Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Tuban is such an institution. One imagines him emerging
Speaker 1: fully dressed from the womb and walking straight into a
Speaker 1: TV studio. But before CNN and The New Yorker, before
Speaker 1: the books, he was a government lawyer, and before that
Speaker 1: a superstar at Harvard, and before that the young son
Speaker 1: of Marlene Sanders, the first major female star in TV news.
Speaker 1: Tuban executive produced the brilliant CNN mini series based on
Speaker 1: his Patty Hurst book. But first I want to ask
Speaker 1: him about a theme that runs through his work, namely
Speaker 1: that he seems to like pissing people off. Fox Studios
Speaker 1: was going to make a Patty Hurst movie with Tuban
Speaker 1: until Hurst called the book a hit job. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justices felt betrayed by the clerks he coaxed into interviews
Speaker 1: for his ex is a The Nine, and when he
Speaker 1: wrote a book about his first job, prosecuting Oliver North,
Speaker 1: his mentor Iran Contry Independent Council Lawrence Walsh threatened to
Speaker 1: prefer to to be prosecuted himself if he released the book,
Speaker 1: in which Walsh claimed he disclosed strategies and secrets of
Speaker 1: the ongoing investigation. You know, there are people who are
Speaker 1: friends of mine who have said, you were a punk
Speaker 1: kid twenty nine years old, What the hell do you
Speaker 1: have to write a book right away? And and you know, I,
Speaker 1: I can certainly understand that criticism. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: sort of matter of taste rather of legality. But I
Speaker 1: think in terms of like legally certainly had every right
Speaker 1: to do. In fact, I had to go to court
Speaker 1: to get a judgment that it was legal for me
Speaker 1: to do it, which I did. But you know, people
Speaker 1: who thought it was distasteful. I can certainly understand that.
Speaker 1: The nine another book he wrote about the court. What
Speaker 1: prompted you to write that book? I decided to write
Speaker 1: a novel and it was like a legal thriller, and
Speaker 1: it's about a TV anchor who gets killed on the air,
Speaker 1: and it was sort like combining my two worlds, the
Speaker 1: legal world in the TV world. And I wrote three chapters.
Speaker 1: And my agents said, you know, there's a famous editor,
Speaker 1: Phillis Grant, who wants to who thinks it's a great idea,
Speaker 1: wants to read your novels. You send her the chapters.
Speaker 1: So I center the chapters and Phillis invited me to
Speaker 1: her house, gave me a diet coke and said, Jeff,
Speaker 1: your novel is terrible. Your novel, it's like it's never
Speaker 1: gonna be good. You should drop it, and instead you
Speaker 1: should write a book about the Supreme Court. Because you've
Speaker 1: written profiles of justices. There hadn't been a real behind
Speaker 1: the scenes book about the Supreme Court since Bob Woodward
Speaker 1: and Scott Armstrong's The Brethren and the Seventies. I mean,
Speaker 1: the subject was just waiting to be exploited. And it's
Speaker 1: still my most successful book, still taught in all sorts
Speaker 1: of school and the nine and it was a great
Speaker 1: idea which was not my think. Ginsburg should be able
Speaker 1: to hanging there. Um, you know, I just saw her
Speaker 1: the other day. I mean, she is so stooped over. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, Ruth Ginsburg is about five foot tall, eighty
Speaker 1: pounds and tough as any NFL linebacker. And she's gonna
Speaker 1: fighting claw. She's certainly got all her marbles. She's doing
Speaker 1: her job as well as she can. She's going to
Speaker 1: try to hang in there, but we'll see. You know,
Speaker 1: she's eighty four. Eighty four is not the new anything.
Speaker 1: Eighty four eighty four. I worked with people for the
Speaker 1: American Way Norman Leaders organization, a lot of judicial watching
Speaker 1: going on there and just stressing the people over and
Speaker 1: over and over again that the court matters most in
Speaker 1: a way, And and Republicans have recognized that more than Democrats.
Speaker 1: And and you know, the fact that the majority leader
Speaker 1: was able to stop uh Barack Obama from filling that
Speaker 1: seat with Merrick Garland, and the fact that that was
Speaker 1: certainly taken for granted and the Democrats sort of put
Speaker 1: up with it, was indicative of the fact that they
Speaker 1: were a Publicans care as scared so much. You grew
Speaker 1: up in a household of two very accomplished, smart people.
Speaker 1: You're an only child. I am, well, you know, in
Speaker 1: the typical American way, I have a complicated family. I
Speaker 1: have a much older half sister. What I was raised
Speaker 1: as an only child. Yeah, and she grew up where Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: how much older than he was shaved your child in
Speaker 1: New York, very much so so she was she wasn't
Speaker 1: around so growing up in your house. So obviously your
Speaker 1: father is very accomplished, your mother is very accomplished. Your
Speaker 1: mother Marley and Sanders, who was a big pioneer and
Speaker 1: broadcast news. Were you kind of like a latchkey kid?
Speaker 1: I felt like I had a great degree of independence.
Speaker 1: I remember visiting my friends in the suburbs, thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is horrible waiting around for your mom
Speaker 1: to drive you around somewhere. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I started walking to school when I was like
Speaker 1: seven or eight, earlier than kids do it. Now, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have guys on like a security detail to tape
Speaker 1: my kids to school, who are like X Boomberg security
Speaker 1: people and cops with guns driving my kids to school.
Speaker 1: It's because you have so many enemies. It's a different
Speaker 1: but the the uh, who would you say? Would you say?
Speaker 1: It was equivalent? Which one of them is responsible for
Speaker 1: your great academic success? She did very well in school
Speaker 1: in law school, I did. But one of the lessons
Speaker 1: I learned, and again one of the things I don't
Speaker 1: think you learn until you have kids of your own
Speaker 1: is sort of what your parents were like, and the
Speaker 1: way my parents acted equally as supervisors, as educators, as
Speaker 1: people who love me. I mean, I really felt like
Speaker 1: my parents were equals in ways that I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that the time were so extraordinary. You know, my mother
Speaker 1: used to tell a funny story that when I was
Speaker 1: in first grade, for whatever reason, someday I went home
Speaker 1: with another kid at lunch and I came home and
Speaker 1: I was talking about my day. I said, mommy' not
Speaker 1: gonna believe this. His mother was home in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day. Why wasn't she at work? And that
Speaker 1: to me was like was was a revelation, because you know,
Speaker 1: I had I had a mother who worked. Now also,
Speaker 1: you know, they were hardly wealthy, but they had enough
Speaker 1: money to have full time help. So we were cushioned
Speaker 1: in that respect. But you know, my dad was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary intellect. I mean, he was largely self taught from
Speaker 1: he was from Philadelphia, and he really grew up in
Speaker 1: the classical music business. Wound up running the Symphony of
Speaker 1: the Year, which was Stokowsky's last orchestra, which failed under
Speaker 1: my father's leadership. It was the days before government subsidies
Speaker 1: of the arts, and and it was it was a
Speaker 1: heart wrenching experience, fortunately before I was conscious. And and
Speaker 1: he then went on to a career in public television
Speaker 1: where he's really one of the founding fathers. But his
Speaker 1: love of music was really the great passion of his life.
Speaker 1: In the one disappointment I think that I was to
Speaker 1: my parents is that I have utterly no talent in
Speaker 1: music and not even that much interest in it, which
Speaker 1: is really no know if you don't know, I did,
Speaker 1: I took I did take piano lessons, and I was
Speaker 1: perhaps the worst piano student in American history. I used
Speaker 1: to have a kitchen timer that like, I had to
Speaker 1: practice fifteen minutes a night. My most vivid memory of
Speaker 1: playing the piano was pushing the timer forward so it
Speaker 1: would end faster. I just was. I just hated it.
Speaker 1: And musical tastes, you know, I mean I I like
Speaker 1: the music of my youth, and you know I still
Speaker 1: love Elvis Costello and but but classical music I don't
Speaker 1: really know much about. And my dad could identify any
Speaker 1: piece immediately, opera, anything, and that. Um, for some reason,
Speaker 1: that was the one sort of intellectual piece of DNA
Speaker 1: that completely skipped me. Now to jump to the Patty
Speaker 1: Hurst project, which is based on your book, eRASS was
Speaker 1: this a pitch from you? Did you say to CNN,
Speaker 1: let's make my book into a documentary series. Um, it
Speaker 1: was sort of their idea. How involved were you mean,
Speaker 1: do they show you cuts? And they show you They
Speaker 1: showed me cuts. But the most important involvement was early
Speaker 1: on when I shared with them all my notes, the
Speaker 1: still photographs that I had, the links to video that
Speaker 1: I had, UM most importantly really the phone numbers of
Speaker 1: the people whom I interviewed so they could contact them directly.
Speaker 1: You interviewed Bill Harris, Emily Bill. That's that's a that's
Speaker 1: a whole, that's a story on We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that. The first thing I say to myself is
Speaker 1: that Bill Harris is as joyful and unrepentant as can
Speaker 1: possibly be about what he did. Is that a mistake?
Speaker 1: That is um that that is not not a mistake
Speaker 1: at all? And and was he repented in other ways
Speaker 1: that were left out? Or what you see is what
Speaker 1: you saw? What you saw is what you get. I mean,
Speaker 1: I spent a tremendous time amount of time with Bill Harris.
Speaker 1: Um I um the and I admit tremendous ambivalence about
Speaker 1: Bill because he did really horrible things. He kidnapped Patty Hurst,
Speaker 1: which is an unspeakably wrong act. He was a UM
Speaker 1: you know, he tried to set off bombs. Fortunately he
Speaker 1: was incompetent, and he never managed to hurt anybody with
Speaker 1: his bombs. He helped rob Banks. I mean this, I
Speaker 1: have absolutely no tolerance for, no respect for it, no
Speaker 1: indulgence for but there is he did it for perversely
Speaker 1: decent reasons. He was never in it to make money.
Speaker 1: He was never in it for um, you know, any
Speaker 1: sort of personal gain. This was a twisted kind of
Speaker 1: altruism that was behind the whole s l a that
Speaker 1: they were not to freeze as well. They were twisted
Speaker 1: and wrong. But you know, in my line of work,
Speaker 1: I dealt with a lot of criminals. I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about O. J. Simpson lately with this horrible interview. That's
Speaker 1: I mean, that is a true sociopath. Bill Harris is
Speaker 1: not a sociopath. He is a deeply, deeply mis guided person,
Speaker 1: but there is something about him that is not entirely evil.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I guess I had perhaps more
Speaker 1: tolerance for Bill than I should is that I got
Speaker 1: into the seventies as a subject, and and you know,
Speaker 1: I was alive in the seventies, but I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and the degree to which the country was really falling
Speaker 1: apart in the seventies was something I did not remember
Speaker 1: or recognize. I mean, the statistic that that haunts me
Speaker 1: because it's just so amazing. In the early and mid
Speaker 1: nineties seventies, there were two thousand political bombings a year
Speaker 1: in the United States. Consider what it's like now when
Speaker 1: we have one political bombing, and and the fact that
Speaker 1: the country was convulsed in this way. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: Bill and Emily Harris and the s l A setting
Speaker 1: off bombs. It was the weather underground, and you had Watergate,
Speaker 1: and you had the energy crisis, and and then and
Speaker 1: then you had the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco, which
Speaker 1: I had never even heard of, where these African Americans
Speaker 1: were just killing random white people on the street. And
Speaker 1: then you have Jim Jones, you know, the People's Temple
Speaker 1: where nine people committed suicide. I mean, it's just those
Speaker 1: convulsions Bill and Emily Harris look less aberrational when you
Speaker 1: see what was going on in the country at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't help but come out of this
Speaker 1: thing with a real concern about what a fraud Patty
Speaker 1: Hurst was. I mean, one of the most harrowing moments
Speaker 1: is and I think you're narrating at the point when
Speaker 1: they say she's in the room and the FBI guys
Speaker 1: come in to take her out of that room, and
Speaker 1: rather than rushing into their arms and saying thank God
Speaker 1: you're here, they cover and she could do in the salute.
Speaker 1: And and when when when they come in the door,
Speaker 1: she's heading to the bedroom where the guns are. And
Speaker 1: and you know the reason why I think the Patty
Speaker 1: Hurst case still compels people so much is so interesting
Speaker 1: to people. It is because it's a mystery about what
Speaker 1: goes on in a person's head. And the arguments about
Speaker 1: whether Patty Hurst was simply coerced to do all that
Speaker 1: she did or that she actually joined the s l
Speaker 1: A is a rich, complicated subject, and I don't pretend
Speaker 1: that it's an easy question to answer. She claims that
Speaker 1: she was she was coerced by them. When she makes
Speaker 1: that claim as a defense, I'm sure she opens herself
Speaker 1: up in California law to have detailed forensic psychiatric examinations
Speaker 1: correct well. In fact, her trial was very much the
Speaker 1: battle of experts. There were six psychiatrists to examine her,
Speaker 1: three from the prosecution, three from the defense, sure, and
Speaker 1: and and they all testified and and frankly it was
Speaker 1: not a great moment for the psychiatric profession. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of gobbledygook that sort of canceled each other out.
Speaker 1: But what really moved the jury was her behavior during
Speaker 1: the year and a half she was on the road,
Speaker 1: on the run with the s l A. And and
Speaker 1: you know, I never missed, I never minimized, you know,
Speaker 1: the terror of her kidnapping and the fact that she
Speaker 1: had sex in a closet, which you know the s
Speaker 1: l A said was consensual. But I don't believe people
Speaker 1: who are you know, who who are you know, kidnapped
Speaker 1: in a closet, are capable of consent in the way
Speaker 1: that we understand it today. But when you look at
Speaker 1: her behavior over that year and a half, three bank robberies,
Speaker 1: including one where a woman was killed, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: Rna hoppsle Uh where she shot up a street in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and male sporting goods, which to me is
Speaker 1: the defining event of her period as a kidnapper, where
Speaker 1: she tried to set off bombs under police cars in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, When when she was by herself for long
Speaker 1: periods of time where she could have made made no
Speaker 1: attempt to escape. When you add all that up, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the the the only verdict I could come
Speaker 1: to is that she did, actually she did go over
Speaker 1: what was in her past, what was in her youth?
Speaker 1: Did she hate? You know not? You know, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about Patty's youth, first of all, was how young
Speaker 1: she was. She was only when she was kidnapped. Uh.
Speaker 1: But you know, even though she came from a very
Speaker 1: wealthy family, it was very typical of the era. You know,
Speaker 1: she piste off from mother. Her mother was a Catholic
Speaker 1: southern Southerner, you know, very concerned about appearances and propriety
Speaker 1: and and you know, Patty like boys, and she moved
Speaker 1: in with her boyfriend, which horrified her mother. But I mean,
Speaker 1: these were the kind of conflicts that were utterly routine.
Speaker 1: You know, she was not a particularly political person. She
Speaker 1: you know, she had worked as a clerk under you know,
Speaker 1: without people knowing where she was for a few months.
Speaker 1: She got a sense of a little bit of how
Speaker 1: the other half lived. But this was not a budding
Speaker 1: political activist. This was not a huge rebel. You know,
Speaker 1: there were signs that she was somewhat more rebellious than
Speaker 1: most kids. You know, she she uh, she she was
Speaker 1: very tough on the nuns, and she kept getting thrown
Speaker 1: out of Catholic schools. But I mean this is very
Speaker 1: minor stuff by the standards of the of the era.
Speaker 1: So the idea that she was some sort of radical
Speaker 1: in embryo, they really just wasn't much proof for that.
Speaker 1: Is it assumed that the Freeze and his organization, everything
Speaker 1: they did, they were super effective in this brainwashing. You know,
Speaker 1: to know the s l A is to know they
Speaker 1: weren't super effective at anything. I mean, they were not competent.
Speaker 1: They didn't have a plan to brainwash her. You know,
Speaker 1: quite no one thought she was actually going to join
Speaker 1: up with them. They basically wanted to get rid of
Speaker 1: her after a certain period of time. But but I
Speaker 1: think the best way to describe her her behavior is that,
Speaker 1: you know, she sort of adapted to her surroundings and
Speaker 1: and you know she she had a thing for authority figures.
Speaker 1: When you think about you know, her boyfriends and lovers
Speaker 1: over this period, Uh, Steve Weed, her fiance had been
Speaker 1: a math to chure in her high school, an authority figure.
Speaker 1: Steve Um. Uh, Well, that's that's that's that becomes her
Speaker 1: husband Um, and he's not just a copies her bodyguard
Speaker 1: UM and the two boyfriends she had while she was
Speaker 1: with the s l A. The first one was Willie Wolfe,
Speaker 1: was sort of her bodyguard within the s l A.
Speaker 1: And then later in in her period where she acknowledges
Speaker 1: she has a consensual relationship with Steve Salia, another who
Speaker 1: was sort of a protector within what became the later
Speaker 1: s l A. And then of course, her lawyers hire
Speaker 1: a bodyguard for her when she's out on bail and
Speaker 1: off duty cop UM named Bernie Shaw, and they they
Speaker 1: fall in love and they have a long and successful marriage.
Speaker 1: So she had a thing for sort of authority figures,
Speaker 1: and she adapted to her surroundings with them. And that's
Speaker 1: sort of the best way I can characterize, at least
Speaker 1: her relationship with Matt legal expert Jeffrey Tuban. Another smart
Speaker 1: kid who turned into a journalistic superstar is George Stephanopoulos.
Speaker 1: But when he left the White House where he was
Speaker 1: domestic policy adviser to President Clinton, he wasn't sure where
Speaker 1: he'd land. I knew I didn't want to be someone
Speaker 1: who just hung around Washington trading off of what he
Speaker 1: had done forever, and I knew that in order to
Speaker 1: feel my age again, I had to start a different career.
Speaker 1: The rest of that interview is that here's the Thing,
Speaker 1: Dot Org coming up, Tuban and I go deep on
Speaker 1: o J. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. New Yorker writer and CNN legal analyst
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Tuban wrote the definitive book on o J. The
Speaker 1: thing about o J that was so rich and it
Speaker 1: was so complicated was that Johnny Cock and who again
Speaker 1: a complicated person, but someone basically I just loved, understood
Speaker 1: the context of the story and understood what it meant
Speaker 1: to blame white cops in Los Angeles and how there
Speaker 1: were so many justifiable reasons to be for black people
Speaker 1: to be pissed at the at the l a p D.
Speaker 1: And he took that history and put it to use
Speaker 1: in favor of the least deserving person in America. And
Speaker 1: and so you had this crazy juxtaposition of Cochrane pointing
Speaker 1: out all these injustices and and then you know, like
Speaker 1: Manna from Heaven, Mark Ferman appears, who is the personification
Speaker 1: of all that's wrong with the l a p D.
Speaker 1: And he puts it to work for the benefit of
Speaker 1: of O. J. Simpson, who is basically just a wealthy
Speaker 1: wife beater, that's all he is. This was a domestic
Speaker 1: violence homicide. Happens all the time in the United States.
Speaker 1: He's just spoiled, Brad. It was a was spoiled, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean when he was at Galile High School in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, he was a football prodigy. He goes to USC,
Speaker 1: superstar at at USC, the first you know, Heisman Trophy winner,
Speaker 1: first pick in the draft, and and you know, he
Speaker 1: led this gilded life, insulated not just from the the
Speaker 1: broader African American struggle. Yes, the perfect setup for someone
Speaker 1: who who had this sense of entitlement um that led
Speaker 1: him to have expectations about his wife that when they
Speaker 1: were not met, he beat the hell out. What do
Speaker 1: you think happened? I mean, I mean I hate to
Speaker 1: ask you specifics like this, Like you watched the program,
Speaker 1: you know, the one based on your book. You know,
Speaker 1: you watch this program in five episodes, go by seven
Speaker 1: and a half hours, and you're still stopping you and
Speaker 1: I want to get you in a room and I
Speaker 1: want to go do you still think O J. Did
Speaker 1: it so all the all the DNA evidence, the DNA
Speaker 1: of is it? That's it. It's not just the DNA evidence.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there are some glove planted. The
Speaker 1: glove wasn't planeted, the the the there are one set
Speaker 1: of bloody footprints walking away from the crime scene. They
Speaker 1: are size of Levin Bruno Molly shoes that O J owned.
Speaker 1: I mean, what more do you need to know? And again,
Speaker 1: you know, people talk about this case as if you know,
Speaker 1: he it's inexplicable, why would he do this? He was
Speaker 1: a domestic violence perpetrator. These is this is how these
Speaker 1: stories escalate. This was not a random crime. This was
Speaker 1: a domestic violence homicide. And and that I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole me Too movement I think, you know,
Speaker 1: has illuminated just how per I mean, obviously that's a
Speaker 1: somewhat separate subject, but it just shows, you know, how
Speaker 1: people could discount the domestic violence aspect of the story
Speaker 1: when it's the core of the story. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: why this murder took place, and poor Ronald Goldman sort
Speaker 1: of stumbled on the scene. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: dirty little secrets of of particularly homicide investigations, is that
Speaker 1: in the vast, vast majority of the time, it's completely
Speaker 1: obvious who the perpetrator is. I mean, you know, there
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of homicides are what people called disputes.
Speaker 1: And I did a story in Milwaukee about the prosecutor's
Speaker 1: office there and it said, of the crime victims, of
Speaker 1: the murder victims in um Milwaukee have criminal records their
Speaker 1: disputes between criminals. And it's like it's pretty easy to tell,
Speaker 1: you know, who killed whom and why. When you have
Speaker 1: cases where you have an aggressive defense, where you have
Speaker 1: cases where people are going to challenge the evidence. The
Speaker 1: cops aren't used to that, and um, you know that
Speaker 1: when you had a genius like Barry Shack challenging the
Speaker 1: DNA evidence and and talking about the possibility of planning,
Speaker 1: was the blanket over the bodies? Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was just this stuff. Was the Asian guy. It was
Speaker 1: just a criminalist. I mean, you know who was just
Speaker 1: you know, supposed to be collecting the evidence. And you know,
Speaker 1: because most most cases ending guilty. Please, that's sort of
Speaker 1: and the vast majority of cases don't have lawyers the
Speaker 1: caliber of Barry Check. None of that behavior has ever challenged,
Speaker 1: but it was and there you see, did she do
Speaker 1: everything she could have done to protect herself? Did she
Speaker 1: really really do what a lot of women do and
Speaker 1: they just knuckle under and hope things get better? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean she left, she divorced him, She called the
Speaker 1: police eight times at least, I mean, you know this,
Speaker 1: she did more than a lot of women do under
Speaker 1: under these circumstances. And also remember you know when she
Speaker 1: called the police, she knew that the police socialized with OJ,
Speaker 1: that they went, and that they were as star struck
Speaker 1: as anybody else by o J. So where was she
Speaker 1: supposed to turn if the police were essentially on o
Speaker 1: J side? So I have a lot of sympathy for
Speaker 1: Nicole on that front. Do you think of that a
Speaker 1: team of Coquine and Check and Shapiro, uh and Bailey,
Speaker 1: did any of them voice any serious regrets about the
Speaker 1: outcome of the trial? I mean Shapiro kind of boycotting
Speaker 1: the festivities afterward and kind of backtracking on certain things
Speaker 1: in the race card. And I actually have a lot
Speaker 1: of contempt for how Robert Shapiro handled the whole thing,
Speaker 1: because Shapiro wanted everything both ways. He wanted to be
Speaker 1: a good lawyer for his client, but he wanted his
Speaker 1: palace in West l A To still like him. And
Speaker 1: they all, they all saw how bad, you know, how
Speaker 1: poisonous the trial had become. So he wanted to help
Speaker 1: o J. But he wanted to dissociate himself with the defense.
Speaker 1: I think that's crap. I think he shouldn't have done that,
Speaker 1: Efflee Bailey, because he's a nut. I think so Ja's innocent,
Speaker 1: like has a whole crazy theory about how I don't know,
Speaker 1: I know, I think he actually believes it. I mean,
Speaker 1: he um Johnny, and Johnny was like, I did my job,
Speaker 1: I blame the cops. I always blame the cops in
Speaker 1: my case, and you come and take me happy with
Speaker 1: the result. Barry Scheck believes with all his heart that
Speaker 1: the evidence was planted. What he ultimately thinks about o
Speaker 1: J's guilt or innocence, I'm not sure. Well we you know,
Speaker 1: I said, I mean, I know one loved Barry Scheck.
Speaker 1: I haven't gone there with him, but he believed with
Speaker 1: all his heart that the evidence was planted, and he
Speaker 1: thought that alone justified an acquittal. I don't think the
Speaker 1: evidence was planted. I didn't think there was a justified acquittal.
Speaker 1: So there were different attitudes on the part of the defense.
Speaker 1: When you look back on Clark and Darten, Uh in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, there's a real distance from all this, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, develop your perspective at all, or people's perspectives
Speaker 1: about it. Do you look back and think beyond is
Speaker 1: firm in the pivotal moment. I think the case when
Speaker 1: they put him on the stand, well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: not so much they blow the case when they put
Speaker 1: him on the stand, because the defense would have put
Speaker 1: him on the stand. I mean, Ferman was the cancer
Speaker 1: at the heart of the case. And they couldn't not
Speaker 1: they couldn't read them out, read them out of the
Speaker 1: case because you know, he did discover the glove at
Speaker 1: OJ's residence. I mean it was not he. They couldn't
Speaker 1: pretend that he had no role in the case. You know,
Speaker 1: when you look at you know, a four month trial
Speaker 1: where the jury deliberates for half a day, there was
Speaker 1: no one turning point. I mean, obviously Chris Dartin shouldn't
Speaker 1: have told him to put on the glove. But the
Speaker 1: case was lost in a million ways, and it was
Speaker 1: probably lost in jury selection. So, I mean one of
Speaker 1: the things I like about going back to stories that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're twenty years old or even forty years old,
Speaker 1: like Patty Hurst, is that people have sort of a
Speaker 1: tragic sense about them and I don't I mean tragic
Speaker 1: in the Greek sense of it was all preordained. We
Speaker 1: think we can control events, but events control us. You know,
Speaker 1: we're so engaged in being angry at the time, and
Speaker 1: why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that?
Speaker 1: When you go back twenty years or forty years, people
Speaker 1: are I think more philosophical about about these subjects, at
Speaker 1: least I am, and I enjoy that kind of that
Speaker 1: kind of work. Do you have more editorial freedom, would
Speaker 1: you say writing books around the New Yorker books? Um,
Speaker 1: the the difference, Well, the New Yorker is and it's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I love it. But it is
Speaker 1: a very intensively edited magazine. I mean, you know, starting
Speaker 1: with David Remnick, but also the senior editors who who
Speaker 1: you know deal with you day to day. I mean
Speaker 1: they are they are tough and fastidious, and they tell
Speaker 1: you to go rewrite, and they tell you to do
Speaker 1: more reporting and um, there is a um and I
Speaker 1: mean this in a good way, but there is a
Speaker 1: formula of sorts. I mean there is a rigor that
Speaker 1: is imposed on New Yorker stories that at least I
Speaker 1: feel kind of constrains my voice. I and and and
Speaker 1: New Yorker story. You know, the New Yorker stories, you know,
Speaker 1: off and have a point of view, but mostly they
Speaker 1: are laying out facts. I feel like when I write
Speaker 1: a book, when I go to the trouble of writing
Speaker 1: a book, I owe it to the reader sort of
Speaker 1: laying out where I stand. And like, for example, I
Speaker 1: wrote a number of pieces about O. J. Simpson in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker at the time, but I never said,
Speaker 1: you know, do I think he's guilty, because that just
Speaker 1: wouldn't have fit within the truth. I am a bit
Speaker 1: of a New Yorker story in my book. I think
Speaker 1: I said it on the third page that you know,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely positively guilty. And I think, you know, when
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about impeachment, I I said I
Speaker 1: thought the impeachment of Bill Clinton was a disgrace. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, written two books in the Supreme Court which
Speaker 1: have less clear there's not sort of guilty innocent dialectic
Speaker 1: in them. They are, you know, more broadly narrative. But
Speaker 1: I feel a greater freedom to give my opinion in
Speaker 1: a book than I do in a New Yorker story.
Speaker 1: What would you say from people who aren't that familiar
Speaker 1: with to go to Clinton now? To jump to Clinton now?
Speaker 1: A big is all these stories of something in common
Speaker 1: where someone does something and some big, big ticket litigation ensues,
Speaker 1: and that litigation is complicated by the fact that the
Speaker 1: person is no altar board. They've done O J killed
Speaker 1: his wife. But as Juror number ten says, we're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna settle the score for Rod Mcking. I want
Speaker 1: to say this carefully. I mean, I know Clinton. I'm
Speaker 1: friends with Clinton. However friendly you can be with the
Speaker 1: former president the United States. Uh, And yet you know,
Speaker 1: you wonder beyond his libido and his appetites and things
Speaker 1: that got him in trouble, the people that wanted to
Speaker 1: bring him down politically, they hated him for what. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. I think it returns to what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, the sixties and seventies. I
Speaker 1: think they thought Bill Clinton was the embodiment of the
Speaker 1: changes in society from the sixties and seventies, that these
Speaker 1: people didn't like sexual liberation, less uh scrupulous morality, the
Speaker 1: rise of women. I think, you know, the hatred of
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, which of course we saw come to fruition
Speaker 1: in two thousand and sixteen. You know, that was a
Speaker 1: big part of why they hated Clinton, to the famous
Speaker 1: moment where she says, well, I could just stay at
Speaker 1: home and bake cookies. Um, they hated Cloton for that.
Speaker 1: They hated Hillary, they hated Bill and I think the
Speaker 1: the the hostility to Clinton that that that led to
Speaker 1: impeachment was much less based in any sort of policy matter.
Speaker 1: I mean, Clinton's policies were hardly very radical. It was
Speaker 1: that Clinton was the embodiment of sort of the worst
Speaker 1: side of the baby boom in their view, that that
Speaker 1: the self indulgent, uh morally right. You know, dodged the draft,
Speaker 1: most of his critics stoffs the draft two but that's okay. Um,
Speaker 1: all of that I think was why they hated Clinton
Speaker 1: much more than any sort of you know, police I
Speaker 1: knew everything that was wrong with Hillary Clinton, or I
Speaker 1: was familiar with the complaints about hill to be Clinton
Speaker 1: in where there was some strand of validity of that.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I and when I look back
Speaker 1: on it now, it's like the slow motions, like the
Speaker 1: Titanic kidding the Iceberg. It never occurred to me that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump could become president of the United States, and
Speaker 1: he has been exactly what his critics claimed he would
Speaker 1: be as president. I mean, you know, I the thing
Speaker 1: that that really just I can't get over about the
Speaker 1: Trump presidency is not so much that he's conservative politically,
Speaker 1: and he puts someone very conservative on the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: even though who knows what his actual politics really are.
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea that Donald Trump is like somehow
Speaker 1: opposed to abortion is kind of comical, right, But but
Speaker 1: I mean, he has he has made his political alliance
Speaker 1: with the most conservative part of the Republican Party. And
Speaker 1: the thing that just kills me every time he does
Speaker 1: it is when he tweets or says, you know, why
Speaker 1: isn't Hillary Clinton being prosecuted? Why why aren't the FBI
Speaker 1: agents being pro secuited. The idea that you can call
Speaker 1: for the imprisonment of your political rivals is precisely what
Speaker 1: happens in authoritarian countries, and his obvious affection for authoritarians
Speaker 1: like Putin, like Urdawan in Turkey. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: something I never thought would happen in the United States.
Speaker 1: I knew we'd have conservative president George W. Bush was
Speaker 1: was conservative, and I you know, I thought the Iraq
Speaker 1: War was a disaster. I thought the economy collapsed under him.
Speaker 1: But I mean these were sort of within the normal
Speaker 1: range of American politics. The casual racism, the bigotry. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like Maxine Waters, the African American congressman from congressman
Speaker 1: from from Los Angeles, and he he says, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, she's very she's very low i Q. She's
Speaker 1: very low IQ. I mean, the idea that the president
Speaker 1: of the United States talks that way. How do we
Speaker 1: deal with that going forward? You know, do we you know,
Speaker 1: the one line we you know, normalize it? I mean,
Speaker 1: when do we stop pointing out the racism, the ignorance,
Speaker 1: the the intolerance of the authoritarian tendant season I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I really don't know. And some people think, well,
Speaker 1: you should just ignore the tweets. How you can ignore
Speaker 1: the tweets. I mean, he's completely guilt guiltless either way. Uh,
Speaker 1: do you think we're going to see something from Mueller soon.
Speaker 1: You know, the crucial question that of the Muller investigation,
Speaker 1: which has not been which which I don't know the
Speaker 1: answer to, is we now know there was this enormously
Speaker 1: elaborate Russian effort to get Donald Trump elected president. There
Speaker 1: was this extreme solicitude for Russia reflected throughout the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign and his campaign chairman um for a while Paul
Speaker 1: Mantiford was like literally in hock to Vladimir Putin's allies.
Speaker 1: What we have not seen clearly is the the joining
Speaker 1: of those two, the the collusion as it were. I mean,
Speaker 1: there there are examples. There's the meeting in June of
Speaker 1: in sixteen and Trump Tower. There is Roger Stone talking
Speaker 1: about Wiki leaks uh in advance of those releases. But
Speaker 1: but the the clear proof of Trump's involvement with Russia's
Speaker 1: or Russia's effort to help him has not yet been made.
Speaker 1: And and that's what I'm waiting to see whether Mueller
Speaker 1: can do. Is this your next book? Yes? Yes, it
Speaker 1: is like your pieces in the New Yorker. Now, yes,
Speaker 1: I I'm going to do a book about this investigation,
Speaker 1: and and and and you know I'm not in a hurry.
Speaker 1: This is not going to be over very soon, and
Speaker 1: you know, not least because no one from Mueller's office
Speaker 1: will talk to me while this is going on. I'm
Speaker 1: going to just wait and it's going to go through.
Speaker 1: Most of two is going to be a movie too.
Speaker 1: It looks like we're gonna sell the rights. Well, as
Speaker 1: you well know, just selling the rights doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a movie. But it looks like we're
Speaker 1: gonna sell. But what you're gonna need is a really
Speaker 1: good Trump control with God who knows where I can.
Speaker 1: It's not me. I'm the worst Trump impersonator. Apparently that's
Speaker 1: out there. It's incredible, incredible. Well, so you'd say that
Speaker 1: the through line, if there is a through line, I
Speaker 1: know your books, what is it? It's it's the law,
Speaker 1: the drama, the stakes, the importance of legal disputes and
Speaker 1: their resolution. We were saying, my producers are not before
Speaker 1: we started with you. You're like the Steven Spielberg of
Speaker 1: legal books. I am exactly like Steven Spielberg, exactly the
Speaker 1: several zeros off everybody else Spielberg. But but but there
Speaker 1: a big, sprawling themes Clinton O. J. Patty story David Remny,
Speaker 1: the editor of The New Yorker. When he when he's
Speaker 1: when he's talking about story ideas, he always says, bring
Speaker 1: me big dumb ideas, like bring me like what people
Speaker 1: really want to know about? Like And I remember I
Speaker 1: was kicking around story ideas with him once he says, well,
Speaker 1: what about the Chief Justice of the United States? So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, given how much this story has
Speaker 1: let our politics has you know, transfixed the country has
Speaker 1: really called into question the legitimacy of this entire presidential election,
Speaker 1: why shouldn't I write a book about it? I mean,
Speaker 1: I really do think of myself fundamentally as a legal journalist.
Speaker 1: I mean, you asked me earlier than I did. I
Speaker 1: think Donald Trump was gonna win. You know, I know
Speaker 1: people like Ron Brownstein who are brilliant at analyzing polls
Speaker 1: and analyzing you know, trends and politics. That's not me.
Speaker 1: But what is the Supreme Court going to do on
Speaker 1: an issue that I'm that I'm good at and that
Speaker 1: I understand and that I care about? Um, How will
Speaker 1: a jury react to certain evidence that interests me that
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm is in my Bailey Wick. So
Speaker 1: I just you know, I'm it's sort of like anchoring
Speaker 1: on television and news. You know, people have always asked me,
Speaker 1: you know, not always no one gives. No one really
Speaker 1: cares that much whether I'm an anchor or not. But
Speaker 1: you know, do I want to anchor? I really don't
Speaker 1: want to anchor? And it's like not, It's it's just
Speaker 1: not something I counting on you not to know I'm not.
Speaker 1: And also they all get fired for the most part.
Speaker 1: It's and so, you know, I feel like I have
Speaker 1: found my niches in in uh, providing content, and I'm
Speaker 1: happy with them. I don't need more. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's emerged from the issues about the election was
Speaker 1: reflecting back on Obama and what Obama didn't do. When
Speaker 1: you look back on Obama through this prism of almost
Speaker 1: you know, a year and a half at least of Trump,
Speaker 1: has your opinion of him changed at all? Not really? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking of books, you could write a whole
Speaker 1: book exploring the decisions made under the two thousands in
Speaker 1: the two thousand sixteen election that we're based on the
Speaker 1: assumption Hillary was going to win anyway. So much of
Speaker 1: people's behavior was based on the idea that she was
Speaker 1: going to win anyway. Obama didn't raise as big a
Speaker 1: stink as he might have about the Russians, which he
Speaker 1: knew about, because he thought she was going to win anyway,
Speaker 1: and the Republicans were not going to help him raise
Speaker 1: this alarm. You know, Jim call me. Thought she was
Speaker 1: gonna win anyway, so he blew up the you know,
Speaker 1: he put that stuff out there the week before the election.
Speaker 1: They didn't think it mattered, didn't think it mattered. And
Speaker 1: how wrong they all were. A sobering thought from legal
Speaker 1: writer and analyst Jeffrey Tuban, who is as eager to
Speaker 1: write as I am to read the last chapter of
Speaker 1: his upcoming book on the Trump presidency. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you were listening to Here's the Thing