The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Welcome to the Resistance, Bill Barr

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

Former AG Barr protected Trump while he obstructed justice, but he's now staked out a spot in the anti-Trump coalition. Plus, Tim Scott tests out being a hack, Pence lacks self-awareness, and did Merrick Garland self-deter? Will Saletan's back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is June 19th, 2023. It is Juneteenth Day. So celebrate and welcome back to the podcast, Will Salatin. Thanks, Charlie. I will say, since I am from Texas, I'm very familiar with Juneteenth. It is a very big deal there. You know, it is the day that the last slaves, and it was in Texas, were informed of emancipation. So it's part of the great American story of gradual emancipation and becoming a more perfect union. Well, and also it is the beginning of what I think can be reasonably described as

the second founding of the country. And I don't think that's woe, but I also think it's interesting that on the day in which we are learning and remembering about our history, that this takes place amidst this massive campaign not to learn and think about our history. Okay, speaking of our history, we have to start with one of the strangest flexes of our time. I think we are used to this sort of thing, but I did not ever think we would start off a podcast by quoting Bill Barr, Donald Trump's Attorney General, and in many ways, one of the most deplorable and deceptive enablers of Trump's presidency. But in case you missed it, this is Bill Barr, who is increasingly sounding like he has all out of Fs to give. This is Barr on CBS yesterday describing the character of his former boss. He will always put his own interests and

gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interests. There's no question about it. This is a perfect example of that. He's like, you know, he's like a nine-year-old defiant nine-year-old kid who's always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it. It's a means of self-assertion and exerting his dominance over other people. And he's a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country's, his personal gratification of his, you know, of his ego. But our country can't, you know, can't be a therapy session for, you know, a troubled man like this. Our country can't be a therapy session

for a troubled man like this. If only Bill Barr had been warned, I'm sorry, I just had to say it. What Bill Barr was able to rationalize and cover up, and now he's going, by the way, this man, here's a quote we didn't play, this man is a consummate narcissist, and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk. And what he doesn't say is, and also the country at risk. So welcome to the resistance, Bill Barr. Will? All right. So Charlie, I'm very excited that we started with this clip of Bill Barr. And the reason is that I get my pony right out of the gate here. I'm going to tell you why this is just wonderful. Okay. So the very fact that you hate Bill Barr and that I kind of despise Bill Barr and that

Bill Barr sat there and lied about the Mueller report and buried the Mueller investigation. That's what makes this quote so great because what Bill Barr is doing here, and Bill Barr is a very, very conservative guy who directly helped Donald Trump get out from under a bunch of other things. But because he is so conservative, such a clear, you know, Republican ideologue, the fact that he is making this critique and the nature of the critique helps to at least broaden the audience for this indictment. Bill Barr is not saying anything about Donald Trump being conservative or Republican. In fact, he says there, right, that Trump put the Republican, put the conservative agenda at risk. This critique is

about Donald Trump, the man, the person. It is a character indictment. And it is really, really important for Americans who are certainly not left, but sort of moderate, perhaps center-right, maybe even some relatively conservative people like Liz Cheney, who follow in that mold, to understand the nature of what is wrong with Donald Trump and why he must not be president, because we're going to get to an election and those people are going to have to decide possibly whether to vote for Donald Trump. And it is really important that they be able to tell themselves the truth, which is that they can honor conservative principles and protect the conservative agenda while at the

same time voting against this consummate narcissist. Well, this may come as a surprise to you, Will, but I completely agree with you. I mean, I actually wrote my newsletter this morning. You know, the call is coming from inside the House. And look, I mean, you know, caveats are in order here. I mean, despite the prominence of some of these folks, I mean, it is unlikely that they have the juice to break Trump's hold on the MAGAverse. So that 34% or whatever, no, they're not going to influence that.

But there is probably a 14% of the Republican Party that is exhausted by Donald Trump and will listen, I think, or potentially could listen to folks like this. Because, you know, I mean, unlike other critiques from the resistance or never Trumpers who have essentially become Democrats, I mean, these voices are coming from within the conservative movement, and they could create the permission structure for other Republicans to say things out loud. And, you know, in my newsletter, I try to put this in some context, which we'll add to your pony here. We use the word unprecedented a lot. I mean, there's no precedent for a twice impeached, defeated former president seeking to regain power. But this is also unprecedented because no president has ever earned the open contempt and

the denunciation of so many members of his inner circle, people that he appointed to office. Now, think about it. And I sort of run down the list of people who have now broken with him to one extent or another. His vice president, his attorney general, two secretaries of defense, Mattis and Mike Esper, two secretaries of state, Tillis and Mike Esper, two Secretaries of State, Tillerson and Pompeo, two Chiefs of Staff, two National Security Advisors, Deputy National Security Advisor, Secretary of the Navy, his own Communications Director, his own Press Secretary, members of his cabinet, personal lawyers, all of whom are saying, look, we saw this guy up close and personal. We saw him in the raw, and we're trying to tell you how bad it is and what the consequences of a second term will be. Okay. We could spend the entire podcast relitigating.

Why did it take you so freaking long? You were able to go through, you know, the Russia story. You were able to go through, you know, an insurrection and, you know, now you're speaking out. That's fine. But I guess this goes back to my, by the way, this is going to be an overused analogy over the next year. I'm going to just prepare people for it. The difference between a heart attack and cancer, they will both kill you, but the heart attack is the immediate problem. And right now we have these people sort of rushing in with the paddles. We don't always get to pick, you know, the army we go to war with, he said, mixing his metaphors. But I agree with you about Bill Barr. And he is all out in this. So he was on Sunday morning. And then he's also now written this scorching critique in the free press. And he describes Trump as a deeply flawed, incorrigible man who frequently brings calamity on himself and the country through his dishonesty and self-destructive recklessness.

This is Bill Barr. Even his supporters who can't help but acknowledge that he has his own worst enemies know it. And then he goes through all of the rationalizations and he just mantles them, pointing out that a lot of the excuses are just piffle, that this is really an obstruction case. And so he is throwing whatever credibility he has into this fight. So let's play a couple more soundbites that I think you highlighted on Twitter. This is Bill Barr talking about the specific issues involved with the indictment. Let's play cut number one. The legal theory by which he gets to take battle plans and sensitive

national security information as his personal papers is absurd. It's just as wacky as the legal doctrine they came up with for having the vice president unilaterally determine who won the election. The whole purpose of the statute, the Presidential Records Act, was to stop presidents from taking official documents out of the White House. It was passed after Watergate. That's the whole purpose of it. And therefore, it restricted what a president can take. It says it's purely private that had nothing to do with the deliberations of government policy. And he makes it clear that Donald Trump is not the victim. Now, what he says is this is not the

witch hunt, because he's been willing to say that other things were witch hunt, but this is not. As Barr explains, this is a case entirely of his own making. Let's play that cut. This was a case that entirely of his own making. He had no right to those documents. The government tried for over a year quietly and with respect to get them back, which was essential that they do, and he jerked them around. And he had no legal basis for keeping them. But beyond that, when he faced his subpoena, he didn't raise any legal arguments. He engaged in a course of deceitful conduct, according to the indictment, that was a clear crime if those allegations are true. Now, I don't know how you square his indictment, his evaluation of his conduct and his character with his statement that he would still vote for Donald Trump if he was the Republican

nominee. So, whatever. I mean, that's why the pony is buried in the mare. But by the way, okay, so, Will, there's more. And I think that this, in some ways, is even better. So, this is Donald Trump's own attorney general. His own secretary of defense, Mark Esper, was also on one of the Sunday shows on CNN, and he was also very definitive about the severity of these charges. Listen to Jake Tapper asking Esper whether he thought Trump could ever be trusted again. Let's play that. Based on your experiences working with the Trump and the actions alleged in the indictment, do you think Trump can be trusted with the nation's secrets ever again?

Well, based on his actions, again, if proven true under the indictment by the special counsel, no. I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk. You cannot have these documents floating around. They need to be secured. We know how that happens. The only authorized persons are allowed to see documents or receive information from documents. So, look, we've got to take this very seriously.

These are serious issues. Damn. Based on his actions, if proven true under the indictment by the special counsel, no, Donald Trump should never be again trusted with the nation's secrets. Will, does he get the attorney general and the secretary of defense? There's so many threads to pull on here. Do you want to start with Esper or you want to start with Barr? I'll give you the tip ball. I'll start with Esper since we just did that one, but there's a hundred things to say about what Barr said. So Esper says in there, Trump can't be trusted with our nation's secrets. He puts our men and women at risk. I just want to draw attention to the specific allegations in the

indictment. I'm looking at the indictment. This is like paragraph 34 of the indictment. It's a story about what happened and they've got an audio tape to back this up. So it's not just a story. They're going to be able to document it. This is July, 2021. And Trump is what at Bedminster. And he's talking to the ghost writer and the publisher for Mark Meadows autobiography. And he's bringing out a document and all the dialogue is in here because they got the audio tape, right? Trump is telling these guys, he's showing them this document and he's telling them I could have declassified it, but now I can't. So it's secret and I've kept it. I took it with me. And it is a plan of attack for a country, which we now know to be Iran, right? A plan of attack.

So that's the document he's taking out. What Mark Esper said there, that Trump is putting men and women at risk, that is directly true. That is not like a turn of phrase, because think about that document leaking to the government of Iran. That is the plan of attack. You are sending your sons and daughters potentially into a military operation to which the former president has leaked the exact battle plan. I mean, that is just an amazing, amazing document for the president to be waving around and showing to people. Well, as Marco Rubio said, well, at least he's not spying. At least we don't have a evidence that he gave it to the enemy.

And just to remind people, we only know about this because there is an audio tape of it. How many other documents, how many other times has Donald Trump waved this around? Just to remind everyone, the reason why Donald Trump is waving this document around is to settle a political score with Mark Milley. So this is a score that Trump has been trying to settle ever since he left office. So God knows how many other people Trump has shown this exact document to. We only know of the one. And think of the peril that it puts American service members in if we ever get into a military

confrontation with Iran. So that's what I have to say about the Esper thing. I just think it's astonishing. It is astonishing. And we ought to spend a little bit of time on the fact that the former Secretary of Defense is saying how reckless and dangerous this is, because I don't know what it will take to drive a wedge between the Republican base and Donald Trump. But this strikes me as at least a candidate. And again, not the 34 percent that listen to Steve Bannon or watch Newsmax, but maybe the 14 percent. But also because it goes at one of Donald Trump's purported strengths, which is that he supports the military, that he supports the men and women, that he believes in a strong America. And what both Esper and Barr are saying is, no,

this is a man who puts his own ego, his own vanity ahead of the country that he is so reckless that he in fact would put the men and women who are charged to defend America in harm's way. If Barack Obama was accused of doing something like that or any Democrat, the country would be on fire and the military would be justifiably absolutely outraged. Well, here's Donald Trump who wraps himself in the flag. And if you can point out, look, this is not someone who puts the country first. This is someone who always puts himself first. This is not somebody who, in fact, is behaving like a responsible commander-in-chief. This is somebody who is

more interested in settling scores. And this may cost American lives. That strikes me as salient. It is. And it's very important. And just to come back to what we were talking about earlier, the fact that Bill Barr is a genuine national security conservative, he's worked in the intelligence community, right? He cares about this stuff. I believe it was last week talking about the same problem. He said, when he looks at the nature of the documents that are described in the indictment and Trump keeping them and showing them around, he said, it turns your stomach if you care about national security. Now, Donald Trump doesn't care about national security, but it's really important to have spokespeople like Bill Barr who do, speaking to voters who do, voters who are not going to be typical Joe Biden supporters, right?

Reminding them, if you care about any of the things that we talked about, if you cared about family values, you should care about the way Trump treats women. If you care about national security, you should care about the way Trump treats classified documents. It's really important that those people are out making the case. Oh, I agree with you. Did you have something else you want to say about Barr? Because I mean, there's so many different elements. I mean, Barr sat down and his critique, which is in the free press, I linked to it in my Morning Shots newsletter, is quite extensive. He walks through all of the various rationalizations and the suck ups. And he says, you know, there's a lot of razzle dazzle here, but it's beside the point.

And he is quite definitive that, you know, he says this effort to present Trump as a victim in the Mar-a-Lago document affair is cynical political propaganda. Now, Bill Barr knows cynical political propaganda. So coming from, I mean, again, there's a certain amount of irony there. But, of course, irony was killed many, many years ago here. But it is interesting that he would say that, you know, and he says these justifications are not only farcical. They are beside the point. They ignore the central reason the former president was indicted. His calculated and deceitful obstruction of a grand jury subpoena. Again, the irony that I

need to point out that the Mueller report documented in great detail Donald Trump's obstruction of justice and Bill Barr was the key player in basically distorting that and blunting that. But now he's saying, okay, this guy, I protected him before when he obstructed justice, but now I am really outraged about this calculated and deceitful obstruction of a grand jury subpoena. Hmm. Okay.

But good now. Good now. Okay. I share your unhappiness with Bill Barr's past behavior, but I'm still going to go with the, I got so many ponies here. I got a whole Kentucky Derby of ponies. Okay. This critique that Barr is delivering about, let's start with the obstruction of justice. Okay. We just talked about how Barr in the case of national security is making the case to national security conservatives,

why Trump did is wrong. Now also Bill Barr would like to think of himself as a law and order conservative. I can see Charlie Sykes laughing because Bill Barr buried the Mueller investigation. But here is Bill Barr saying this case. Not laughing. Not funny. Amused. So this case, the documents case, he's saying is an open and shut case. Here they have the goods. Trump has violated the law. As you just read from that quote, it's obstruction of justice. That is a crime, right? And if we really believe in law and order, we law and order conservatives, we should prosecute anyone for that, including the president. So that's another way in which Barr is speaking to that audience of conservatives. In addition to that, so we did national security, we did law and order. How about textualism? How about, you know, federalist

society, conservatism, about the nature of the law and interpretation of the law? When Barr goes into and talks about the Presidential Records Act, that was a great passage because what he's doing is saying, look, I'm serious. I'm going to be serious here about looking at what was the text of the statute, right? The statute, the Presidential Records Act distinguishes between personal records and agency records, government records, like the ones that Trump has withheld here. And he also talks about the context of the Presidential Records Act. It was created right after Watergate, I think. And the point was to constrain presidents taking documents away, not to make it easier for them, not to justify it. So now he's speaking to those Federalist Society types about how the law should

be enforced. So that's another way in which Barr is speaking to conservatives. I love it. I think it's very helpful. I think it is too. I mean, I agree with you on all of this. In fact, they are talking to the voters who I think will decide the 2024 election. They may not decide the Republican nomination, but I'm just kind of making this number up. It was on a show with John Meacham this morning, and he was talking about the fact that you have 34% of Americans that will basically believe anything, but Trump has the delta of another 14% who might vote for him. But that 14% is not necessarily locked into it. And I agree with you. I think speaking to these people is absolutely crucial. And the voice needs to come from inside the house. Hey folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around?

Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bullwork Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebullwork.com slash charlie. That's thebullwork.com forward slash charlie. We're going to get through this together. I promise. So let's talk about Mike Pence, because I have to tell you, it actually makes my head hurt. People ask me about it, and I've said it's like walking cognitive dissonance. But Pence has been evolving on this issue. He's gone back and forth. He suggested he was going to pardon him. And now he's waffling

on the issue. He has said that he will not defend the conduct. And yet he seems willing to go along with the other Republican attacks on the Department of Justice. You had a fantastic piece last week from justifying Trump to justifying autocracy, you know, taking a deep dive into all of these defenses that we're getting from MAGA Republicans who want to defund the FBI, want to go after the Department of Justice, you know, in the context of Donald Trump threatening himself to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies. Well, here's Mike Pence yesterday on Meet the Press. It was a long interview. There's a lot there. But here is Mike Pence talking about the alleged double standard.

The American people would like to see evidence that we don't have a two-tiered system of justice. Seven years, it appears as though Democrats get one level of treatment and Republicans, especially those of us in the Trump-Pence administration, get another. The American people want to see action by the Department of Justice that proves to them or starts to prove to them that that's not the case. Will, does Mike Pence hear himself? No, I don't think so. Okay, just to remind everyone, there are three prominent recent cases of public officials

having documents they shouldn't have. One is Donald Trump. One is Joe Biden. The third is Mike Pence, right? Two of these guys are Republicans. One of them is a Democrat. If there is political bias being practiced, you would expect the two Republicans to be persecuted. And that is what Mike Pence alleges. He says, those of us in the Trump administration are being

prosecuted for this stuff. Just factually, a small correction. I think it's about two weeks ago, we learned that Mike Pence has already received, his lawyer has already received a letter from DOJ saying he's not going to be prosecuted for his treatment of classified documents. Why? Because just like Joe Biden, Mike Pence, when he found out that he had these documents, which were mixed with other stuff, right, that he didn't know about it, he says, come in and take it, right? It's not mine. It belongs to the government, right?

So Donald Trump gets treated differently, not because he's a Republican. He and Mike Pence were both in the Trump-Pence administration, may I remind that's why it's called the Trump-Pence administration. And so it is just amazing for Mike Pence, of all people, to go on TV and allege that the Trump-Pence administration, rather than Donald Trump himself, because of his particular behavior, not because of his politics, are being somehow persecuted. This is where I think Rhonda Sandis and Mike Pence seem to be following a similar path, which is that somebody gives them a checklist of phrases and words and positions to take that are deemed to be safe, and they take them. So Rhonda Sandis is out in Nevada, and he's serving beer to veterans, and he says, anything but Bud Light. Fuck's sake. I mean, come on.

I mean, it's just the pandering there. And then Mike Pence feels that he needs to attack the Department of Justice. Well, at least he didn't go as far as Tim Scott. Tim Scott, who is, he's a no-hoper. I don't know what he's actually running for, whether he's running for VP. Senator from South Carolina. He was on yesterday. I mean, he got in touch with his inner, you know, hackiest hack on all of this, going after the Department of Justice. A very

short clip here. Here's Tim Scott asked about this indictment, and this is what he said. You've said you would restore integrity at the DOJ. What would you do? The first thing we have to do is fire Joe Biden. The second thing we do is fire Merrick Garland. And the third thing we do is fire Chris Wray. We have to clean out the political appointments in the Department of Justice to restore confidence and integrity in the DOJ. Today, we want to know that in our justice system, Lady Justice wears a blindfold and that all Americans will be treated fairly by Lady Justice. But today, this DOJ continues to hunt Republicans while they protect Democrats. What is he talking about? Is he talking about the January 6th investigation? Is he talking about

the indictment of Donald Trump? And keep in mind, by the way, I know we have the memory of goldfish, but remember that Trump rode to the presidency in 2016 on the slogan, lock her up, which was, you know, talking about Hillary Clinton's abuse of classified documents. I mean, it's just this way, you know, irony was beaten to death by hammers. I mean, seriously. So Tim Scott, I'm going to fire Merrick Garland. We're going to fire the FBI head. And we're going to do what? We're going to put in the kind of people that Donald Trump would bring back and put in charge of the Department of Justice. I'm trying to clean this up.

But you know what I want to say next, right? I mean, you know, God bless Tim Scott. You know, he talks about Lady Justice wearing a blindfold. Clearly, Tim Scott is wearing a blindfold because when Republicans get to the point of saying we have to stop the liberal bias in the Justice Department by firing Chris Wray. Of course, Chris Wray famously appointed by Donald Trump to replace what he thought was a biased Justice Department. So it's Trump's own appointee. Chris Wray is very useful as an index of the absurdity of this, because it shows that no matter who is in charge of the Justice Department or the FBI, right, including people appointed by

Donald Trump himself, that person will be accused of bias if they investigate or prosecute anyone on the right, including Donald Trump. So it's insane. And one other thing on this, Charlie, imagine President Tim Scott. I know that's hard. Imagine President Tim Scott and you or anyone else has just been appointed to a senior position in Tim Scott's Justice Department after Tim Scott has delivered this attack and the statement of what the Justice Department mustn't do. And you are faced with an obvious crime by a Republican. Are you going to prosecute that? Are you going to investigate that? Or are you going to feel the heat of President Tim Scott over your shoulder, suggesting that you will be chucked out, that you will lose your job and possibly more if you investigate that crime? Okay, well, I have a more realistic scenario,

that Tim Scott is still a member of the US Senate, and has to decide how is he going to vote on the confirmation of Donald Trump's attorney general, who has pledged that he is going to immediately indict all the members of the Biden family. Will you vote to confirm the kind of person that Donald Trump would name to the FBI directorship, to the other positions in the Department of Justice? Because the one thing about Donald Trump is he's made it very clear what he will do and what he intends to do. And one of the questions, of course, out there is, and would Republicans go along with it? I think, as you wrote in your piece, there's a lot of reasons to believe that they would go along with it. Even though he said, basically, nakedly, I don't believe the Department of Justice should

be independent. I'm going to strip it of its independence, and then I'm going to use it as a weapon against my political foes. What does Tim Scott, a member of the United States Senate, do when he has to vote up or down? I think I know what he would do. He'll go along. He'll go along. He'll roll over. Right. They all go along because this is all projection. There isn't anything that one could do as attorney general or president to insulate this case, the Trump prosecution from politics that they have already done. Biden has tried to separate himself from Garland. Garland has tried to separate himself from the case by appointing Jack Smith, right? So Jack Smith does it. And what do the Republicans say? It doesn't matter because it's a democratic

administration. Remember they have two scenarios here. One in which Republicans control the government and Trump never gets prosecuted because of sort of gutless partisanship. And the other is Democrats control the administration, in which case, no matter what insulation is put there to keep it non-political, Republicans will accuse it. So either way, they've got it covered that Trump can never be prosecuted. Wonderful. Yeah, it's perfect, isn't it? Okay, so I know I've used the word irony too many times. I think we're at our quota. But these attacks on the Department of Justice are particularly ironic in light of the big story the Washington Post dropped a few minutes before we began taping this. I'm holding in my hand, this is like a 10,000-word piece.

The headline is, FBI resisted opening probe into Trump's role in January 6th for more than a year in the Department of Justice investigation of January 6th, key justice officials also quashed an early plan for a task force focused on people in Trump's orbit. Now, the interesting thing about the headline is it's FBI resisted opening this probe into Trump's role, but it goes all the way up to Merrick Garland. Let me just read you some of the key paragraphs and let's talk about this. Because again, keep in mind that it has now become almost orthodoxy in the Republican Party. The Department of Justice has been weaponized against Republicans, right? That they are just out of control. Look what they're doing here. Well, a Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on

a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation. A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Merrick Garland and the Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling that top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, the Post found. So many of the concerns is Merrick Garland really,

you know, dragging his feet here? Is he really, you know, moving it, you know, quietly at the warp speed? I think we're getting the answer to that right now. Okay, so I'm going to jump down a little bit. Whether a decision about Trump's culpability for January 6th could have come any earlier is unclear. The delay in examining that question began before Garland was even confirmed as Attorney General. Sherwin, senior Justice Department officials, and Paul Abadie, the top deputy to FBI Director Christopher Wray, quashed a plan by prosecutors in the United States Attorney's Office to directly investigate Trump associates for any links to the riot. Deeming it premature, according to five individuals familiar with the decision, instead they insisted on a methodical approach focusing first on rioters and going up

the ladder. That strategy was embraced by Garland, Monaco, and Wray. They remained committed to it, even as evidence emerged of an organized, weeks-long effort by Trump and his advisors before January 6th to pressure state leaders, justice officials, and Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Biden's victory. In the weeks before January 6th, Trump supporters boasted publicly that they had submitted fake electors on his behalf, but the Justice Department declined to investigate the matter in February 2021, the Post found. The department did not actively probe the effort for nearly a year, and the FBI did not open an investigation of the elector scheme until April 2022, about 15 months after the attack. Two more paragraphs.

The Justice Department's painstaking approach to investigating Trump can be traced to Merrick Garland's desire to turn the page from missteps, bruising attacks, and allegations of partisanship in the department's recent investigation of both Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Inside justice, however, some have complained that the attorney general's determination to steer clear of any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate the former president. You couldn't use the T word, said one former just official briefed on prosecutors' discussions. Well, the good news is that

eventually he appointed Jack Smith after Trump announced he was running. Jack Smith is obviously being very, very aggressive, but this delay, I mean, that's become the big problem going right into the election. So what do you think, Will? Well, first of all, let me just pause on that wonderful quote, you couldn't use the T word. Imagine for a minute, Charlie, that instead of the T word, imagine it was the B word, Biden, right? I mean, you and I wouldn't even be able to talk here. We would already have been overwhelmed by Jamie Comer and Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy out pouncing on this and saying they're covering up for Joe Biden. So instead, it's not Biden that they're covering up for, it's Trump. And I want to say covering up. I don't mean they're covering up, but they're

going very slowly, in fact, very carefully. And I really liked the line there about how Garland is trying to turn the page from the Russia investigation. And look, Bill Barr buried the Mueller report and there was lots of evidence of collusion and obstruction in the Mueller report, but there were definitely missteps in the Russia investigation. And there were some overzealous people. They went too far in a lot of ways, the Carter page warrant and all that stuff. So what happens here is Merrick Garland decides to take that criticism seriously. Merrick Garland is trying to be the good guy. He's trying to be honest. And he says, we're not going to do what happened in the Russia investigation, right? What is Merrick

Garland's reward for that is to be accused of political hackery anyway, because it doesn't matter. We already have right now, many Republicans accusing the Biden Justice Department, as they call it, of dragging its heels on Hunter Biden, right? Why it's taken four and a half years? Why has there not been? And what we see here is that the Justice Department under Merrick Garland is being careful in all respects, in all cases. They're trying to bend over backward, not to push it and wait until the evidence is overwhelming. So when you hear criticisms about the Hunter Biden investigation and why there isn't more action on that, remember that this is a methodical approach by the Justice Department under Garland as a whole. Well, I don't think that this is a methodical approach by the Justice Department under Garland as a whole.

Well, I don't think that this article describes just methodical. It describes self-deterrence and it describes excessive caution. And it strikes me as another example of the asymmetric political and legal warfare that we saw in the Mueller investigation that Bob Mueller was playing by old rules. He underestimated what Trump world was like. You have this absolutely shameless political figure who is willing to say and do anything in a political party that's willing to back him. And here you have Bob Mueller coming in and he brings a pen to a gunfight. He's playing by Marquis of Queensberry rules when in fact it's the Thunderdome. And in many ways, Merrick Garland is also from that generation and from that tradition that he came in and he thought,

I'm going to restore the institutional integrity of the Justice Department. Great. And he made that very clear from day one that he wanted to depoliticize it. But that also showed that he did not understand the moment he was in or the stakes or the adversaries to the rule of law. This is a read it and weep piece, I'm afraid. Well, okay. So I'll argue with you here. And just to be clear with everyone, I am a squish, right? And my flaws are the flaws of a squish. This is known. Maybe I'm being a sap about this story. It's not, you know, and they are definitely bending over backwards, perhaps farther than they should. But Garland is trying to restore faith in institutions. And I think he's right to have his focus on restoring faith in the Justice Department,

not on punishing Donald Trump. I think that's really important. But the problem is when Garland is trying to do that, it just gets overwhelmed by, again, Cruz and McCarthy and Comer and all these cynical Republicans in Congress who don't care about the institution. And they are out there every day trying to destroy public faith in law and order and in the institutions of law enforcement by alleging no matter what happens, no matter who's in charge of the Justice Department, no matter how far it bends over backward to avoid prosecuting Donald Trump. They still allege you cannot trust these institutions and we have to tear everyone out of them. And didn't Vivek Ramaswamy say he wants to abolish the FBI? I mean, it's just an escalating arms race on the

Republican side to destroy not only faith in the institutions, but the institutions themselves. This is why what Bill Barr is saying is so important, because Bill Barr is standing up and saying, okay, I come from that world. I come from the Department of Justice. I have to tell you that what they're saying is happening is not happening. This is not the case. And so even though I may hate the fact that it's Bill Barr, think about what a twisted world we're in. Merrick Garland comes in and he has to clean up the mess largely created by Bill Barr, right? He has to like, I need to restore the integrity of the Justice Department that was trashed under my predecessor, Bill Barr. And yet at this particular moment in history, who is the figure standing up and providing cover to what the Department of Justice is doing with Donald Trump? It's Bill Barr.

So, I mean, this is why Game of Thrones is actually kind of a documentary. It's like, you just never know, you know, who's going to, you know, stand up when you actually need them to stand up. So, all right, speaking of people who are like, you know, strange twists of fate, and we've talked about this extensively, of course, you know, Chris Christie, I think you could argue, contributed as much as anyone to Donald Trump's triumph back in 2016. We remember him, you know, endorsing him, one of the first normal Republicans to endorse Donald Trump after taking out Marco Rubio. Well, Chris Christie has emerged as the biggest, I think the most vociferous and in many ways the most eloquent Trump critic on the stage. Asa Hutchinson has been saying rather extraordinarily on-point things, but Chris Christie has become far more

entertaining and interesting. Well, he was on various shows yesterday and explaining, and of course he's asked, what were you thinking back in 2016? This is his first answer. I made it very clear in 2016, I did not want Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States. And I think that was the right decision. And my hope back in 2016 was that I could make Donald Trump a better candidate. And if he won, a better president. I tried and I was wrong. I couldn't make him a better president. And he failed over and over again. All you need to look at is the fact that he said he would build a wall. He didn't build the wall.

And in fact, he said he would make Mexico pay for it. We haven't gotten our first peso. He said he would balance the budget in four years. He left the biggest deficit of any president in recent American history. I have a problem with that answer. Okay. And you know that I've kind of, you know, been open to listening to Chris Christie. There's a couple of things. I mean, number one, first of all, Chris Christie is a smart guy. He knew that Mexico was never going to pay for that freaking

wall. Okay. Number one, number two, he knew that he wasn't going to balance the budget in four years. He absolutely knew that. So come on. And also that the explanation that he wanted to beat Hillary Clinton. Well, here's the problem. He endorsed Donald Trump before Donald Trump had nailed down the nomination. So at that point in the race, it was not Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. It was anybody else in the field and Hillary Clinton. Now, if you had waited until after the convention and then he endorsed Donald Trump, then he could say, okay, it was either him or Hillary Clinton and blah, blah, blah. But the fact that he endorsed him so early and played such a role in getting him the nomination makes that a little bit questionable. No, not a little bit questionable, a lot questionable. I fully agree with that. That's a really good point. And in addition to that, I would add,

think about what Christie just named as things Donald Trump did that showed he was not a real conservative, right? He said he would build the wall, make Mexico pay for it. That didn't happen, right? He says he left it with the biggest budget deficits in history, right? So Charlie, all of that was quite apparent by the fall of 2020, when, to remind everyone, Chris Christie, the reason Chris Christie got COVID and nearly died was that he was doing Donald Trump's debate prep, right? Not 2016. We're now in 2020. We've been through the whole term that Chris Christie describes, and still Chris Christie was trying to help Trump win a general election. And part of the reason why that's important is if in 2016, despite everything he said about Donald Trump, Chris Christie supported Trump in the general election. And in 2020,

despite Trump having shown that he wasn't conservative in all the ways Christie alleges, Chris Christie again supports Donald Trump. Why should we believe in 2024 that if it's once again Trump against Biden, that Chris Christie won't roll over again? I mean, I assume he will. Well, I'll ask him. I'm going to have him on the podcast. Oh, good. I'm going to have him sitting in the seat you are sitting in right now. Good. I'm going to have him on the podcast. I'm going to have him sitting in the seat you are sitting in right now. I hope. And I have to ask him that. All right. So among the other things that he addressed, I was really interested in this because I think he's made it clear that he would never support the nominee, even if it is Donald Trump. And if they don't do it, they won't be on the debate stage. Chris Christie was asked about this. This is his thoughts on the RNC demand for a pledge. Jake, I'm going to go back to 2016 again and say

I'm going to take the pledge just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016. As you'll remember, Reince Priebus had to go up to Trump Tower to get him to sign it, to ask him to do so. He did. And then we went to a subsequent debate and we were all asked if we would reaffirm our support of whoever the nominee was going to be by raising our hand. There were 10 of us on the stage. Nine of us raised our hands. The one who didn't was Donald Trump. And so I'll take the pledge then ignore it if it's Trump, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. So Charlie, let's pause for a minute and talk about Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie, because this is really a good example of two guys who think different. Like these are the two guys in the Republican field who are really aggressively criticizing and rejecting Donald Trump, but they're doing it in very different ways. And some of it is

Arkansas versus New Jersey, right? So Asa Hutchinson is kind of the Boy Scout, right? She's trying to be good and honorable and a good Christian and all that. And he's, and I don't think we have the clip of him, but I'll just tell you what he said. He was on one of the other shows and he said about the debate pledge, he's also going to take the pledge. And he explains how in his mind, in Asa's mind, he's rationalizing it, that you have to be confident that Trump will not actually be the nominee. So that's what he tells himself. Hutchinson tells himself that therefore he can make this statement that I will support the nominee. So it's this kind of moral rationalization, right? Chris Christie's totally different. Chris Christie is all Jersey, right? He's like, oh, I'm going to stand up there.

I'm going to take this pledge. And if it comes to Trump, he's basically saying, I'll renege. I'll renege because I don't respect the pledge. Yeah, because it was bullshit in the beginning. Now, Asa Hutchinson also did something interesting last week. We ought to mention this. So he actually writes to the RNC and say, okay, I'm going to take this pledge, but can we have an out clause that it doesn't apply to somebody who is a convicted felon? By the way, a very reasonable ask on his part, like, okay, I'm going to pledge this, but is there a clause there except for, you know, somebody who is convicted of violating, say, the Espionage Act? And the RNC's answer was, no way.

No, you pledged to support the nominee. It doesn't matter if he's a convicted felon, which is one of those amazing moments in American politics that just sort of got glossed over. The RNC essentially saying, you know, we can nominate a convicted felon, somebody convicted of violating the Espionage Act, and damn well, you better support that person because it's all about party over anything else. Party over principle, party over country, party over whatever. Yes, yes, emphatically, yes. And I thoroughly agree with you. This is a loyalty Uber alas party.

And, you know, if you're asking yourself, what does the Republican Party stand for? At this point, the answer is, there is no constraining principle on supporting the nominee, which is another way of saying nothing else matters. Nothing at all matters. There is no violation of the traditional Republican platform. There is no violation of the law. There is no violation of the traditional Republican platform. There is no violation of the law. There is no violation of the Constitution that will stop them from demanding loyalty. See, none of this is hyperbole. I mean, this is the codification of the shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, right? Yes. I mean, literally, it's like, okay, Asa Hutchinson, Ronna, Romney, McDaniel, if in fact the nominee has in fact murdered someone in the middle of the street,

then it doesn't apply, right? And Daniel's answer is no, no, no, screw that. If he's the nominee, doesn't matter what the body count is, doesn't matter sexual assault, espionage, anything. Hush money, just you got to do it. Right. So Charlie, can you remind me what was the exact phrasing when Hutchinson wanted them to commit, we don't have to support the nominee if what has committed a felony, was that it? Because if that is, just to remind everyone, shooting someone on Fifth Avenue in cold blood is a felony. So rejecting the pledge is rejecting the Fifth Avenue shooting as a criterion. Okay, so in the few minutes we have left, you did this, as I said before, a really remarkable piece for the bulwark about the justifications for Trump. And you point out, you know, once again, Trump is testing America's tolerance for autocracy.

And once again, his allies on the right are backing him up with extreme and dangerous theories of vast presidential power. And I'm not going to go through the details, but here are the arguments that we're hearing right now. And these are prominent people on the right. Number one, that a former president is entitled to obstruct investigators if he doesn't trust them. Number two, a former president is entitled to withhold documents from investigators based on his belief that he declassified the documents. Number three, that federal law grants a former president sole authority to decide what he can keep. Number four, the mere act of taking documents makes them the former president's rightful property. Wow. Number five, a former

president is entitled to hide documents from investigators as long as he doesn't destroy them. Number six, a former president is entitled to destroy documents. Number seven, a former president could ignore rules about sensitive documents because the people who make and enforce those rules are corrupt. Eight, former presidents are exempt from the classification system. Number nine, Congress cannot constrain a former president's treatment of documents. Number 10, no former president should ever be prosecuted. This is John Yoo. And number 11, prosecution of a former president who seeks reelection is like a coup. As you point out, there seems to be no limit to the unilateral authority Republicans will grant Trump. That delivers the speech and he says that as a former president, he has unconstrained authority. He said, I have an absolute right to do what I want with these documents. So he's claiming essentially, he's claiming autocratic power. And so, you know, this is one of the things that I learned from writing that long story about Lindsey Graham.

It is, you don't have to think of yourself as an authoritarian party to become an authoritarian party. What happens, what happened in the case of Donald Trump, and don't have to think of yourself as an authoritarian party to become an authoritarian party. What happens, what happened in the case of Donald Trump, and it's continuing to happen, is Trump just keeps crossing one line after another. He claims one increasingly vast power after another, absolute rights, unconstrained authority. And his party simply defends every claim. They follow in his wake, defending whatever he said. And so it's a progressive step where you end up rationalizing that nobody can constrain him at all

because he did these things. And if we were to constrain him, you know, then we'd have to prosecute him and we don't want to do that. So we would like to think that when Trump left the White House, that might have stopped. It has not stopped. And the documents case is an illustration of the continuation of this progressive authoritarianism in the Republican Party. It not only has not stopped, you could make the case that, in fact, it is accelerated and will continue accelerating even after Trump leaves the political scene, because now we have what I'm struck by is the willingness, particularly of congressional Republicans, to internalize obstruction of justice as part of their mission. I mean, that they will use the power of Congress to stop this investigation, that this has actually become, you know,

it's not that we're accusing them of obstructing justice. They're going, yes, and here are the tools we will use to obstruct justice. And then this incredible hostility to the rule of law in the context of Donald Trump explicitly threatening to strip the Department of Justice. I keep coming back to this. I mean, he is saying, you know, the leader of this party, the presumptive nominee is saying, I basically don't believe in the independence of the Justice Department. I will use it to go after my political opponents. And what do we hear from Republicans? Fine, you will have complete control. And if he

gets back into power, if they accept this idea, then there will be no check and balance. And of course, coming back to the various ironies, it was, of course, Bill Barr. One of the reasons why he became attorney general was he believes in that concept of the unitary executive, which basically all power in the executive branch flows from the president, and the president has few restraints on his power. So again, the phrase, you built this, you did this, is way overused, and I'm a little sensitive about it for a few reasons. But in Bill Barr's case, it's like, Bill, what did you think would happen when you basically write this letter saying, make know, make me the attorney general, Mr. Trump, and I will make you the most all-powerful president ever. And it's like, wow,

that turned out not to be a good idea. Yeah. Look, there's going to be a real test if Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination. What all of these people have said during the course of the buildup to that doesn't matter. What matters is what do you do in the moment when this guy who is explicitly threatening, he's not threatening, he's saying he will weaponize the Justice Department against what he called the Biden family, the whole family, and is obviously claiming authoritarian powers for himself. If you're serious about any of what you said about national security conservatism, about judicial conservatism, about moral cultural conservatism, about the Constitution, if you're serious about any of it, then you have to support the alternative, the one guy who could beat him, right? Which like it or not is Joe Biden. And I understand people

have other objections. If you don't do that, if you won't do that, then you're not serious about any of this. So we'll find out. But you do understand why they're not willing to say this right now. If they want to stay relevant in this particular debate, you know, it can't be the binary choice between Trump or Biden. It's got to be the binary choice between Trump or never again Trump. And I think that there will come the time when it becomes a different choice. But right now, I do understand why they're basically saying, look, we are conservatives talking to other conservatives right now. And I think that's the most important debate that's taking place at the moment. It doesn't mean that they will have the same debate a year from now.

Will Salatan, it is great having you back on the pod. We will talk again soon. Thank you. Thanks, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.