is not accurate.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Independent branches of government that duke it out against each other. I want transparency as a journalist. I wish there was more from the DOJ and everywhere. That's what prevents, I think, the concentration of power and the lack of transparency to me is the biggest threat. That's what leads to authoritarianism.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I mean, I want to see what happens, meaning it's brilliant messaging. It's very effective messaging from Stephen Chung, and those are all such vivid terms and all these narratives that grab us. But, you know, Joe Biden won the 2020 election. I guess that's considered a conspiracy. But I'm just saying to voters from both sides of the political spectrum that Donald Trump won in 2016. He won. It was an electoral college thing, but there's no question about that. And so I think that the countries is deeply divided as the polls show. I think that changes are happening in Washington, meaning Joe Biden, you know, much more progress for labor unions, that liberal peoples might want, a deeply conservative Supreme Court overthrowing Roe v. Wade. That's what many conservatives wanted. So I just don't think that this is all like a play occurring in Washington. I think there's real divisions in our country. I want us to have three.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't vouch for every special counsel, but I just maybe trust an independent investigator or, again, a public health official in our election clerk that they're actually trying to get basic facts out.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that he was a well-meaning older man with a memory issue. And I think there's tremendous pressure from Republicans on her to explain why there was some classified documents that Biden had in his basement. And not as many and not as high level as the Trump documents. And so he put that explanation in there and her was savage by the Biden White House and by Democrats for mentioning his memory. lo and behold, the debate happens and it turns out that President Biden does have a memory problem. And so I'm not.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe this is true in newsrooms, many of them, but like, you know, in FBI offices, they don't sit around and talk about politics. You know, there's a pride in being a political in certain professions. And again, Trump consistently is the bigger threat, I think, in terms of weaponizing things. But I want to talk for one second about Robert Hurr, the special counsel that investigated Joe Biden's handling a classified documents. He put in his report this famous line about one of the reasons he didn't prosecute.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that's a, and that's we've always had people thinking that, and there may have been plots that you and I and other journalists missed. But it's good that Americans are skeptical of government power. That's a good thing about the country. I just, again, I can just say what people told me. I mean, both the DOJ people and the FBI people who were given the Mara Lago case were just like, they didn't want it. They thought it was like kryptonite. They were like, some of them were like, well, won't he just give them back eventually? They just saw it as a lose-lose as a former senior FBI official asked me not to name him because he was worried about threats. But he said, you know, why are we wasting our time on this? And then like, you know, Russia and China are the real enemies. So I didn't find FBI. I found that there's a culture in the FBI and DOJ, particularly the FBI. This was a change after Hoover. And it was William Webster and way back, again, to the 70s where they don't.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It is, and I think it's a real danger to our democracy. And I can, I mean, you know better than I do about, I think the internet overall still has the potential to be a force for good, but it's also an incredible source of. False and misleading and conspiratorial information. So I'm proud to be a journalist and we'll stay journalists for the rest of my life and trying to get the facts as best I can. But it alarms me that so many people believe these theories on the right and the left and that a theme of the new book is how these same divisions, the conspiracy theories have now seeped into our government agencies and are slowing investigations.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, but the difference is again, you have prominent, you know, the term deep state takes off. Trump say what you want about him. He's a brilliant at messaging.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's, um, thank you. You're helping me nerd out here. Okay, go ahead. No, no. So the deep state, you know, as you may know, so originally it was used actually as like a description of the Turkish military, the Egyptian military. They were thwarting pro-democracy movements in those countries. But it explodes after Trump wins in 2016. And there's an anonymous column on Steve Bannon's website about a great struggle is now going to unfold as Trump takes power between the deep state. He views them all as bureaucrats and the Trump administration. And it was this sort of wide new definition of the deep state that wasn't, it's not just the military industrial complex, which liberals fear. And, you know, we should fear unaccountable bureaucrats across the federal government. But it's any public employee who people behold into the government or, you know,”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so our system can and should reform. It did reform after Watergate. It can reform again to our times, but there's so much partisan gridlock that laws aren't being passed, you know, changes aren't being made to our government systems.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Issue in the Mueller investigation. It's very confusing. Congress has failed to act on that. There's a way to make it very clear that the president using his pardon power to get someone in exchange for someone obstructing an investigation that that is illegal. There's Jack Goldsmith who served under George W. Bush has made all these recommendations, even like a law requiring presidents to make their tax returns public. a bit of field from the Justice Department, but there are laws that Congress could enact that would buttress these norms and they could do a new special counsel law so that Eileen Cannon's ruling wouldn't matter that we need special counsels to carry out investigations, another reform would be to limit special counsel investigations to five years. Presidents from both parties get very frustrated when they drag on for years.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She's exactly right, and this is the view that, at least exactly right, and this is exactly what Garland says, and that the best thing he can do is sort of represent embody, show the public this is the nonpartisan norm, and this is the way to stop the president. I've asked legal experts, like, can't we, this justice manual, which has all these guidelines for prosecution where Jeff Session says, I'm not going to oversee the investigation of the campaign I helped run. I was like, can Congress make these laws? Is there any way to make these stronger these norms? And that would be thrown out because it would be probably by this Supreme Court because that would be Congress dictating to another branch of government, the executive branch, how it should conduct prosecutions. And so, and I don't, I still think there's more that can be done. There's a way the obstruction of justice laws can be updated. This became...”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People are not leaving, that people are staying in the justice department waiting to see the election results, and this would be the big question if Trump were to win. He wants to get rid of a lot of the civil service protections people have, that this would allow him to fire people more easily. Currently, the president, this is part of the Project 2025, and changing the whole civil service system and the federal government. The president could go from now any president points about 4,000 political appointees across the federal government. It could be many thousands more, tens of thousands of people appointed by Trump. He hired and fired them personally. And then again, this is just the fear is politicizing the Justice Department and other agencies.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the immunity ruling was a real shock. And it was clearly seen in the Justice Department as it was written very vaguely. And some people feel that was intentional, that the definition of, you know, that official acts by the president are absolutely immune, including the conversations between the president and the attorney general, which is an unprecedented interpretation of law. But personal acts, you know, you can investigate. But every interaction with the Justice Department was absolutely immune from prosecution. And they didn't really define what a personal act was versus an official act. And this is going to cause this case, even if Kama Harris wins the presidency, it'll take two years to litigate, or one to two years to litigate exactly what is a personal act on January 6th and what was an official act on January 6th to carry out that trial. So I do think it hurt morale, but I've heard that”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, there are good Trump appointees in the Atlanta, the appeals court in Atlanta that overruled Canon earlier. So, you know, there are people trying to do the right thing.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did the right thing, particularly in December 2020? Dozens of judges, Trump appointees, also rejected the claims of fraud. The judiciary, I would argue, was the strongest branch of government in the crisis we faced in 2020. He lost at the Supreme Court as well. And now you have Judge Cannon throwing out these charges that may get overturned, and then you have the immunity ruling from the Supreme Court, which we can talk about also. That's the to me the wild card as we head into the 2024 election.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I think it's fair to say that there was time lost in the beginning of the January 6th investigation and the documents case had the delay I talked about. And then the judge cannon's decision was a shock. It's sort of saying that special counsels and all the, there's several dozen political appointees at the top of the Justice Department, people that aren't Senate confirmed are unconstitutional. And this no judge no one anywhere had sort of used this interpretation of the law. It's sort of this unitary executive theory, but kind of on steroids in that you're weakening the president because you're able to appoint these special counsels, that the president is the chief executive should oversee all investigations themselves. And it just shocked the justice department. And this is a change. Again, Glass half full. So judiciary general...”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On social media, it's just a whole new ballgame. So I do think there's a more active way for Garland to get out there. I mean, he said he's given all these speeches and things. And so it's a conundrum, though, for the office of the Attorney General. Again, he should act apolitically. But one other mistake, too, I think, was that he could have appointed a special counsel sooner to investigate Trump. Jack Smith, I mean, they did carry out investigations January 6th, but there's another chapter of the book called The Lost Year. Other journalists have reported this as well. But there was a very slow move in the beginning to investigate Trump.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think he could have been giving speeches like this much sooner and been much more aggressive in talking about what's happening. Another character in the book was a former DOJ official who worked on one of the Trump investigations, one of an associate of Trump's. And this prosecutor, Trump specifically mentioned them in a tweet, and this person was terrified that in their view, you know better than me, 60 million, 70 million, 80 million followers at that point on Twitter, that he has no security. He would go home at night afraid that he was going to round a corner and have a Trump supporter who believed that this prosecutor was part of the deep state attack him. And so the chilling effect of a president saying this, having the platform”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was slow. I mean, he really believes he should not be a political actor. And one thing I've talked to his aides and others about this, and I'd say to them, you're so reticent, he's so reticent. You've got sort of one hand tied behind your back compared to a political actor. Sure. And Garland has told AIDS, you know, yes, the Justice Department has a hand behind its back compared to a political actor, but Garland insists, you know, but becoming a political actor is a line that he will never cross. He will never allow the GOJ to become political. And there's sort of a contradiction here. But he said to AIDS, we would not want to be a political actor. That is the end of the rule of law.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Journalists, you need to try to just be fair and get basic information, public health officials. And if we don't have them, I think our democracy doesn't function well.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm so glad that you asked this question and chose that quote. So Garland has complete, he's been a public servant himself and he deeply believes in upholding the rule of law in a fair way.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be fair, those once on the ground had been put there by FBI agents as they went through files. But they were very powerful images and it was a new tactic.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, social media, the pictures of the stacks of boxes in a bathroom, the stacks of boxes on a stage, and then most of all that kind of vivid picture on a flowered carpet, those top secret documents sort of spread across the floor. And that was an example of the department changing and being more transparent and trying to not let themselves be defined by Trump or other political actors”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, one other example from Mar Lago, which is more interesting, is this younger generation pushed for putting out as much detail as possible after the Marlago raid. Garland initially said nothing. He did give a press conference and say, I ordered this search. What was interesting is when they filed the court papers showing about the search and the classified documents, there was a push by younger prosecutors and FBI folks to include photographs. This might sound like a simple thing, but the FBI doesn't traditionally do that. And you and I, as members of the media, these incredibly powerful pictures.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, there's questions still about what happened under Trump, and there hasn't been, as far as I know, a full sort of accounting under Garland in terms of what happened. And some people criticize Garland for this, but this is, again, a sort of a traditional approach to the Justice Department where I guess in deference for the institution, Garland is not made everything public that was done under bar. I also have, you know, there are DOJ officials who say they haven't found many things, but then you have this very concerning account on the Egypt investigation.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He fears the left that there's this sort of socialist takeover looming. And he feels he happens to be religiously observant and a Catholic, but he feels like, for example, that religiously observant people in America of all faiths are sort of under cultural siege from the left.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's interesting. And Barr didn't talk to me. He was very unhappy with the profile I wrote about him for The New Yorker. But talking with people around him, the fairest thing I can say is that he, for all of his life, he's sort of not trusted the left. He grew up during the Vietnam era and sort of hated all the Vietnam War protesters at Colombia. And I think he really sees the country as being under threat from a radical left that he thinks sort of controls Hollywood and increasingly controls politics. And he thought, you know, appointing Mueller was just totally unnecessary and an effort to, again, handicap Trump's presidency. And it's this existential threat. You're right. He recently said he did the right thing for the election. He said the 2020 election was not stolen. He rebuffed Trump's claims and criticized him, but then recently he said he would vote for Trump.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was vital, and it's important to frame him. Barr is a big believer in the unitary executive theory, and this is a big federalist society belief that you need a strong president. And Barr talked about this in a speech when he was Attorney General, that at moments of crisis for the country, this massive country needs a strong president. And we can talk about how this ends up feeding into the immunity ruling later. But so Barr's view and generally the circles view is that the Attorney General can be somewhat political. The Attorney General can, you know, Act and the idea is that, and even maybe have pressure from the president, the idea is that it's up to voters every four years to then hold a president and their attorney general accountable for their actions and throw them out of office. And the problem, of course, with that theory.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In an age of hyper partisanship and in the digital age where you just have tons of information out there. And I think that it's slowly changing, but that was a major mistake by Mueller was to let Barr get out there and define the report.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He did, and there's a general tendency of waiting to talk and letting your sort of documents speak for you, your filings in court. So what Barr does is hold his press conference. Everybody, or I think many people remember it. And Mueller basically lets Barr have this press conference, let Barr decide how to summarize the report. Barr doesn't use the prepared summaries from Mueller's team. He makes up his own findings, holds this press conference. And as you said, he sort of shapes the findings in the best possible way for Trump. And Mueller had a chance then to make a public statement to come out very strongly, get up in front of the cameras and say, my report has been distorted, but he didn't do that. And there's a newer generation, a younger generation of DOJ and FBI officials that's saying kind of this classic thing of sitting back and filing court filings. One of them said to me, trust me doesn't cut it.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He does protect the Mueller investigation. He and one of his aides, a guy named Ed O'Callahan, who also spoke to me, they did the right thing. They let Mueller have the time he needed. There was constant pressure from Trump to shorten the investigation. And eventually the Mueller report comes out. It does not find enough proof to bring criminal charges that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia. And then there's obviously this huge dispute about Mueller not making a decision on obstruction of justice. But I did feel that the system worked because a special counsel, you know, roughly cleared Trump of the most significant charge. And of course, Trump still attacked the whole process and mocked it all.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was critical. So he was the deputy attorney general. And what happens is Jeff Sessions, again, Glass Half full Jeff Sessions recuses himself from the Trump-Russia investigation. Absolutely correctly. He's briefed on it, and I talked to sessions about it. One of the first meetings Jeff Sessions has is Attorney General is he's told we have to tell you, sir, that there is an ongoing FBI investigation of the Trump campaign and whether it coordinated with Russia, and Sessions, who was one of the top people in that campaign, he immediately said, stop talking. I don't want to hear more about this. I cannot be involved. He did absolutely the right thing. And he said, it's like a crystal clear norm. You can't, literally, one of the examples in the justice manual, the guidebook, is that you cannot investigate an organization that you are involved in. So Rod Rosenstein is then put in charge of this, Trump's furious, he berates, as we all know, publicly and privately sessions. And so there's huge pressure on Rod Rosenstein.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say it's a last gasp, and I'm going to constantly try to be glass half full here So Rod Rosen, I spoke with him at length as well.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interfere in an investigation of themselves or their aides, or they couldn't fire an FBI director and not face an enormous political cost. And when Trump fired Comey, he didn't pay that large a political cost. And that creates this chilling effect that just intensifies over the years after that”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the firing of Comey was a major shock to people in the bureau. Again, a lot of reforms were enacted after Watergate and Jedgar Hoover. One was that there would be a 10-year term for an FBI director, so you wouldn't have a Hoover who just engaged in all kinds of abuses. We can talk about that separately. And I think the removal of Comey, the effectiveness of it in terms of the limited pushback that Trump got really surprised people in the FBI. Essentially, since Nixon was resigned, there was a fear, I think, among all presidents, Democrats and Republicans for about 50 years since Nixon, that they couldn't sort of”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, he just said, let's have one more conversation with Evan Corcoran, and basically he was overruled. There's a one political appointee in the entire FBI that's Chris Ray, the director, and that's to keep it apolitical. But the deputy director, Paul Abate, a civil servant, he's praised by a lot of people. I mean, he said enough. We are going to carry out this search. They move these boxes. He's had more than a year. There's a subpoena. He's defying a subpoena. There was a danger of obstruction of justice charges, and that's an alarm. You know, you don't want to set that precedent that if someone obstructs justice in an investigation You don't react. So, Dantoano did carry out the search after he had been ordered to do so by the deputy director.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He absolutely thought it was that we would get, he said it's our job as the FBI to get these classified documents. They do this all the time and they are much more aggressive with other people. But he just said the way we're doing it is we're rushing it. And then the really interesting detail that I thought was very telling privately, this didn't come up in the meeting, FBI agents had looked at the campaign donations of one of the main DOJ prosecutors and found that he had given donations to Democrats. They were pretty small. It was years ago, but they saw that as like a warning sign that maybe this guy, this prosecutor was sort of biased and out to get Trump. And so there were private conversations among FBI agents.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they're deadlocked. And Antoino says, I will not conduct a search of Mar Lago unless I'm ordered to do so by my superiors in the FBI.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a big divide in the FBI. Senior folks in the FBI were like, this is just too much. You can't defy a subpoena. They had already given Trump like a year to return these things. And they feel they were, you know, caught in this impossible situation that they were treating him differently than they would treat another American. But then the head of the FBI office in Washington, a guy named Stephen Dantuano, he just thought it was a mistake to go in without getting Trump's consent that he thought they should wait longer, negotiate again with Evan Corcoran, the lawyer who'd handed over for Trump and delay it because he felt the forcible search would play into Trump's narrative of a deep state FBI. And it was, you know, he and several others in the Washington Field Office didn't want to do it. And at the end of this very tense hour-long meeting, people are shouting at each other. There's no agreement.”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an example of this hyperpartisanship, this caution among DOJ and FBI officials, particularly FBI, slowing an investigation. We all know the search of Mar Lago happened, but it was this moment, August 2nd, and what had happened was that the DOJ had sent one of their prosecutors down and Trump's lawyer had certified that here are all the remaining classified documents that were 38 of them. Immediately after that, they got some surveillance tape that showed that, in fact, people who worked for Trump had moved dozens of boxes and hidden them. Before the DOJ showed”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Attacks from Democrats, and it just worries me because I think we need people who are investigating, looking for facts in a sort of nonpartisan manner. We need election clerks who count votes and law enforcement who investigate crimes and journalists too. I'm just worried about people being fearful of doing this sort of public service. But the book starts with this meeting where FBI agents are...”
2024-09-23 · On with Kara Swisher · From “Witch Hunt” to “Weaponization”: The Impact of Trump’s War on the DOJ with David Rohde · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT