Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman and I am pretty excited about today's guest. Hi,
Speaker 1: this is Stacy Abrams. Hi, Stacey, it's no Affeldman. How
Speaker 1: are you? I am well, How are you? I'm great?
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. If it's okay
Speaker 1: with you, we'll just dive right down. Sounds good, Yep.
Speaker 1: It's attorney, politician, activist, romance novelist, and most likely twenty
Speaker 1: twenty Democratic vice presidential candidate, Stacy Abrams. You know all
Speaker 1: about Stacy. In twenty eighteen, she ran for governor of Georgia.
Speaker 1: She turned out an extraordinary number of voters, especially African
Speaker 1: American voters, and very very narrowly lost to Brian Kemp,
Speaker 1: a Republican who was the Secretary of State of Georgia
Speaker 1: at the time, which meant that his job was to
Speaker 1: oversee the election. Stacy never conceded the race. She said
Speaker 1: that Kemp suppressed votes and that she believed she had
Speaker 1: sufficient reason to question the outcome. She still considers Kemp
Speaker 1: not to be the legitimate governor of Georgia. The whole
Speaker 1: election and its aftermath catapulted Stacy onto the national stage.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, Stacy Abrams became the first African American
Speaker 1: woman to deliver an official response to the State of
Speaker 1: the Union address. Now she runs two organizations, Fair Fight
Speaker 1: and Fair Count. She has appeared on Everyone's short list
Speaker 1: as the most like the vice presidential pick, no matter
Speaker 1: who is the Democratic nominee for the presidency in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: She also recently told the blog five thirty eight that
Speaker 1: she plans to be president herself by twenty forty. I
Speaker 1: reached Stacy Abrams by phone, understandably enough, she was too
Speaker 1: busy to get to a studio, and we talked about
Speaker 1: how to create change, whether that's easier to do as
Speaker 1: an insider or as an outsider. So I want to
Speaker 1: begin by asking you about two organizations that you've founded,
Speaker 1: Fair Fight, which is devoted to fighting voter suppression, and
Speaker 1: fair Count, which is devoted to making sure the census
Speaker 1: is fair. The fairness theme emerges very powerfully here, and
Speaker 1: I just want to begin by asking you, given your
Speaker 1: long career in public service and as a lawyer, as
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, what makes you think that fairness is achievable.
Speaker 1: I'd like to begin by a thinking about the fact
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Deep South. I am the
Speaker 1: daughter of two people who are civil rights activist as teenagers,
Speaker 1: and my grandparents and all of those who preceded me
Speaker 1: either live through Jim Crow or the Black Codes, or slavery,
Speaker 1: and so I think of fairness as a continuum. Our
Speaker 1: responsibility is to constantly move towards the promise of equality,
Speaker 1: and in each generation of my family's life, progress has
Speaker 1: been made. It has been slow and plotting and painful
Speaker 1: and violent, but it has been achievable. And so my
Speaker 1: responsibility is not simply to see the difficulties that we face,
Speaker 1: but to remember that in each generation and the opportunity
Speaker 1: to fight back against these difficulties has been a critical responsibility.
Speaker 1: And the ultimate goal is not that we will have
Speaker 1: everything we desire. The goal is that we will have fairness,
Speaker 1: and that is my core belief. That's a moving and
Speaker 1: it's actually even an inspiring answer. You're a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: I don't say that as a bad word. I'm a
Speaker 1: lawyer too. You know I went to this same bows
Speaker 1: school and that you did. Other people may hold that
Speaker 1: against us, but I don't. But I want to ask
Speaker 1: about the balance between law and more direct social activism
Speaker 1: because I sometimes worry. I mean, I even teach law
Speaker 1: students for a living, and I sometimes worry that I
Speaker 1: fall too far into the category of telling them, look,
Speaker 1: this social movement generated legal change, and so that's how
Speaker 1: you know that it's a success full social movement in
Speaker 1: real time. And then they sort of look at me,
Speaker 1: at least when they start law school a little skeptically
Speaker 1: and say, isn't it the other way around? I mean,
Speaker 1: shouldn't the measure of a law be whether it produced
Speaker 1: social change rather than the measure of a social movement
Speaker 1: being whether it generated some some legal outcomes. And I'm
Speaker 1: wondering how you see the balance. Obviously we need both,
Speaker 1: but when you think about which comes first, or which
Speaker 1: needs to be more powerful, or where the emphasis should be,
Speaker 1: where do you come down. I think they're inherently intertwined.
Speaker 1: And I think your students are asking smart questions. But
Speaker 1: it wouldn't say unfair, but it's a more complicated question.
Speaker 1: If you look at my election, for example, my decision
Speaker 1: on November sixteenth to acknowledge the legal sufficiency of the outcome.
Speaker 1: Recognize that there are a laws in place that have
Speaker 1: created the very process that was used to thwart voters,
Speaker 1: that those laws have been deemed appropriate by lawmakers. But
Speaker 1: my refusal to concede the election was that I take
Speaker 1: exception to the actual laws themselves, that the very presence
Speaker 1: of those rules that permitted that behavior raises the need
Speaker 1: to question and in our case, overturn those laws and
Speaker 1: reconstruct those laws. Social movements give voice and power and
Speaker 1: faith to what needs to change. The law gives structure
Speaker 1: and to the extent possible permanence to the existence of
Speaker 1: that change. And for me, I've never seen I understand
Speaker 1: there's attention, but I've never seen a dichotomy or an
Speaker 1: order of priority to my participation. My responsibility is to
Speaker 1: be engaged in the social action that we are pursuing
Speaker 1: through fair fight and fair account. But I am also
Speaker 1: someone who believes that I need to be part of
Speaker 1: the lawmaking process because social movements without a voice in
Speaker 1: the law do not have the longstanding and deep, deeply
Speaker 1: needed effects. If there isn't something implicated into laws that
Speaker 1: makes it harder to undo or to thwart the intention,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought up your non concession after
Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen Georgia governor's race, and I want to
Speaker 1: use that as you just raised it, to try to
Speaker 1: ask you about a sort of a skeptical question that
Speaker 1: someone from the outside might ask, and they might say,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes down to can the system be
Speaker 1: trusted to change enough to make a difference. So as
Speaker 1: you say, you recognize the legal sufficiency of the outcome
Speaker 1: in the sense that you didn't walk into the governor's
Speaker 1: office and say I'm the governor and ask the Georgia
Speaker 1: State Police to put you in office. But you didn't
Speaker 1: conceive because you didn't want to say I lost in
Speaker 1: a fair fight, because it wasn't a fair fight. And
Speaker 1: so in that sense, you didn't want to say the
Speaker 1: words I lost because you didn't lose in some fairness sense.
Speaker 1: And I guess what I'm wondering is, couldn't someone say, look,
Speaker 1: that suggests the system is just rigged in a way
Speaker 1: where it's not going to change. And if that's the case,
Speaker 1: we need to go outside the system and engage in
Speaker 1: civil disobedience or other more radical forms of efforts to
Speaker 1: not just tweak the system through laws and improvements and
Speaker 1: social activism, but something more fundamental. I would say they're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. But for me, I have always internalized that
Speaker 1: it cannot be one or the other, that it must
Speaker 1: always be this collaboration of challenging the laws of they stand,
Speaker 1: creating better laws and fighting bad laws, and also engaging
Speaker 1: people to press the system for the change that needs
Speaker 1: to happen. Let me ask you about your own personal
Speaker 1: version of this fight. I mean, you wrote a fantastic
Speaker 1: autobiography which huge numbers of people all over read. You
Speaker 1: did a very public response to the state of the union,
Speaker 1: which is ordinarily something that a senior or legislative figure
Speaker 1: would have done at the national level. If the New
Speaker 1: York Times quoted you correctly, they said you were open
Speaker 1: to serving as vice president if asked for any Democratic nominee.
Speaker 1: These are big national within the system undertakings. What do
Speaker 1: you think is the probability that that's where you're going
Speaker 1: to end up going in the next phase of your
Speaker 1: pretty extraordinary story. Thank you again. I do not see
Speaker 1: these as conflicting spaces to operate in. I've always seen
Speaker 1: them as collaboratives. When I was a state legislator, when
Speaker 1: I became Democratic leader in the House minority leader of
Speaker 1: our party. One of the challenges we faced was that
Speaker 1: we had eight hundred thousand people of color who were
Speaker 1: not registered to vote in Georgia who were eligible. Those
Speaker 1: who have been in the legislature long before I got there,
Speaker 1: had been bemoaning these massive numbers for years. My approach
Speaker 1: was to start the New Georgia Project. So, while as
Speaker 1: sitting legislator and while the leader of my caucus, I
Speaker 1: was also an outside agitator who started an organization that's
Speaker 1: registered more than four hundred thousand people of color in
Speaker 1: the state of George. As Democratic leader, I did not
Speaker 1: see an what's between those two responsibilities. There were legal
Speaker 1: issues that I had to be very cognizant of and
Speaker 1: ways that had to manage my responsibilities. But I do
Speaker 1: not see being in elected office as a deterrent to
Speaker 1: being part of a public space. Well it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: a deterrent, but as a pragmatic matter, just to be
Speaker 1: we don't have to be super realistic, but we can
Speaker 1: be mildly realistic. You know, if you listen to all
Speaker 1: the Democratic presidential candidates now, even those who self conceive
Speaker 1: as critics of the existing system, their criticism, though in
Speaker 1: many cases sharp still comes with a strong aspiration to
Speaker 1: be at the center of power, you know, to be
Speaker 1: sitting in the White House and leading crucial national decisions.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's just the nature running for president.
Speaker 1: You end up talking like you're in the system, that
Speaker 1: you're committed to the system, and then although you want
Speaker 1: to change it, the system basically doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: fundamentally restructured. I think that that is not inaccurate, but
Speaker 1: I think it ignores, or can't ignore, or the multiple
Speaker 1: ways you can affect the system before you have that job.
Speaker 1: And so my approach has been this, I attempt to
Speaker 1: leverage whichever, you know, sort of the commentary about Outlas,
Speaker 1: you know, give me a place to stand, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to try my best to shift the world a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's a terrible reduction of it, but that's
Speaker 1: how I operate. And so for me, the issue has
Speaker 1: always been you have to create external pathways to making change,
Speaker 1: because systems are not going to change themselves without external pressure,
Speaker 1: and so I attempt to create those external pressures. The
Speaker 1: New Georgia Project did so by Rich Strain, thousands of
Speaker 1: voters who had a very dramatic impact on the outcome
Speaker 1: of elections. Fair Fight and Fair Count will do so
Speaker 1: by affecting voter protection agencies and attempts to make certain
Speaker 1: that votes cannot be stolen or forwarded. And in each
Speaker 1: of those instances, I've set up organizations where I'm not
Speaker 1: in charge. I am the chair of the board, I
Speaker 1: am the chief fundraiser. I participate in strategy, but I'm
Speaker 1: not the person who does the daily work. Because I
Speaker 1: am inside the system and there is a conflict that happens,
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to dismantle a system that you are
Speaker 1: deeply embedded in, and so part of my responsibility is
Speaker 1: to use my inside knowledge to create outside forces and
Speaker 1: then to populate those forces so that if I move
Speaker 1: back inside, they can still operate without me. The New
Speaker 1: Georgia project is entirely independent. Now. Fair Fight and Fair Account,
Speaker 1: should I stand for another public office, will also quickly
Speaker 1: erase me from their boards. And that's my job. My
Speaker 1: job is to be aware enough to know that when
Speaker 1: you are inside the system, it is disingenuous to say
Speaker 1: that you are going to wholly deconstructed, but it is
Speaker 1: also an opportunity to use what you learn from inside
Speaker 1: the system, to arm the populace, to challenge and improve
Speaker 1: a system from the outside. It's a little daunting to
Speaker 1: imagine the huge number of different jobs that you actually
Speaker 1: have created for yourself. We haven't even gotten to author
Speaker 1: of romance novels, which I promise will come to before
Speaker 1: the end of our conversation. But when you wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning, how do you know what you're literally?
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean that's the most prosaic level, like,
Speaker 1: how do you know what you're going to do next?
Speaker 1: Do you? You know, look at your calendar? Do you
Speaker 1: How do you know which of these many responsibilities is
Speaker 1: the one that you should start working on that morning?
Speaker 1: It's border of urgency. Typically, again, I do my best
Speaker 1: to make certain that there are teams of people who
Speaker 1: can help me determine where my best value add is.
Speaker 1: And so my wife is basically at the mercy of
Speaker 1: a bunch of millennials and a hugen xers who organize
Speaker 1: my day. So, just to get a picture of this,
Speaker 1: you're kind of the chairman and CEO of Stacy Abram's
Speaker 1: Social Justice, Inc. And you you know you've got it's
Speaker 1: a conglomerate with lots of little subparts. And in there
Speaker 1: are your your millennials, in your your a handful of
Speaker 1: gen xers, and they're they're each running their own effectively
Speaker 1: startups which you started. In each case it's your socialist
Speaker 1: orical seed capital, and you're weighing in to try to
Speaker 1: make sure they're all keeping it in order or something
Speaker 1: like that. That am I getting the picture. That's exactly it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important because often in social justice movements,
Speaker 1: cultive personality tends to organize around the founder, and the
Speaker 1: founder serves not only as the creator but also the
Speaker 1: full crom around which everything circulates, and that, to me
Speaker 1: is a dangerous position. I am in politics, I am
Speaker 1: also incredibly human and thus flawed. And anytime a social
Speaker 1: movement has to adopt or rely on the personality or
Speaker 1: the foibles of their founder, you're setting yourself up for trouble.
Speaker 1: So part of my responsibility is to work as assiduously
Speaker 1: as possible to make myself irrelevant to the long term
Speaker 1: success of the organization. But can I just say, I mean,
Speaker 1: you want to run for national office, you want to
Speaker 1: be have your maximal impact. Cultive personality is what it's
Speaker 1: all about. I mean, what I'm wondering, is when you
Speaker 1: go out there, as you're doing now, building your I
Speaker 1: don't want to call it a brand, because I detest
Speaker 1: that terminology for public servants, but building the message connected
Speaker 1: to you and the things that you want to be
Speaker 1: known for and known for doing. What's your brief description
Speaker 1: of how you want to be seen by the broader world,
Speaker 1: Not by your constituents in Georgia who know you well,
Speaker 1: but by the country. I'm an architect of social justice
Speaker 1: and that means standing in the spaces where I can
Speaker 1: be most effective and doing the work that is most needed,
Speaker 1: or I'm the right person to do the work and
Speaker 1: it's the right time for that work to be done.
Speaker 1: So architect of social justice. And is that, you know,
Speaker 1: not a political consultant. But is that a teeny bit
Speaker 1: abstract for a factory worker who's lost his job or
Speaker 1: a mother who's working several jobs and trying to go
Speaker 1: to night school at the same time. Is architect of
Speaker 1: social justice? Concrete enough? The way you have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a potential constituent begins with meeting them where they are.
Speaker 1: And so I wouldn't start by saying who I am.
Speaker 1: I would start by asking what they need and talk
Speaker 1: then about how my skills, how my architecture skills, how
Speaker 1: my management skills help me deliver that. But to your point,
Speaker 1: one of the most difficult parts of running for office
Speaker 1: is trying to come up with something reductive enough to
Speaker 1: be a sound bite, but meaningful enough to actually convey
Speaker 1: your intention, and that's really hard. I don't try. I
Speaker 1: was slightly a conoclastic in my campaign in part because
Speaker 1: I do not look like or operate in the way
Speaker 1: that most traditional politicians do, and that of itself became
Speaker 1: my brand, which is that I'm much more like you
Speaker 1: than like them, do things different. Yeah, I did, but
Speaker 1: I also have experienced many of these things. I can
Speaker 1: talk about criminal justice reform because I have a younger
Speaker 1: brother who is in and out of jail. I can
Speaker 1: talk about mental health issues because one of the since
Speaker 1: he finds himself in an outjail is that he had
Speaker 1: an undiagnosed mental health disorder and he cannot receive healthcare
Speaker 1: for it because of his ex offender status and because
Speaker 1: of the challenges with Southern healthcare delivery. I can talk
Speaker 1: about debt because I've been in it and I know
Speaker 1: what it means, and so part of my part of
Speaker 1: what I think resonates is that I don't attempt to
Speaker 1: create this reductive line that makes me palatable and acceptable
Speaker 1: to all people, because the minute you've done that, it
Speaker 1: is so benign that it has no meaning at all.
Speaker 1: So I think what I hear you're saying is that
Speaker 1: it helps to be a real person, and you're not
Speaker 1: ashamed of actually being a real person, not at all,
Speaker 1: and one of my whole life. Yeah, and you've been
Speaker 1: able to speak directly and honestly to people about that,
Speaker 1: and that is really that has really resonated. And I
Speaker 1: do think that's hugely important because the approach you described,
Speaker 1: where you start by meeting the voter, that can work
Speaker 1: incredibly well at a smaller scale when you can actually
Speaker 1: meet the voters, but when the scale becomes national, that
Speaker 1: just becomes extra really difficult. And I think here of
Speaker 1: someone who's our rough contemporary, a friend of mine and
Speaker 1: probably a friend of yours too, Corey Booker, who's an
Speaker 1: extremely successful politician at the one on one or one
Speaker 1: on small group level. You know, when one meets Corey,
Speaker 1: one is blown away by his enthusiasm and his charisma
Speaker 1: and his capacity to connect and on the national scale,
Speaker 1: he's had a hard time translating that. I think, really,
Speaker 1: you know, one in a million kind of personality into
Speaker 1: something that resonates on the broader level. And it's not
Speaker 1: for any lack of sincerity. It's just that the medium
Speaker 1: of trying to reach people all over the country via
Speaker 1: a television set or a social media account is just
Speaker 1: really different than being a human being looking somebody in
Speaker 1: the eyes and interacting with them. I would say that
Speaker 1: this is a very specific moment in our political history,
Speaker 1: and were this a normative election where we were simply
Speaker 1: arguing about the margins and the shift from one leader
Speaker 1: on the margins to the next, I would say that
Speaker 1: Corey would his resonance would be much sharper because we
Speaker 1: are in this moment of panic and existential fear. I
Speaker 1: think there's a retrenchment that is happening that doesn't allow
Speaker 1: for newness and for his brand of personal engagement in
Speaker 1: this moment. I do not think it's just positive of
Speaker 1: his long term capacity to demonstrate himself. I think it's
Speaker 1: less than medium than that moment. That's quite interesting. It is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you watch how people react, how they say they
Speaker 1: want to react and how they are telling posters they
Speaker 1: will react, which are often very different. In this moment,
Speaker 1: It's what I kept hearing, Oh, I like you a lot,
Speaker 1: I think you're wonderful, but I'm not sure you can
Speaker 1: be the one to do it. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of I'm not sure happening. And when that is
Speaker 1: the case, people tend to return to what is the
Speaker 1: most familiar and most comfortable, and in America, ninety nine
Speaker 1: point nine percent of the time, that's a white man.
Speaker 1: I was about to ask you if you think there's
Speaker 1: some implicit or maybe not so implicit racism in that formulation.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if what you're describing really is essentially
Speaker 1: somebody saying, well, sure Barack Obama got elected, but right
Speaker 1: now the only way to beat the white man in
Speaker 1: the White House is with another white person. I think
Speaker 1: there's a degree of that. I think there's also just
Speaker 1: a degree of familiarity. If you have two weapons available
Speaker 1: to fight back against the beast attacking you, are you
Speaker 1: going to go with the one that you've tried one so,
Speaker 1: the one that you've tried forty four times? So can
Speaker 1: I then ask you somewhat undiplomatically, and because sometimes you're
Speaker 1: willing to be on diplomatic too. What is the answer
Speaker 1: for the Democratic Party in twenty twenty if it's not
Speaker 1: to go with the tools that we are familiar with.
Speaker 1: I mean, what would work the best? And I'm not
Speaker 1: asking you to name a particular candidate, but I'm asking
Speaker 1: as a general approach matter, what's the message that you
Speaker 1: think will work beyond you know, the current president has
Speaker 1: terrible views on nearly every topic, which is going to
Speaker 1: be part of any Democrats message. I do not subscribe
Speaker 1: to the notion that we need to talk about Trump
Speaker 1: that often he's going to talk about himself enough, and
Speaker 1: typically his performance is much stronger than any characterization we
Speaker 1: could offer to those who are willing to listen. There
Speaker 1: is a group of people for whom he is. He
Speaker 1: cannot be defeated. And let's acknowledge that we lost because
Speaker 1: we did not turn out the people who could have
Speaker 1: elected our person. And the solution is that we have
Speaker 1: to have a candidate who is clear about their values.
Speaker 1: You don't have to agree with all of them, but
Speaker 1: we need to know what they are, who is willing
Speaker 1: to invest in the actual work of winning elections. And
Speaker 1: that's the place where I think we have the weakest
Speaker 1: performance historically but the greatest opportunity when we invest in
Speaker 1: hard to reach communities, When we invest early and broadly
Speaker 1: in kansassing, in the mechanics of winning an election, not
Speaker 1: the ease of television and not the wizardry of digital,
Speaker 1: but in the hardcore effort of turning out voters, we
Speaker 1: win and we have to broaden our field. So that's
Speaker 1: a good argument for Stacey Abrams for vice president, right,
Speaker 1: because whoever the presidential candidate is, none of them, I
Speaker 1: will say, is super great at that. You are great
Speaker 1: at that. So that's an argument that this is an
Speaker 1: election that can be won in the trenches by turnout.
Speaker 1: And here you are. You are you know you are
Speaker 1: the the social justice architect of turnout. I've been practicing
Speaker 1: a lot. I don't want I want to be respectful
Speaker 1: of your time, but I also don't want to let
Speaker 1: you go without asking you about Selena Montgomery, your alter
Speaker 1: ego and pen name. How do you I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you decide you're going to change the mood, walk
Speaker 1: away from social justice and start writing romance? And I
Speaker 1: will say, just from a quick glance, not romance that
Speaker 1: is without some spice. Well, it's it's part and parcel
Speaker 1: of who I am. I love writing, I love storytelling,
Speaker 1: and you know, all of my novels sit into the
Speaker 1: romance genre. But I kill a lot of people. I
Speaker 1: write about ethnobotanists and cognitive scientists and chemical physicists, so
Speaker 1: I get to explore all the other things I would
Speaker 1: have been had I not followed whatever pastageys I'm on.
Speaker 1: But I also enjoy just creating universes in worlds where
Speaker 1: people can lose themselves and learn something and emerge a
Speaker 1: little happy because two people found each other and tell
Speaker 1: I love Well. I hope that Selena Montgomery becomes the
Speaker 1: fictional vice president and that Stacey Abrams becomes the actual
Speaker 1: real world social does as an architect of vice presidential candidate.
Speaker 1: I'm super grateful to you for your time and thank
Speaker 1: you so much for such a thoughtful and deep conversation. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I will say this has been delightful. You were one
Speaker 1: of the three else who's really nice to me as
Speaker 1: a one l and you have no reason to remember this,
Speaker 1: but you were very kind to me one day at
Speaker 1: at Yale, and I remember that as fondly and was
Speaker 1: happy to do this. That's super nice of you to say,
Speaker 1: I really I appreciate that tremendously. From our conversation, I
Speaker 1: think you'll really be able to see why so many
Speaker 1: Democrats are enthusiastic about the idea of Stacy Abrams as
Speaker 1: a vice presidential pick for twenty twenty. She has a
Speaker 1: proven ability to inspire voters and to get out the vote.
Speaker 1: She can reach across different lines within the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: and beyond. She's also a remarkable and unusual person with
Speaker 1: an amazing life story. We're going to be hearing a
Speaker 1: lot more from Stacy, and I'm really glad that we
Speaker 1: had a chance to talk to her here and now
Speaker 1: for this week's playback. Last Thursday on ABC News, Attorney
Speaker 1: General William Barr told Donald Trump enough with the tweets.
Speaker 1: I cannot do my job here at the Department with
Speaker 1: a constant background commentary that undercuts me. Barr was referring
Speaker 1: to Trump's tweets, but the way the Justice Department handled
Speaker 1: the sentencing of Roger Stone. Roger Stone is a form
Speaker 1: adviser to the President, who was convicted of seven crimes,
Speaker 1: including obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness tampering.
Speaker 1: When the prosecutors recommended that he served seven to nine
Speaker 1: years in prison, Trump responded with a tweet. This is
Speaker 1: a horrible and very unfair situation, is what he said. Again,
Speaker 1: he said that about a recommendation for sentencing from his
Speaker 1: own Department of Justice. The very next day, the Justice
Speaker 1: Department announced that it was overruling its own recommendation from
Speaker 1: its own prosecutors for being too harsh. Critics myself included,
Speaker 1: said that the Justice Department was rather obviously influenced by
Speaker 1: the President, who was defending not only someone he knew
Speaker 1: and liked, but someone who was lying on behalf of
Speaker 1: his campaign two investigators who were investigating Donald Trump for
Speaker 1: collusion with Russia. Barr responded by saying that his decision
Speaker 1: to overrule the sentencing recommendation from his own prosecutors had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Trump's tweets, and then he basically
Speaker 1: begged Trump to tweet less. So those are the facts,
Speaker 1: But what's really going on here? The answer is that
Speaker 1: we're in the midst of a historic conflict over the
Speaker 1: independence the Department of Justice. In the years after Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon's disastrous presidency, slowly but surely, presidents of both parties
Speaker 1: and attorney generals of both parties began to recreate a
Speaker 1: set of values and norms that were supposed to govern
Speaker 1: what the Department of Justice would do. Above all, it
Speaker 1: was supposed to make decisions about investigation and prosecution on
Speaker 1: an independent, nonpartisan basis. No targeting the president's enemies, no
Speaker 1: special favors for the president's friends. To be sure, nothing
Speaker 1: written down explicitly in the law or the regulations to
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice says this. Instead, it came to
Speaker 1: be the common sense of the Department, broadly shared by
Speaker 1: prosecutors at the line level and all the way up
Speaker 1: to the highest level of the Attorney General. Everyone in
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice and the FBI came to believe
Speaker 1: that the right way to do justice in the United
Speaker 1: States was without reference to the president's party, to the
Speaker 1: president's political friends, ordered the president's political and Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has been systematically eroding that independence at the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice since even before he took office, when he encouraged
Speaker 1: people to chant lock her Up about Hillary Clinton, thereby
Speaker 1: signaling that as president he would want to use criminal
Speaker 1: prosecution as a tool in the political game. William Barr
Speaker 1: took office promising to do what his predecessor, Jeff Sessions,
Speaker 1: had not been able to do, namely, push back against
Speaker 1: the president and insist on the traditional independence of the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice. Until now, it's been a little unclear
Speaker 1: whether Barr was successful in that or not. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, Barr repeatedly enabled Trump, most famously in announcing
Speaker 1: his own version of the Muller investigation before Muller could
Speaker 1: announce it. On the other hand, Barrs supporters claimed that
Speaker 1: he was successfully standing up to the President by pushing
Speaker 1: him away from the relentless criticism of his own Department
Speaker 1: of Justice, which had characterized the previous two years under
Speaker 1: Attorney General Jeff Session. What's so striking about the current
Speaker 1: conflict is, for the first time in Barr's tenure, Trump
Speaker 1: deliberately undercut a Department of Justice decision, and he did
Speaker 1: it before Barr could act on his own. Possibly Barr
Speaker 1: wouldn't have objected at all to Trump's tweeting if he
Speaker 1: had given Barr a chance to reverse the sentencing recommendation
Speaker 1: on his own first. And I personally believe Bar when
Speaker 1: he says he probably would have done so anyway, not
Speaker 1: so much because the sentencing request was so outrageously high
Speaker 1: as because Barr would have been trying to please Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: For Barr, however, there's a fundamental question of his long
Speaker 1: term reputation. In his best case scenario, he leaves the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice with people saying he served the president.
Speaker 1: He served the president well. Democrats will continue to say
Speaker 1: that they hate Bar, but they might still be able
Speaker 1: to say that Bar did something to shore up the
Speaker 1: legitimacy of the Department of Justice. In his worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: people come to see Barr as just another Trump patsy,
Speaker 1: someone put in a job who aims to be able
Speaker 1: to exercise independence, tries to stand up to the president
Speaker 1: and gets steamrolled. What remains to be seen is whether
Speaker 1: Trump will actually fire Bar. Bar supporters say he can't
Speaker 1: do it. Barr is unfireable. Skeptics myself included, say nobody
Speaker 1: is unfireable by Donald Trump, especially in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: his survival of the impeachment process. So what we're watching
Speaker 1: is an attempt by Bar to get some space for
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice while giving Trump everything that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump wants. And on the other hand, Donald Trump's constant
Speaker 1: desire and need to be seen to be in charge,
Speaker 1: to be seen to push around his employees, and to
Speaker 1: be seen to disrespect the independence of the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice for the first time in Barr's tenure. This is
Speaker 1: an actual zero sum conflict between the Attorney General and
Speaker 1: the president. Barr wants to give Trump what he thinks
Speaker 1: Trump wants. But if what Trump wants is to be
Speaker 1: seen to push around Bar, that's the one thing Bar
Speaker 1: isn't prepared to give. Let's keep watching this space. I
Speaker 1: expect the story to continue to develop more. But when
Speaker 1: you watch it, keep in mind this is about one
Speaker 1: man's reputation and one man's desire to show that he's
Speaker 1: the boss. Deep background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Lydia Genecott, with studio recording by Joseph
Speaker 1: Friedman and mastering by Jason Gambrell and Jason Roskowski. Our
Speaker 1: showrunner is Sophie mckibbn. Our theme music is composed by
Speaker 1: Luis Gara. Special thanks to the Pushkin Brass Malcolm Gladwell,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. This is
Speaker 1: deep background