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Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Sophia Bush here. Welcome to Work in Progress,

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Speaker 1: where I talk to people who inspire me about how

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Speaker 1: they got to where they are and where they think

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Speaker 1: they're still going. All right, listeners, I'm so excited for

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Speaker 1: you to hear from this next guest. He's one of

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Speaker 1: my personal heroes, someone who I looked to to remind

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Speaker 1: me of what American democracy stands for, to explain the law,

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Speaker 1: and essentially to be a badass activist. Today, I'm interviewing

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Speaker 1: Neil Catil. He's the former Acting Solicitor General of the

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Speaker 1: United States. He focuses on a pellet and complex litigation.

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Speaker 1: Neil currently runs one of the largest Supreme Court practices

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Speaker 1: in the world on an international law firm, where he

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Speaker 1: happens to occupy the role formerly held by now Chief

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Speaker 1: Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court. He has extensive

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Speaker 1: experience and constitutional law and criminal law. He's orally argued

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Speaker 1: forty cases before the Supreme Court of the United States,

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Speaker 1: thirty seven of which have been in the last decade,

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Speaker 1: and at the age of forty nine, he has already

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Speaker 1: argued more Supreme Court cases in US history than any

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Speaker 1: other minority attorney. Breaking the red of esteemed their good.

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Speaker 1: Marshal Neil is a badass. The list of awards that

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Speaker 1: he has won and accolades he has earned is honestly

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Speaker 1: too long for me to read to you. But among

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Speaker 1: all of those honors, he's been named as one of

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Speaker 1: the forty most influential lawyers of the last decade nationwide

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Speaker 1: by the National Law Journal. And he happened to play

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Speaker 1: himself on an episode of House of Cards. Yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: a badass. And his book, Impeach the Case against Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump is an incredible quick read. It's hundred and fifty pages.

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Speaker 1: You can do it in an afternoon. It'll explain what

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Speaker 1: impeachment is, what the history of it is, how it

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Speaker 1: works in the foundation of United States democracy as a

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Speaker 1: check on power, and why it's relevant to this president.

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Speaker 1: It's an incredible, incredible resource. I hope that you read it,

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Speaker 1: and I hope that you really enjoy this interview. He's

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Speaker 1: going to answer a lot of questions and pull me

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Speaker 1: back from the ledge for sure. Enjoy. I'm so excited

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Speaker 1: to be doing this with you today on a very

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Speaker 1: strange day in the history of American democracy. It is

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Speaker 1: it is Friday, January one, when we're recording this. Um

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Speaker 1: at the moment, the vote as to whether or not

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Speaker 1: to allow witnesses in the impeachment case of Donald Trump

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Speaker 1: is happening. Uh So this is pretty weird. It is weird.

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Speaker 1: And I mean, let me first say, it's just a

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Speaker 1: real privilege to be with you. Um, I met you

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Speaker 1: back in June, and I'm a big fan, and so

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Speaker 1: it's a real delight with what you've been doing. Um,

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Speaker 1: and yeah, it is a weird day. In fact, literally

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Speaker 1: as you were just saying that, about a minute ago,

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Speaker 1: I got a flash on my screen that the vote

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Speaker 1: on the Senate witness has failed to nine. So it

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Speaker 1: is a weird time to be doing this. It's unbelievable

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Speaker 1: to me. So we're not in a trial, we're officially

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Speaker 1: in a cover up. Yes, exactly. I mean every trial,

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Speaker 1: you know. I'm I'm a lawyer. I've been around a

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Speaker 1: lot of trials since I've certainly never seen a trial

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Speaker 1: without witnesses. I don't think anyone in America has. I

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Speaker 1: think people in the Soviet Union had, but but not

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Speaker 1: in America. And UM, you know what makes it even

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Speaker 1: more striking, Sophia, is that we're having We're they just

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Speaker 1: voted down witnesses when some of the witnesses, like John Bolton,

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Speaker 1: the President's national security advisor, have come forward and said

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Speaker 1: I really want to testify. And indeed, even today, just

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Speaker 1: a couple hours ago, it was really it was revealed

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Speaker 1: that Bolton's book says the President ordered him to try

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Speaker 1: and cut the aid off from Ukraine and pressure Ukraine

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Speaker 1: to get dirt on the Democrats. So you know, it's

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Speaker 1: not as if it's like a fishing expedition where the

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Speaker 1: President is saying, oh, you just want to talk to

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Speaker 1: p well, you're not sure if they have relevant information.

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Speaker 1: Here John Bolton is saying, look, I've got this really

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Speaker 1: important information. It makes it shows the President is guilty

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Speaker 1: and the Senate is basically adopting a kind of see

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Speaker 1: no evil here, no evil um policy. And you know,

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Speaker 1: John Bolton is not just some ordinary guy. He's the

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Speaker 1: national security advisor to the president. Like when I worked

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Speaker 1: in two different administrations, the national security advisors like a

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Speaker 1: step under God, Like that's how important they are. It's

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Speaker 1: like the president's you know, if it's not his number

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Speaker 1: one most trusted official, it's his number two. And here

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Speaker 1: you've got that guy Trump's own guy saying Trump is

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Speaker 1: effectively guilty. Yes. Wow, oh my god, Okay, I'm my

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Speaker 1: head is spinning because of what's happening in real time

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Speaker 1: as we do this. I I want to go back

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Speaker 1: and give our listeners a little bit of information about

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Speaker 1: you for anyone who doesn't know you, who hasn't read

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Speaker 1: your bio or your or your book yet to understand.

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Speaker 1: One of my favorite facts about you, besides the fact

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Speaker 1: that you are the former acting Solicitor General of the

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Speaker 1: United States, which is crazy, you now run one of

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Speaker 1: the largest Supreme Court practices in the world in an

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Speaker 1: international firm, where you occupy the role formerly held by

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Speaker 1: now Chief Justice John Roberts. At the age of just

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Speaker 1: forty nine, You've already argued more Supreme Court cases in

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Speaker 1: US history than any other minority attorney, which breaks their

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Speaker 1: Good Marshall's record, which is pretty wild when you consider history.

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Speaker 1: You've received the Edmund Randolph Award, which is the highest

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Speaker 1: award that the United States Justice Department can award a civilian.

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Speaker 1: I mean you, it goes on and on. You've argued

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Speaker 1: an insane number of cases in the Supreme Court. You've

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Speaker 1: had major victories defending democracy, defending the public against bad

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Speaker 1: environmental practices. I mean literally, I'm sitting here holding your bio.

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Speaker 1: It's three typed out pages long with my with it

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Speaker 1: is not with my highlights all over it. And I

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Speaker 1: wonder if you can kind of qualify that enormous amount

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Speaker 1: of experience which you have or or are there highlights

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Speaker 1: that stand out to you over the course of your career?

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Speaker 1: Uh that can that can sort of let listeners at

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Speaker 1: home who don't have the legal degree and accolades that

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Speaker 1: you do in on how this all works. Sure, sure,

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Speaker 1: I'll try. I mean, look, I'm a law professor at Georgetown.

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Speaker 1: That's like, um, you know, I'm a lawyer, and as

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Speaker 1: a lawyer, I'm not a particularly political person. I do

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Speaker 1: believe that, you know, I've been fortunate to have a

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Speaker 1: great education and some resources, and I feel like my

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Speaker 1: duty is to use those things for the public good.

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Speaker 1: But you know, lots of times that's for the public

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Speaker 1: good that doesn't have any sort of political component at all. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, my view is justice is blind you know,

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Speaker 1: like literally, Lady Justice, the statue is blindfolded and she's

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Speaker 1: blindfolded because of the idea that it doesn't matter whether

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Speaker 1: you're a man or woman, or you know, rich or poor,

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Speaker 1: or black or white, you're supposed to get the same

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Speaker 1: set of rules. And basically that's how I've tried to

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Speaker 1: live my career as to try and fight for that principle. So, like,

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Speaker 1: my first big Supreme Court case was Guantanamo after the

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Speaker 1: horrible nine eleven attacks, and um, the president had set

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Speaker 1: up this military trial system at Guantanamo just out of

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Speaker 1: his own on on the stroke of his own pen,

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Speaker 1: which gave no rights to the defendants, and said they

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Speaker 1: could be executed, and hand picked the judges and hand

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Speaker 1: picked the appellate judges, and said the federal Court said

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Speaker 1: no business reviewing what he's doing at Guantanamo. And I'm

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Speaker 1: a pretty strong nationals believer in national security. I was

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Speaker 1: National Security Advisor of the Justice Department. I was known

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Speaker 1: for having a very tough stance on al Qaeda. But

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Speaker 1: even still, I thought that one really way too far,

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Speaker 1: and so I challenged it. I wound up actually representing

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Speaker 1: Osama bin Lauden's driver, and I brought that case to

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. It was my first argument. I argued

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Speaker 1: it against the Solicitor General, the government's top lawyer. It

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Speaker 1: was at that point his thirty fifth argument. Um, but

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Speaker 1: I won. And when I won, and I was I

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Speaker 1: think thirty five years old, and you know, the Guantanamo

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Speaker 1: tribunals came down. But it also meant that the Geneva

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Speaker 1: Conventions applied to the War on Terror, so it ended

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Speaker 1: water boarding and ghost prisons around the world and stuff

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Speaker 1: like that. And to me, that's like a law at

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Speaker 1: it's best. It's just saying, look, here's some simple rules

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Speaker 1: of basic decency that make us human, and here's how

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Speaker 1: we're going to apply them. And so you know, that's

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Speaker 1: kind of you know, the way I approached the law

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Speaker 1: is to say, don't think about this in terms of

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Speaker 1: left versus right, but just really right versus wrong and uh,

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Speaker 1: And unfortunately, I think that's what we've lost so much

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Speaker 1: sight of. And like in my book on impeachment, you know,

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Speaker 1: I start by just saying, here's the basic way to

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Speaker 1: think about this. You know, just ask yourself if President

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Speaker 1: Obama did these things, how would you feel. Um, if

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Speaker 1: you're a Democrat, would you vote to impeach and remove

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Speaker 1: President Obama? If you're a Republican, would you vote to

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Speaker 1: impeach and remove President Obama, and I firmly believe. Look,

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Speaker 1: I love President Obama the privilege of working for it

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Speaker 1: with him, but if he did this stuff in Ukraine,

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Speaker 1: I would go there and I'd be a house manager

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Speaker 1: against him or whatever and seek his impeachment and removal.

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Speaker 1: Percent believe that, And I also a percent believe every

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Speaker 1: Republican would do the same thing if President Obama had

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Speaker 1: done this autely they wanted to teach him for enacting

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Speaker 1: healthcare exactly. And I think that's what we have to

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Speaker 1: fight for, is this idea that law is more important

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Speaker 1: and it transcends um left versus right. What before we

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Speaker 1: get into what's happening right now in our in our

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Speaker 1: legal landscape and the threat to the Constitution, Can I

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Speaker 1: ask you a really simple question, but I it's one

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Speaker 1: that I I've always been curious of the answer. What

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Speaker 1: is it like to actually argue in front of the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court? Well, I hope you get to come and watch,

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Speaker 1: and you're welcome to all right, you got an invite

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Speaker 1: anytime you'd like. So it's um, it's it's I'll say,

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Speaker 1: it's still scary. You know. I just argued my forty

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Speaker 1: first case last week and it's still tough, um and um,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's only half hour per side. So back

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Speaker 1: in the like old days, it used to be like

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Speaker 1: a go on for days or all argument, Like Daniel

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Speaker 1: Webster used to argue for like nine days at a

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Speaker 1: time or something. But now it's like, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: kind of like an Indian wedding. An Indian Hindu wedding

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Speaker 1: supposed to be three days long, but my parents compressed

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Speaker 1: it into a half hour. And that's basically what we've

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Speaker 1: done with Supreme Court arguments. We've compressed this long thing

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Speaker 1: into a half hour where there's no room for error.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like the Olympics and you know, you

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Speaker 1: just you you can't mess up even a sentence. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it's really scary, you know, there's no doubt about it.

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Speaker 1: Justices I love interrupting you and asking questions, and so

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Speaker 1: in that half hour argument, I'll average about fifty nine

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Speaker 1: questions in the half hour that they're throwing at me.

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Speaker 1: So it's rapid fire. And sometimes they're also talking and

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Speaker 1: asking questions over each other. So there's a kind of

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Speaker 1: like uh traffic cop roll that you have to em

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Speaker 1: play sometimes as well. So but it's also really exhilarating,

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Speaker 1: because honestly, Sophie, it's the one branch of government that works.

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Speaker 1: Like I've been watching the hearings all week, and I

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Speaker 1: certainly don't think the Senate is functional. Um. The Presidency is,

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Speaker 1: you know, to call it dysfunctional would be generous, um.

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Speaker 1: But the but the Supreme Court really does work, you know,

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Speaker 1: however you think about them in terms of their votes.

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Speaker 1: These are nine really smart people who have read everything,

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Speaker 1: every footnote, every case, and they're really going after you.

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Speaker 1: And they're not doing it like to embarrass you. They're

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Speaker 1: doing it because, as they know, whatever decision they make

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Speaker 1: is going to set law for the whole nation, and

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Speaker 1: they want to make sure they understand all the answers

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Speaker 1: to all the arguments. Um. So it's tense. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: when Justice Scalio was there, there was probably a little

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Speaker 1: more of combat, and now it's a little less combative

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Speaker 1: and a little more kind of friendly. Um. But you know,

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Speaker 1: I kind of enjoyed the combat too, I have to say, Like,

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Speaker 1: even as much as he loved to give me a

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Speaker 1: hard time, I remember I argued a case soon after

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Speaker 1: he passed away, and I remember walking out of the

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Speaker 1: court and I had a tear tear in my eye

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Speaker 1: because you know, um, he was such a larger than

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Speaker 1: life presence on the court. Okay, I want to I

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Speaker 1: want to go back because obviously we're we're speaking to

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Speaker 1: you in this position that you occupy in your life.

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Speaker 1: You breathe very rare air, uh in terms of our

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Speaker 1: legal system. And I'm curious where where you began. I'm

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Speaker 1: curious about Neil as a kid, where did you grow up? Okay,

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Speaker 1: So I grew up in Chicago. My parents came from

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Speaker 1: India the year before I was born, um, and we

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Speaker 1: got married the year before I was born. They were

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Speaker 1: separately here at times before that, but they met each

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Speaker 1: other and it had an arranged marriage in India and

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Speaker 1: and moved here what part of the other Punjabi, so

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Speaker 1: northern India. And to directly connect it to my little,

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Speaker 1: you know, my kind of my career life, my dad

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Speaker 1: lost his job when when I was about twelve, and

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Speaker 1: lost it in some really you know, UM, I don't

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Speaker 1: generally like to you know, talk about, but you know,

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Speaker 1: it was some really ugly discrimination stuff that happened, and

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Speaker 1: he couldn't get a lawyer for a long time, and

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Speaker 1: filed the case pro se himself and actually asked me

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Speaker 1: to help. But you know, I was twelve and thirteen

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Speaker 1: years old. I didn't really know much about the law.

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Speaker 1: I was on the debate team, so he asked me

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Speaker 1: to do some research, and I was kind of annoyed, um,

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Speaker 1: but I tried a little bit um. But then he

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Speaker 1: had so much merit to his case. The federal judge

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Speaker 1: did something I still think it's incredibly rare. He read

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Speaker 1: my dad's handwritten complaint and he said, there's enough here,

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Speaker 1: I want to appoint a lawyer. And that lawyer went

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Speaker 1: and fought for my dad. And I remember still to

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Speaker 1: this day when my dad wound up resolving the case.

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Speaker 1: And it wasn't like any huge amount of money or anything,

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Speaker 1: but it gave him his dignity back. And that's when

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Speaker 1: I learned about the power of the law. And um,

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Speaker 1: you know is an Indian um in America. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's only one profession, which is a doctor. And I

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Speaker 1: decided then basically that wasn't for me to be a doctor.

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Speaker 1: That I liked this idea of using my voice to

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Speaker 1: stand up for other people, and so I went to

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Speaker 1: college and law school, and I also loved the idea

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Speaker 1: of teaching, so I started teaching at Georgetown and then

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Speaker 1: taking cases like Guantanamo first on the side, and now

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Speaker 1: it's become much more of a big time occupation. At

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Speaker 1: that age, when your dad was fired, what what was

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Speaker 1: what line of work was he in? Who was a

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Speaker 1: chemical engineer? Oh wow, okay, so you see your dad

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Speaker 1: lose his job in what was apparent very it was

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Speaker 1: very apparent that it was a discrimination issue. Did that

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Speaker 1: affect sort of your sense of security as a kid?

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Speaker 1: Were you experiencing your own versions of discrimination because look

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Speaker 1: like twelve year old or mean, no matter what, And

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Speaker 1: I imagine that the card you're a good interviewer, So yes,

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Speaker 1: well but I just I imagine that there was a

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Speaker 1: compounding thing going on, and and and how did that

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Speaker 1: affect your understanding of what you were on the receiving

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Speaker 1: end of as a kid. Such such a great question.

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Speaker 1: So actually, when I was twelve, the movie Gandhi had

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Speaker 1: come out in the movie theaters, and every time I

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Speaker 1: get on the bus, the kids would call me Gandhi

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Speaker 1: and stuff like that, which actually is quite a compliment,

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Speaker 1: but not when you're twelve years old, and uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: and there was and bullying and stuff like that, which

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Speaker 1: I just thought was the just the norm. I didn't

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Speaker 1: even call it bullying or anything. That's just like that's

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Speaker 1: part of life. But at the same time, you're right,

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Speaker 1: it did affect me. And you know, there's a direct

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Speaker 1: relationship to why when I graduated from law school, I

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Speaker 1: went straight to the university setting in tenure because I

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Speaker 1: wanted a job I could have for the rest of

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Speaker 1: my life that nobody could take away from me. And

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Speaker 1: I worked so hard, so fast to get that job.

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Speaker 1: Like I I wrote, you know, a dozen papers in

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Speaker 1: the first couple of years and became I think one

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Speaker 1: of the youngest professors ever tenured at Georgetown. And the reason, though,

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Speaker 1: is all goes back to that question you asked. It

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Speaker 1: was like a race to get at the ultimate job

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Speaker 1: security so that what happened to my dad wouldn't happen

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Speaker 1: to me. And I've never really been actually a believer

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Speaker 1: in the tenure system, because you know, once you get

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Speaker 1: tenure as a law professor, you can kind of do

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Speaker 1: whatever you want. Um, And so what does that mean.

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Speaker 1: I'm give my ignorance. I don't I understand what tenure means,

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Speaker 1: but what does it mean that if you have it

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Speaker 1: as a law professor, you can do whatever you want. Well,

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Speaker 1: it just me as a university professor, it means that

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Speaker 1: as long as you show up and teaches your teacher classes,

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Speaker 1: basically they can't take your job away and listen right

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Speaker 1: like you could turn into a craft teacher and you stay. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So so because of that, you know, I felt like

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Speaker 1: when I got tenure, you know, I had an obligation

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Speaker 1: to use it for something important. And you know, if

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Speaker 1: you ask why did I do the Guantanamo case, one

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Speaker 1: of the things I thought about at the time when

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Speaker 1: I started to bring it. I was thirty one years

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Speaker 1: old when I started, and I had funded it out

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Speaker 1: of my pocket, so really hard, you know, and I

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Speaker 1: was a professor, so it wasn't like, you know, had

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Speaker 1: like a big salary anything. But I did think to myself,

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Speaker 1: I'm one of the few people who have as a lawyer,

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Speaker 1: who has a job that they can't take away. And

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Speaker 1: with that, you know, it's the spider Man principle, with

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Speaker 1: great power comes great responsibility. I felt that way. I

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Speaker 1: felt like, you know, it's not that brave for me

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Speaker 1: to do this speak because I can never get fired

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Speaker 1: from my job. These people in law firms, they can't

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Speaker 1: go represent someone at GITMO that you know, that's a

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Speaker 1: much more complicated thing. And in fact, I went to

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Speaker 1: thirty eight different law firms. No one would help me

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Speaker 1: at the time. And then once we started to you know,

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Speaker 1: get further along, we started to figure out a way

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Speaker 1: to make Guantanamo actually an interesting thing for lawyers and

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Speaker 1: ultimately got law firms to help. But it took a while.

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Speaker 1: And so that was one nice thing about the tenure system.

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Speaker 1: In my dean at the time got so many letters

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Speaker 1: urging Georgetown to fire me because I was siding with

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Speaker 1: the terrorists and stuff like that. Wow, it's odd to me.

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Speaker 1: And look, I understand, I'm sure there are people listening

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Speaker 1: who have a little bit of an uneasy feeling or like,

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Speaker 1: but why those people, like, why would you want to

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Speaker 1: defend those people the way that I see it? If

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Speaker 1: I may sort of speak to my own feelings on

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Speaker 1: the subject, obviously, it's very confounding to think about what

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Speaker 1: and I won't say all because there were many people

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Speaker 1: thrown in Gimo for no reason, but there were people

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Speaker 1: there for good reason who participated in an an enormous

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Speaker 1: and devastating attack on America. But the way I see

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Speaker 1: it is, if we want to be the leaders we

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Speaker 1: claim to be, if we want to be the country

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Speaker 1: we claim to be, if we want to set precedence

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Speaker 1: for excellence, we do not treat anyone the way dictators

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Speaker 1: or terrorists treat people. And that's what we were doing

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Speaker 1: at Gitmo. That's so beautifully said, that's exactly right. And

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Speaker 1: if you believe in principle, you don't throw them out

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Speaker 1: at the throw them out the window when the going

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Speaker 1: gets tough. You you live under the principles and cure.

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Speaker 1: The basic principle was literally common. Article three of the

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Speaker 1: Geneva Conventions said the rights indispensable to all civilized people's

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Speaker 1: should be granted the rights indispensable doll civilized people's. And

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Speaker 1: the Bush administration took the view that they couldn't do that,

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Speaker 1: that the rights indispensable to all civilize people's, And I

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Speaker 1: just think, you know, that's ridiculous. So we that's scared,

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Speaker 1: we that you know, weak as a country, that we

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Speaker 1: can't just afford basic decent rules like having an independent

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Speaker 1: trial or having a lawyer who can research your case

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Speaker 1: or things like that. I mean of course not so

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Speaker 1: you know, I think you're right, and sometimes, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's hard, like I take. I try and take a

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Speaker 1: death penalty case to the U. S. Supreme Court almost

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Speaker 1: every year, and some of them are gruesome facts. Um,

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Speaker 1: there's no doubt about it. They did horrible, horrible things.

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Speaker 1: But there's a principle at stake, and I think it's

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Speaker 1: real important to fight for that principle and not likewise,

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Speaker 1: I think it's really important on the other side that

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Speaker 1: there's someone on the other side of the courtroom who's

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Speaker 1: making the opposite argument, and we let the adversarial system,

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Speaker 1: you know, test it out. But nobody wins if one

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Speaker 1: side is represented poorly and the other side has represented well,

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Speaker 1: which is why I like even in this Trump impeachment,

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Speaker 1: I wanted him to have good lawyers. I wanted him

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Speaker 1: great lawyers, but we also wanted to hear witnesses. I

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Speaker 1: wanted a fair trial. You know, America, our our justice

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Speaker 1: system exists on the pretense of a fair trial, not

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Speaker 1: of opening arguments, and then it's over exactly I mean,

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Speaker 1: and particularly when you're the president. The idea that because

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Speaker 1: you're the president, you can hide evidence and call it

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Speaker 1: privileged or this or that. I mean, it's just the

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Speaker 1: it's it's worse than Nixon. I mean, even Nixon anything

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Speaker 1: like this. I mean, Nixon thought about hiding two witnesses

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Speaker 1: for a little while, but then he even he after

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Speaker 1: two weeks, back down and provided them. So this is

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Speaker 1: a an unprecedented thing in a real threat to what

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Speaker 1: the rule of law is all about. Well, it's a

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Speaker 1: shocking miscarriage of justice. And again, I've never been to

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Speaker 1: law school, but I do an awful lot of research,

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Speaker 1: and it is so apparent to me, and I don't understand, honestly,

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Speaker 1: I don't understand how all of America is not in

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Speaker 1: the streets right now. Yeah, I mean, you know, and

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Speaker 1: I don't mean that they should be writing, but I

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Speaker 1: do think they should be protesting, protesting, marching, you know.

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Speaker 1: But but that is that is kind of our our

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Speaker 1: great right. It's it's it's a really weird time. I'm

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Speaker 1: curious because you know, you you get to argue a

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Speaker 1: case in front of the Supreme Court because you have

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Speaker 1: an incredible amount of schooling and you study, and to

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Speaker 1: your point, you you did it at a really accelerated pace.

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Speaker 1: And I and I imagine that when you have that

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Speaker 1: fire lit in you of an experience, whether personally or

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Speaker 1: by proxy, of oppression, and you say, I'm never going

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Speaker 1: to let that happen to me, and I'm going to

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Speaker 1: make sure that doesn't happen to other people. The speed

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Speaker 1: at which you went through school and and became the

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Speaker 1: youngest tenured professor at your university is is pretty wild. Um.

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Speaker 1: Every once in a while when I hear you talk

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Speaker 1: about things, I'm like, I mean, yeah, I mean, I

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Speaker 1: guess you're pretty smart. You're literally one of the most

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Speaker 1: brilliant people I know. But but what how did your

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Speaker 1: law career begin? Because I'm curious about the experience, you know,

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Speaker 1: from early high school that we were speaking about in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: What happened? Like, how how do you go about high school?

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Speaker 1: How do you decide where to go to law school? Well,

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Speaker 1: where to go to college and then where to go

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Speaker 1: to law school? What's what's the story there? Fill in

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Speaker 1: the middle. First, so two very formative events happened. One

428
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:46,800
Speaker 1: we've talked about, which is my dad losing his job

429
00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:49,679
Speaker 1: and me starting to think about being a voice for

430
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,359
Speaker 1: other people. And the second thing that happened was that

431
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:54,440
Speaker 1: I joined the debate team at the age of thirteen,

432
00:23:54,480 --> 00:23:57,040
Speaker 1: because I, you know, I wasn't particularly good at sports,

433
00:23:57,280 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 1: and my uncle said, as I was going to high schools, like,

434
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 1: you should try the debate team. Now, I was the

435
00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: shyest kid imaginable, and I thought this was insane. He

436
00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:09,240
Speaker 1: might as well said, you know, join the football team.

437
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:11,560
Speaker 1: But I was like, all right, you know, I'll try it.

438
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 1: And I tried it, and actually it turned out that,

439
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: you know, if I put the work in, I could

440
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 1: win some rounds, and by my sophomore year. By the

441
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 1: middle of my sophomore year, I was flying around the

442
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,800
Speaker 1: country on a national circuit and starting to win and

443
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:30,439
Speaker 1: so um I got recruited to go to Dartmouth College,

444
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:34,200
Speaker 1: which had a great team and I loved arguing. And

445
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:37,159
Speaker 1: then as I was thinking about going to law school,

446
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: I said, because this other thing we're talking about about

447
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:41,199
Speaker 1: job security, I was like, I want to go to

448
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:45,199
Speaker 1: the law school which teach, which which trains law professors,

449
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:47,919
Speaker 1: so that I could go and teach and get tenure

450
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:51,239
Speaker 1: really fast. So I went to Yale Law School for

451
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:56,320
Speaker 1: that reason, and then from there I really thought that

452
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: I was going to teach. But one of the things

453
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 1: you can do if you're doing very well in law school,

454
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: as you can clerk for a federal judge, which is

455
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:05,439
Speaker 1: like an apprenticeship for a year. And so I did

456
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:08,360
Speaker 1: that first for a judge on the Court of Appeals

457
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 1: who actually was the Yale Law School dean before then

458
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 1: a brilliant man named Guido Calabresi, who's still a judge

459
00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:17,879
Speaker 1: and kind of almost my second dad or something. He

460
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: is a remarkably brilliant and humane individual. And then I

461
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Bryer. And when

462
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 1: I was doing that, I was going to take a

463
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,960
Speaker 1: job at Georgetown. I was on the teaching market and

464
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 1: I had done a little work for al Gore and

465
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:35,880
Speaker 1: his lawyers called me up. His chief of staff called

466
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 1: me up and said, hey, we're going to nominate this

467
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:40,480
Speaker 1: guy to be deputy Attorney General. Do you want to

468
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 1: go work for him? I said, what is the deputy

469
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:45,639
Speaker 1: attorney general? This is before Rod Rosenstein, and you know,

470
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:48,200
Speaker 1: people knew what a deputy attorney general was. He said,

471
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 1: it's the number two person of the Justice Department. I said, ha,

472
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: I don't know. I said, who is it? And they're

473
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:54,840
Speaker 1: like a guy you never heard of. His name is

474
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:58,479
Speaker 1: Eric holder, and I hadn't heard of him, as nobody

475
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 1: really had at that time. But I met Eric and

476
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: I started working for him at the Justice Department and

477
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: did national security work. And ultimately also even at the

478
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:12,960
Speaker 1: age of UM, we had the Ken's Star investigation going on,

479
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:15,919
Speaker 1: and I got to write the rules for the Special

480
00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:19,640
Speaker 1: Council that Mueller ultimately was appointed under. So I thought

481
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: really hard about for a year and a half about like,

482
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:27,639
Speaker 1: how do we investigate the president? Um? And so those rules, um,

483
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: you know, we're something I wrote with a lot of

484
00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: input from a lot of different folks at the Justice

485
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,399
Speaker 1: Department and on the Hill. But then after that I thought, Okay,

486
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: I'm finally going to go be a law profestor, and

487
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 1: that's what I started to do at the age of

488
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:43,679
Speaker 1: about nine. Wow, what is it like to be in

489
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 1: your twenties and to be expanding the justice systems, rules

490
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: and regulations for a formative part of the house the

491
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:57,399
Speaker 1: country was built as in a in a way, being

492
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:01,160
Speaker 1: our powers to investigate the president, to have these systems

493
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: of checks and balances, you know, a little asterisk obviously

494
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: they're not working right now, but what what what is

495
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 1: that like to really imagine you are analyzing, you know,

496
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 1: the the history of America's democracy and and having to

497
00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: make estimations about what that legally's means. Is that crazy?

498
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: Did that feel? It's like totally awesome and hetty and

499
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: I think what made it so awesome was all the

500
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: things you say, which are some of the most intricate,

501
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:39,440
Speaker 1: deep questions in the law, in history, even in philosophy.

502
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:42,880
Speaker 1: They go back to ancient Greece, who guards the guardians?

503
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:45,439
Speaker 1: Or if you're a fan of Dr Seuss, it's the

504
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 1: bees b Watchers and watching the b watcher Watchers and

505
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I mean, these are really important questions.

506
00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 1: But what made it even more awesome was that I

507
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 1: felt like everyone was trying to do the right thing

508
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: back in because, uh, the president, President Clinton was on

509
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: his second term. He was term limited, so we were

510
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:08,359
Speaker 1: kind of behind the veil of ignorance. We didn't know

511
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:11,120
Speaker 1: whether a Republican would win or a Democrat would win,

512
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: and therefore there was no incumbency advantage to a first

513
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: term president or anything like that because he was in

514
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: the second term. So everyone was trying to think about

515
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:23,280
Speaker 1: what the real rules should be and ken Starr was investigating.

516
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 1: But that investigation would be grandfather and not touched by

517
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:28,879
Speaker 1: our rules. So we're really just writing the rules for

518
00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 1: the future and the most ideal state. And I worked

519
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: with tons of Republicans and tons of Democrats to just

520
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: try and get it right the way that I the

521
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: the way that I think our founders kind of imagined

522
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 1: it to be. And um, So if you ask, like, yes,

523
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 1: it was a substance of what I was doing, but

524
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 1: it was also the spirit in which everyone was going

525
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 1: through that task, which was really trying to solve a

526
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: hard problem and take politics out of it. And that's

527
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: what I guess I missed some And like I think about,

528
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: you know, the next generation, and they grew up in

529
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 1: a world in which they don't even know that existed. Um,

530
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: And that's what laws ultimately at its best about. It's

531
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: about that. The word that comes to mind when I

532
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 1: hear you explain the kind of perfect storm you were

533
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: in at that moment is purity. It feels pure, it

534
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: feels it feels true, and and we have lost a

535
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: lot of that, so so much has been weaponized in

536
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: ways that feel really nonsensical, you know. Tangentially, the fact

537
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: that we have these debates about the environment and the

538
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: and what the oversight of the e p A should

539
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: be as though it's a Republican or a Democratic issue.

540
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 1: It's crazy to me. I'm like, the water is not political.

541
00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 1: It's exactly the water, the air. I mean, what's going

542
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 1: on with climate and they, you know, the Republicans in particular,

543
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 1: politicized this so much. And you know, if you're a

544
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: Republican kid growing up, and you know your house may

545
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 1: not be there or it might be on fire, and

546
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: the environment doesn't know politics. It's you know, we're getting

547
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 1: given this great gift of an earth. And um, yeah,

548
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 1: I agree with you entirely. And the law is not

549
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 1: meant to know politics either exactly. And I'm curious about

550
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 1: the the sort of space in between this really beautiful

551
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: moment in history that you're referring to in in in

552
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 1: Clinton's second term and where we find ourselves now. Were

553
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: there people in particular who stand out when you look

554
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: back on it, when you look back on writing those briefs.

555
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: Is that the right term you you wrote briefs on Okay, great,

556
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: just making sure. Um. I had a moment where I

557
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: was like, am I talking about this as though I

558
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, and I actually don't all be

559
00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 1: so embarrassed, but I do. Great. Uh, when you were

560
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: writing those briefs, where there people were their experts who

561
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 1: you really relied on. Where there you know? Because for me,

562
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: I in my you know, in the fantasy movie in

563
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: which I have the position that you had, then I'd

564
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: be like, I gotta call Ruth Bader Ginsberg and ask

565
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 1: her opinion about X. Were there people who, now when

566
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 1: you look back on that really stood out as incredible

567
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: guide posts and and experts to you? Yeah, totally. And

568
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:25,959
Speaker 1: obviously it wasn't Justice Ginsburg because if I'm arguing before her,

569
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: I can't call it for But let's see, that's where

570
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm doing, and that's fair. But

571
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 1: there were so many and sofyeah, I think like that's

572
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 1: you know, one of the most important things is both

573
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: to seek that out when you're just starting out, but

574
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,440
Speaker 1: also now that I'm way past that point in time,

575
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: like it's the most important thing for me to do

576
00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: is to mentor other people now who are starting out

577
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: that way. And you know, like in the bar I'm

578
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court bar. If you ask yourself who

579
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: argues in the Supreme Court um last year was sevent women.

580
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: The year before, one year before that, twelve percent. These

581
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: are I mean, I don't know of another profession with

582
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 1: those kind of atrocious numbers. And you know, I don't

583
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: mean to pat myself on the back, but this is

584
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: kind of the pinnacle of the profession, or way pinnacle

585
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:20,520
Speaker 1: of the legal profession, and yet it's largely closed to women,

586
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 1: almost entirely closed to minorities. I mean, you know, it

587
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: took me fifty years to break through Good Marshall's record

588
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 1: for the most number of minority arguments. I mean, that's

589
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 1: great for me, but it's terrible what it says about

590
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 1: our profession. Um. This year, I gave one of my

591
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: young associates, UH a Supreme Court argument, and he became

592
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: one of the very few openly gay attorneys to have

593
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: argued in the U. S. Supreme Court. UM. So there's

594
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that's not happening in the legal

595
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: profession or in any other profession, but you know, the

596
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 1: legal ones the one I know, And you're absolutely right.

597
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:00,960
Speaker 1: It does go back to, hey, are you going to

598
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: throw that lifeline to someone else? Because you're right, Sofia,

599
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: A lot of people through that lifeline to me and

600
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:10,480
Speaker 1: made it possible for me to, you know, as a

601
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:15,880
Speaker 1: law professor without any real courtroom experience, figure out how

602
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: to argue one of the most consequential cases in the

603
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 1: United States history. And then when I won that, all

604
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,240
Speaker 1: sorts of doors opened up. You know, after one Guantanamo

605
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: you know, Barack Obama when he was a senator, heard

606
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 1: me on the radio this is before the age of

607
00:33:30,600 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: podcasts and um and invited me to go to the

608
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 1: Senate and speak with him, and that's how we got

609
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 1: to know each other. And companies started to hire me

610
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 1: and things like that. But it all took that first win.

611
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: And to take to get that first win required an

612
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: incredible amount of support. Um. You know, there's a law

613
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: firm in Seattle, Perkins Cooie that really took me under

614
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: their wing, and we did the Guantanamo case together and

615
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: they helped me in so many ways. And on the

616
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 1: ever forget that, and you know, I feel like that's

617
00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: my job is to now pay that forward. That's so cool.

618
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: What did you talk about with President Obama when he

619
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: was a senator and invited you in what what was

620
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:16,399
Speaker 1: that first conversation, Well, the first conversation was about Guantanamo,

621
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,839
Speaker 1: because there was pending on the Senate floor a bill

622
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:22,640
Speaker 1: to reverse a lot of the winds that we had

623
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:25,840
Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court. And we talked for three hours

624
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,839
Speaker 1: in his office. The first two hours were one on

625
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: one when he asked me to just take him through

626
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:33,239
Speaker 1: everything about getting out, which I did, and then for

627
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 1: the third hour he brought in his staff and we

628
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 1: argued it back and forth amongst each other, and at

629
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:43,120
Speaker 1: the end of the third hour he said, Okay, you

630
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:45,439
Speaker 1: gotta go. I said, of course, and he said, Neil.

631
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:48,840
Speaker 1: On this side of the room, everyone's saying, don't listen

632
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: to Neil. And that's like ten of his staff. And

633
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:53,839
Speaker 1: on this side of the room he's like that. One

634
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: woman is saying, listen to Neil. Which one do you

635
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,240
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna do? And I said, well, I don't know, Senator,

636
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:01,399
Speaker 1: we've just met, but I hope you do the right thing.

637
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: But I walked out thinking, no chance. It sounds like

638
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: he may want to run for president or something. He's

639
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,799
Speaker 1: not going to side with terroristic guantanamo. And you know what,

640
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:13,840
Speaker 1: Sophia like, two weeks later, no advanced notice, but I

641
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 1: get the word on the news that he's voting against

642
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 1: this Guantanamo thing. He had done the right thing, and

643
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:24,200
Speaker 1: that's when I knew, like this is I've never really

644
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: been political before, but this is the kind of person

645
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,319
Speaker 1: I want to work for. Yes, And what I would

646
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:32,279
Speaker 1: what I want to clarify for people listening at home

647
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 1: is again it was posited by people arguing for the

648
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 1: wrong reasons, that you were either siding with victims or

649
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 1: siding with terrorists. But that wasn't the argument. The argument

650
00:35:43,160 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: was we're either going to abide by America's ideals and

651
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:50,279
Speaker 1: carry justice out blindly for all people. We're going to

652
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 1: be better than those who would attack us, or we're not.

653
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 1: And if we stoop, then we then we never stop.

654
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: You have to set boundaries around your integrity, and you

655
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: don't have integrity unless you can apply it to those

656
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: who you do not agree with. That's right, And you know,

657
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: at the time though it was such a hard thing

658
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 1: for him to do. I mean, even I, as the lawyer,

659
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: was called the terrorist lover, terrorist tugger, go back to Afghanistan,

660
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:18,280
Speaker 1: you know, like you know all that kind of stuff,

661
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: and of course you know, someone named Barack Hussain Obama

662
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 1: is going to get that just as much or more.

663
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:27,680
Speaker 1: But he did the right thing. And you know, as president,

664
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: he often had hard calls. Not all of them were right,

665
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: but they were motivated by the right things. He was

666
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:39,799
Speaker 1: a truly American president, and I think we have lost that,

667
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 1: and I feel so badly for the kids who are

668
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:46,239
Speaker 1: growing up and only know a president who's craven, who

669
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 1: wants to return America to its worst impulses rather than

670
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: its highest and best. You worked as the Acting Solicitor

671
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 1: General under President Obama. Can you explain to listeners what

672
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 1: that role into els and what your responsibilities are when

673
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,840
Speaker 1: you hold that title. Yeah, so it's the top courtroom

674
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 1: lawyer for the government, and uh so it means you're

675
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: in charge of all the cases across the country. But

676
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: the most visible part of it is arguing the most

677
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: important cases before the Supreme Court and sometimes in other

678
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:22,279
Speaker 1: courts as well. So like I did argue the Affordable

679
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:26,400
Speaker 1: Care Act because it was challenged by all these conservative states, um,

680
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: and defended that in all the courts across the country. UM.

681
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:33,839
Speaker 1: But also one perhaps the most interesting case for me,

682
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:37,439
Speaker 1: which I knew nothing about, patents. I thought patents would

683
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 1: be really boring. But I have the case about the

684
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 1: b r c A one and b r c A

685
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: two genes, which if you have in your body, well,

686
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 1: you have a very high chance of an aggressive form

687
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: of breast cancer. This is the gene that Angelina Jolie

688
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: has now and that people know from that people call

689
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:56,760
Speaker 1: it the gene, Yeah, exactly, that's kind of the common

690
00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 1: lexicon for it, exactly. And so the problem was and

691
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: that a company had gone and patented the gene itself,

692
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:11,200
Speaker 1: and they charged women like my wife many thousands of

693
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 1: dollars just to take a blood test to see if

694
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: you had the gene in your body or not. And

695
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 1: so I looked at that, and the is horrible. And

696
00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:25,160
Speaker 1: the government had actually issued twenty thousand patents just like this,

697
00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:28,400
Speaker 1: not just on Bracca one and two, but on other genes.

698
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: And I looked at it and I sought the invalidation

699
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 1: of all twenty thousand gene patents, which basically certain people

700
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: in the biotech industry wanted to run me out of

701
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 1: government after I made that call, and they said there's

702
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: no chance he would ever win this position in court.

703
00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:46,479
Speaker 1: You're taking away people's property rights that will lose nine

704
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 1: zero at the Supreme Court. Well, it turns out we

705
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: won at the Supreme Court, and the invalidation of patents

706
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: on the human genome has unleashed a whole field of

707
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: medicine now, uh, personalized genetic medic sin and the like,

708
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 1: which is going to have huge, huge implications for society.

709
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 1: And so that's a chance in which you know, government

710
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 1: can really do well on something like a technical issue

711
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 1: that maybe a little hard for folks to understand. For me,

712
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: it took actually a year. I went to the n

713
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: i H on Monday nights and they tutored me in genetics,

714
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:24,400
Speaker 1: and I had Larry Summers tutoring me about the economics

715
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 1: of innovation at the White House. I mean, it was

716
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: like the most awesome thing ever, and I'm glad. I'm

717
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 1: really proud of that call I made. That's really incredible.

718
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:36,840
Speaker 1: One of my favorite victories of yours. During that time,

719
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 1: you had a unanimous victory against eight states across the

720
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 1: nation who sued the nation's leading power plants for their

721
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 1: contributions to global warming. And that rings so significant for

722
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:52,480
Speaker 1: me because I think that many of us who exist

723
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 1: outside the realms of the legal system assume that someone

724
00:39:56,440 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 1: is in charge making good decisions for us, and really

725
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 1: that's not the case very often. To your point about this,

726
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 1: you know, even the patents on genes, big corporations have

727
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 1: spent the money to screw over the American people in

728
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 1: order to make more money for themselves. And it's so

729
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 1: amazing to me when people take that power back and

730
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 1: and this idea that you were able to argue that

731
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 1: these companies actually have a responsibility to us, not just

732
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: to their bottom line and have such an immense victory

733
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:32,279
Speaker 1: in court was very exciting to me. I mean, I

734
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:34,879
Speaker 1: think one of the things the president President Obama cared

735
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:37,359
Speaker 1: so much about was global warming. And you know, it's

736
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 1: obviously a huge hard issue, and particularly when you have

737
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 1: a Congress that was opposed to him, and so some

738
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 1: of this had to be done by regulation. But I'm

739
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: proud of what he did. I mean, I think we

740
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: need to do way more. And you know, when we

741
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 1: don't have much time, and you know, the current doccupant

742
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 1: is creating even less time for us as a species,

743
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 1: and so you know, I do think that, Uh, it's

744
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:06,239
Speaker 1: like human rights. I mean, this is a human right effectively,

745
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:08,200
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what we're talking about. We're talking

746
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:21,359
Speaker 1: about about a breathable, livable planet. Okay, I feel like

747
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 1: we've got to get to it. We're in the midst

748
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: of impeachment. Thank you for all of the background. I

749
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: feel lit up, I feel inspired, and now I feel

750
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:34,120
Speaker 1: like I'm about to get very scared. But I wouldn't

751
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:37,400
Speaker 1: want to talk about this with anybody but you. We're

752
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:40,719
Speaker 1: we've over the last week witnessed these marathon sessions in

753
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:44,080
Speaker 1: the Senate for impeachment hearings. Can you talk me through

754
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 1: your take on what you've witnessed so far and then

755
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: we'll get into what's happening as we're speaking. I've witnessed

756
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 1: a lack of witnesses. I've witnessed a trial that's not

757
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 1: a trial. That's what I've seen. I've seen basically what

758
00:41:56,560 --> 00:41:58,839
Speaker 1: you called at the start, a cover up, and that's

759
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: what it's been. This isn't like an American system of justice.

760
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:06,919
Speaker 1: This is just a rush through to try and beat

761
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,760
Speaker 1: the clock because they're worried more and more bad evidence

762
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 1: is going to come out. President Trump, Yeah, and it's

763
00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: going to Um this is a question to win and

764
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: UM Yeah. It's really unfortunate. There was a foreign former

765
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: foreign leader who tweeted today, Oh good, I'll never get

766
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 1: to hear you have to hear another lecture from Americans

767
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: about fair trials or do process or anything like that

768
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 1: after today. And you know, we've really taken the Constitution,

769
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:39,440
Speaker 1: taken the uh what the United States is known for

770
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: around the world in terms of a beacon of liberty

771
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 1: and justice, and set it aflame. And so I think

772
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: what the Senate did is reprehensible, un American, undemocratic, unconstitutional, unlawful.

773
00:42:55,360 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 1: But I don't want to leave you or you're listeners

774
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:04,879
Speaker 1: with only that dire side, because the truth is, I'm

775
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: actually kind of optimistic after this. And I'm optimistic, and

776
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 1: so let me tell you some of them. So, like,

777
00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:16,319
Speaker 1: one way you could think about it is say, well, look,

778
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 1: the President's gonna be acquitted, and so it just shows

779
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:25,200
Speaker 1: the lawlessness of our country and the Republican Party. But

780
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: I'd say a few things to push back on that.

781
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 1: One is seventy even though we're the country so divided politically,

782
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 1: people think that what President Trump did was wrong, and

783
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: even more want witnesses at this trial. And so that

784
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: just shows me that the people as opposed to maybe

785
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:48,359
Speaker 1: some of the yahoo's in Washington actually have it right.

786
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:52,879
Speaker 1: And then I think about the Democratic Party because they

787
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 1: have been told from the start, from President Trump onto

788
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 1: their own leaders that impeachment as a loser for them.

789
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: It's going to hurt them in November, and it very

790
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: well may who knows. But they did it anyway because

791
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 1: they didn't because it was right, because it was the

792
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: right thing to do, and they risked things because they

793
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 1: stood up for principle, and that, to me is like

794
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 1: what this country is all about. Even more to the point,

795
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: think about those brave people who went and testified in

796
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:27,000
Speaker 1: the House, like Dr Fiona Hill or Colonel Alexander Vindemann.

797
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: These are like, they don't have the resources that you

798
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: and I have. They've been in the government their whole lives,

799
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:37,960
Speaker 1: and yet they're going and telling their stories. Even though

800
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: the President tried to gag them and forbid them from

801
00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,280
Speaker 1: telling their stories. They told the truth because they felt

802
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:47,799
Speaker 1: like that was their duty as Americans. Think about that

803
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 1: whistleblower who did the same thing, risking his life for

804
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:56,800
Speaker 1: her life, and all the things that would follow once

805
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:01,240
Speaker 1: the report was filed. So I think about those things,

806
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:04,279
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, we've got a lot of

807
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:08,360
Speaker 1: fundamentals in this country that are good, and I'm not

808
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 1: going to let fifty one or fifty three people in

809
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:16,040
Speaker 1: Washington ruined my image of America. I'm going to make

810
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 1: sure that they don't control things again. I mean, and

811
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: I think we all have to, but we can get

812
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:25,319
Speaker 1: this country back to what our founders wanted it to be.

813
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: That's my question for you, though, because when you say

814
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: of Americans believe that what Trump did was wrong, and look,

815
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:36,319
Speaker 1: the facts are out there, nothing is hidden, it's all

816
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,399
Speaker 1: out in plain sight. We know that what he did

817
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:44,399
Speaker 1: makes Nixon's impeachment look like child's play. And and he's

818
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: running the country the way a mob boss runs an

819
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:51,160
Speaker 1: organized crime unit. It's it's blatant, it's offensive, it's scary,

820
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:55,960
Speaker 1: and to your point, more than people wanted witnesses. It's

821
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:57,759
Speaker 1: up in the high eighties, I believe the last time

822
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: I checked the polling numbers, and yet the Senate didn't

823
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 1: call witnesses. They've doubled down on holding onto power, no

824
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:09,799
Speaker 1: matter what the cost is to the country. They've put

825
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: party over country in a way that is so over

826
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 1: And the irony is that they keep accusing the Congress

827
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:21,680
Speaker 1: who and called the sessions in the first place of

828
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:24,399
Speaker 1: being political. It's like, now we'd word being constitutional here,

829
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 1: what does it mean? What do we do because yes,

830
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 1: it's what we as Americans want, but they're not listening.

831
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:37,759
Speaker 1: How in your estimation, with your legal expertise, how do

832
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 1: we make these people listen to us? Because if they're

833
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: elected to represent us and they don't represent us, but

834
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:46,200
Speaker 1: they sit in Washington representing themselves, taking kickbacks from corporate

835
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:50,760
Speaker 1: lobbyists and and really working in the interests of the

836
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:54,120
Speaker 1: super rich, and and those people alone, and I'm talking

837
00:46:54,160 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 1: like ten billionaires and a bunch of corporations like not

838
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:00,120
Speaker 1: people who think that for some reason, the Democrats are

839
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:03,680
Speaker 1: against anyone being successful. It's like we all like nice shit, Okay,

840
00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: that's not it. Um, What do we do when we

841
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 1: see this? How how do you recommend that we act?

842
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:15,240
Speaker 1: How do we act meaningfully? How do we not lose hope?

843
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:20,239
Speaker 1: Because it feels bleak. I don't think it should feel

844
00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: bleak because our founders did give us one tool and

845
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: it's coming up on us right now, which is the reelection.

846
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:30,760
Speaker 1: And these senators are vulnerable and you know what, they're scared.

847
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:33,919
Speaker 1: They're scared, and that's why they did what they did

848
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 1: because they want Trump's support. But Trump himself is not

849
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: particularly popular. He's one of the least popular presidents in

850
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: American history, and I think we fight like hell against

851
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:49,760
Speaker 1: him and anyone who voted for this cover up. Um.

852
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 1: I don't care if they voted on other things that

853
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:56,879
Speaker 1: are good. But anyone who stood for this and said, oh,

854
00:47:56,960 --> 00:47:59,840
Speaker 1: this is okay, it's cool for a president to go

855
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 1: and cheat on his re election with the help of

856
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,799
Speaker 1: a foreign government. Anyone who's okay with that is fundamentally

857
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,879
Speaker 1: unfit for government. And I hear you about the billionaires.

858
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:12,319
Speaker 1: You know, one of my cases when I was at

859
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:15,560
Speaker 1: the at the Justice Department was Citizens United, which is

860
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:19,399
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court case that said corporations have free speech rights.

861
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:21,880
Speaker 1: And we fought it like hell, and we lost five

862
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: to four. And so there's a lot of money flowing

863
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:32,160
Speaker 1: into political campaigns now that didn't exist before. But ultimately

864
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,960
Speaker 1: we do have the people we fight, and I think

865
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:38,919
Speaker 1: it's incredibly important to people registered to vote. I think,

866
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: you know, young people like the folks who were listening

867
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:44,200
Speaker 1: to this, you know, got to go out and registered

868
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: to vote and get other people to vote. Bring their

869
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: friends I think it is so important. This election is

870
00:48:50,560 --> 00:48:54,960
Speaker 1: everything because if Trump wins and the others in the

871
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:58,680
Speaker 1: Senate win, then I think we could set the country back,

872
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:02,719
Speaker 1: the world's progress back, perhaps revocably, And so I think

873
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:06,160
Speaker 1: the stakes could not be higher. And you know, like,

874
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:08,520
Speaker 1: let me just talk about one thing which I care

875
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 1: a lot about, which is a woman's right to choose.

876
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: And right now that's incredibly vulnerable at the Supreme Court

877
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:19,240
Speaker 1: and in lower courts because Trumps packed the lower courts

878
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 1: with all sorts of judges who are hell bent on

879
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:27,359
Speaker 1: trying to overturn Roe versus Wade, and it's hanging by

880
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 1: a threat. And so there's two things that we can do.

881
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,880
Speaker 1: One is to elect a president who's going to appoint

882
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:36,799
Speaker 1: justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But there's another thing, which

883
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: is if we just elect a Senate that's democratic, we

884
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,239
Speaker 1: can sweep all of this away because the Senate in

885
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: the House together can pass a federal law that displaces

886
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 1: any state law restricting abortion unnecessarily. And so we can

887
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: really just on the political side, with just a couple

888
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:01,720
Speaker 1: more votes, take this issue and guarantee it for women

889
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:04,839
Speaker 1: across the country. And so it's things like that, which

890
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:09,359
Speaker 1: are just so important, Like if you're uh, if you're

891
00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:13,360
Speaker 1: gay and you get fired from your job in twenty States,

892
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 1: there's no protection against you. They can fire you just

893
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: because of who you love. If we can just get

894
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: those three votes in the Senate, everything changes. And I

895
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:25,120
Speaker 1: want to point out two really important things, both in

896
00:50:25,160 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: the argument of orientation that you just brought up and

897
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 1: on the abortion issue. People forget how much these issues

898
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:35,680
Speaker 1: are tied together. People think that abortion is just about abortion,

899
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: but really what it's about is women's comprehensive health care

900
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 1: abortion included. One of the things that frustrates me is

901
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 1: that nobody was talking about the fact that with the

902
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:48,279
Speaker 1: expansion of women's reproductive care under the Obama administration, abortions

903
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: actually hit the lowest rate they'd ever been at in

904
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: US history. Because when you provide comprehensive access, even to

905
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 1: that greater step, women don't need it because they have

906
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 1: other protections that come along first. People don't understand that

907
00:51:03,719 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the rollback of abortion rights, we're

908
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 1: also talking about the rollback of access to birth control

909
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:12,480
Speaker 1: in the first place, access to comprehensive sex head, which

910
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:15,400
Speaker 1: actually increases when it goes away, increases the rates of

911
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:18,120
Speaker 1: teen pregnancy, which then increase the amount of kids who

912
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:20,400
Speaker 1: are struggling who need to have abortions in the first place,

913
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: because babies shouldn't be having babies. You know, these things

914
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:26,719
Speaker 1: are inextricably linked. And people want to put their head

915
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:28,279
Speaker 1: in the sand and say, well, I don't agree with that,

916
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to vote for it, and my

917
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:34,280
Speaker 1: my estimation would be good. People can disagree on these issues,

918
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 1: but if you don't agree with it, then you don't

919
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: do it in your personal life, But you don't destroy

920
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 1: other women and other families options, and you don't fly

921
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 1: in the face of medical science and proclaim that you

922
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 1: know more than a woman and her doctor know about

923
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: her body, her family and what she needs. And in

924
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:52,360
Speaker 1: the same way that when we talk about issues of

925
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:55,360
Speaker 1: sexual orientation and who people love and where they're employed,

926
00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:59,279
Speaker 1: if if a company can fire someone for being in

927
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 1: the lgbt e Q community, they can sure ship fire

928
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 1: you for something that shouldn't matter either, whether it's a disability,

929
00:52:05,280 --> 00:52:08,600
Speaker 1: whether it's being a parent, whatever the issue. If we

930
00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: give them a window to to control our lives based

931
00:52:13,160 --> 00:52:16,400
Speaker 1: on the minutia of who we are, it doesn't just

932
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 1: affect one vertical, it affects all. So we either show

933
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:22,160
Speaker 1: up for each other, whether we agree with each other

934
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 1: or not, or we throw everybody away, ourselves included. So

935
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:27,839
Speaker 1: if yeah, I think you should be a lawyer, that

936
00:52:27,920 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: was beautiful and much better than anything I could say.

937
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:32,799
Speaker 1: And well, you're a very kind person. My dad still

938
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 1: thinks it's weird that I'm not a lawyer with respect

939
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:38,719
Speaker 1: to abortion, you know, the way I think about it,

940
00:52:38,760 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 1: the phrase I like to use as reproductive justice, and

941
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:45,440
Speaker 1: it's not just abortion, of course, it's everything. And it's

942
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: everything that Trump is trying to take away from women

943
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: right now, and and again, I think we have to

944
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:54,560
Speaker 1: fight like helper this this is this is not something

945
00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 1: that you know. It's sad to me that we're still

946
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,680
Speaker 1: fighting for it now, you know, after some many decades.

947
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:03,360
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think when we talk about fighting,

948
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:06,560
Speaker 1: and when we talk about voting, how do you think

949
00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:09,719
Speaker 1: we sort of shake people out of the stupor and

950
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:13,720
Speaker 1: remind them that you've got to vote on the bigger issues.

951
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: And what goes hand in hand with that question for

952
00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:19,920
Speaker 1: me is this one. How are you feeling about election security?

953
00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:23,800
Speaker 1: Because that's where I'm very, very scared looking at research.

954
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 1: I don't know if you follow Jennifer Cone, She's an

955
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: incredible writer and an expert in in our elections, and

956
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:33,760
Speaker 1: every single day she's posting information about vulnerable systems, election

957
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:35,799
Speaker 1: machines that are online when they're not supposed to be.

958
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:38,719
Speaker 1: How we're passing all these paper ballot initiatives but they're

959
00:53:38,719 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: actually bar coded so they can't be audited. And we

960
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:45,760
Speaker 1: know that the Trump campaign is soliciting help from hackers.

961
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:47,440
Speaker 1: We know that he did it in the first election,

962
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:50,239
Speaker 1: he's doing it again. What are we supposed to do?

963
00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:53,239
Speaker 1: How are we supposed to trust our elections in the

964
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:57,160
Speaker 1: first place? How? How do you how do you remind

965
00:53:57,239 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: people how to fight in that arena? Yeah, no, I'm

966
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:04,440
Speaker 1: really worried about election security. I think that's a great question.

967
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:07,359
Speaker 1: I think all we can do is, you know, turn

968
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:10,759
Speaker 1: out as many people as possible to the polls to

969
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:14,799
Speaker 1: try and eliminate the cheating that we expect is going

970
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:17,839
Speaker 1: to happen. Weide we need a landslide because you know,

971
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:22,040
Speaker 1: just remember the president's lawyers just a couple of days

972
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: ago in the Senate said if the president cheats or

973
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:30,320
Speaker 1: does something, and because he's trying to win an election,

974
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 1: then it's okay, it's not impeachable. They were saying, if

975
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: he if he, if he, if he did anything criminal

976
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: in the effort to get re elected, it was okay,

977
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 1: Alan R. Yeah. So so you know it's he's he

978
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:48,600
Speaker 1: effectively said he could cheat in the election and it's

979
00:54:48,680 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: not impeachable. So of course he's going to do that.

980
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:53,080
Speaker 1: He's going to do that in all sorts of ways.

981
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: And so we need, we need to be better than like, uh,

982
00:54:57,640 --> 00:54:59,680
Speaker 1: just a little bit of a win. We need, we need,

983
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:01,879
Speaker 1: as you say, a landslide. And that's where I think

984
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:06,399
Speaker 1: it's actually all about getting young people to vote. I'm

985
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: not I'm not worried if they show up at the

986
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:11,080
Speaker 1: polls who they're going to vote for. Are they're going

987
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:13,799
Speaker 1: to vote on some irrelevant issue like you're gonna want

988
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 1: to have a beer with or something? No way, everyone

989
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:18,080
Speaker 1: knows what the stakes are. They just got to turn

990
00:55:18,160 --> 00:55:21,399
Speaker 1: up and vote. And if they turn up and vote,

991
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:25,120
Speaker 1: they're not going to want this man who really stands

992
00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:29,439
Speaker 1: for everything that America is against. Um. But it's like

993
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:32,800
Speaker 1: getting young people to the polls, and every way, shape

994
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 1: and form is important, you said in response to dershowitz argument,

995
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:42,120
Speaker 1: not only in response to it, but really you rang

996
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 1: the alarm about what happens to us if this becomes

997
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:47,200
Speaker 1: legal precedent. And that's I think what people forget is

998
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: that we're talking about precedent here, and once it's precedent,

999
00:55:50,160 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: anybody can argue that it's fair. And you said that

1000
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 1: you can't think of something more dangerous to our democracy

1001
00:55:59,200 --> 00:56:01,800
Speaker 1: than to have of one of the most destructive precedents

1002
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:04,360
Speaker 1: to have existed in our nation's history. It would empower

1003
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: a president to use the full suite of his powers

1004
00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 1: as commander in chief to assure re election. And you

1005
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:14,040
Speaker 1: tweeted that that's what kings do, not what presidents do.

1006
00:56:14,800 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 1: And when when we see that Trump loves dictators and

1007
00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:21,120
Speaker 1: despots and he loves and he loves him and Oligarch,

1008
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 1: where do we go with that? Yeah, No, it's terrifying.

1009
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:26,920
Speaker 1: So you know when you go back to the Philadelphia Convention,

1010
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:28,880
Speaker 1: and there's a chapter in my book about it, and

1011
00:56:28,920 --> 00:56:31,400
Speaker 1: you asked, like, what were the founders thinking, Well, the

1012
00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 1: first two months they were trying to debate the great

1013
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:35,440
Speaker 1: powers of government, like how much should be in the

1014
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:38,680
Speaker 1: president versus Congress, and they ultimately settled down a lot

1015
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:41,880
Speaker 1: for the president. They wanted a strong commander in chief,

1016
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 1: as Hamilton's says, see a president who has secrecy and

1017
00:56:45,440 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: dispatch and a whole awesome area powers because they knew

1018
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:52,160
Speaker 1: the president could act quickly um and that that was important.

1019
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 1: And then in the third month they got around to

1020
00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: the question of impeachment and asked should we have it

1021
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:00,880
Speaker 1: or not, And ultimately they said yeah, because the powers

1022
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 1: of the president are so awesome that people need to

1023
00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:06,920
Speaker 1: have some sort of check, particularly if the president is

1024
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:09,239
Speaker 1: trying to cheat on an election. That was actually one

1025
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:12,839
Speaker 1: of the things that motivated the impeachment clause. And so

1026
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:16,080
Speaker 1: you have that history, and then you have a president

1027
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 1: like Trump who says, oh, no, I get to have

1028
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:22,160
Speaker 1: all the awesome powers but none of the guardrails or

1029
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 1: limits like impeachment. And that combination is incredibly dangerous. And

1030
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:30,919
Speaker 1: I'm hardened by the fact that the president is incompetent

1031
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:34,200
Speaker 1: whenever he does anything, so he always gets caught and

1032
00:57:34,280 --> 00:57:37,320
Speaker 1: he blows it every time. So he's admits to his

1033
00:57:37,840 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 1: to his corruption on the White House lawn on live

1034
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:43,920
Speaker 1: TV like once a week, right, So I mean you know,

1035
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 1: he's gonna he's gonna try some stuff, but he's not

1036
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:53,000
Speaker 1: gonna execute it as well as a really nefarious, dangerous

1037
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:56,640
Speaker 1: criminal president would. Um. So he's kind of an incompetent

1038
00:57:56,680 --> 00:57:59,520
Speaker 1: buffoon president. Um. And so I think you know that's

1039
00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 1: why I'm a little bit hopeful. Um. But you're absolutely right.

1040
00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:04,880
Speaker 1: So if you have the question is you're setting a

1041
00:58:04,960 --> 00:58:10,360
Speaker 1: precedent and the next president maybe a lot smarter than Trump.

1042
00:58:10,760 --> 00:58:12,840
Speaker 1: And you know, let's just say, do we really want

1043
00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:15,520
Speaker 1: if you're a Republican, do you want a president Bernie

1044
00:58:15,520 --> 00:58:18,360
Speaker 1: Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to have the kind of powers

1045
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:22,560
Speaker 1: that they just voted this president should have. Boy, that's

1046
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:24,920
Speaker 1: a I mean, you know that that can be a

1047
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:29,240
Speaker 1: pretty unappetizing proposition. Well, it's a grave mistake. And my

1048
00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:34,320
Speaker 1: hope is that whether it's Bernie, Elizabeth Amy, whoever it

1049
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:38,920
Speaker 1: is for us, my hope is that they very clearly

1050
00:58:40,080 --> 00:58:42,479
Speaker 1: roll back some of this and say, hey, we gotta

1051
00:58:42,560 --> 00:58:45,840
Speaker 1: we gotta re we gotta re examine what we're allowing

1052
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 1: in this country. We have to course correct for the

1053
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:51,160
Speaker 1: mess that we made last term. You you've said that

1054
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:56,120
Speaker 1: Trump is emboldened to do worse if he's acquitted, which

1055
00:58:56,160 --> 00:59:00,720
Speaker 1: is looking more likely given what's happened today, how how

1056
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:03,640
Speaker 1: much worse do you think it's going to get? Are

1057
00:59:03,680 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 1: there things that you sort of see coming down the

1058
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:10,200
Speaker 1: pipeline if the acquittal happens based on the GOP's complicity

1059
00:59:10,200 --> 00:59:12,920
Speaker 1: in this, Yeah, I mean I think it's starting already today.

1060
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:17,080
Speaker 1: The President just announced a bigger Muslim ban um and

1061
00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:20,240
Speaker 1: that's something I'd spent a couple of years challenging, and

1062
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:23,560
Speaker 1: we got versions one and two struck down by the courts,

1063
00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: but version three, which I argued in the Supreme Court,

1064
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:29,720
Speaker 1: lost five to four. Then the President was able to

1065
00:59:29,840 --> 00:59:33,040
Speaker 1: issue the Muscliman and the revised version, and now he's

1066
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:36,160
Speaker 1: trying to expand it. So that's just day one of

1067
00:59:36,200 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 1: this new reality. And I do think, as we were

1068
00:59:39,000 --> 00:59:41,840
Speaker 1: talking about before, we're going to see all sorts of

1069
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:45,160
Speaker 1: stuff in the election arena and the foreign government arena,

1070
00:59:45,640 --> 00:59:49,440
Speaker 1: and maybe most worrisome to me, the Justice Department. You know,

1071
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: there's a traditionally a wall so that you don't have

1072
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:57,040
Speaker 1: political prosecutions at the Justice Department, that you have you

1073
00:59:57,120 --> 01:00:00,560
Speaker 1: avoid any sort of White House content acts with the

1074
01:00:00,640 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 1: prosecutors um at the Justice Department because the law enforcement

1075
01:00:04,440 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: powers are just so, you know, extreme, you can do

1076
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:11,480
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. And I think this president doesn't

1077
01:00:11,520 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 1: give one wit about that, and he thinks the Justice

1078
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:17,560
Speaker 1: Department is his and can be turned to go after

1079
01:00:17,680 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 1: any of his enemies. And so I'm very, very worried

1080
01:00:21,600 --> 01:00:25,080
Speaker 1: about what's going to happen to our Justice Department. I'm

1081
01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:28,240
Speaker 1: hearing all sorts of stuff from people at the Justice

1082
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:31,280
Speaker 1: Department whom I used to work with, career officials and

1083
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:33,640
Speaker 1: the like, saying I can't stomach this, I need to

1084
01:00:33,680 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: get out, um. And I love the Justice Department. It's

1085
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:41,200
Speaker 1: exactly what we started our conversation with a entity that's

1086
01:00:41,240 --> 01:00:44,480
Speaker 1: really devoted to this idea that justice is blind. And

1087
01:00:44,520 --> 01:00:47,400
Speaker 1: you do the same thing. You treat a Republican defendant

1088
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:50,200
Speaker 1: or target of an investigation the same way as a Democrat.

1089
01:00:50,320 --> 01:00:54,360
Speaker 1: You don't think they're different. And I think this president

1090
01:00:54,800 --> 01:00:57,840
Speaker 1: is wants to throw all of that out the window. Well,

1091
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 1: he wants to utilize departments and in such a scary way,

1092
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:06,200
Speaker 1: the Justice Department almost as an extension of a of

1093
01:01:06,200 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: an organized crime family. It's like he he thinks the

1094
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:13,920
Speaker 1: Justice Department is his personal gestapo exactly. It's frightening to

1095
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:16,400
Speaker 1: me that no matter how many people have sat this

1096
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:18,640
Speaker 1: man down over the last three years and tried to

1097
01:01:18,680 --> 01:01:20,960
Speaker 1: explain to him the way the government works, the way

1098
01:01:21,000 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 1: the military works, the way the Justice Department works, He's

1099
01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:27,120
Speaker 1: not interested. No, that would require him to listen, to learn,

1100
01:01:27,320 --> 01:01:31,600
Speaker 1: to read, to think, and you know, those aren't traits

1101
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:37,960
Speaker 1: that he particularly values. Well, I wonder because it does

1102
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:40,880
Speaker 1: feel overwhelming, and I will say, I'm so grateful for

1103
01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:43,720
Speaker 1: the amount of you know, belief that you carry and

1104
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:45,959
Speaker 1: the hope that you carry, and then your motivation because

1105
01:01:45,960 --> 01:01:48,520
Speaker 1: your motivation reminds me to be motivated. So thank you.

1106
01:01:49,080 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 1: And I'm sure people at home are feeling the same.

1107
01:01:51,760 --> 01:01:55,480
Speaker 1: Do you think that all of this chaos because it

1108
01:01:55,560 --> 01:01:57,720
Speaker 1: is chaos theory that they've been applying, right? You know,

1109
01:01:57,720 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon, who helped Trump get elected, said if you flood,

1110
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:04,720
Speaker 1: if you flood the world with ship, people will stop

1111
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:07,280
Speaker 1: paying attention. It's a version of that in paraphrasing, but

1112
01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:09,640
Speaker 1: that was his idea that if there was a dumpster

1113
01:02:09,680 --> 01:02:12,120
Speaker 1: fire every day, people would get overwhelmed and fatigued and

1114
01:02:12,160 --> 01:02:14,520
Speaker 1: they would stick their heads in the sand. Do you

1115
01:02:14,600 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: think people have stopped paying attention. And if they have,

1116
01:02:17,760 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 1: what do you say to them to get their attention again?

1117
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:23,000
Speaker 1: Do you encourage them to focus on one thing really hard?

1118
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:27,200
Speaker 1: Do you do you have some sort of like get

1119
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 1: back in their motivational speech for us? You know what? What?

1120
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:33,240
Speaker 1: What do we use to hold on? Yeah? I know

1121
01:02:33,320 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: I feel it. I of course go through it myself.

1122
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:38,720
Speaker 1: And you know, like I fought really hard on Mueller

1123
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:42,439
Speaker 1: and so on, and then that fizzled and I was demoralized,

1124
01:02:42,440 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: and I fought so hard on the travel band before that,

1125
01:02:45,160 --> 01:02:49,920
Speaker 1: and and now on this. But I will say, you know,

1126
01:02:50,080 --> 01:02:53,040
Speaker 1: you obviously take a little time, you rest up, you

1127
01:02:53,080 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 1: lick your wounds. But this is the battle of our

1128
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:59,520
Speaker 1: lives coming up over the next few months. November is everything.

1129
01:03:00,080 --> 01:03:02,040
Speaker 1: It's a battle for the heart and soul of what

1130
01:03:02,120 --> 01:03:05,120
Speaker 1: America is. It's about whether we want to live under

1131
01:03:05,120 --> 01:03:08,640
Speaker 1: a constitution with limited government. It's about whether we want

1132
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:12,200
Speaker 1: to clean environment, and whether we want reproductive justice. And

1133
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:15,720
Speaker 1: as a result, I don't care if you're tired, get

1134
01:03:15,720 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: the hell out there, man. And uh, you know, I'm

1135
01:03:18,440 --> 01:03:21,360
Speaker 1: a lot older than your your average listener, and I'm

1136
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:23,560
Speaker 1: going to get out there. So I want your listeners

1137
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:27,720
Speaker 1: to get out there, and if they don't, we kind

1138
01:03:27,720 --> 01:03:31,120
Speaker 1: of deserve this. We deserve a little of this ourselves

1139
01:03:31,240 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 1: because we weren't able to tell our story and have

1140
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:38,320
Speaker 1: our voice heard and to stand up for our values,

1141
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:42,080
Speaker 1: and we got complacent and we were on Instagram too

1142
01:03:42,160 --> 01:03:45,479
Speaker 1: much or whatever, and um, no more of that. We

1143
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:48,920
Speaker 1: we can't do that. The stakes are everything you mentioned

1144
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:53,120
Speaker 1: Muller and and that fight. A lot of people believed

1145
01:03:53,520 --> 01:03:57,240
Speaker 1: the statement that bar put out that said the Muller

1146
01:03:57,280 --> 01:03:59,480
Speaker 1: Report found no wrongdoing, and the Muller Report in fact

1147
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 1: found and hundreds of instances of wrongdoing on the part

1148
01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:05,960
Speaker 1: of the president. And again the Trump administration tried to

1149
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:08,880
Speaker 1: hide it and hide its findings from us. Can you

1150
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:13,920
Speaker 1: walk listeners through as a lawyer what the Mueller report

1151
01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:17,160
Speaker 1: really said, even if it's a quick overview, because a

1152
01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:19,680
Speaker 1: lot of people are curious and there's a lot of

1153
01:04:19,920 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 1: roadblocks up to find the information. Right. Okay, So there

1154
01:04:23,720 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: are two parts of the Muller investigation. Part one is

1155
01:04:26,600 --> 01:04:31,840
Speaker 1: did the Trump campaign colued or conspire with the Russians?

1156
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:35,520
Speaker 1: And that's like things like when the President said during

1157
01:04:35,520 --> 01:04:38,480
Speaker 1: the campaign, Russia, if you're listening, give us a thirty

1158
01:04:38,480 --> 01:04:42,160
Speaker 1: thousand emails. It's meeting the Russians at the Trump Tower,

1159
01:04:42,400 --> 01:04:46,760
Speaker 1: intelligence assets and things like that. Um. Look at you know,

1160
01:04:46,880 --> 01:04:50,640
Speaker 1: any normal political campaign, if you get dirt on your

1161
01:04:50,640 --> 01:04:54,080
Speaker 1: opponent from a foreign government, you like, if someone calls

1162
01:04:54,120 --> 01:04:57,000
Speaker 1: and offers it, you say, hey, can I call you back?

1163
01:04:57,120 --> 01:05:01,040
Speaker 1: And then you go call the FBI. UM. But that's

1164
01:05:01,160 --> 01:05:03,720
Speaker 1: not what Trump did. They went and took the meetings

1165
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:05,960
Speaker 1: and the like, so much so that Don Jr. Even

1166
01:05:06,080 --> 01:05:08,360
Speaker 1: Said if it is what you say it is, I

1167
01:05:08,400 --> 01:05:12,240
Speaker 1: love it, particularly later in the summer. So there's all

1168
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:16,680
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. Now, Mueller said that there was evidence,

1169
01:05:16,800 --> 01:05:21,480
Speaker 1: but not enough to bring a criminal case. Barr took

1170
01:05:21,520 --> 01:05:27,040
Speaker 1: that and spun it as try that Mueller cleared the president. No.

1171
01:05:27,720 --> 01:05:30,640
Speaker 1: In fact, the very first page or first or second

1172
01:05:30,640 --> 01:05:33,640
Speaker 1: page of the Mueller report on that question says, if

1173
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:36,480
Speaker 1: I could clear the president, I would if the evidence

1174
01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:39,560
Speaker 1: showed that that. Of course Barne ever said anything about

1175
01:05:39,680 --> 01:05:42,320
Speaker 1: He just hid that from the American people. And then

1176
01:05:42,720 --> 01:05:46,680
Speaker 1: the second part of the investigation was after Trump became president,

1177
01:05:46,760 --> 01:05:50,840
Speaker 1: did he obstruct justice to fire the FBI director because

1178
01:05:50,840 --> 01:05:53,640
Speaker 1: he was looking into him? And did he do other

1179
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:56,160
Speaker 1: things like with his White House counsel to try and

1180
01:05:56,240 --> 01:06:01,080
Speaker 1: prevent the investigation. And Mueller actually found ten separate instances

1181
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:04,720
Speaker 1: Sophia in which President Trump did that each of those,

1182
01:06:04,840 --> 01:06:07,480
Speaker 1: if he were anyone but the president, he'd be in

1183
01:06:07,560 --> 01:06:12,800
Speaker 1: jail for. But Mueller said, because you're the sitting president,

1184
01:06:13,280 --> 01:06:18,800
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed under a Justice Department opinion to indicte you. Now,

1185
01:06:18,840 --> 01:06:22,320
Speaker 1: did Bar tell us any of that, Nope, not a word.

1186
01:06:22,880 --> 01:06:27,440
Speaker 1: He just pretended that Mueller cleared the president when actually

1187
01:06:27,440 --> 01:06:30,960
Speaker 1: what Mueller said is the president is not being indicted

1188
01:06:31,080 --> 01:06:34,760
Speaker 1: right now on a technicality because he's a sitting president.

1189
01:06:34,800 --> 01:06:38,480
Speaker 1: But after he's president, all of those ten instances he

1190
01:06:38,560 --> 01:06:41,200
Speaker 1: can be indicted. And you know, one of the other

1191
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:45,080
Speaker 1: things that might motivate some of your listeners, if Donald

1192
01:06:45,080 --> 01:06:48,160
Speaker 1: Trump is not re elected, he can be indicted on

1193
01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:52,040
Speaker 1: day one of a new administration and it's within the

1194
01:06:52,080 --> 01:06:56,480
Speaker 1: statute of limitations and he will have effectively no defense.

1195
01:06:56,720 --> 01:06:59,640
Speaker 1: Um he you know, the report is as plain as

1196
01:06:59,720 --> 01:07:02,960
Speaker 1: day as to what he did. And so look, I

1197
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:05,200
Speaker 1: never really wish that any you know, jail is a

1198
01:07:05,200 --> 01:07:10,080
Speaker 1: horrible thing, but this person who broke a lot of laws,

1199
01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:14,840
Speaker 1: he deserves a serious and real investigation. That's something. And

1200
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 1: and if if the report, if if Mueller's report is verified,

1201
01:07:18,400 --> 01:07:22,280
Speaker 1: then absolutely there should be criminal charges brought against him.

1202
01:07:22,320 --> 01:07:24,800
Speaker 1: So Mueller's report was not able to be used because

1203
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:30,440
Speaker 1: he's a sitting president. And now, as we've discussed, so

1204
01:07:30,520 --> 01:07:34,040
Speaker 1: much of the miscarriage of justice makes, you know, Watergate

1205
01:07:34,080 --> 01:07:37,800
Speaker 1: look like child's play. What are some of the things

1206
01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:40,720
Speaker 1: about this impeachment trial that are that are real? First, like,

1207
01:07:40,840 --> 01:07:42,800
Speaker 1: what are some of the things that we really need

1208
01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:46,520
Speaker 1: to understand on the on the level of severity which

1209
01:07:46,560 --> 01:07:50,880
Speaker 1: is accurate? Yeah, okay, So we don't have in this

1210
01:07:50,960 --> 01:07:53,800
Speaker 1: country a tradition of presidents going and trying to cheat

1211
01:07:53,960 --> 01:07:56,760
Speaker 1: in election campaigns. The one time it happened was Richard

1212
01:07:56,840 --> 01:08:00,439
Speaker 1: Nixon and it led to his resignation. You know, there's

1213
01:08:00,440 --> 01:08:04,320
Speaker 1: an impeachment investigation, but it's stopped because of that. So

1214
01:08:05,000 --> 01:08:07,240
Speaker 1: you know, this is certainly the first time a president

1215
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:10,880
Speaker 1: has been cleared after he's tried to cheat on a reelection,

1216
01:08:10,920 --> 01:08:13,400
Speaker 1: because the re election is kind of what our founders

1217
01:08:13,440 --> 01:08:16,240
Speaker 1: gave us as our cardinal right to stop the abuse

1218
01:08:16,760 --> 01:08:19,920
Speaker 1: of a government that we don't like, and that has

1219
01:08:19,960 --> 01:08:23,960
Speaker 1: been read out of the Constitution by some members of

1220
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:27,800
Speaker 1: the Republican Senate. So that's number one. Number two, we've

1221
01:08:27,840 --> 01:08:32,000
Speaker 1: never had a president who has stonewalled the House in

1222
01:08:32,040 --> 01:08:35,920
Speaker 1: an impeachment investigation, not to you know, you know, a

1223
01:08:36,040 --> 01:08:38,840
Speaker 1: wholesale stone stone wall, not a single witness, not a

1224
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:43,080
Speaker 1: single document. Number three, we've never had a Senate trial.

1225
01:08:43,400 --> 01:08:46,960
Speaker 1: We've had fifteen impeachment trials. I think every single one

1226
01:08:47,280 --> 01:08:50,160
Speaker 1: had witnesses in the Senate. This is the first one

1227
01:08:50,240 --> 01:08:53,240
Speaker 1: in which there were no witnesses, and indeed they're all

1228
01:08:53,320 --> 01:08:57,440
Speaker 1: new witnesses too. So eli, President Clinton had three witnesses

1229
01:08:57,479 --> 01:08:59,240
Speaker 1: in the Senate. None of them were in the House.

1230
01:08:59,760 --> 01:09:03,320
Speaker 1: Um Johnson had forty one witnesses at his trial in

1231
01:09:03,360 --> 01:09:07,639
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight. And here the president's lawyers, the Trump's

1232
01:09:07,680 --> 01:09:10,400
Speaker 1: lawyers had the audacity to say, Oh, you're going to

1233
01:09:10,479 --> 01:09:13,679
Speaker 1: set a bad precedent because the House didn't call these

1234
01:09:13,680 --> 01:09:15,960
Speaker 1: people like Bolton, and now you want to call him

1235
01:09:15,960 --> 01:09:18,880
Speaker 1: in the Senate. No, the president of the reverse, every

1236
01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:22,479
Speaker 1: single trial did that before. So they were just making

1237
01:09:22,640 --> 01:09:25,720
Speaker 1: specious and bad arguments. Oh. Number four is something that

1238
01:09:25,760 --> 01:09:28,840
Speaker 1: we just found out a few hours ago from the

1239
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:33,200
Speaker 1: Bolton book. It turns out that the president's lead impeachment lawyer,

1240
01:09:33,240 --> 01:09:37,440
Speaker 1: Pat Sippoloni the White House Council was in the meetings

1241
01:09:38,000 --> 01:09:42,160
Speaker 1: with John Bolton and the President in which Trump ordered

1242
01:09:42,560 --> 01:09:46,160
Speaker 1: the AID to be cut off and pressure Ukraine unless

1243
01:09:46,200 --> 01:09:49,880
Speaker 1: they got dirt on the Democrats. So the president's chief

1244
01:09:49,960 --> 01:09:54,799
Speaker 1: lawyer is compromised. It's like the most cardinal ethical issue

1245
01:09:54,960 --> 01:09:56,960
Speaker 1: as a lawyer, you know, is like if you're a witness,

1246
01:09:57,040 --> 01:10:02,320
Speaker 1: you can't be the lawyers. That's a horrendous like of interest, totally, totally,

1247
01:10:02,479 --> 01:10:04,960
Speaker 1: and yet that has now been revealed just as of

1248
01:10:04,960 --> 01:10:09,280
Speaker 1: a few hours ago. So take all those things together, Yeah,

1249
01:10:09,360 --> 01:10:12,880
Speaker 1: it's a pretty dark day for our democracy. But as

1250
01:10:12,920 --> 01:10:16,160
Speaker 1: I say, I don't want people to lose hope because

1251
01:10:16,240 --> 01:10:19,040
Speaker 1: there's a lot of counter story and a lot of

1252
01:10:19,080 --> 01:10:22,320
Speaker 1: stuff that is good that's happened, and this story will

1253
01:10:22,360 --> 01:10:24,840
Speaker 1: all come out. Every part of it is going to

1254
01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:27,680
Speaker 1: come out, and the American people are gonna know. They're

1255
01:10:27,680 --> 01:10:29,960
Speaker 1: going to know what the President did, and they're gonna

1256
01:10:30,000 --> 01:10:33,280
Speaker 1: know what the Senate did in enabling and covering it up.

1257
01:10:35,479 --> 01:10:38,400
Speaker 1: And that's one of our biggest points to fight back

1258
01:10:38,439 --> 01:10:41,040
Speaker 1: is flipping the Senate. One of the biggest we have

1259
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:43,280
Speaker 1: to remember that that yes, of course we have to

1260
01:10:43,320 --> 01:10:46,640
Speaker 1: fight like hell for the presidency, but we have an

1261
01:10:46,640 --> 01:10:50,360
Speaker 1: opportunity to restore order and hold the president in check

1262
01:10:50,479 --> 01:10:55,920
Speaker 1: by flipping the Senate. Totally, that's exciting, which isn't the word.

1263
01:10:55,960 --> 01:10:57,880
Speaker 1: I thought I sound excited. I want you to sound

1264
01:10:57,920 --> 01:10:59,680
Speaker 1: We're exciting. I mean, I know, I am. I'm just

1265
01:10:59,720 --> 01:11:02,120
Speaker 1: I'm I'm amused in a way because I'm like, oh

1266
01:11:02,160 --> 01:11:05,480
Speaker 1: my god, it's so intense. But also I do feel inspired.

1267
01:11:05,600 --> 01:11:08,280
Speaker 1: I don't feel like giving up. I I don't believe

1268
01:11:08,280 --> 01:11:12,000
Speaker 1: that the two hundred plus years of this American experiment

1269
01:11:12,120 --> 01:11:15,240
Speaker 1: go away because of this horrid man. I just refuse,

1270
01:11:15,360 --> 01:11:18,640
Speaker 1: I refuse totally. Our country is stronger than that. You

1271
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:21,320
Speaker 1: and I are stronger than that. Our friends are you know,

1272
01:11:21,439 --> 01:11:24,479
Speaker 1: our peers groups are stronger than that. We're not going

1273
01:11:24,520 --> 01:11:27,759
Speaker 1: to let it happen. Can you tell us about your book?

1274
01:11:27,800 --> 01:11:30,360
Speaker 1: I I want, you know, people who are curious about

1275
01:11:30,439 --> 01:11:34,040
Speaker 1: this the case and and really what's happening and how

1276
01:11:34,080 --> 01:11:36,600
Speaker 1: the system works. I think would learn so much from it.

1277
01:11:36,680 --> 01:11:39,160
Speaker 1: But you'll do a better job talking about the book

1278
01:11:39,160 --> 01:11:42,040
Speaker 1: you wrote than I'll do talking about it. Having read it. Well,

1279
01:11:42,400 --> 01:11:44,719
Speaker 1: you know it's a hundred and fifty page book. It's short,

1280
01:11:44,880 --> 01:11:47,400
Speaker 1: and it's designed to be read in an afternoon and

1281
01:11:47,479 --> 01:11:51,559
Speaker 1: just provide everyone with a guide as to what impeachments, about,

1282
01:11:51,600 --> 01:11:54,760
Speaker 1: why it's in the Constitution, where it comes from, all

1283
01:11:54,840 --> 01:11:57,920
Speaker 1: the past precedents in which it's been used. And then

1284
01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:00,639
Speaker 1: it's a guide to what Trump did. And I really

1285
01:12:00,680 --> 01:12:03,920
Speaker 1: try and be non political about this and and really

1286
01:12:04,120 --> 01:12:07,200
Speaker 1: try and present both sides and explain why what the

1287
01:12:07,240 --> 01:12:11,160
Speaker 1: president did is such an affront to our democracy and

1288
01:12:11,200 --> 01:12:14,439
Speaker 1: to what America stands for. But I've tried to make

1289
01:12:14,479 --> 01:12:17,280
Speaker 1: it like a page turner, you know, like I don't

1290
01:12:17,280 --> 01:12:20,920
Speaker 1: actually read serious nonfiction. I'm sure you do, but I don't,

1291
01:12:21,040 --> 01:12:23,120
Speaker 1: Like I'm too tired at night, so I read like

1292
01:12:23,200 --> 01:12:28,160
Speaker 1: Dan Brown books and stuff like that is great. Cool. Well,

1293
01:12:28,160 --> 01:12:29,920
Speaker 1: I tried to make it like that. I tried to

1294
01:12:29,960 --> 01:12:33,160
Speaker 1: make it, like, you know, in a more interesting book

1295
01:12:33,240 --> 01:12:36,280
Speaker 1: for people, um, particularly young people, so that they can

1296
01:12:36,400 --> 01:12:38,720
Speaker 1: really kind of get a guide as to what all

1297
01:12:38,800 --> 01:12:42,760
Speaker 1: of this controversy is about. Yes, awesome, it's so good,

1298
01:12:42,800 --> 01:12:45,439
Speaker 1: And we're going to link it in the stories that

1299
01:12:45,520 --> 01:12:47,439
Speaker 1: come up with this episode so that people have a

1300
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:50,640
Speaker 1: quick swipe up to get the book and it's it

1301
01:12:51,000 --> 01:12:54,320
Speaker 1: does really you you explain it in Layman's terms in

1302
01:12:54,320 --> 01:12:57,560
Speaker 1: a way that that both make this stuff feel understandable

1303
01:12:57,640 --> 01:12:59,960
Speaker 1: and make you realize how exciting it is to be

1304
01:13:00,160 --> 01:13:03,680
Speaker 1: part of a democracy with a functioning legal system. Yeah. No,

1305
01:13:03,840 --> 01:13:06,280
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we we you know, I won't

1306
01:13:06,280 --> 01:13:08,160
Speaker 1: say that goes so far. Say we're lucky to be

1307
01:13:08,160 --> 01:13:11,080
Speaker 1: alive at this time, like the lion in Hamilton's um,

1308
01:13:11,080 --> 01:13:15,200
Speaker 1: but we are witnessing history being made right now. And um,

1309
01:13:15,240 --> 01:13:20,480
Speaker 1: the first steps have been cast, and the president has

1310
01:13:20,720 --> 01:13:23,519
Speaker 1: has won these early battles. But I don't think he's

1311
01:13:23,560 --> 01:13:26,000
Speaker 1: going to win this war. I don't think that he

1312
01:13:26,040 --> 01:13:29,439
Speaker 1: will remain president. I don't think I think the Senate

1313
01:13:29,439 --> 01:13:33,000
Speaker 1: will pay a huge price. I hope everyone the d

1314
01:13:33,160 --> 01:13:36,400
Speaker 1: n A, the DNA of our people is so much

1315
01:13:36,439 --> 01:13:40,799
Speaker 1: stronger than this. And um, there's a chance that because

1316
01:13:40,840 --> 01:13:43,160
Speaker 1: of this, we come out of this stronger and say

1317
01:13:43,160 --> 01:13:47,080
Speaker 1: to ourselves, we'll never do that again. We we flirted

1318
01:13:47,120 --> 01:13:52,120
Speaker 1: with authoritarianism. It was you know, it was exciting for

1319
01:13:52,160 --> 01:13:54,920
Speaker 1: a moment, But no, let's go back to old and

1320
01:13:54,960 --> 01:13:58,320
Speaker 1: boring and milk toast. You know, you know, God, you know,

1321
01:13:58,360 --> 01:14:00,880
Speaker 1: remember when Obama and Michelle were president, and like the

1322
01:14:00,880 --> 01:14:03,120
Speaker 1: things we had to worry about were like tan suits

1323
01:14:03,160 --> 01:14:05,240
Speaker 1: and things just to say. People were like, what is

1324
01:14:05,280 --> 01:14:07,799
Speaker 1: he wearing? I'm like, give me back the day dad

1325
01:14:07,960 --> 01:14:13,880
Speaker 1: come home. The babysitter is weird. So you, as we

1326
01:14:13,920 --> 01:14:17,160
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, you run one of the largest Supreme Court

1327
01:14:17,200 --> 01:14:22,080
Speaker 1: practices in the world. You occupy the role formerly held

1328
01:14:22,160 --> 01:14:27,160
Speaker 1: by now Chief Justice John Roberts. Do you see yourself

1329
01:14:27,200 --> 01:14:30,320
Speaker 1: sitting on that go to s bench one day? No,

1330
01:14:30,600 --> 01:14:32,920
Speaker 1: I'm definitely on the other side. Come on, I want

1331
01:14:32,920 --> 01:14:36,639
Speaker 1: to root for you as like like peer groups r GB.

1332
01:14:37,280 --> 01:14:39,200
Speaker 1: Look if you if you want to put me, I'm

1333
01:14:39,200 --> 01:14:42,240
Speaker 1: not going to turn it down. But um, but I

1334
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:45,200
Speaker 1: decided a long time ago that it's real important to

1335
01:14:45,200 --> 01:14:49,120
Speaker 1: me to live my life and fight for the things

1336
01:14:49,160 --> 01:14:53,400
Speaker 1: I believe, and um that's that's my calling. And I'm

1337
01:14:53,439 --> 01:14:56,360
Speaker 1: so fortunate to do it on behalf of clients and

1338
01:14:56,400 --> 01:15:00,519
Speaker 1: the public interest and so so that's that really where

1339
01:15:00,560 --> 01:15:04,440
Speaker 1: I see myself. Um, but you know, and it's a privilege.

1340
01:15:04,560 --> 01:15:06,920
Speaker 1: It's a privilege to fight for my clients and it's

1341
01:15:06,920 --> 01:15:11,160
Speaker 1: a privilege to mentor This group of fifteen attorneys were

1342
01:15:11,200 --> 01:15:14,439
Speaker 1: the only group only kind of Supreme Court group that's

1343
01:15:14,520 --> 01:15:19,040
Speaker 1: half women, and um, it's such a joy to work

1344
01:15:19,080 --> 01:15:22,280
Speaker 1: with these incredible young people. It's the top fifteen young

1345
01:15:22,360 --> 01:15:24,840
Speaker 1: lawyers in the country as far as I'm concerned, and

1346
01:15:25,360 --> 01:15:27,640
Speaker 1: to be able to work with them is is a

1347
01:15:27,720 --> 01:15:31,719
Speaker 1: real joy. So yeah, there's like cool things about government service,

1348
01:15:31,840 --> 01:15:37,200
Speaker 1: but um, in a really good spot, that's so cool. Well,

1349
01:15:38,160 --> 01:15:39,680
Speaker 1: I got a question for you that I like to

1350
01:15:39,720 --> 01:15:43,840
Speaker 1: ask everybody. The podcast is called work in progress, and

1351
01:15:44,520 --> 01:15:46,360
Speaker 1: it's a phrase that always a list it to a

1352
01:15:46,360 --> 01:15:49,320
Speaker 1: pretty immediate response when you hear it. And I'm curious

1353
01:15:49,840 --> 01:15:52,439
Speaker 1: when I just said it to you, what comes to

1354
01:15:52,520 --> 01:15:56,040
Speaker 1: mind as a work in progress in your life? Well,

1355
01:15:56,560 --> 01:16:01,479
Speaker 1: in in my life balance you know, it's particularly after Trump.

1356
01:16:01,560 --> 01:16:04,639
Speaker 1: I don't have any um, but when you know, when

1357
01:16:04,720 --> 01:16:07,200
Speaker 1: you when I think about that phrase in connection with

1358
01:16:07,240 --> 01:16:09,879
Speaker 1: your podcast, and I think, what's really a work in progress?

1359
01:16:09,880 --> 01:16:14,320
Speaker 1: It's our American democracy And it's not something that yes,

1360
01:16:14,320 --> 01:16:17,599
Speaker 1: it's written down on a piece of paper, but as

1361
01:16:17,640 --> 01:16:21,040
Speaker 1: Madison said, you know that's just mere parchment. What American

1362
01:16:21,080 --> 01:16:25,280
Speaker 1: democracy really is is its conversations like this between you

1363
01:16:25,320 --> 01:16:28,720
Speaker 1: and me that are going on all over the country

1364
01:16:28,840 --> 01:16:31,640
Speaker 1: and energizing people to get out and fight for what

1365
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:35,720
Speaker 1: they believe. And that's the work in progress, because we

1366
01:16:35,840 --> 01:16:38,080
Speaker 1: lost that for a little while. We got we were

1367
01:16:38,120 --> 01:16:41,960
Speaker 1: so glad with the new iPhone and the new whatever

1368
01:16:42,280 --> 01:16:46,080
Speaker 1: features on the Xbox that we didn't think about these

1369
01:16:46,120 --> 01:16:49,800
Speaker 1: big questions. And we don't have that luxury anymore. We've

1370
01:16:49,800 --> 01:16:53,000
Speaker 1: got adversaries like Russia that are trying to tear us apart.

1371
01:16:53,640 --> 01:16:57,760
Speaker 1: We have ill forces in our society racism and homophobia

1372
01:16:57,760 --> 01:17:00,360
Speaker 1: and sexism and the like that are trying to fan

1373
01:17:00,479 --> 01:17:04,400
Speaker 1: those flames even further. And you know, this is all

1374
01:17:04,400 --> 01:17:07,680
Speaker 1: a work in progress. It's a work that generally, in

1375
01:17:07,840 --> 01:17:10,760
Speaker 1: the course of America has bent bent in the ark,

1376
01:17:11,160 --> 01:17:14,120
Speaker 1: bent towards the arc of improvement, but certainly not for

1377
01:17:14,160 --> 01:17:17,880
Speaker 1: the last few years. And so we gotta pick that

1378
01:17:17,960 --> 01:17:21,080
Speaker 1: progress back up and fight for it. Well, I'm here

1379
01:17:21,479 --> 01:17:23,920
Speaker 1: anything you need. I'm sure there's plenty of people at

1380
01:17:23,960 --> 01:17:27,640
Speaker 1: home thinking the same. You. Let us know how we

1381
01:17:27,680 --> 01:17:29,880
Speaker 1: can show up and fight the good fight, and we'll

1382
01:17:29,920 --> 01:17:37,160
Speaker 1: be right there with you. Awesome, can't wait. This show

1383
01:17:37,240 --> 01:17:40,679
Speaker 1: is executive produced by me, Sophia Bush, and sim Sarna.

1384
01:17:41,320 --> 01:17:45,360
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Alison Bresnick. Our Associate producer is

1385
01:17:45,439 --> 01:17:49,360
Speaker 1: Cate Linley, our editor is Josh Wendish, and our music

1386
01:17:49,439 --> 01:17:51,960
Speaker 1: was written by Jack Garrett and produced by Mark Foster.

1387
01:17:52,720 --> 01:17:54,719
Speaker 1: This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy