YouSaid · the spoken record

Lisa Monaco

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78
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2017-04-17
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2017-04-17
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  1. “Some of them did, and those folks ended up becoming usually cooperators for the government. And the classic story of somebody who ends up being a defendant and then ends up cooperating with the government is somebody who has to undergo first and foremost being somebody who tells the truth and acknowledges and accepts responsibility for what they did and comes to grips With that through that process and then getting”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That it was an incredibly complicated case when it comes down to vastly complicated and arcane accounting schemes and frauds, but at bottom it was about greed. It was about greed and hubris. There was a great book written about probably the definitive book about the Enron fraud called The Smartest Guys in the Room. And it really, that title encapsulates it. These guys thought they were the smartest guys in the room and that they could monetize anything and that they could devise schemes to really cook the books and ultimately defraud their shareholders. So it really for all the accounting manipulation, it really was about greed”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “That was managed out of what they call main justice, the headquarters in Washington, DC, and it was populated by Assistant U.S. Attorneys drawn from offices around the country. So us from the U.S. attorney's office in DC, others from New York, from San Francisco, from Chicago. So that task force was formed. And then basically we ended up splitting our time between DC and Houston. And when we were in trial, as I was for many, many months, and as those who prosecuted the other cases were, we lived in Houston and became kind of dual citizens for the time that we were on the task force.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “No. No, as you said, it was the first kind of marquee prosecution for the financial scandals of the period, and it followed what was at the time the largest bankruptcy ever in the history of corporate America in December of 2001 when Enron went bankrupt. And a task force was formed, right? So the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston, which would have been the U.S. Attorney's Office to investigate and prosecute the fraud associated with Enron recused itself. Enron had become such an engine and a magnet and a part of the lifeblood of the community that the Houston U.S. Attorney's Office recused itself. And so the Justice Department took an unusual step of forming a task force.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Former White House counsel and former colleague of mine, she and I met in the U.S. Attorney's office. And in fact, our first day of misdemeanor training as young baby prosecutors was September 10th, two thousand one. And our second day was obviously september eleventh, and so we first met there and kind of went through the rotation process in the U.S. Attorney's office, and she left to join the Enron Task Force first. And when they needed another prosecutor to join the case that I ended up prosecuting, she recommended me to the then director of the Enron Task Force.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Scale. And what happened to me is one of my colleagues in the U.S. Attorney's office, Kathy Rummler, who you know well. Yes, great.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So it was interesting not your question is correctly skeptical as to how that would be a straight line. So in the Washington DC U.S. Attorney's Office, because it has such a broad jurisdiction, a broad range of things as a young prosecutor, you start in the misdemeanor court, as I mentioned, and then you make your way through a series of parts of the office. in the office and did all of those, what they call the rotations, and ended up in the federal court side of the office prosecuting fraud and public corruption cases. So I was dealing with, by the time I left to join the Enron Task Force, I was dealing with prosecuting fraud at the local level and public corruption cases. But the Enron case was a whole different”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is towards the end of the Obama administration, a lot of effort going in, both on the Obama administration's part and, as you pointed out, folks in Congress on both sides of the aisle looking for some common ground on this issue. So you had the Obama administration working with the Koch brothers on criminal justice reform issues. If there's a way for that type of bipartisan work to continue in our current environment, that would be a great thing.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “The warden is running all kinds of programs Well, one of the things that ended up being a very useful tool on the substance abuse side was something called drug courts. Was pioneered by Janet Reno in the Miami Dade local criminal justice system and then got incorporated in the federal courts. And I saw it used in DC to great effect. And one wonders if there shouldn't be the same type of approach on the mental health side.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “guns and drugs and shoplifting and the like and what I saw David in that experience was a profound impact of mental health issues and drug abuse on the running of the criminal justice system and invariably that went hand in hand with people who did not have economic means were turning to other things to you know as an outlet. And so those things went hand in hand and our inability to both deal with the mental health problems and substance abuse problems really contributed to the criminal justice problem.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, actually what I saw, because I went on to be, as you said before, I was on the Enron Task Force, I worked as an assistant US attorney in Washington, D.C. And there, it's a very unique rule because it's the only federal prosecutor's office that serves as both the local Prosecutor, the local DA and the federal prosecutor, and so as what we used to call as a baby prosecutor in that U.S. attorney's office, I handled very, very low-level crime. So federal prosecutors don't handle this type of crime in any other district. So it was literally like night court, the old show Night Court, every day in that office handling.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Story So, it's interesting, I think it was a reasonable effort at the time to deal with what was, as you said, really a skyrocketing crime problem. So you're referring to mandatory minimum sentences. There are other things like the three strikes and your out bill, which got incorporated in there as well. That in particular, I think, ended up having unintended consequences, which I think people of all stripes have acknowledged. Mandatory minimums became something that the courts ended up and Putting some more process around and sentencing guidelines and the like. So it turned out, I think, ultimately to have served, provided a service at the time, but over time needed to be reformed”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Profoundly so, and it really was a massive undertaking. I remember working with the lawyers on staff to help manage the amendment process on the Senate floor. But by and large, I work”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Which was a really significant watershed piece of legislation. It's also obviously come under some controversy since, but I think it represented an effort to deal with what was Yeah, people don't remember, but the”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, so it's interesting, the experience that I had at the Judiciary Committee was really quite formative from working on the confirmation hearing process to legislation like the Violence Against Women Act to the crime bill. Yes, which was...”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “which ended up becoming a bipartisan bill, I remember Oran Hatch saying famously he wanted it called the Biden Hatch Violence Against Women Act. I'm not sure that ended up happening. Yes. There was an inability to go back.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I remember, so I joined the Judiciary Committee staff after the Thomas hearings. But I remember being a young person in Washington driving around and having the experience of being stopped at a stoplight and hearing the hearings coming out of the car radios of people. It obviously riveted Washington, D.C. at the time. And obviously took a toll on the judiciary committee and how those hearings were handled later. Joe Biden was the chairman and Orrin Hatch was the ranking member. There certainly was partisan differences, but there was a sense of coming together and working together on issues. One of the other things I worked on on the Judiciary Committee staff was the violence against women act.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I helped do whatever the lawyers on staff, because at this time I was a year or two out of college. So I basically did whatever the lawyers on staff asked of me from research to putting together briefing books to, at the time, we didn't, there's no internet, there was none of the ease of research now. There was good old-fashioned books and newspapers and the like. So I spent a lot of time doing that.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So I was thinking about ultimately when I was in college, I thought about getting a PhD in literature and going further in my studies there and then realized I probably wasn't going to be able to get a job in COVID.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “It's true. So there weren't going to be any Monaco dynasty of transplant surgeons, but it actually became, my aversion to math became pretty funny when I ended up on the Enron Task Force, which, of course, involved a lot of... Kind of funky at counting stuff.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “As a transplant surgeon, yes, one of the pioneers in kidney transplant surgery and trained the team in Boston that ultimately got federal funding to do the liver transplants there. So I think he reached such a height that his kids rightly figured out that they could probably not do better than dad. So we paved our own way.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “No, my brothers each at various times kind of flirted with it, but I think my father has reached such a claim and accomplishment in his field as a”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I really wasn't. I always knew I gravitated to writing and reading and history and the humanities. I tended to shy away from math and science, much to my father, the doctor's chagrin.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Family conversations. But the point is that they really They instilled in us an appreciation for hard work. And I saw them focus on how they could give us every advantage my brothers and I, which they did, and we were extremely fortunate. All the while, while also instilling in us the values that they had because they grew up without those advantages. And it's an interesting test for parents. And I was very fortunate that they focused so hard on that.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Know first generation American kids and he went to Central High in Philadelphia and then on to University of Pennsylvania and then on to Harvard Medical School. So he worked his way in the great American story and my mother is from parents who are of Welsh and Irish and Belgian background, so very hardy stock there too. So I basically said I've got Irish on the one side and Italian on the other which made for some very fiery.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “My dad is Italian, Italian-American heritage. Both of his parents immigrated, my grandfather on my father's side came over here from Italy at the age of sixteen, went through Ellis Island. I've been seeing his name there, went to Philadelphia and opened a barbershop at Sixth and Pine. I think it's now a Starbucks probably. took a room. It's a great American story, took a room in a rooming house in South Broad Street in South Philadelphia, where my grandmother's parents were keeping the rooming house and unsurprisingly he ends up marrying the innkeepers daughter and she was from a neighboring hilltown in Italy. So they raised four kids. My father is the youngest.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “But I think it really traces back to my parents who are the product of immigrant households, hard work, ethos, prioritizing education, and being really focused on.”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Well, you're absolutely right. If you had told me when I was a kid, or frankly if you had even told me five years ago or six years ago, that I was going to end up being the president's Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, I would have said you were nuts, quite frankly. Growing up I was extremely fortunate to grow up with three brothers, which I think maybe had an impact. Toughening effect. A toughening effect on some of the situations I've since found myself in and some of the career choices I've made”

    2017-04-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 139 - Lisa Monaco · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source