The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department by Elie Honig

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department by Elie Honig “Elie Honig has written much more than a compelling takedown of an unfit attorney general; he also offers a blueprint for how impartial and apolitical justice should be administered in America.”—Preet Bharara “An essential analysis for anyone committed to understanding the abuses of the Trump administration so we can ensure they never happen again.”—Joyce White Vance “Essential reading for all who cherish the rule of law in America.”—George Conway "Written with all the color and pacing of a legal thriller."—Variety CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig exposes William Barr as the most corrupt attorney general in modern U.S. history, with stunning new scandals bubbling to the surface even after Barr's departure from office. In Hatchet Man, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig uncovers Barr’s unprecedented abuse of power as Attorney General and the lasting structural damage done to the Justice Department. Honig uses his own experience as a prosecutor at DOJ to show how, as America’s top law enforcement official, Barr repeatedly violated the Department’s written rules, and those vital, unwritten norms and principles that comprise the “prosecutor’s code.” Barr was corrupt from the beginning. His first act as AG was to distort the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, earning a public rebuke for his dishonesty from Mueller himself and, later, from a federal judge. Then, Barr tried to manipulate the law to squash a whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine—the report that eventually led to Trump’s first impeachment. Barr later intervened in an unprecedented manner to undermine his own DOJ prosecutors on the cases of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, both political allies of the President. And then Barr fired the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York under false pretenses. Finally, Barr amplified baseless theories about massive mail-in ballot fraud, pouring gasoline on the dumpster fire battle over the 2020 election results and contributing to the January 6 insurrection that led to Trump’s second impeachment. In Hatchet Man, Honig proves that Barr trampled the two core virtues that have long defined the department and its mission: credibility and independence – ultimately in service of his own deeply-rooted, extremist legal and personal beliefs. Honig shows how Barr corrupted the Justice Department and explains what we must do to prevent this from ever happening again. About the author Elie Honig is a CNN Senior Legal Analyst who previously worked for 14 years as a federal and state prosecutor. He provides on-air commentary and analysis for CNN on news relating to the U.S. Department of Justice, major criminal trials, the Supreme Court, Congressional and grand jury investigations, national security, policing, and other legal issues. In 2022, Honig was nominated for an Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in the category “Outstanding News Analysis: Editorial & Opinion.” Honig is the author of the national bestselling book, “Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department,” published by HarperCollins. His second book, “Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It,” is scheduled for publication in January 2023. Honig is the host of a popular true-crime podcast, “Up Against the Mob,” and a weekly legal podcast, “Third Degree,” both productions of Cafe and Vox Media. Season Two of “Up Against the Mob” premieres in November 2022. Honig graduated from Rutgers College (where he now teaches) in 1997, and Harvard Law School in 2000.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host Chris Voss hi folks Chris Voss here from the chris voss show dot com the chris voss show dot com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here to see the amazing podcast it's gonna be amazing today it It's going to be so amazing.

You just want to go subscribe at youtube.com forward says Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification so you can get all the wonderful things we're doing over there. Go to goodreads.com forward says Chris Voss. You can see all the books we're reading and reviewing over there as well. You can also go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. I can't even keep track of all the new social media things. You can go see everything we're doing over there as well. Today, we have an amazing author on the show, and he's going to be talking to us about his new book that just came out July 6, 2021. It's called Hatchet Man, How Bill Barr Broke the

Prosecutor's Code and code and corrupted the Justice Department. We have on the show with us today the author of that amazing book, Ellie Honig. He is a CNN senior legal analyst who previously worked for 14 years as a federal and state prosecutor. From 2004 to 2012, he was the assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He prosecuted and tried federal cases involving organized crime, human trafficking, public corruption, and violent crime. And he successfully prosecuted over 100 members and associates of the mafia, including bosses and other high-ranking members on murder, racketeering, and other charges. He has a storied history working for the Justice Department, and we have him here live on the show.

Welcome to the show, Ellie. How are you? Good. Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun talking about this book. This is my first book, by the way. I guess we'll get into that. I'm enjoying the tour. I don't feel people have said, are you completely exhausted yet? I think the answer is almost, but not quite. It's quite a tour. You put so much work into writing a book. I'm writing my first one now and I'm about ready to lose my mind. I'm climbing the walls.

I'm at that stage and the editors are about ready to tear my soul out and stomp on it. Just blast through it. If you have young kids, the first six months of their lives are so stressful, but your body, your brain naturally suppresses the memory as you get older because they don't want you to never do it again. Is that what's going to happen? That's my theory. Yeah. Sounds good.

Sounds good. So give us your plugs of being on Find You on the interwebs and tell us where they can order this fine book. One of the nice things about having an unusual name like Ellie Honig is there's only one of me. You don't have to find Ellie Honig 14 or anything like that. You can get the book anywhere you get your books. You can get them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores, you name it. I'm Ellie Honig on Twitter, on Instagram. I guess those

are the two big ones that I do. And you can see me on CNN most days where I do legal analysis. There you go. There you go. So what motivated you to write this book? Something between rage and therapy, or maybe a combination of the two. The way this came about, I think is unusual within the publishing industry. I was a prosecutor for 14 years up until about three years ago, summer of 2018. When I started to do, I teach at Rutgers University and I'm with a law firm, excuse me, but I started to do CNN and it went well and it grew from there. And then I signed with CNN and became an on-air comment. And one of the main things that I would rage against on air, excuse me, on air and in my writing for CNN and elsewhere was what Bill Barr was doing to the Justice Department.

Because I was raised a certain way at the Justice Department. I was taught there's a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. I was taught that a good prosecutor can do probably more good for our society than virtually anybody else. And a bad prosecutor can do more harm than virtually anybody else. And I do think it's important, and I note this in the book, when Bill Barr's name first surfaced as Donald Trump's likely nominee, I was asked about it on CNN. There's tape of this. I asked the producer to pull it because I wanted to quote it in the book where I say, essentially, he's experienced, he's known, he's respected, he seems like a strong pick. And I put that in the book because it's at the end of a section about a lot of prominent commentators who had been critical of the Trump administration,

critical of the prior attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Matthew Whitaker, but said positive things initially about Bill Barr, because I thought it was important to include myself in that category and to show the reader that I didn't have it in for Bill Barr. I didn't look at him day one and go, ooh, I can't wait to hate this guy. I said I thought he was going to be good and I thought he was a good pick, but he then spent the next two years proving me very wrong and really tearing down some sort of the fundamental concepts that were taught as prosecutors. Yeah. So give us an arcing overview of the book and then we'll get into some of the stories and chapters. Yeah. So the basic structure is a little bit unusual. I did not want this to just be the history of Bill Barr and it's not. What I do is I intersperse my own stories of

being a prosecutor at the Southern District of New York. I take you behind the scenes really. What's it really like? Everyone sees Law and Order, the TV show, or hears about trials, but I take you into the trial room behind the scenes and i tell a story i tell them in part because they're entertaining and people like this stuff trial stories usually involving me messing something up or getting yelled at or something but each one of them also has a point that i learned from that story or this point illustrates an important principle of being a prosecutor then i take that principle and i apply it to one of the many actually i thinkingly many, when you sit down and see them

all together, scandals that Bill Barr was involved in, one of the many violations that Bill Barr committed to show how what he did is so antithetical to what the Justice Department really ought to be about. And what's interesting is he's is correct me if i'm wrong he's the only ag that's ever done it twice there's one other in the 1850s yeah yeah we don't count the 1850s but in modern history yeah he's one of two people and he did it very far apart he was ag from 91 to early 93 under george hw bush and then 25 years later basically under donald trump 28 uh to 2020. Do you touch on the Casper Weinberger pardon? I do. Yes. My takeaway from Bill Barr's first term in office as Attorney General is that he emerged from that the way that most AGs emerge from their term, which is known as an AG,

going to have your controversies. It's impossible to be attorney general for two years without some controversy, but by and large was seen as a steady, solid institutionalist. But yeah, I say the biggest thing that sort of stuck with him from his first time was that he was involved in advocating for pardons of Caspar Weinberger and other very powerful, well-connected people who had been part of the Bush and Reagan administration. And it was thought that if they wanted to, they could have flipped and provided prosecutors with damaging information against potentially Reagan. I think he had passed away by then, but Reagan and Bush himself, who was vice president under Reagan. And Barr was so instrumental in arranging and advocating for those pardons, which in isolation is a scandal, but doesn't

seem like much, but also I think was interesting foreshadowing of what was to come in his second term. It was definitely foreshadowing because Caspar Weinberger was going to, I think on January 5th, following that year at the end of Bush's term, Bush senior, he was going to trial and that God knows what could have happened then. But that may be the, I don't know, the beginning of the original sin and downhill from there. But he writes that letter. That's so amazing. I remember following the Mueller report every day. It's any day now. And tell us a little bit about that and how that played out in the news. Yeah. The Mueller report was really Bill Barr's original sin. And I think maybe his biggest sin when all said and done, although he's met,

he's remembered for that, but he deserves to be remembered for a lot of other things too. Shortly after that day when his name first came out and I was positive about him, it came out that Bill Barr had written what I call the audition memo. He had written about six months before his nomination to the Justice Department

his view on why Robert Mueller's investigation, which was going strong at that point, was, to quote Bill Barr, fatally misconceived. And Barr tried to make, oh, I just wrote this up as a sort of concerned citizen of the world who had thought I would shit. Penny for your thoughts. All the time. 19-page memo goes into the Justice Department. Not surprisingly, that memo made its way to Donald Trump, or he learned of it.

And not surprisingly, Donald Trump liked it because Donald Trump wanted his Roy Cohn. And here's a person saying, I'm going to make the Mueller investigation go away. That's what fatally misconceived means. And by the way, Bill Barr didn't know anything more about the investigation than you or I did as members of the public. So Bill Barr gets the job. Democrats try to push him on it at the confirmation hearings but he said republicans control the senate and he gets through on an almost straight down the party line vote and he proceeds to do exactly what he told us he would do um by the way one thing i want to say about the memo bar

tried to make it was this penny the thing that bar doesn't like to remember is that he also did media on this. Yeah. And now talking about why the report. So if you're just offering your thoughts, why are you going in the media to do that? Anyway, he gets the job and then he does exactly what he told us he was going to do. Now, the timeline is important here. Bill Barr is basically the first person outside of Mueller's team to get the Mueller report.

He gets it on a Friday night, March 22nd, 2019. And then two days later, a weekend later, the same weekend, Sunday night, Bill Barr issues the letter you were talking about, Chris, the four-page letter where Bill Barr essentially declares Donald Trump free and clear. And he lies to us. He lies to us about what's in Mueller's report. He selectively omits a lot of the things that were really important that were bad for Trump. He leaves in only the back half of the conclusions that are good for Trump. He declares on his own that there's been no obstruction of justice, which I think virtually any prosecutor, I'm one of 2000 prosecutors who signed a letter saying there

absolutely is obstruction of justice here. And he basically just puts in a complete cover up in this dishonest four page letter. And by the way, that's not just my view. Robert Mueller criticized Barr later and two federal judges criticized Bill Barr later for being dishonest in that letter. But here's what, and we all remember that, but here's one of those things when I was looking at the book, when I was researching the book that I went, oh yeah, this is even more devious than we remember. I'm going to put, can I put you on the spot, Chris? Do it. So Barr issues his report, his four pager. Do you remember how long he withheld the Mueller report from the public? How long was it before we got to see it after that? Now I've watched a bunch of your videos and research, so I have to pretend like I don't know. It was a long

time. It wasn't good. It was 27 days. And what he tried to say he was doing was, oh, we were redacting, meaning like I've done this. You have to cross out classified information or that kind of thing. That's bull. There's no way it took 27 days. A federal judge later found that was bull, that his redactions weren't even done. And Robert Mueller had given him summaries. Robert Mueller had pre-scrubbed summaries, six and seven pages. And he said, look, these are supposed to go out, not your spin on it. This is my summary of it. So it was so devious because what happened in that nearly one month is Bill Barr's slanted spin, his dishonest take, took hold, right? Donald Trump declared victory. Everyone around Donald Trump declared victory.

And you talk about the power of first impressions. We weren't even able to check Bill Barr for a full month. But by the time it came out, the actual report, the die were already cast. Good luck undoing that initial impression so it's this not only is was bar dishonest in the way he handled them all the report but he was devious in the way he strategically game planned it out so that he would have the field to himself for about a full month in your research did you find that any evidence of the planning manipulation or is this all just come from his head and him? Because he seemed pretty contained within himself.

Yeah. I make my judgments based off of his conduct, based off of the timing, based off the lies in his letter. I don't have any evidence that he said, I'm going to do it this way. But it did seem, actions speak louder than words. But, and that's an interesting point about Bill Barr too. He gets away with a lot or got away with a lot because of his demeanor. Because a lot of the president's most infamous enablers or apologists are people who tend to be very in your face, right? The Yellers, the Jim Jordans, the Marjorie Taylor Greens, the people who are very aggressive and outspoken. You can roll your eyes at them and take them as a little bit, you know, WWF, or I guess I'm dating myself, world wrestling, professional wrestling type characters. Bill Barr got away with a lot because he had, first of all, he was the attorney general.

You take that person seriously. He's not a yeller. He's soft spoken. He has what I call a veneer of intellectualism. He knows how to make a document look lawyerly, but they're really flimsy. His legal work is really poor. And I, in layperson terms, I tear some of it apart in the book. And by the way, he got his ass kicked in court constantly.

He lost all the time in court. Think about his demeanor. He was a little arrogant in his demeanor, but he's soft-spoken. And so you don't think of him as a Mo Brooks type guy, you know what I mean, as someone like that. But what he did was just as dangerous, if not more, because as attorney general, you have so much more responsibility, so much more power than your run of the mill Congress. It almost seemed like he was just cunning in a way, like a cunning Columbo, if you will, Peter Falk, where he seems a little bit bumbling. He's this guy, he's like, I don't know. But then once he gets the job, then he's, I think there's a hearing where he's just, yeah, so what?

Not only is he cunning and bumbling, he's dishonest. I call him a liar in the book. And I don't do that lightly. I come from two professions, the law and media, where you don't lightly call someone a liar. But the guy lied constantly. And some of those clips of him being questioned by Congress and by journalists are cringeworthy. He's either arrogant, history's written by the winners, or why should I is the clip I think you're thinking of when he's asked if he'll investigate Roger Stone. But at other times, he just plays dumb. There's the famous clip of Kamala Harris asking him, has anyone at the White House

asked you to investigate? Can you repeat that? Struggling with the word suggest. What? Suggest? Why are you struggling? So he's really dishonest. And by the way, it's not just me that says he's a liar. Robert Mueller wrote a letter calling him out for being dishonest, but also multiple federal judges. And sometimes people like this, oh, is there a Democrat? Both parties, judges appointed by both parties have called him out for lacking candor, for being inconsistent with truth, for being disingenuous, for obfuscating, calling into question his credibility. It's all nice, polite,

judgy ways of saying you're a liar. And to have that said about any prosecutor, I talk about this in the book. I knew one colleague, a regular line prosecutor like I was, who one time a judge said that I have a question about his credibility. And it was devastating to him, to the whole office. It was a huge deal that happened. But here we have federal judges, multiple federal judges making official findings that the attorney general was dishonest over and over again. And that's a big part of the reason why Barr did so much damage to DOJ. So I'd like to get a commitment for you on the show. You've been critical about this kind of cleanup tour that he's been doing. And evidently there's a book coming out in 2022. I would pay to see the pay-per-view version of the two of you on an audience stage, or you're welcome to

go on the Chris Voss show. I'm just kidding. I would love to do that. And I do think it's important to say, I asked him to speak with me about this book multiple times and not interested. Yeah. I think he said yes to coming back on the show with Bill Barr. Yeah, like Bill Barr is going to come on the show. If you get Bill Barr, I'm in. He's probably seen my Facebook post. But here's the thing.

Bill Barr is, again, he tries to play the, and in his confirmation, he played the whole, like he even said, I'm a semi-retired grandfather. I don't need this. Bill Barr likes to put out this humble, quiet public servant, but he really is very image conscious. He speaks to the media. I don't know for a fact, but there was a lot of reporting during his tenure that single sourced about conversations that he had one-on-one with Donald Trump or whoever else where he comes off as the big hero, draw your own conclusion.

But the man absolutely is very image conscious. I know for a fact he knows about this book. I know for a fact he knew about it for a long time and was not happy about it, but he should have talked to me if he wanted to get his side of the story in. It's funny that he's image conscious. I remember there were several cartoon and political cartoonists that had him as a giant toad, which was ironic being a toady for trump and looking like a toad do you think that look is going to get him a lot of tinder dates i don't know look he's i do stay away from that i don't yeah i'm just kidding yeah i get it i get i know i hear you but the only thing i do say is because of his look and i talked about this

because he's not a fire breather a jim jordan that's not his style. I do think he gets away with it. And I do think he carries this veneer of respect. He looks the part. He looks the part of the serious, stable attorney general, but he's really, the things he did, his words, his actions, his conduct were really quite extreme. Did you find out why he wanted that job? What his motivation was? Did he need the cash or something? Did he need a whole bookie or what was going on there? Definitely did not need the cash. We dug into the numbers and his financial disclosures a little bit. He was worth tens of millions of dollars at the time. Because in the 25 years in between being AG, he cashed in. There's nothing wrong with that. He was a big law firm partner. He was

general counsel for some major international corporations. He had plenty of money. He'd already been AG once before. I argue in the book, again, based on his own conduct and his own words and actions, that there's really, there were three things at play here. One is the man wanted power. Don't buy this shuffling older grandpa routine. The man sought out power. He had been essentially out of the public spotlight, out of public relevance for a quarter century, and he saw a chance to get more power. And you know what?

I don't hold that against him. I tried to get promoted. I did get promoted. People want to have a say in the world. That's fine. Number two is Bill Barr's a legal extremist. He is a Federalist Society member, which is fine. They're a mainstream group. They're on the far conservative side of the mainstream, but he was beyond that. Their theory is something called the unitary executive, which basically means the executive branch should stand above the others and the president is the executive branch. Nobody works for them. They all are carrying out the president's will, which I take issue with. But Bill Barr took that to such a ridiculous extreme that he would have it so the president was utterly untouchable.

Can't be, forget about indicted, can't be subpoenaed, can't even be investigated, could hardly even be questioned. And partially, and that was a lifelong professional belief and commitment that he had that I think he saw a simpatico president in Donald Trump who wanted to be all powerful. It's easy to do that math. You go, I believe in the all powerful president. I have the most power hungry president I've ever in history. And we will, Donald Trump doesn't know what the unitary executive theory is put that way, but he is living embodiment of unitary executive theory. But he took it too far, Bill Barr, and it backfired on me. Like I said, he has a terrible record in the courts. And then finally, and this was the thing that really surprised me when we dug in, we found things that Bill Barr had written and said in public speeches back in the nineties, where it's clear that he is what I call a culture

warrior, meaning he is a believer that quote, God's law, that's Bill Barr's term, needs to be the supreme law of the land. And he rants and raves about what he calls militant secularists. Secularism is somebody who believes in a non-religious government. You can have freedom of religion, you can have separation of church and state, but the government itself should not be guided by religious principles. And he ranted and raved about that in extreme ways. He spoke and wrote about the dangers of, and I quote Bill Barr, the homosexual movement and how that was threatening the fabric of our society. He talked about how the church needs a strategy for getting back on the battlefield and reclaiming

its territory. And so again, I think he saw the attorney general's position, which is one of the handful of most powerful people in the country as an opportunity to install, not just his extreme legal beliefs, but his very extreme personal beliefs. And would you say he almost came in like a white knight to save the Trump administration? It was a complete debacle at that point. The Mueller report, if it dropped wrong, would probably put the GOP back in the stone ages like when Nixon resigned. Was he pulled in maybe as a white knight, either by his own affiliations and influence, or maybe he just decided I can save this thing? Yeah, I think that's exactly what was at play. I think it was a very convenient bargain,

a this for that, which is Bill Barr, again, in that outrageous memo said, I'm going to gut the Mueller report, give it to fatally misconceived means that that's what Bill Barr said about Mueller's report. That means dead. And so from Trump's perspective and the administration's perspective, this is our fixer. This is the guy who's going to make this thing go away. From Barr's perspective, it was his ticket in. It was his ticket to power and to implement his legal and social beliefs. And he did just that. And I do believe that if we had seen the full Mueller report on day one, or if we had seen even Robert Mueller's accurate summaries of his own report, it would have been a very different story. It would have been impossible for Congress to ignore. Remember, to this day, Donald Trump has never had any consequence for the obstruction of justice laid out in the Mueller report. He's never been impeached. He's been impeached twice. Remember when he was impeached the first time for Ukraine? There was some conversation in Congress about should we include as a sort of add-on, there were two articles of impeachment related to ukraine but should we include a third one for muller they didn't even do that because it becomes so politically tainted by bill barr and others

by that point so yeah i do think bill barr really saved trump's bacon with the way he lied about the mother report he did exactly what he told us all he would do and i think bill barr is probably the only guy who could have pulled that off i don't know. I don't know of anybody else that could have pulled it off, but- I'm not sure we would have had any serious contender for attorney general who would be willing to lie the way he did and willing to manipulate the timing the way he did. The other thing about Bill Barr, by the way, is he should have recused himself off of that. I write about this in the book. I write about times when I was recused from cases based on six levels of separation where there's one story in the book. I write about times when I was recused from cases based on six levels of separation, where there's one story in the book about how my father's former law partner once

represented somebody who was a witness in the case. Because if there's ever any chance that the prosecutor might lean ever so slightly one way or the other, you have to get off that case. Bill Barr, forget about ever so slightly a chance. He already said, I'm going to kill this thing in advance. And I don't know how, I'm going to kill this thing in advance. That is, and I don't know how, I criticize in the book, DOJ's ethics people. I think they were just too cowardly to tell him no. They somehow, even though, by the way, his predecessor, Matthew Whitaker, had done the same thing. He had publicly gone on TV and said, I'm again, I think this Mueller investigation is bogus. DOJ's ethics people told Matthew Whitaker, we recommend you recuse yourself. He ignored them and stayed on anyway. Then Barr comes in with the same exact

problem, only way worse because Barr was way more definitive about it. And somehow these ethics people, and I think cowards, tell him, oh, you're fine, Mr. Attorney General, you don't have to recuse. This is where my own experience as a prosecutor really illuminates it, where I talk about the minuscule potential conflicts of interest that got me and my colleagues off cases versus the massive conflict of interest and prejudgment by Bill Barr that he managed to ignore and stay on the case. But of course he was going to stay on the case. That's why he got the job.

And this is a historical thing because if he hadn't come in and done that, the Mueller report might have pulled Trump out of office and things would have been much different. Let's talk about, you write one of your chapters is about Michael Flynn. We've had Peter Strzok, the FBI agent on the show who interviewed him and of course oversaw the case. Tell us a little bit about that. Michael Flynn was convicted of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia during the transition period. He pled guilty. He cooperated at first with Mueller's team, and then he went sour. Something happened, and he went off the rails. And I argue in the book that if you're going to do that, the worst thing you can do, and I give examples from my own experience,

if you're a cooperating witness, the worst possible thing you can do is cooperate and then go bad, and then either lie to the government or refuse to continue cooperating. Because at this point, you've already pled guilty, and your reduced sentence is dependent on you finishing your cooperation and so there's only really one reason why any self-interested person would do that and it's if they've been assured or they're confident they're going to get taken care of at sentencing by somebody else whether by pardon by justice department or whatever bill barr then comes in and puts together this absolutely bogus motion to dismiss michael flynn's conviction and the prosecutors on the case rightly resign because that is completely unprecedented it is transparently political he

does it only after trump's been out in the media railing about how unfair the michael flynn prosecution is he gets crushed in court because he so badly bill barr distorts the facts in the law he has the gall to try to lie to us and tell us that it had nothing to do with politics it was just the case that happened to come across my desk sure you get 80 000 cases a year at doj the one time you ever try to undo your own team's guilty plea is a guy who happens to be cooperating and close to the president and a hero of a certain political sect although he's becoming Flynn has become more and more unhinged and you undercut you backstab your own prosecutors who had done everything they did on

that case trying Flynn convicting him seeking his sentence with proper DOJ approvals and I say in the book the attorney general absolutely has the right to disagree with, to overrule anyone in the department, but not after they've been approved within DOJ to go ahead with a certain course of conduct and publicly done that and not for political reasons. And then Barr does it again with Roger Stone, which makes it even more obvious what's going on. And again, he tried to tell us, oh, it was just, no, there's nothing political. I wasn't aware of any, oh no. I think the way he phrasedased it is these were just the cases that landed on my desk like at a certain point you're allowed to laugh but you're allowed to say like we're not

think about it mathematically 80 000 cases a year the two the two that you intervened in happened to both be cronies of the president who would have been in position to implicate him if they cooperated we don't have to buy that i'm Yeah. And at one point they were telling all the Justice Department people, especially SDNY, that everything had to go up through Bill Barr, didn't they, if I recall? Yeah. There were various points where any attorney general is always struggling to rein in my old office, the SDNY. I talk in the book about why the SDNY, everyone always says the famously independent SDNY, the sovereign district. And I explain what that means and why that is. But the bottom line is we typically don't like to listen to the attorney general or

play well with the attorney general. We like to go after whatever cases are there, regardless of politics and regardless of DC input. So yeah, there are various times when it appears Bill Barr put the brakes on, but it's a hard thing to do ultimately to the SDNY. Yeah. I still would like to see the pay-per-view of the two of you guys on stage boxing these things out. You can fight with your books or something. What does it tell you when one person is all in and eager to do it and the other one's hiding for cover? It is going to be interesting. I'm turning into a World Wrestling Federation.

I feel like The Rock here. Bring it. We need to get you some glasses and maybe the cape. We can have that whole shoot down. One thing you talk about in the book is lafayette square and that that was really almost a really roy cone overreach just extraordinary talk a little bit about that how you do in the book yeah this is bill barr pretending to be a general and bill barr by the way i do mention the book is famously like a military buff i don't know if he played with toy soldiers or what but even now and bill Barr really got way out of his lane there. He goes to the White

House that afternoon. He stands on the White House lawn in full view of the cameras. And he starts, you can see there's video of this giving instructions to the people around him who end up clearing out violently Lafayette Square from protesters. This is last summer, the police related protests. And then moments later, Donald Trump strides across the just-cleared track and does his little Bible holding up opportunity at the church. And Bill Barr tried to say that those two things are not connected. And by the way, some people who are Trump and Barr apologists are claiming that this recent report by the Interior Department cleared them. Absolutely not with respect to Barr. What that report says is,

and this report never talked to anyone in the Justice Department or the White House, but even this report, this partial report says Bill Barr came out, sees the protesters there, says to one of the commanders, are these people still going to be here when the president comes out in a few minutes? And then they get cleared away. You can argue about whether it ties Trump in or not, or whether they would have had any, whether the Department of Interior, who didn't talk to the White House, would have even had the ability to do that.

But it ties in Bill Barr, absolutely. And that was a real abuse of power to Bill Barr. And he tells us, oh, I didn't know anything. It had nothing to do with the president. Really? I thought we were going for a walk. Why then does Bill Barr ask, are these people going to be here

when the president comes out in a few minutes later? Why then do they immediately get cleared out? And why does Bill Barr actually, are these people going to be here when the president comes out in a few minutes later? Why then do they immediately get cleared out? And why does Bill Barr actually stroll over with the president? If you look at those photos in the video, he's walking over like they do their whole tough guy walk striding across this land where a bunch of protesters, mostly armed with water bottles and stuff, have been cleared out by federal agents. And now they're tough guys and they confidently stride over to the church where Trump holds up a Bible and doesn't know what to do this is a bible he actually you know what chris

he actually did not um no and i know this because i because of the research on my book um i wrote it as upside down because i had heard that and i thought so and it was funny and then as i dug into the fact check i realized there's actually articles in there he actually did not hold it upside down but the funnier thing is the funnier thing, do you remember the question he was asked and the answer he gave? This is great. I don't. Some reporter yells out, I'm going to give you the question. Let me see if you remember the answer. Somebody goes, is that your Bible, Mr. President? Do you remember his response? That's right. Yeah. He goes, it's a Bible. A Bible. No, no. They go, is this your Bible, Mr. President? He goes, it's a Bible.

Obviously it's not his, but he obviously just said to some staffer, someone give me a Bible. Isn't there some intern here who has a Bible? Not a deeply religious person whatsoever. Very popular in some religious and not just across some religions with religious people, but he is absolutely, he is not a devout religious person himself, although he likes to pretend once in a while. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think someone from one of the news centers had asked him early on at, I think it was Trump Tower, had asked him, what's your favorite verses? He says all of them. All of them. Yeah, all of them. That's what I said. So Patty from Facebook, she was going to, she wanted to ask you, what's your favorite chapter of the book if you had to

pick one? What sticks out to you the most? Can I pick three? Sure. I think Patty will allow that. Patty, I hope so. I love the first and last chapters because they're both trial stories. The first chapter is about my first trial as a prosecutor. The last chapter is about one of my last ones and how I learned the same lesson in both of them,

which is that a lot of the quality of the Justice Department is about the quality of the people who have key jobs. There are a lot of things at DOJ that are not written rules, but they depend on the integrity and the principle of the people who have those jobs. So I love those because I take you really into the trial room. And then I also love the chapter about the SDNY because I talk about what it really means to work there and what it's like day to day and why the SDNY is so famous or infamous, I guess, if you're a criminal defendant and all the things in pop culture that are based on the SDNY. And I think those chapters are, they're fun and interesting. And I think really take the reader behind the scenes, but also point out some of the key,

the key flaws in Bill Barr's approach. And so do we get all three chapters in there? Yeah, first, last, and SBY. All right, there you go. And you also give advice on what needs to happen to change this so this doesn't happen in the future. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I recommend a whole bunch of policy changes

that DOJ can make and that Congress can make. Just to give you one example, DOJ has longstanding restrictions on communications between members of DOJ and members of Congress or congressional staffers. If there are conversations, you have to report them and you can't discuss ongoing cases, a whole set of rules. There are no such rules relating to communications between DOJ and the White House, however. And I say that they absolutely have to adopt this kind of rule. It's what my former boss and good friend Preet Bharara got fired for.

When Preet was in office, Donald Trump called good friend Preet Bharara got fired for. When Preet was in office, Donald Trump called him and Preet refused to return the call. He reported it. And the next day, I guess we don't know for sure, but the next day Donald Trump fired Preet. So I make that kind of recommendation. But the bigger picture, and this is what I get with some of the trial stories is we just need to return to what I call the prosecutor's code, which is all those lessons, the principles, the unwritten rules that you can only learn by being a real prosecutor. And that's why I tell these stories. And Bill Barr, it's important to remember, was never a real prosecutor. The man was AG twice, but he never tried an actual case

in court. And so he never learned those rules. He didn't respect those rules. He didn't understand those rules. And so we need to get back to basics. Like as crazy as it sounds that I have to say this, you don't lie. You don't, and forget about never lying. You don't embellish. You don't exaggerate. You don't fudge. You don't lie by omission. You don't backstab your colleagues.

If you get something wrong or there's a fact you don't like, you put it out there and you deal with it. All of these things, you don't play politics. You don't let, you don't do special favors for powerful people. All these things are lessons that you learn that Bill Barr either never learned and didn't respect or did understand and didn't respect. So those are my sort of recommendations for how DOJ needs to get back on its feet. And I think I've been critical of some things Merrick Garland has done, but I think he's done a much better job restoring that code.

Do you think, you mentioned this because of ignorance, do you think it's more malice that he just did? No, I think it's both. I think it's the ignorance combined with poor character traits, with a willingness to lie. Look, you can be ignorant, but not willing to lie. Bill Barr was both. You also can be willing to play politics, ruthless enough and crooked enough to do that. No, it's not just like he was some innocent babe in the woods who didn't know better. He also has some terrible character traits that he brought to bear on this job. Yeah. We've had a lot of authors that came on that talked about the rise of fascism.

And as we were coming down to the final moments of the Trump administration, I think it was after the election, if I recall rightly. We hadn't seen January 6th. And you can see that there's a lot of positioning going on. You're hearing about people being installed at the Pentagon. And you're starting to hear stuff. And then you see Bill Barr resigning. And I think later there's been some reporting on they got into maybe an argument or some words were said or he stood up to him.

Tell us a little bit about that. And it almost seemed like Bill Barr knew that some shit was going to go down, maybe on January 6th or maybe some sort of attack of a seizure of power. I don't know. I don't have any proof that Bill Barr knew of anything specific, but I think it's clear to Bill Barr at this point, we're into December now, that things are getting really off the rails, right? Bill Barr, I think, made a rational, self-interested decision that I don't want to go down in history with the loonies. I don't want to be lumped in with Rudy and Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell and the pillow guy, my pillow guy, because he was an accepted, respected member of mainstream law and DC society. And I think he was trying desperately to prevent that. And by the way,

if he really thought some bad stuff was going to go down and the responsible thing to do, the bold thing to do would be to stay in office because as attorney general, you're in the best position to prevent it. But he just failed. He just pulled the ripcord and failed. Bill Barr did say, and he's trying to remind us all of this now, and I say this in the book, in December of 2020, he did publicly say that there's been no evidence, we found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. And that was good that he did that better than not doing it. However, what he's leaving out of the story now, which I do not leave out of my book, is that he was one of the biggest cheerleaders behind the big lie in the

first place. Donald Trump started tweeting about the risk of election fraud in early 2020, when it became clear we were going to have a lot of mail-in ballots. And he tweeted about it every single day, basically from that point on. Bill Barr very quickly fell right into line and started using his power as Attorney General to go on national TV, to go in front of Congress and talk about this risk, the massive risk of election fraud, And there's nothing we can do about it. And we can't police it. He was right on board, right behind Donald Trump, clapping along and fanning the flames. And there's examples of this that I give in the book. And so look, did he turn late in the game? Yeah. But had he already helped set the house on fire? You bet. And I tell the whole story in this book, the good and the bad for Bill Barr. And I think there's a

lot more bad than good. What I'm not willing to do is let his one-sided part where he reminds us of the good, but leads out the significantly more powerful bad and hopes that we all forget about the other stuff. Do you think he would have stayed on if Donald Trump would have won? That would have been an interesting piece of history. He said he would have. And there was reporting that he wanted to. And later on, he admitted that he did want to because he was still pursuing those same goals that I talked about before. Look, he had a perhaps somewhat unwitting, but he had the perfect partner in Donald Trump. I say in the book, based on his conduct and actions, I don't believe Bill Barr looked at Donald Trump as this brilliant, all-knowing, charismatic being to be exalted the way some of Donald's followers do. I think Bill Barr, and I argue again using Bill Barr's own words and actions, looked at Donald Trump primarily as a vehicle

to his own power, to his own policy goals, to his own personal goals. And I think he recognized, here's a guy who I can work through because even though Donald Trump doesn't express things in his intellectual way, Donald Trump probably doesn't know the word secularism or doesn't understand what God's law is or doesn't understand the unitary executive theory. But here's a guy who's basically power mad and willing to kick down all doors to achieve his own power. So I can work with that. Yeah. And it almost seemed like he propped them up. Like I said, a white knight where he was like the non-crazy person in the room. Because I remember, I think Rudy was like, we're trying to reach, what's his face? We can't

get through to him, bar. And it seemed like he's, yeah, keep those guys away from me and stuff. Once he saw the tea leaves of where things are going. Anything you want to tease out on the book, anything you want to tease readers with that they might find interesting in the book? The main thing I'll tease readers with is that you will go behind the scenes of a prosecutor's office in ways that are good, bad, good, bad, funny, ugly, but real. And I think it's important that people know what really happens. And I don't expose massive scandals, but I tell you what it's really like to try a case, what it really feels like to stand in front of a jury in the SDNY to have crazy things happen, unexpected things. And I don't want to give away

too many of the stories, but everything from, I became the chief of the organized crime unit. So cases where we dug up or tried to dig up, and I don't want to spoil that, a body that had been buried in the woods to times when I got yelled at. It wasn't me. We convicted the guys who did. Oh, I guess I did give that away. I got yelled at by judges. No, it's fine. But if you really want to see, several people have said to me that it really reads more like a true crime novel both because it's my own experience overlaid with bill barr who's sort of like yeah i don't i don't

necessarily believe bill barr committed chargeable crimes but the way that he manipulated the justice department that's a little bit of a tease for the book that was the other question i had for you is he threaded the needle where he can never be prosecuted for anything at this point um let me put it this way there's no way he will there's no way merrick garland is going to indict bill bar but the club here lucky for bill bar it's not a crime to lie to the public it is a crime to lie to congress but his lies to congress are more just obnoxious and like the kamala harris thing where he goes oh i don't know what suggests means like you're not going to be able to sustain a perjury charge based off of that.

Now, his bar license, his license to practice is being challenged. Oh, that. Yeah. And so he may end up with a similar fate to Rudy. But the things he did were better camouflaged and better propped up than Rudy's madness. So we'll see. But look, people say what's going to happen to him. And I think this book is an important part of it. If I didn't write this book, nobody else has written this book or will write this book. So he would have

gotten away with his, he's right. He's got his own, like you said, Chris, he's got his own book coming out. He's doing a PR tour now. He's spoke to John Carl about John Carl's upcoming book. And he gave us the bar rehab tour, the, how he boldly stood up to Trump and not talking about the part where he was right, right behind Trump on everything. I think this book is an important part of, of keeping the history real. I hope that. I hope they put on like a spinner so that you can just spin the thing like that. I don't know. If he does lose his law, he's a fairly old gentleman. He can DoorDash, Uber or something, pick up some extra money on the side if he needs to. So how does the book end with Bard? Does he? No, I'm just kidding. So Ellie, it's been wonderful to have

you on the show. Anything you want to tell us or tease out before we go off? No, I'm just kidding. So Ellie, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Anything you want to tell us or tease out before we go off? No, I will tease one other thing. Thanks for having me, Chris. I've got two really interesting things coming down the pike. One is for CNN and relates to, to the 60th anniversary of the trial of Adolf Eichmann,

which is not famous Nazi war criminal. They greenlit me to do a little bit of a documentary piece about that, which is coming out soon. So I'm excited about that. And I had a new podcast coming that, which is coming out soon. So I'm excited about that. And I have a new podcast coming soon, which we've recorded, which will deal with my, it is mob specific. It is a real mob prosecutors podcast where I bring on guests, including a mobster who cooperated with me, an FBI agent who went undercover, a defense lawyer who defended these guys. And so look for that in the fall. That's going to be fun. That's going to be through Vox and Cafe, which I'm a contributor to. That'll be really interesting to see. So it'll be the people you

prosecuted maybe? One of them. One of them is going to be on the show. We had Watergate Girl, a great friend of the show. Jill Weinbanks. Jill Weinbanks. She's so amazing. It's so wonderful. We had her on the show and I asked her, I said, so are you in like John Dean, like good friends now? And there's, yeah,

it's really interesting. I always forget that about John. I got to know him because we're both CNN contributors and he's a great guy, but, and I forget like what, what a historical figure he is. I got a nice guy who I see around that. I'm like,

oh yeah, there's the famous. And now her and him are just like having drinks. Hey, how's the coffee? You should have on the show, Sammy the Bull. He's been doing this YouTube series. Oh boy. There are a lot of Sammy the Bulls out there.

Sammy's a little too unhinged for me. I had to talk to him a couple of times when I was a prosecutor because I prosecuted some people he knew later on, but I never met him in person, but they put me through this like highly bizarre, secure line to talk to him him i talked to him for about 30 seconds we were thinking about calling him as a witness in one case and about 30 seconds in i just said to my trial partner like no way he's he's off he's no he probably won't get john ghani on either then so i'll talk to john if i prosecuted john ghani jr oh did you yeah he may want to come on i'm talking i'm through an intermediary trying to get him to talk that would be good but the dad

i'll put it this way that's for sure john gatti jr has expressed way more willingness to talk to me than bill barr has how about that that'll be interesting i still think you should reach out to him for your podcast see if he'll come on your podcast to talk about his new book you know i'd love to that would be yep when bill Barr brings out his book, again, not to turn into The Rock here, but anytime, anyplace, I will meet him. We can go on Fox News. He can do it on his home turf. I'll go on

there. I'll go on with him. I want to do some Randy. Bring it! I don't know. I'm not going to do the voice, but I hear you. Anyway, it's been an honor and wonderful to have you on the show, Ellie. Thank you very much for coming on. Thanks, Chris. That was really fun. Glad to talk to you. There you go. And to my audience, be sure to pick it up. Go to wherever fine bookstores are sold,

but only go into the ones where the fine books are sold. Hatchet Man, how Bill Barr broke the prosecutor's code and corrupted the Justice Department. It was an interesting ride to go through the history live. It's interesting to look back, and it'll be interesting to how your narrative shapes the history because that's really what it comes down to is what these people are remembered for and hopefully keep them from happening again. Thanks for being on the show.

Thanks, Moniz, for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, 4Chess Chris Foss. Hit that bell notification. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess Chris Foss. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, all those different places you can find us. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time.