YouSaid · the spoken record

Preet Bharara

lines on the record: 147
first: 2019-05-15
most recent: 2019-05-15
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

“There's so many. I mean, you kind of want to remember their names, but you want to remember their acts. And you think, okay, well, there's overabundant proof that he was from this side of the ideological spectrum. Right. And he's spewing this kind of white supremacist nonsense.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You cannot win an argument. I'd lost track because there have been so many incidents Of hate crime, and you had this person, I think, who was engaging in all this violence, and the speculation, well, is he a right-winger or is he not? And then they find, remember the guy I'm talking about, and he had... And they found his van, and it was covered with the all sorts of right wing propaganda, the bomber, right? And then”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And having your attack dogs come on television like Rudy, Giuliani, and others, that's all part of the game. That's all part of the, you know, now he's an actual politician as opposed to a faux politician who is just looking for good press and to maintain and increase his brand. Now he's trying to maintain and increase his power as a president of the United States and maybe leverage that into another term as president. All this is great spectacle. All this is, you know, he gets to engage in the rhetoric of victimhood. He gets to have his folks go on television misstate the law often, misstate the facts often It's good political theater for him. And at the end of the day, he can always resort to saying corrupt judge, corrupt process, hoax. They were doing that yesterday.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, he almost never wins. Almost never wins. And he may not win here, but it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because showing that you have the power to fight.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who had to deal with all these issues over and over and over again? Think of how many times Donald Trump, and this is a good thing, I guess, has threatened to sue someone or threatened to change something. And most of the time he doesn't do it”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a book not to plug someone else's book, so read it after you read my book. David McCraw, the Deputy General Counsel of the New York Times.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know these ever won a suit. I think maybe he's won a couple. He doesn't care about the winning of the lawsuit. He cares about the fight.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And people think everything should be fact talk about this in the book. When something bad happens, people want the investigation, they want it to happen immediately. Yeah, that's good if it can happen. But there's a downside to speed also. Miscarriages of justice happen”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Has the ability to get the tax return. But you know what? You make some arguments, and maybe someone will entertain them. And if you lose, this is the way the system works. The system is intended to be slow to some extent.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a totally different thing. The statute, as I see it, and I agree that people say it's very clear. That particular House chair”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They have arguments to make. Some of them are strong, some of them are weak. Same is true for the other side. I think that the House Democrats have the much, much stronger argument on all of these things. But the president's arguments there is such a thing as executive privilege. And you can drag it out as long as you want. Delay delay delay. Delay delay delay. It's like sort of like the tax returns”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're not any more ridiculous, and people won't like me saying this. And I know I shouldn't compare this kind of thing to the mundane everyday total horseshit. Civil litigations that take place in courtrooms and courthouses throughout the country every day.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of those things didn't get resolved for four years until the next administration was in office. And so now on the other side of the coin, going to your question. Yeah, the Trump people are like, we just have to get to 2020. And maybe it's a good campaign issue, even if it comes to a head in the summer of 2020. But depending on how the courts operate and depending on how many roadblocks they throw up, yeah, it could take a long, long time. And so I understand everyone up in arms about the constitutional crisis. I've sort of been through this. I worked in the Senate and I worked at law firms and I worked as a prosecutor. And whether you like the invocations of privilege or not, I think some of them are totally bogus and ridiculous.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Bob Mueller must have thought, and this bears on this other thing that we're talking about, but on the other side, Bob Mueller must have thought, you know, people are not going to tolerate an investigation that goes on forever. They're certainly not going to tolerate an investigation and no report going until the eve of the election or even after the 2020 election. If I go down this road of fighting about the subpoena, I can't abandon that fight midstream. And so nothing else can happen until that is resolved. And that could take a year. It could take a year and a half. People are now putting out explainers about the contempt process and there are various investigations that they're talking about from the past, including fast and furious, which wrapped up Eric Holder and some other people.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And I particularly the time correctly and a lot of other predictions that were wrong, but Bob Mueller explains in the report that one of the reasons they didn't seek to compel the testimony was time.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, one of the biggest criticisms that Mueller has gotten, and I don't really still understand it, Was he didn't make a decision on obstruction? Volume two of the Mueller report, right? But the other thing of a lesser nature, but relates to this that he's been criticized for is not compelling the president to come speak to him. Not issuing a subpoena and fighting it out to get actual live testimony with the possibility of follow up questions to understand what was in the mind of the president when he was engaged in all those critical obstructions.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think absolutely. And this is not directly to your point, but I think an important one that's parallel to this. All these things take time.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That says you can't do it. Right. So when this happens, when people blow through norms that have laws behind them, some of which do, some of which don't, one of the things, for example, with this week with not meeting demands from Congress and being held in Condemned of Congress, I think the calculation, just like it would be if I'm not paying my bill, say if you're Donald Trump, is court will mess it up for a while. Let's put it in court for a while. Because”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All sorts of stuff on the tech side, too, that people are just sort of engaging in content because there's not a specific law that says you can't do it.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way you can get a security clearance was to get elected president of the United States of America. Maybe a senator, I think the same thing applies to them. He didn't have to divest. There's all sorts, we passed a law. After Bobby Kennedy, who I think was a great Attorney General, but it was not cool for a president to have his brother as the Attorney General. We passed anti-Nepotism laws, which were written in a way That had a loophole through which Donald Trump can now have his daughter and his son in law. Working in the White House, maybe we'll have to reexamine that too because nobody thought between Bobby Cannon, that someone would do that. And I guess, and you know this better than I do.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And now you can. Well, some people didn't know that they were happening because of norms or happening because of laws. Right. So this idea that the president states. People are now discovering he himself can say, yeah, I know that you have a lot of problems, but you can get a security clearance because I can overrule everyone else because I'm the president. I, as the president, even though in ordinary life, if I was a rookie federal prosecutor, I would never, Donald Trump would never get a security clearance for any purpose.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't do certain things because you just don't do them, and norms get established and traditions get established, and sometimes they need to be upended. When people talk about the president, they say that's unprecedented, or is he said unprecedented? I don't know that that's a pejorative. But Barack Obama was an unprecedented presidency. That's good. That's good. The question is whether or not you're overturning some norm that you shouldn't be overturning, and so there are these norms that people are blowing through, and it causes people to think, well, maybe we should have some laws. Dictate what kind of behavior is okay.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, look, it's like a lot of things. There's a parallel between what's going on in the tech industry a little bit and what's going on in the White House. And people are learning that a lot of stuff that happens. Based on the honor code. You don't do certain things.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, that's because there's no immunity from it. We're going to talk about that where tech companies are going and what they should have, but one of the arguments going on right now around tech companies is they have so much immunity because of laws that were in place and therefore they behave as if they had immunity. And when there's no consequence or what you do, You do things. Like, you can't, not good people, but good people can do bad things. You know, they can. Yeah.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hang dog face testifying in front of Congress now because now this stuff is real. Right, Paul Manaford, same thing. So you can't impose the court of law on the entire country, but there's something to be said for figuring out ways”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they get away with in public debate, I'm sure not on a podcast, but generally on cable television and other places. Lying, cheating about the facts, engaging in conspiracy theories, totally not evidence based, and they can talk around an anchor for like seven minutes. You see those guys end up in a court of law. In a deposition Yeah, they changed their tune. Roger Stone had to plead and beg and apologize to a federal district court judge who could take his freedom for pulling all his antics. He had Michael Cohen.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That the president uses. So there's a model there. I'm not saying everyone should talk like a lawyer because you shouldn't. But there's a model there for how And also relevance. You see these people argue past each other. I call them clowns. You have these clowns, many of whom are associated with the president, and they include people He's a thuggish clown in his past life. Paul Manafort, another one. Roger Stone, another one. I'll even add Alex Jones to that list.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing I think we can celebrate, and I talk about in the book for society generally, is a lawyer in court, particularly a criminal lawyer in court, on either side, imagine if you just put your hands over your ears and you said, I'm going to make my arguments and I know I'm right, the guy's innocent or the guy's guilty. And when the other guy talks, I'm not going to listen and I'm going to sort of think to myself with my hands over my ears and not engage in the argument. You're actually obligated by professional ethics and also to do your job to listen. And then when you do engage and you get up before the jury and make your counter-argument, you can't call them names. You can't talk about their weight. You can't get them in court in an ordinary case and say, well, all Mexicans are rapists, so you need to convict this guy because he's a rapist. And this is the kind of rhetoric.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then the second thing happens when people do come out of their bubble and they seek to have some engagement with people who disagree with them, they lie about them, they yell at them, they engage in character assassination, they talk about their appearance and all sorts of other things that have nothing to do with the merits of the argument. And so when I say go back to first principles, people don't like lawyers for a lot of good reasons.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, so two things, you know, reasonable people can differ on a lot of things. There should be debate. You get a back and forth with all the time. I do also. But the one way that people don't do it right is they decide to absent themselves from discussion and debate. It's the thing that I know you talk about a lot. You can be on social media. We have so many channels now. You can just listen to people who are going to reinforce your point of view, never challenge your point of view. If someone disagrees with you, they're a lib tarred and vice versa. And you don't listen to them and you never refine your arguments and you live in your little bubble.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think there are two big problems in the country. And this Didn't start with Trump. I think it's been happening for a long time. I agree with people who say Trump is a symptom, not a cause.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's an opinion. I think there are two things. Nobody should hit each other. I think they're two things that affirm. May the record reflect that you were pointing your finger at me. I didn't do anything wrong.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pain is not lies. And then I was like, well, are lies, opinions, or lie just a lie. Like, I can't figure that one out. Like, it was astonishing thing. Yeah. I literally nearly rushed the stage. I was like, I would have enjoyed that.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, these days, I think there's a lot of people unsettled because you have things like and phrases like alternative facts Truth isn't truth, which you know, the lawyer, not just any lawyer, but the lawyer of the president of the United States. Has said truth isn't truth and expects”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or just ignoring them, miscarriages of justice happen. So that's what I think has changed. And I think the way to get back to first principles is to make sure you understand what they are.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As far as I can recall, the Constitution is the same. Virtually all the laws are the same. The regulations are the same. The OLC memos are the same. What has changed, which changes some of the people who are in charge of those things. Right. And when you get a degradation in the quality of the people who don't have as much respect for those principles and those norms ignored.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And have the fates of the students close to their heart and are not acting in good faith, you're going to have a terrible school. And the same is true for a legal system. It is of essential importance that the people who are responsible at the Justice Department, at DA's offices, defense lawyers, judges, everyone in the process in any institution has to understand that their job is to do the right thing. And so a lot of this is about that. You know, when people complain about the rule of law and they complain about what's happening to the country and the reason they're all flocking to television and watching these former prosecutors and listening to podcasts. Nothing has changed.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what new law should we pass? And what new tools should we give criminal law enforcement or what new rights should we decide people have? And that's all well and good. There's a lot of reform that needs to happen and there are a lot of things that need to change. The death penalty is a problematic thing. Cash bail is a problematic thing. But you know what gets missing, I think, in that discussion is how important it is that not only to believe the bedrock principle that we're a nation of law is not men, but also appreciate that it's people who enforce the law. It's people who interpret the law, like anything else. You can have a great curriculum in school, but the teachers aren't good.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a central theme of the book, unlike, I think, with some other lawyers have written about, and smart people and academics and others have written about, they're always talking about what law, how do we change the law?”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But like everything else in the world, Trump's shadow looms over all things. Somebody at the Guardian, I think, when they reviewed the book called it, even though I don't refer to Trump directly a lot, a sort of metaphorical survivor's guide to the Trump era. And I guess it's a little bit that because it goes back to basic things, as I said. And I think.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I decided to go sort of from beginning to end the arc of any case you begin with an investigation inquiry, then you have to figure out whether or not you accuse someone. Then you got to figure out how to make the judgment. Is it true? Is it not? Is someone guilty? Are they not? Should they be disciplined? Should they not? And then on to punishment. And those are things that everyone has to deal with. I have a chapter on judges, which is not just for people who ever appear in front of judges. But I think if you've ever engaged in competition. If you ever played a sport You have been judged by the referee's and umps, or you have judged others. And so I think there's a lot there for people to sort of figure out. I don't talk about Trump a lot. Directly.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I thought I would write this sort of general book with no legal jargon where I would sort of discuss difficult quandaries that people find themselves in, whether you work in a school or you work in tech or you work in media or you're a stay-at-home parent dealing with how you raise your kids to figure out just what the right thing to do is. I mean, that's sort of the mantra, as I said, in my old office.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I had this thought about writing a book when I was in office, and then when I got fired a hell of one more time. And as I was starting to think about the stories and talking to people about what I might write about, I realized that the stories that I had in mind to tell and the case that I'd overseen, they were not just relevant to lawyers and certainly not just relevant to criminal lawyers. They're about fundamental things like what truth is, like what fairness is, how to avoid bias, how to make decisions, how to engage in moral reasoning.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, from the people who actually tried cases. And so I've never seen more federal prosecutors on TV. Oh, well, yeah.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's, I think, a hunger generally, but in the law in particular, not just for people who are smart and can talk about this stuff, but people have actually done it. So they're really smart journalists who didn't know what you mean. Criminal law. But they want to hear from.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now we're learning about contempt. So Twitter is a place where some folks are getting a large following, including George Conway and others, for on occasion being snyed like I am from time to time because you just sort of pop off on Twitter and it's a clever format. But also in a serious way. I turn on the television. There's a joke going around sort of Southern District alumni circles.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Related to that, how far have we fallen from how it's supposed to work? So everyone is viewing the legal system through this weird, distorted lens of Bob Muller and Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Everyone's getting this sort of masterclass. Yeah, and Bill Labar. This masterclass in flipping. And there's this time for a few months like, what does it mean to flip? How do you flip a witness? What if he's a liar? What if he's a bad guy?”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm sure you will. You wouldn't be held in contempt. But there's this newfound interest in the law on the part of thoughtful people in the country who just want to understand, among other things, how the hell is it supposed to work? And then second,”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, because you get to learn a little bit. And look, and you get a consensus that develops like. The podcast has been successful. The book has done very well. I think in part, I don't think that would have been true necessarily 10 years ago. I think people are really, really in the same way that they're more interested in tech than they've ever been before and why you're so popular and successful separate from your genius and American treasure status. You're about to convict the minute you get back in office. I'm just buttering”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. Anyway, see, you could have tweeted that. So you use that in a certain way, but you don't find it to be sort of the substances of it that you're worried about. Because everything now in politics are tweet, including the president.”
2019-05-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Preet Bharara · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT