Pod Save the World - Trump Fired Jim Comey?!?

Episode Date: May 10, 2017

Tommy talks with former DOJ Official Matthew Miller about Trump's decision to fire FBI Director Jim Comey.

Welcome back to POTS, the World, everybody. I had thought I was going to take a brief hiatus from the show this week because we were doing a number of all-day meetings. And then our good friend Donald Trump decided to create a constitutional crisis by firing the head of the FBI. So on the line today is my friend Matthew Miller. Nat was the director of the Office of Public Affairs for the Department of Justice. He's worked in the United States Senate. He is someone who understands the practices and procedures at DOJ and also knows a lot of the individuals who are still there. So, Matt, thank you so much for jumping on the phone today, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, Tommy, of course. Happy to do it. So full disclosure, many Democrats and many Republicans have been all over the map on Comey and the way he's handled the Clinton investigation. A lot of Democrats praised him when they felt like he exonerated Hillary Clinton back in July of 2016. They criticized rightly, in my opinion, his decision to send a letter to Congress that made it sound like he was reopening his investigation to Hillary Clinton's emails just days before the election. You were not one of those people. You have been totally consistent. When Comey did his press conference on

July 5th, 2016, you said it was totally inappropriate and a total departure from FBI and DOJ standards. Can you explain why you were so critical of him then and now and what those standards are that you felt he was violating? Yeah. So it's a pretty simple rule at DOJ, which is when the department investigates someone. So the FBI has enormous power. Department of Justice has enormous power. They can look through, you know, with warrants, they can look through your emails, they can tap your phones, they can interview your neighbors, your co-workers. They can really, you know, damage your reputation. But they do that by, you know, there are some simple rules they're supposed to abide by. And one of them is, if they're going to publicly say something

about you, they do it in court. And they do it by way of bringing an indictment, by way of bringing you up and trying to prosecute you in a court setting where you have a chance to defend yourself, and there's this neutral third party, either a judge or a jury, who gets to decide who's right. If they investigate you and they decide they're not going to bring charges and they're not going to put the weight of the department behind what they say in court, they're supposed to shut up and quietly go home. And you do not, it's just a fundamental rule. If you're not charging someone, you don't come out and then say, well, I'm not going to bring charges, but their behavior was careless, and they might have gotten some classified information,

but it's hard to prove. And Jim Comey just seemed to come up with this different rule for Hillary Clinton than applied to anyone else, and I thought it was completely inappropriate for him to do it. So he did a hearing the other day, and he basically said, I saw two doors, right? You know, sort of conceal or disclose. Did you think that was just a cop-out? Was that just bullshit? It was total bullshit.

It was a cop-out he came up with. now to justify something he did back then. Let's be honest. The reason he sent that letter was because he put himself on this path starting in July 5th. So, like, he violated the rules doing the press conference. He didn't want to come to Congress a couple days after that press conference in July and testified about it in a way and gave much more information than the FBI director would ever give about a case. And then he turned over all the FBI's internal files to Congress about it, which they promptly leaked out in the middle of the presidential campaign and created a bunch of damaging news cycles for Clinton.

And it kind of set this precedent where he was going to handle the investigation different than he did anything else. And that got him in his place where he ended up sending a letter. And it had nothing to do with this decision or whether disclose or conceal. And conceal is, by the way, a euphemism for all the Department of Justice's normal rule and practices. That's what the department is supposed to do. It concealed. If you want to use the word conceal, that's how the department operates every day because that's what they're so. to do. But, but, you know, he ends up sending this letter, I think it, honestly, because he was

worried it was going to leak, and he was going to get criticized by Republicans in Congress, and he thought he would win, or he thought Hillary would win, and so he didn't want to be accused of being a shill for her. And so he bent over backwards to appease Jason Schafeitz and all these other Republicans who were on his back. And in turn, he ends up, I think, you can make a very good argument, backed up in data, tipping the election and electing Donald Trump president. Yeah. My options were disclose and try her in the court of public opinion or not, right, or prosecute. Yeah. Seems like that would have been a much better option. Yeah, that's right. And by the way, you know, even if you grant him this odd choice he came up with a disclose or conceal, I don't know why he had to tell Congress immediately.

The department has this longstanding rule. You don't do anything in the 60 days before the election that could be seen as influencing the election. unless you absolutely, you know, have to for some investigative reason. And that would be, say, if evidence is going to be destroyed, if witnesses are going to plead, then you take whatever, then the investigation comes first. But there was no destruction of evidence that was possible. They had Wiener's laptop in their hands. There was no urgency at all to do it. They could have waited.

They could have told Congress after the election besides the fact that everything they had, you know, would basically stuff that they had before. There was no new thing to investigate anyway, as they, you know, eventually confirmed. Right. And this is the point in the conversation where every so-called wise man in Washington says, well, you know, if he'd held onto it, it would have leaked. And in my response to that is always, well, if they couldn't hold on to information that long without leaking, they should all quit their jobs because those guys investigate much more sensitive things every single day without leaking it. But I guess that's besides the point. That's right. Leaking is a management issue. And by the way, leaking it and you can manage a story that's leaked. It's much different than sending a letter where you officially announced an open investigation. The magnitude couldn't be greater. totally agree. So fast forward to last night, this shocking announcement that Jim Comey has been fired. You work to DOJ. You understand the people, the culture, the mission of the place. What do you think about this decision and what are you hearing from people who are still at DOJ or at the FBI about what

happened and how they're sorting this out? This morning, either people that are still there or people who were there with me that have left are completely shocked because, look, there is one principle. We just talked about a bunch of rules that Comey violated. There is one principle at DOJ that is more important than any other principle. And that is that the FBI, the Department of Justice, has the ability to conduct criminal investigations free from interference from the White House. And then you take that rule and you multiply it times a hundred, a factor of a hundred, when it comes to investigations that involve the White House. Right. So the president shouldn't be directing investigations or firing people over investment.

say if it was into a company, if he wanted to help the company. If it's into the president, his campaign associates, it is even more sacrosanct rule. And I don't think there's anyone that believes, I mean, let's be, I don't think they could have come up with a more laughable justification for firing Comey than it was over how he had with the Clinton case. I mean, no one thinks Donald Trump cares about that. It is a farce. So he has just violated the, the most sacrosanct rule.

And he's done it with the, you know, with two accomplices. with Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, both of whom are supposed to be the ones who protects the Department of Justice from political interference. And they didn't. They buckled when they had a chance to stand up to Trump. Yeah. I mean, I think all of us like see some darkness inside of Jeff Sessions and have feared him since the day he was nominated. But Rod Rosenstein is supposed to be a professional, nonpartisan guy. He worked at the Department of Justice during the Clinton administration He was an assistant U.S. attorney, but he released this absurd letter that seemed to be written solely as a pretext to allow Trump to fire Comey. What did you make of that letter?

And to me, in some ways, that was the most shocking part of what I read yesterday. So I'll say two things about the letter. One about the content and the second about the timing. First, on the content, you know, typically Department of Justice letters, they cite rules, they cite practices, they cite president. And there's some of that in the Rosenstein letter. But then he takes all of these quotes from former Justice Department officials who were gone from the department that said things in real time back in the fall. That reads a lot more like a political opposition research document. It's a political document where you pull out a bunch of quotes and use them to justify what you're doing.

And you already see the White House coming out and using this and say, well, there are a bunch of Democrats who criticized Comey. And if they criticize Comey, as is noted in this Rosenstein memo, well, then it's perfectly appropriate to fire him, which is. is a leap, obviously, to get from criticizing him to firing him. So that's one thing. And then on the timing, let me tell you the way, I don't, I don't remember this from dealing with DOJ somewhat when you were at the White House. The way DOJ moves is slow and deliberate. I mean, if, you know, the department needs to open, you know, order like new toilet paper

for the bathrooms, it takes weeks and, you know, three memos. The idea that Rod Rosenstein, on his own, in the first two weeks in his tenure as, as, as, as, Deputy Attorney General decided, you know what, I'm going to just launch this review of Jim Comey's tenure as he is conducting the most sensitive investigation possible. And I'm going to write this memo to the Attorney General. And in the same day that he gets the memo, the Attorney General, without any taking time to consider it, to deliberate, to ask for other views, turns around and writes a letter to the President on the same day.

And the president then on that same day decides to fire Comey and have one of his henchmen, his personal bodyguard, Banana Republic stuff, walk a letter over to the FBI and deliver it. I mean, it just defies any belief. It is so transparent and so obvious that they came up with an outcome. The president wanted to fire Jim Comey, and they worked backwards to try to find the most plausible way to do it without it being obvious what it's all about, and that's the Russia probe. Yeah, okay, so this is the thing, right? Everyone who's observing this, like, to their great credit, you know, Jeffrey, too, who's a legal expert and analyst on CNN last night saying, give me a break with this Rod Rosentine letter. The only reason that he is being fired is because there's an ongoing investigation

into whether Trump's aid is coordinated with Russia or to interfere in our elections. The notion that somehow they suddenly care about how Hillary Clinton is treated is ridiculous, etc. So when I was at the NSC, I spent a lot of times in meetings with the deputy FBI director, a guy named Sean Joyce, who looked and sounded like an expert from the departed. He was not a guy you wanted to piss off. You know, he would seem like he had prosecuted. He prosecuted a lot of bad mofos in his day. What the hell happens with this counterintelligence investigation now?

Does it get kicked to the deputy? Are you worried that this thing could be squashed if he names like Chris Christie or some other supplicant like Rudy Giuliani to be the next FBI director? How does this work now? Boy, that is the million dollar question. So the deputy director of the FBI will take over as the acting director now while Trump nominate, you know, find someone and nominate someone. And that can take a while.

I mean, I guess they can do it tomorrow if they just don't vet him because they've done that. They've done that. They've pursued that model before. Yeah, they love that one. But if they do a real search, it will take some time to consider it and come up with someone. And then you would think a pretty rough confirmation process, you would hope anyway. But in the meantime, the acting director of the FBI will oversee it.

And Rod Rosenstein from the DOJ side will oversee it. But there is now this question about the leadership of the investigation all being compromised. So you have Rod Rosenstein, who ultimately is responsible as the deputy attorney general. I think his actions in writing this memo and being complicit in this firing absolutely raise, you know, call his objectivity into doubt. The head of the National Security Division at DOJ, which is the prosecuting and investigated division on the DOJ side that does counterintelligence investigations. is headed by Dana Bonte, who is the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, northern Virginia, and who is the person who took over his deputy attorney general when Trump fired Sally Yates. I think he's still hanging around on an acting basis, looking for a permanent job.

I think you have to question whether he can carry it out. And the problem is, so look, they can't come in and shut down the investigation right now. I mean, there would be leaks and resignation. They would never get away with it. But the way these investigations work, there are. are big decisions and little decisions that the leaders, the politically appointed, theoretically Senate-confirmed leaders get to make. So you're pursuing one line of inquiry.

You see a lead and a separate but related line. You have to decide, do we pursue that or do we not? And that's where the leadership matters. And you have to have someone who is the leader that is willing to pursue it wherever it goes. And I don't know how anyone can have faith that anyone at the Department of Justice is going to make those tough calls right now. Yeah, man, I'm totally with you. I mean, it feels like Donald Trump couldn't more fully have put his thumb on the scale here. Do you think there's any chance the new FBI director could restart the investigation into Clinton's emails?

Is that even possible? I mean, it's possible. You can always restart anything. It would be laughable. I mean, that case was always a clunker from the beginning. I mean, everyone who works in the department, Hillary Clinton was never going to get prosecuted for disclosing classified information or mishandling classified information. There was never going to be a case there. It was kind of a right-wing fantasy that got turned into a big investigation.

I'm skeptical whether that even needed to be a full investigation. But there was never going to be a prosecution. I mean, if they did that, it would be the clear sign that the Department of Justice has completely gone off the rails. I mean, I don't know what I mean. We already have a clear sign that the Department of Justice has completely gone off the rail. The FBI director has been fired for investigating the president. So this would be worse, but, you know, we're already there. We're already into really uncharted waters.

You're geeking out with me on POTSave the World. More on the way. So FBI directors, they're usually appointed to 10-year terms. They're not like judges who receive lifetime appointments, but I believe only one FBI director has ever been fired by a president. Others have resigned early. Are you worthy this is precedent setting? Like, can Congress speak out and do anything to prevent yet another norm from being eroded?

Because, you know, normally there was just sort of seen as a political cost to hiring a problematic FBI director. Like Bill Clinton had a notoriously awful relationship with his FBI director, Louis Free, right? But he couldn't fire the guy because he thought it would just look so bad optically. Clearly, we're in another planet here. And Donald Trump doesn't give a shit about any optics and cared more about Jim Comey being on TV too often than he did about what's going to be a massive reaction. I mean, is there any way to keep this from from being precedent setting? Or are we just, are we screwed now? I mean, this is the

question about everything with Trump. And, you know, this goes back to releasing his tax returns, whether he's going to divest his businesses, his private business, you know, when he joins, or when he takes the oath of office, he has just blown right through all of these norms. And at every time, there's been no one other than Democrats who will stand up and say, you know what, this isn't appropriate. And this is a real test. I feel like we keep waiting for, you know, what is the point where Republicans in Congress will stand up and say, you know what, enough? And if they don't stand up and say enough here, they have to think about what it means for this administration, obviously, and what it means for this investigation or whether we ever found out, you know, whether we ever find out the truth about what happened.

But then, yeah, I mean, once these norms are eroded, you can never go back. That's the thing especially about the Department of Justice. So, you know, I was talking about DOJ's independence. That's not written into law anywhere. It's not written into the Constitution. There's no rule anywhere that says the president can't direct who gets prosecuted, who gets investigated, what investigations get lost. It's just all norm in practice.

And you've had an attorney's general in the past who were willing to stand up for that norm and that rule. And we just saw an attorney general and a deputy general, who weren't willing to stand up for that. And once that precedent is said, there's nothing to stop any future president, any future attorney general from ignoring it other than, you know, the other men and women in government being willing to stand up and say it's wrong. Right. I mean, yeah, the comparison we're hearing a lot.

The Nixonian comparison is to an incident called the Saturday Night Massacre, which was in October of 1973, President Nixon wanted to fire the special prosecutor in charge of the Watergate investigation. demanded his attorney general did it. Elliot Richardson, he refused. The deputy attorney general William D. Ruckelhaus also refused and was fired. And so the solicitor general, Bob Bork, finally complied with the president's request to fire

the special prosecutor. And ultimately what happened there is a lot of Republicans in Congress and in the Senate stood up and said, no, this is enough. Have you seen anything that leads you to believe that might happen here? Like the Grams and McCains of the worlds who get a lot of credit for being independent minded? Have they said anything that makes you feel like they might be putting their foot down here? No. I mean, Chuck Grassley, is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Senate committee that oversees DOJ was just on Fox a little while ago, and his answer was suck it up and move off.

Yeah, that seems to be the talking point. You know, that seems to be the talking point. If we're putting our faith in Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, people like that, I'm afraid we're going to be pretty disappointed. You know, you think back and you think about the, you know, you think about water, gate. I mean, if Jeff Sessions was attorney gentleman, then, it seems like he would fire with a special prosecutor. I mean, it seems fairly obvious. If Mitch McConnell had been the leader of the Senate instead of, you know, Howard Baker was a prominent center at the time and eventually, you know, went to Nixon and said, you have to step down. Nixon probably never would have left. I mean, there's just been a,

there's been a change in the Republican Party where they are just unwilling to stand up for these basic traditions of American democracy. You know, so right, we're 110 days in. Trump has fired his national security advisor, his deputy national security advisor, the acting attorney general, the FBI director. There has been a tradition in this country of treating those positions differently, treating them with the respect they deserve for being, you know, important in terms of law enforcement, of rule of law for national security. I am every day struck by how little you hear about that, the general sort of chaos in the national security team for Donald Trump. Do you hear more about this from the people you talk to or work with who are still in these

institutions? Are they nervous? I can tell you people at DOJ are nervous. And people were already nervous about Jeff Sessions. It's hard to overstate that. People were nervous about whether he would enforce civil rights, whether he would respect criminal justice reform, and clearly doesn't. We just know his beliefs. on that. But there even people who disagree with sessions on a lot of things hoped that,

you know, he's someone who came up in the department. He had been an assistant U.S. attorney. He was U.S. attorney for, I think, 12 years. And it really is this culture at the department. You don't have to work there very long to get kind of, you know, this culture, you know, deep in your bones where you respect independence. And people hoped that he would be somewhat independent. And he pretty quickly showed he wouldn't be. You know, he's walking around all the time, talking about this is the Trump era, which is something that attorneys general just aren't supposed to talk like that.

And then everyone went, well, so Jeff Sessions isn't going to be the one to stand up for the department's traditions, but maybe Rod will be. You know, Rod has been here, sort of through both administrations. He'll be the one to stand up for us. And last night, we found out that Rod isn't going to be that person either.

And so now, I think you're going to have a lot of people at D.J. have to decide, you know, do I just leave or do I stay and try to fight? do I try to hang it out and do what I can from the inside and be prepared to resign or be prepared to be a whistleblower. It's kind of individual decisions of everyone there. And, you know, unfortunately, most of the people you talk to are like, I don't know how long I can stay here. And you want to say, look, stay and tough it out. But, I mean, you ask yourself, would you stay? I mean, it's hard to imagine. I don't know. I really don't know. And you're right. And, you know,

I think all of us sort of hope that Donald Trump will feel some shame. We'll see the headlines and wonder if he maybe made a mistake. But he spent the morning and last evening with childish attacks on Chuck Schumer, calling him a crybaby, attacking the service, you know, Richard Blumenthal, the senator from Connecticut's record of service or something. I don't know what the fuck he's talking about. And this morning he's meeting with Lavrov, Putin's top diplomat. It's like, I can't tell if they're actively thumbing.

their noses at us or if, you know, they're just that stupid. I mean, I think I sort of lean towards the latter, but I don't know if you have a take here. I think the staff are that stupid. I mean, you hear these reports that they thought this wouldn't be that controversial, which just shows how, you know, how idiotic they are. It shows two things. It shows how politically stupid they are. It also shows that no one there has any clue about the traditions of the United States government and how it's supposed to work. But I would put Trump in a different category. I think Trump is a rubber. our noses in it. You know, I think this is a dominant thing for him. He's showing, look, I'm the boss. I'm the one that gets to decide what happens, and I'm going to do whatever I want, and none of you

can stop me. And, and you know what? Until Republicans in Congress stand up, he's kind of right. Yeah, he is. Even though he gets to be a coward and have his random security goon deliver the message and what he can call coming himself. He does get to make these decisions. Okay, so last question for you is like, what's the end game here? So Trump will have to name a new FBI director. There will be hearings to confirm that individual. I mean, do you think that Democrats will make the entire conversation about Comey's firing and the Russian investigation or try to extract some promise that that investigation will continue unmist with? I would think, and I would hope that they would make confirmation of a new FBI director contingent upon the Deputy Attorney General appointing

a special prosecutor. That's clearly the only way out of this is someone that is completely independent from the White House, completely independent from the chain of command of DOJ, has to be someone like that who investigates this entire Russia case. But the question is, are there three Republicans that will join with them to demand that? Because if not, Republicans can jam a confirmation through and continue to ignore these calls for a special counsel. So I think that's the right play for Democrats.

but there have to be pressure from everyone across the country to get a few Republicans to join hands. Yeah, I'm totally with you. We need some of these Republicans who are up in 2018 like Jeff Flake and Dean Heller to hear. Yeah, Flake was already tweeting some things that made it sound like he's a bit concerned or at least nervous about what this means for him politically. The other thing I think gives me a little bit of hope is you have to figure that there are some folks of the FBI, folks in DOJ, who are going to be absolutely enraged at what happened and can. concerned about this investigation getting swept under the rug and start blowing the whistle and going to Congress and going to the press and talking about what it is they know and what Donald Trump might be concerned is revealed here. I think there are going to be a flood of weeks. I will tell you, I've already heard from a few reporters this morning chasing some really outlandish leads. Who knows if any of them pan out, if any of them come true. But there are, you know, I think

people are going to be concerned now that this entire thing gets quashed. And if I were an investigative on this case, I would start writing everything down, every recommendation I would put in paper. I wouldn't do it orally to anyone, and I'd be ready to turn that over to committees on the Hill or to the press at a moment's notice. Yeah, absolutely. That is good advice for all of you guys listening out there.

Matt, thank you so much, man. I really, really appreciate you doing this. You did it on the absolute last seconds notice. I was DMing you at 5 a.m. Pacific time, and we are now recording this at 6.46 a.m. So that's pretty damn good, man. Thank you. Thank you again.

Thank you. All right, buddy. Talk to you soon. All right, thanks.