[laughs] Oh, it works every time.

But I, I will say, like, one of the, like, the caveat, one of the good things is, like- The people that really mess with you will still mess with you.

Like, I, I think even if I were to take a break, people who, you know, really m- like my work, they're still gonna book with me.

Like, and I, I even notice, like, people who, uh, don't have much cl- like, m- ha- don't have much of a social media following, they still, they s- they can still be booked out.

You know? They might only have, like, 1,000-

Mm-hmm

... you know, the com- then it becomes the commercial thing where it's like, okay, I need to, yeah, like you said, there's a lot of ears and a lot of, like, eyes looking at this shit.

Um, going back to when I was working in publishing, like, whenever I would make, like, a book cover, you know, I'd be like, okay, this is what I feel like is, in my heart, the best cover possible.

And what was his role in the story you tell in the book?

Well, Matt Axelrod is there for a really, you know, a moment in time that we didn't even realize was so important.

I will happily tell the story of Matt Axelrod just before I get started.

Delegate Corman, thank you so much for moderating this talk.

Thank you all for being here.

I know this is not the most enlightening or happy topic you could come and talk about on a beautiful Saturday morning, but it's an important one and I think we all, especially in this area, have lived what has happened at the Department of Justice and how it's changed.

We have neighbors and parents of kids in our classes and things like that that have all had their lives upended because of what's been happening inside the Justice Department.

Can you just describe what was going on there and what was being investigated?

Can you just describe what was going on there and what was being investigated?

Yeah.

So this is one that we actually broke off.

You know, we, we had a...

I never thought that we would end up writing the book that we wrote, by the way.

Uh, we set out, Carol and I wrote a story back in 2023 about kind of the, this year of delays inside the Justice Department to really get going on this Trump investigation.

And a book publisher who had published a couple of Carol's previous books came to us and said, "We think this could be a whole book," like just trying to investigate Donald Trump after January 6th.

And, uh, the book you w- you write, uh, "Through a mix of self-restraint and disbelief that protesters could mean what they were saying, the FBI kept dismissing each guardian top, uh, uh, each guardian tip in isolation rather than as part of a larger mosaic." So what was going on? Why wasn't law enforcement prepared for what happened, uh, on January 6th, despite all the sort of, uh, tips that they were receiving?

Uh, and I do want to talk about like how the Bondi, Blanche, Patel axis is working, but what is the feeling just down the chain inside the Justice Department from line prosecutors, career professionals? They have to know what's happening here is- is well beyond the pale.

Well, the sources we talked to for the book obviously, um, you know, you can tell by the final chapters when you're inside the rooms as, you know, entire classes of senior FBI officials are being summarily dismissed and they're going after all of the agents or anybody who had their name on a- on January 6th case.

Uh, obviously they, you know, they're, they know that this is a- a different place than we've ever been in.

Uh, you know, they knew that the- the week after, uh, Donald Trump was elected, we were meeting with folks who were saying, "This place is gonna be shredded." But it's even so much worse than they told us then that, what they expected.

And so, um, there are prosecutors, there are FBI agents who I think would, uh, uh, much rather not be dealing with what they're dealing with now.

There...

But there's a lot of folks who are, uh, as Carol said a couple of times, hanging on by their fingernails and trying to stay there and do the best they can, and try to keep, you know, as many cases they, as they can, uh, running the right way, being evaluated on, y- fairly on the evidence.And the other thing they're dealing with too is this kind of little bit of a dichotomy within the whole institution, which is that main Justice and the places closest to the centers of power here are very much acting at the behest of the President.

I'll say.

Aaron's got, uh, quite a few more.

Well, there are many moments in that first year.

I th- think it's also just important to think about that, m- that time period and what's going on, and you do have Attorney General Merrick Garland coming in in, then in March of 2021 and really saying, "We're gonna do things differently than they were done under the, under the Trump term.

We're not going to have political appointees, uh, pressing the buttons of what, how investigations should be done.

These things should bubble up from the bottom." That, uh, you know, investigations, the prosecutors, the career prosecutors and agents should be the ones, you know, deciding what goes forward, what there's evidence to investigate.

But they had just said, "We're not gonna do this." And, um, and they, you know...

And, and Merrick Garland, as we're told in those first months, uh, reinforces that to, uh, people around him, saying, "That's the right decision for now.

And what's the story behind that?

He's allowed to do it back." What's the way you articulate the response to that to a non-lawyer, non-Justice Department official?

It's hard to go back and put ourselves in this time period.

But you almost have to, if you're gonna have that conversation, you have to go back and look at how much evidence there was and how much, you know, concern there was about what had happened when Donald Trump fired Jim Comey and when, you know, there was a, there were contacts between the Russian government and people in his campaign.

And how could the Department of Justice not in good conscience look at that? I mean, these were not...

These were Republican appointees beginning this investigation, not Democrats at the very b- very beginning.

So, I think you do need to go back there and, and at least have...

Try to peel back some of the, you know, as Carol said, the repeating of, of the lies in a way that's, um, you know, made them real for people on one half of the political spectrum here.

... h- how, how did that happen?

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, you go back to the day after January 6th where then-acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, comes out and there was a press conference (techno sound effect)　that's a, that's a remote press conference in the middle of COVID, but he's asked, you know, "How far will you go in this investigation?" He says, "We'll go as far as we need to." And he's asked specifically about Donald Trump, "Will you go to Donald Trump?" And, and he'll say, you know...

He says, "We will take this to, you know...

Even people who weren't there at the Capitol will be, you know, held accountable." And the next day, there's headlines in the New York Times and Washington Post and everywhere, "Donald Trump will be the subject of investigation," the Department of Justice says.

But we actually found that a full 15 months went by before they really put the spotlight on what had happened, uh, regarding Trump, the people around him and his campaign and the fake electors and all of that.

And, and that meant, in that gap, you're right, the House Select Committee and the investigators, they were the first people laying down the tracks and w- and doing these interviews.

And that was a remarkable upside-down situation where, you know, people working for, you know, the behest of a congressional committee were the first ones doing interviews that are gonna be, you know, eventually important in a criminal case.

Yeah.

Based on your conversations with career Justice officials, did they ever perceive that Garland's caution amounted to dereliction?

Well, uh, you know, Garland came in, was widely respected for his, you know, jurisprudence and the way he had been so even-handed on the bench as a federal judge for, for decades, and, you know, they were hopeful that they would set a new tone, and he s- really did from the get-go.

Uh, you know, Merrick Garland was the guy who had actually written some of the rules about, uh, separation between the White House and DOJ, and trying to keep things on the straight and narrow, much as, you know, uh, DOJ had done after Watergate.

Um, but there was this, uh, kind of growing concern inside the department, uh, by many, not just low ranks but mid-ranks and, and some people very senior, that the Department of Justice was moving too slow, and Merrick Garland had set out this, uh, you know, mandate that we're going to start from the ground up.

We're gonna build this case up from the rioters, from the video that you can see, and we'll get to the top.

But, you know, there was already evidence that, that they were not looking at it from the very get-go, and that was where the, including the fake elector documents that had been submitted even before January 6th, and it ultimately took 15 months for DOJ and FBI to get on the same page....

under Garland and, and agreed to begin to investigate those.

What specific damage underpins that warning?

People felt bruised, I guess.

That's really true.

You know, it's- we're so far from it, but this is a big reason of why we started to report and work on the book, which is that we had written a couple stories, Carol and I, uh, back in 2023 about some of the slow start, and we didn't have the whole picture then, but we had.

Some pieces of it, and, you know, we got some blowback from people inside the Department of Justice who said, "Hey, you don't know what it's been like in here," uh, (clears throat) "during the first Trump term." And-So as we set about writing a book, we said, "Well let's try to capture that." And we went back over those years of the first Trump term and as bad as it was, and we saw in the headlines then, it was actually worse.

I mean there was more arm twisting, there was more, you know, c-cajoling and trying to get, uh, you know, prosecutors to sign things and go against what they thought was the right reading of the law and the same on the FBI side as well.

We got to a place where we wanted to be able to have everyone who reads the book understand what is the Department of Justice, the condition that it's in as the sun comes up on the morning of January 6th? And if you can grasp that, then you can understand why they're so reticent and careful and slow in the years afterward, and when it comes to this particular point of really digging into the fake electors scheme and all the politicians around the country that become, you know, involved in that, you know, there is suddenly a recognition, uh, inside the department when they look at this and say, "This is actually the heart of the scheme and if we're gonna go forward with this, there's gonna have to be a lot of hands on the knife," is one of the quotes from inside a meeting inside DOJ that, you know, everybody has to have buy-in.

If we're gonna go back and have...

But I'm wondering, you know, as you talk to FBI leaders, um, about this now, do any of them express regret? Do they say, "Yes, we should have moved with urgency"?

Uh, can you sort of spell out the trap as you, as you guys concluded, Aaron?

Well, that, that quote actually co- does come from the book and it's regarding, you know, some internal, uh, folks who worked for Mueller.

Uh, that this was their perception of how things had played out in the very end.

That, uh, you know, Mueller believed that they would deliver this report, that it would be presented fairly.

You know, we, we spoke with people who really got into this and years later do feel some remorse about how all of this took, uh, you know, this played out.

That, um, you know, they really thought this was going to be the beginning of a national dialogue about Russian interference, about so much that had happened in those years, and in fact it, you know, as we all saw, got buried.

The narrative was lost in the public, you know, to the prosecutors, the, the investigators working on this case, it was a travesty that so many things that they had found about, you know, the, the Russian, uh, government, the, uh, you know, agents working on their behalf, uh, to hack into, you know, systems in, in our country, uh, th- that never really got a full airing and, you know, pl- allowed to play out afterwards without, you know, any follow-up, so...

Yeah.

Did he really think it was working?

This has been one of the things that we were, really tried to triangulate as much as possible because of, to your question, what happens from December 20 to the, when Jack Smith comes in? You know, there is a time period, even before Merrick Garland is there, when the first interim people that, that, uh, Biden appoints to, you know, temporarily take care of the Justice Department.

You know, they're like, "Whoa, wait.

We don't want to do anything to investigate Donald Trump right now.

We just wanna start with the rioters.

We don't wanna put Merrick Garland on the hook for doing anything that could be a political investigation.

Let him decide that later." And then Garland comes in and we're told by our reporting that he tells, uh, senior staff, "That was the right call.

What are they going to do now?

They should have done it in DC and they should have done it faster." But why did they think they could do it down in Florida and get a fair hearing?

Yeah.

We do.

We go deep into that area because it is such a pivotal moment.

You know, that night after the raid, uh, the- the agents and the- and the prosecutors are on a conference call and they say, you know, "What do we do now? You know, we've never encountered...

We never expected to see this many documents down there." And, uh, the assistant attorney general at the moment, uh, M- Matthew Olsen, turns to the kind of encyclopedia inside the Justice Department for classified documents cases, and she says, "If it was anybody else, we would arrest them tomorrow morning." And so this was a huge moment inside where a lot of law enforcement, law enforcement that usually leans conservative, uh, felt compelled to go forward and investigate Donald Trump with everything that the Department of Justice had.

And then when it did get to the sprint area of going to, uh, Jack Smith, Jack Smith realized that, you know, so much of the heart of that investigation, so much of the documents that were hidden, uh, the bo- those boxes that were moved at the behest of Donald Trump in the days before those rooms were searched, that was down in Florida.

Yeah.