Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Recently we got some big news. Robert Mueller,
Speaker 1: despite saying he did not want to, is going to
Speaker 1: testify in front of Congress about his investigation into Russian
Speaker 1: interference in the twenty sixteen election and into possible obstruction
Speaker 1: by President Donald Trump. When that happens, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a media circus, which made me think, what's it
Speaker 1: like to cover a story like that, How does it work?
Speaker 1: What is the news behind the news? To talk about this?
Speaker 1: We are incredibly fortunate to have with us Laura Jarrett,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people of all time. Laura covers
Speaker 1: legal affairs for CNN, and she has the DUBI distinction
Speaker 1: of having joined CNN at exactly the moment when the
Speaker 1: Trump administration exploded into the headlines. Laura, you're either the
Speaker 1: smartest person in the world were the unluckiest in terms
Speaker 1: of when you started your job. It's not boring, it's
Speaker 1: not boring. Before Laura joined CNN, she was a practicing
Speaker 1: attorney in Chicago and private practice, doing all sorts of
Speaker 1: high powered litigation. Not the sort of person who usually
Speaker 1: turns into a journalist. And before that, she was a
Speaker 1: law student at Harvard Law School, where I had the
Speaker 1: great pleasure of meeting her, and she was the standout
Speaker 1: student in a course I taught way back when when
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was just running for president with John Jackson
Speaker 1: of University of Pennsylvania, who's now the dean at the
Speaker 1: end and Burg School at the University of Pennsylvania. And
Speaker 1: I've been following her career with tremendous and totally undeserved pride,
Speaker 1: and I'm thrilled that you could join us. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Laura for being here, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So start at the beginning. You're sitting in your law firm,
Speaker 1: you're earning your big law from salary, You're a mover
Speaker 1: and shaker in Chicago. Why turn to journalism? Other than
Speaker 1: the fact that I had a killer shoe collection, I
Speaker 1: was miserable. And I think part of the issue is,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you have a legal background or you
Speaker 1: have parents that are at law firms, a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't realize that much of the day is spent
Speaker 1: on phone calls and in meetings planning for different eventualities,
Speaker 1: but not actually digging into the substance of the law.
Speaker 1: And so when by the time I left, I was
Speaker 1: a sixth year associate, and which that means is I'm
Speaker 1: basically managing other associates, but it also meant you're on
Speaker 1: the cusp of partnership. I mean making it to the
Speaker 1: sixth year. Usually people go for the go for the gold. Sure,
Speaker 1: but that requires seeing somebody's life who is serving as
Speaker 1: a partner and thinking, oh, you know what if I
Speaker 1: just work a couple more years, work really hard, put
Speaker 1: my head down, that's the life I can have. And
Speaker 1: there was nobody for which I could point to and
Speaker 1: say that's what I want. So why journalism and why
Speaker 1: not going off to become a ski bumb Because I
Speaker 1: knew that I still love the law, and I knew
Speaker 1: that I still loved digging into legal issues, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be an advocate anymore. I didn't like
Speaker 1: the idea of having to just take a position coal hog,
Speaker 1: no matter whether I thought it was right or dumb.
Speaker 1: I was loathed to go in every day knowing that
Speaker 1: this is what they're paying me to do. So whether
Speaker 1: I think they're wrong or right, I'm supposed to argue
Speaker 1: for it, and you're penalized if you're not as aggressive
Speaker 1: as possible about it. And I wanted to just dig
Speaker 1: in on the facts, and so I try to think, well,
Speaker 1: what can I do where I can cover the facts,
Speaker 1: I can cover legal issues, but do it in a
Speaker 1: far more fulfilling, an interesting way. It turns out local
Speaker 1: news in Chicago is very competitive. They really want you
Speaker 1: to have you gone through the ranks of other local markets.
Speaker 1: And it turns out more sort of nationwide networks, especially Cable,
Speaker 1: are far more flexible about taking someone with an unorthodox
Speaker 1: background that's actually fascinating. I would have had no idea
Speaker 1: about that, and I was gonna my next question was
Speaker 1: actually going to be how does someone who's a great
Speaker 1: lawyer with an impeccable legal pedigree but has never actually
Speaker 1: stood in front of a camera and explain things to
Speaker 1: people before suddenly end up on air at CNN. So
Speaker 1: part of why CNN ends up being such a great
Speaker 1: fit for me, especially coming directly from Latham and Watkins
Speaker 1: having never been on air once in my life, is
Speaker 1: because it's on all day long, so they need people.
Speaker 1: They need people on all day long, and there's so
Speaker 1: much more willing to take a chance on you. And
Speaker 1: it was really CNN that came up with this idea
Speaker 1: of well, you have the legal background, why don't we
Speaker 1: leverage why don't you cover the Justice Department? And again
Speaker 1: they remember, this is the summer of twenty sixteen, So
Speaker 1: the Justice Department that they envisioned for me was, I
Speaker 1: would say, the pace was going to be slightly different,
Speaker 1: and they thought, well, you know, in your account, your account, Laura.
Speaker 1: They hired you because they had nothing to lose, because
Speaker 1: if you weren't good at four am, they just would
Speaker 1: never put you on, you know, at nine pm. And
Speaker 1: they give you the very boring beat of the Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton Justice Department, where nothing especially would happen, and antitrust
Speaker 1: laws wouldn't be strictly enforced and you know, etc. Etc. Right,
Speaker 1: we would be dealing with, you know, the twelve Benghazi
Speaker 1: hearing and congressional document fights about stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: you took a boring job and you got an interesting one.
Speaker 1: I knew it would be interesting. I just didn't know
Speaker 1: that it was going to be like this. Shall we say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew, I knew it was going to be great,
Speaker 1: and I knew it was going to be the right
Speaker 1: move for me, and it was certainly going to be
Speaker 1: far more fulfilling the managing document review for large corporate litigation.
Speaker 1: I had no idea it was going to be like this,
Speaker 1: and it has turned out, I think, to be, you know,
Speaker 1: such a memorable and incredible experience for me to have
Speaker 1: as my first formative job in journalism. So tell me
Speaker 1: about what it's actually like on a daily basis. I
Speaker 1: mean to those of us who are I would say
Speaker 1: at the periphery of the media like me, I write
Speaker 1: a column, but I'm not, you know, I don't have
Speaker 1: to respond in every live moment. Sometimes Trump's legal news
Speaker 1: seems like drinking from a fire hose. You know. Every
Speaker 1: morning we wake up, we turn on CNN or we
Speaker 1: open the newspaper, and we hear the latest story of
Speaker 1: what's happened. But that means that if we're doing that,
Speaker 1: you've already been up for hours before us. You've already
Speaker 1: assimilated what's happened, and you've already presented it as a
Speaker 1: as a story. So how do you usually first hear
Speaker 1: that the president has done something or that the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice has done something what's your usual, Well, do
Speaker 1: you usually know about it before it even happens, So
Speaker 1: it kind of depends on what the issue is. A
Speaker 1: perfect example of where unfortunately we had no heads up
Speaker 1: was when the Special Council decided to break his silence
Speaker 1: after two years of stoicism. That day, walked into the
Speaker 1: Justice Department at nine am, got some coffee, sat down,
Speaker 1: was just sort of casually going through my emails, and
Speaker 1: what do we get is a media alert from the
Speaker 1: Special Counsel's office that he's actually going to speak in
Speaker 1: an hour and a half. And the challenge of something
Speaker 1: like that is immediately everyone turns to you with what
Speaker 1: is he going to say? And does that mean that
Speaker 1: the people within CNN call you. They say, well, you're
Speaker 1: on the Department of Justice, bead. We need to be
Speaker 1: prepared for when he speaks in an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: So we expect that you will already know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen before it's happened. That's what they're saying too. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: go find out exactly what he's going to say, and
Speaker 1: then not only go out and find out what he's
Speaker 1: going to say, but get on TV right now and
Speaker 1: talk about it and tell us first find out and
Speaker 1: then tell us about it. But actually you want to
Speaker 1: we want to do that in reverse order, but really
Speaker 1: maybe simultaneously. Maybe maybe maybe that And that's that is
Speaker 1: Again one of the challenges with how fast everything is
Speaker 1: moving right now is while you are on trying to
Speaker 1: report about what you just found out about, it's there's
Speaker 1: still incoming. So why did you how did you do it?
Speaker 1: I mean tell us concretely, what did you do? Ninety
Speaker 1: minutes you get the email, suddenly you go into action.
Speaker 1: What did you do for the next ninety minutes? So
Speaker 1: for the next ninety minutes, I was literally running all
Speaker 1: over the building, or I should say waddling, because I'm
Speaker 1: eight and a half months pregnant difficulty. We don't make
Speaker 1: this too easy for you, waddling all over the halls
Speaker 1: of Justice, um knocking on doors to whomever I thought
Speaker 1: would be best positioned to know about what exactly he's
Speaker 1: going to say. And the challenge with someone like Mueller
Speaker 1: is that group is very tight lipped and to say
Speaker 1: the least, And so it's probably not that surprising that
Speaker 1: we didn't even know he was going to speak that day,
Speaker 1: because they don't, you know, frontload things with the press.
Speaker 1: They just they don't operate like that. And so I
Speaker 1: waddled around Justice and then I made as many phone
Speaker 1: calls as possible while doing live hits, saying I don't
Speaker 1: know what he's going to say, but it should be interesting.
Speaker 1: And did you did you engage in any pre analysis?
Speaker 1: I mean, I will say I watched the thing live
Speaker 1: on CNN, and then I muted it to start writing
Speaker 1: my own column explaining what I thought had happened. And
Speaker 1: then when I saw you come on the screen, because
Speaker 1: about ninety seconds later, then I unmuted it and to
Speaker 1: listen to you. Appreciate it that I didn't hear you
Speaker 1: before the event. So did you do any pre analysis?
Speaker 1: I did, and what I tried to do there, because
Speaker 1: I don't think it serves the viewer to do like
Speaker 1: too much speculation about what he will say unless I've
Speaker 1: been told he's going to say X. So I was
Speaker 1: told it was going to be substance. I was told
Speaker 1: that he had spoken with the Attorney General before about this,
Speaker 1: and that the Attorney General wasn't blindsided by that. So
Speaker 1: those types of nuggets, you know, we have now an
Speaker 1: hour and a half of air to fill. So that's
Speaker 1: helpful to give the viewers sort of a little bit
Speaker 1: of a peak behind the curtain on that. But in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, actually predicting the words that are
Speaker 1: going to come out of his mouth, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't see any value in doing that unless I had
Speaker 1: gotten a copy of the remarks myself, which I hadn't,
Speaker 1: But I did try to give our audience a bit
Speaker 1: of a frame to understand why it mattered that he
Speaker 1: was speaking. And I think that that's what we try
Speaker 1: to do in all of these things, because most people
Speaker 1: aren't following the minutia of this as you know closely,
Speaker 1: as all of us are sometimes in the media, and
Speaker 1: so I try my hardest to pull back and think, like,
Speaker 1: if someone is just tuning in right now and they
Speaker 1: haven't you been following every last indictment, but they know
Speaker 1: who Robert Muller is vaguely, and they see his face,
Speaker 1: and they see b roll of him on our air
Speaker 1: every day. Yeah, that's all there is of Mother's brow.
Speaker 1: There's no way roll, right, So why should it matter
Speaker 1: to the average person that he's decided to day is
Speaker 1: the day he wants to open his mouth? So now
Speaker 1: he speaks. Now he gets up there, he says his piece,
Speaker 1: he says he won't take questions, and you know, you
Speaker 1: have at most a couple of minutes before you have
Speaker 1: to go on and offer an authoritative analysis. I noticed
Speaker 1: that CNN first went to a panel of people who
Speaker 1: kind of free associated No offense to them, They're doing
Speaker 1: their best, but they were kind of free associating, right,
Speaker 1: and then you came on and actually said something. Again,
Speaker 1: part of that part of the dance there is logistics, right,
Speaker 1: So the press conference happens on the seventh floor of
Speaker 1: the Justice Department. I then have to waddle back down
Speaker 1: to the first floor where my booth or slash closet is,
Speaker 1: and you know, get miked up, get everything on so
Speaker 1: that I can be back on air. So there has
Speaker 1: to be a little bit of a well, who's going
Speaker 1: to sort of fill the time until we can get
Speaker 1: the reporters and correspondence back on. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of times if you see panels, even on the day
Speaker 1: when the report was released, she'll notice when it first
Speaker 1: gets released, there is a panel of probably eight or
Speaker 1: ten people on set talking about it. But before Evan Perez,
Speaker 1: who's my colleague, who also covers the Justice Department, and
Speaker 1: I could get back to our positions to come on
Speaker 1: and talk about what the report actually says, because it
Speaker 1: just there just has to be something to fill the
Speaker 1: time until we can get in position. That's amazing. You know,
Speaker 1: in my fantasy, I somehow thought they were giving you
Speaker 1: a minute or twould actually think about what you were
Speaker 1: going to say. But of course that's totally wrong. They
Speaker 1: were just giving you time to walk down the stairs.
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to have done that. I'm supposed to have
Speaker 1: done that while I was walking or brushing my teeth
Speaker 1: this morning. My goodness. So then how do you do it?
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's too hard to explain. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: like you know, asking Michael Jordan, how does he make
Speaker 1: to move under the basket? But in reality, you have
Speaker 1: to assimilate a lot of information extremely quickly and provide
Speaker 1: not only a summary of it that's accurate, which is
Speaker 1: relevant in the molar context because we've learned that not
Speaker 1: all summaries are accurate, yes, and also an analysis so
Speaker 1: that the very first thing the listener or the viewer
Speaker 1: sees or hears is Laura explaining what just happened, and
Speaker 1: Laura also saying what it meant. And that's really different,
Speaker 1: we should just point out than traditional journalism, in which
Speaker 1: there were really two different jobs. One job was tell
Speaker 1: us what happened, and that was the fast in immediate job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the other job was tell us what it means.
Speaker 1: And you used to have a little more time to
Speaker 1: do that part of it. So how did you do that?
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you do on a regular basis
Speaker 1: when you know you have to analyze as well as described. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the benefit is that because I
Speaker 1: just get to cover one beat, I spent an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of time thinking about this stuff all day long,
Speaker 1: and it kind of helps if you're sort of marinated
Speaker 1: over it for a long period of time. I think
Speaker 1: it gives you a little bit more context. It gives
Speaker 1: you a little bit more flavor of what's happening, and
Speaker 1: so it's not like you're just sort of just dropped
Speaker 1: in cold without having any sort of heads or tails
Speaker 1: of what's going on. And for the times when it's
Speaker 1: about doing both, as you said, what happened and the analysis,
Speaker 1: I actually like that better because what happened people can
Speaker 1: now find out, you know, in so many different ways,
Speaker 1: and so I hope part of the reason that they
Speaker 1: would tune in is for our analysis of how to
Speaker 1: make sense of it, to how to see it in
Speaker 1: the larger context, how to understand why it matters. I
Speaker 1: think that that's, you know, hopefully, what would differentiate myself
Speaker 1: from you know, another justice reporter on the beat. That
Speaker 1: should be sort of what we're offering as a brand.
Speaker 1: Can I ask about that? In fact, because one of
Speaker 1: the things that strikes me is actually there is almost
Speaker 1: no way anymore to find any source of news that
Speaker 1: would just tell you what happened without already hearing the analysis,
Speaker 1: at least if you want it in real time. And
Speaker 1: here's what I mean, nobody waits till the next morning
Speaker 1: to read the news story anymore. In fact, if I
Speaker 1: want to know what's happening right now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: turn on a cable news network, and you know, I've
Speaker 1: got you guys, I've got MSNBC, I've got Fox News.
Speaker 1: All three will show Mueller live and then instantaneously all
Speaker 1: three will give you description plus analysis, and in many
Speaker 1: cases that will be the most important way that anyone
Speaker 1: can get that information. I mean, there's no there isn't
Speaker 1: a network, cable network that just says, we just tell
Speaker 1: you what happened, and we don't analyze it. And one
Speaker 1: of the results of that, and this is actually something
Speaker 1: that worries me, is that we get the news already analyzed.
Speaker 1: It already comes out analyzed. And if you watched Fox,
Speaker 1: which I then turn to, you've of course heard radically
Speaker 1: different analysis then you've heard on CNN or MSNBC. And
Speaker 1: that's true of every breaking story nowadays. And I do
Speaker 1: share that concern, especially when you know this stuff is
Speaker 1: not always straightforward. It's sometimes actually requires a beat to
Speaker 1: sort of process it and think about it. And a
Speaker 1: good example, I think is the day that the Attorney
Speaker 1: General Bill Barr released his four page memo on what
Speaker 1: he took away to be Muller's principal conclusions. And in
Speaker 1: subsequent days and weeks and everything that's followed, I think
Speaker 1: there's been a more fulsome understanding of what happened there.
Speaker 1: But in the first I would say, thirty minutes of
Speaker 1: that memo coming out, if you look at the coverage,
Speaker 1: the coverage is the special counsel has cleared the president
Speaker 1: of conspiracy or as he likes hiss a collusion. The
Speaker 1: analysis that Oler gives is far far from that. But
Speaker 1: because we were so quick and so lightning speed trying
Speaker 1: to get on the takeaway and I think trying to
Speaker 1: be actually as fair as possible to Trump, which I
Speaker 1: know many people may not think that that's what this was,
Speaker 1: but it actually I think was an attempt to say,
Speaker 1: you know, for two and a half years, the president's
Speaker 1: been under this cloud. If the Special Council's cleared him,
Speaker 1: we have to say that right away. And so I
Speaker 1: think there was actually a jump to do that without
Speaker 1: taking a second to really process what Muller was saying,
Speaker 1: and that I think it is an example of the
Speaker 1: danger of this. But aren't you being a little hard,
Speaker 1: a little too hard on yourself? I mean, you're leaving
Speaker 1: out in your description just now you're being so neutral.
Speaker 1: You left out the fact that Bar's memo, the Attorney
Speaker 1: General's memo misrepresented, at least in my view, the conclusions
Speaker 1: of the Muller report with respect to half of it. Right, So,
Speaker 1: just to remind listeners, the first half of the Mueller
Speaker 1: Documents report do say that there wasn't sufficient evidence of
Speaker 1: conspiracy or collusion to bring a charge. But then in
Speaker 1: the second half of the report. In fact, there's this
Speaker 1: very complicated business where there begins by saying that if
Speaker 1: we had concluded that the president didn't commit a crime,
Speaker 1: we would have said so, and we can't say that.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to say, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: because we can't put a sitting president on trial, we're
Speaker 1: never going to say the president probably committed a crime.
Speaker 1: But read the details, where sure enough we lay out
Speaker 1: all the elements of the obstruction of justice, and in
Speaker 1: a handful of instances five or six, we actually do
Speaker 1: say that probably the president satisfied all those requirements. And
Speaker 1: none of that second half, none of it appears in
Speaker 1: Bar's summary of the principal conclusion. So didn't Bar play you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't really beat yourselves up for that.
Speaker 1: You trusted the Attorney General to some degree, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if we just should have been more like shown
Speaker 1: our work a little bit more to say, Look, this
Speaker 1: is a four page summary of even at that time
Speaker 1: we didn't know how long it is. So this is
Speaker 1: a four page summary of a report that could be massive,
Speaker 1: and just to provide I think the viewer with a
Speaker 1: little bit more understanding of what the limitations were, But
Speaker 1: even within that four page memo, I felt like there
Speaker 1: were things that may have gotten lost the initial sort
Speaker 1: of understanding of it. But then you again, you see
Speaker 1: it switch. So the language switches from there's no evidence
Speaker 1: of conspiracy to Muller couldn't find sufficient legal basis to
Speaker 1: charge members of the Trump campaign with a conspiracy with Russia.
Speaker 1: It's just you're not the same thing at all. Yet
Speaker 1: which are not the same thing. But if you notice,
Speaker 1: even in digital rights, from the Washington Post to US
Speaker 1: to the Times, there's a switch that happens in language
Speaker 1: once people take a minute to process it. So let
Speaker 1: me ask you a question that I'm actually obsessed with,
Speaker 1: and it's actually steps outside of just the issue of
Speaker 1: how you make your judgments, And this actually goes to
Speaker 1: substance of what we think happened. Why do you think
Speaker 1: in your heart of hearts that Bob Muller opened the
Speaker 1: door in the way he did to have his conclusions
Speaker 1: distorted by bar And here's what I mean by that.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of ways that Muller could have written
Speaker 1: the second half of his report the Obstruction of Justice
Speaker 1: party to make it much clearer to an ordinary English speaker,
Speaker 1: not a crazy lawyer like we are, that there was
Speaker 1: substantial evidence to support the conclusion that the President committed
Speaker 1: an obstruction of justice crime, which unquestionably is the substance
Speaker 1: of what he's saying. Why did he bend over so
Speaker 1: far backwards to say we're not going to say that
Speaker 1: president committed a crime, even if we think so, because
Speaker 1: he can't defend himself. I mean, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: very questionable thing for him to have said. Remember his reason,
Speaker 1: his stated reason is it's not fair to accuse someone
Speaker 1: of a crime if they can't defend themselves in court.
Speaker 1: But of course the reality is Donald Trump can defend
Speaker 1: himself far more effectively in hablick and has than he
Speaker 1: ever could have defended himself in court. There are limits
Speaker 1: to what you can say in court. There's no limit
Speaker 1: to what you can say on Twitter, at least not
Speaker 1: if you're Donald Trump. So what happened with the obstruction
Speaker 1: section is one of the more fascinating and confounding elements
Speaker 1: of this and I share I share your obsession with it,
Speaker 1: especially knowing a little bit behind the scenes of how
Speaker 1: this all sort of went down. Tell us more about
Speaker 1: that too, Yeah, so at least as I understand it,
Speaker 1: and again you have your understanding of it is only
Speaker 1: as good as your sources and your skepticism, So as
Speaker 1: I understand it. For a long time, the Special Counsel's
Speaker 1: Office struggled with the obstruction issue. They went back and
Speaker 1: forth with it on Main Justice. They were being supervised
Speaker 1: by the Deputy Attorney General's office, so they're in regular
Speaker 1: contact with Main Justice, as we like to call it,
Speaker 1: about these issues. They're doing research, you know, what are
Speaker 1: applicable precedents to even look at this is obviously a
Speaker 1: unique situation given that it's the president. They're trying to
Speaker 1: get their arms around this. At some point they all
Speaker 1: sit down meeting Mueller's whole team, not the whole team,
Speaker 1: but the senior team. So Mueller himself, his top two deputies,
Speaker 1: James Quarrels and Aaron Zebli, who's been his chiefest staff
Speaker 1: essentially forever, They sit down with the Attorney General, the
Speaker 1: Deputy Attorney General, Rod rosen Signed and other senior members
Speaker 1: of DJ and Mueller's team says we can't get there
Speaker 1: on obstruction, and Barr says, okay, are you saying that?
Speaker 1: But for the Office of legal counsel that has provided
Speaker 1: this decades old policy opinion essentially that says Canada died
Speaker 1: sitting president. Are you saying but for that opinion? And,
Speaker 1: according again to bar, Mueller says no. They asked three
Speaker 1: different times, they're told no. They ask well, what is
Speaker 1: your reasoning for how you're going to explain the obstruction issue?
Speaker 1: And they say, well, we're still working on that. I
Speaker 1: find that amazing that that late in the day. I mean,
Speaker 1: because Barr wasn't atturne General for very long before the
Speaker 1: report came out. It doesn't add up to me, and
Speaker 1: it has not adequately I think, been fleshed out or
Speaker 1: reported on it. And I still am trying to dig
Speaker 1: into how do you have such an enormous breakdown in
Speaker 1: communication such that the Special Counsel's office thinks we can't
Speaker 1: even make a traditional judgment and everyone is looking around
Speaker 1: surprised about that. How does that happen? It's not like
Speaker 1: the OLC opinion was new, right. I mean, one thing
Speaker 1: about your reporting there is that it suggests that the
Speaker 1: rationale ultimately given by Muller for why he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to address whether the president committed a crime wasn't really
Speaker 1: the rationale that it had been driving them in the
Speaker 1: course of the investigation. I mean that to me is
Speaker 1: bombshell might be too strong a term, but it's very striking.
Speaker 1: I mean it suggests that there was some other reason
Speaker 1: for them to say no, we can't get there, and
Speaker 1: that they only later came to the conclusion that the
Speaker 1: way they should explain or justify themselves was by saying, well,
Speaker 1: we can't say the president committed a crime. Right, And
Speaker 1: the fairness issue in particular, how they get to that,
Speaker 1: the worry that somehow it's unfair to the president to
Speaker 1: say he committed a crime. Poor a little Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: And how that wasn't discussed. You would think that that
Speaker 1: would have been in constant consultation with DJ throughout the
Speaker 1: two years, or that would just be a premise of
Speaker 1: the investigation, right. I mean, if you think that there's
Speaker 1: a legal matter you can't say the president committed a crime,
Speaker 1: then that should affect everything you do in your investigation.
Speaker 1: And I don't really even understand how it didn't affect
Speaker 1: the conspiracy part of the investigation, other than perhaps what
Speaker 1: maybe happened is they realized, Okay, we don't have enough
Speaker 1: here for conspiracy. Given that we don't have enough for conspiracy,
Speaker 1: maybe then that also affects our obstruction analysis. I don't
Speaker 1: think they make that connection, but I sometimes wonder whether
Speaker 1: that is what happened. You know, there's another theory that
Speaker 1: they didn't want to put bar in a sort of
Speaker 1: tough spot, saying we think the president committed a crime,
Speaker 1: but we know we can't do anything about it. They
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry about Bill Barr. He knows that
Speaker 1: to take care of himself more. I know we're cheaping
Speaker 1: the weeds here, but I just want to ask you
Speaker 1: one more thing about that that big climactic meeting that
Speaker 1: you're describing and obviously only answered if your sources will
Speaker 1: let you. Do you know about that meeting at all
Speaker 1: from people who might be more inclined towards Mueller as
Speaker 1: opposed to people who are more on the bar side
Speaker 1: of the fence. I think we now have it from
Speaker 1: multiple sources that I feel confident with the facts of it,
Speaker 1: that's what happened. That that's what happened in the meeting,
Speaker 1: I think from I think from the Mueller perspective, they
Speaker 1: think that and you notice this again in the press
Speaker 1: conference that Bar does on the day the reporters released,
Speaker 1: I asked him about the OLC memo, and I asked
Speaker 1: him about whether I asked him about the impact of it,
Speaker 1: and you know, whether I had any effect on the analysis.
Speaker 1: And again he goes back to the butt for formulation.
Speaker 1: And the problem with the butt for formulation is one
Speaker 1: that wasn't how Mueller was looking at it, or at
Speaker 1: least that's not how the team I think, formulates their
Speaker 1: explanation for it. And indeed, Barr has since dug in
Speaker 1: on that, and he has said he actually has gone
Speaker 1: so far as to say he doesn't buy the fairness explanation,
Speaker 1: that in fact, it would have been perfectly fine to
Speaker 1: say that the president committed the following acts, which cons
Speaker 1: studio crime, which is kind of I mean, it's incredibly clever.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am never I never ceased to be
Speaker 1: impressed by Bar's cleverness, just as I never ceased to
Speaker 1: be impressed by Mueller's strong belief that the year is
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five. Yeah, and that he doesn't have to
Speaker 1: play it by contemporary rules. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: that Bar is correct to say that that fairness justification
Speaker 1: makes no sense. But he's ironically used that to make
Speaker 1: the president look better. Right, He says, well, they could
Speaker 1: have said it, I don't think it would have been unfair.
Speaker 1: And so therefore the fact that they didn't say the
Speaker 1: president committed a crime essentially vindicates the president. And here
Speaker 1: is Mueller saying basically one hundred and eighty degrees the opposite,
Speaker 1: and the Special Counsel's team, i think again thinks to
Speaker 1: the extent that Barr was asking, but for um this
Speaker 1: DJ guidance, would you have found the president committed crime?
Speaker 1: They would say that was true. The answer to that
Speaker 1: is no, because we didn't even we didn't even go there,
Speaker 1: we didn't even start that analysis. Right. But again, that's right, right,
Speaker 1: that's literally not true if you actually read the report, right,
Speaker 1: they go through every element of the crime and they
Speaker 1: say whether it was satisfied or not. I mean so right.
Speaker 1: The way I've tried to talk about this with my
Speaker 1: students is, as you will recall painfully, I'm sure you know,
Speaker 1: when we teach legal writing in law school, we tell
Speaker 1: people it's got there. There are these different steps you
Speaker 1: have to follow. You stayed the issue, you state the rule,
Speaker 1: you apply the rule, and then you write a conclusion,
Speaker 1: and this had all of those things except the conclusion.
Speaker 1: There's just no conclusion there. So they did the analysis,
Speaker 1: they just don't say the line of conclusion, and of course,
Speaker 1: the most curious line of the entire thing, saying although
Speaker 1: the fairness thing might I don't know, it might be
Speaker 1: a tie, here is the line that if we could
Speaker 1: exonerate him, we would so state yes, which is very
Speaker 1: very strange. I mean that to me is just what
Speaker 1: is that what people hate lawyers? That's why people hate lawyers,
Speaker 1: because only a lawyer could have thought of that sentence. Right,
Speaker 1: we're not exonerating you, and if we could exonerate you,
Speaker 1: we would exonerate you. But we're also not not exonerating you.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only lawyers talk that way. No human
Speaker 1: being has ever talked that way before coming through the
Speaker 1: gates of a law school. But for the average I
Speaker 1: think for the average lay person, and certainly for our viewers,
Speaker 1: that is cat nip because politically it's saying, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you whether he committed a crime or not. Laurie,
Speaker 1: you're from a political background, You're you're from a political family,
Speaker 1: and you you're no DC very very well and you've
Speaker 1: seen it in different eras now and two very different eras.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the way the way we think
Speaker 1: about politics and the fights that we have in Washington
Speaker 1: and beyond have really changed in the Trump barra compared
Speaker 1: to the Obama era or do you think it's it's
Speaker 1: actually deceptive to think of them as different, that we
Speaker 1: were already so profound the partisan in the in the
Speaker 1: Obama era that you know that this is just a
Speaker 1: natural evolution. You know, that's a great question. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know that it has changed. I certainly think
Speaker 1: that the media's sort of role in this dance has changed.
Speaker 1: And I was sort of always advised when I first
Speaker 1: took this job and I've seen it throughout is you
Speaker 1: know that you never want to become the story. We're
Speaker 1: supposed to be covering the news. And because of for
Speaker 1: better or worse, how things have gone over the last
Speaker 1: two and a half years, the media has become so
Speaker 1: much part of the narrative. And because of Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: calling on fifty million people on his Twitter feed to
Speaker 1: his actually boycott an entire network which happens to be
Speaker 1: your network. But I mean, well, you're describing is not that.
Speaker 1: I mean the media, you know, CNN doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be part of the story necessarily, or maybe didn't want
Speaker 1: to at least at the beginning. And Donald Trump just
Speaker 1: didn't allow that option, right, right, He made he knew
Speaker 1: very effectively that he could make the media part of
Speaker 1: the story. And at some level the media does love that. Sure.
Speaker 1: But what I what I what I've noticed and what
Speaker 1: I struggle with is that, of course everything in DC
Speaker 1: is always partisan, but the media ends up getting accused
Speaker 1: of being partisan because it's doing his job and it's
Speaker 1: asking questions, and somehow just even raising the question is
Speaker 1: seen as taking aside sometimes or even just a fact
Speaker 1: checking exercise is seen as sort of adversarial. Is there
Speaker 1: any going back? I mean you mentioned earlier or something
Speaker 1: was you mentioned earlier? You know, the claim of the
Speaker 1: Mother report that they couldn't exonerate the president is katnip
Speaker 1: for your viewers, That's right, It's for CNNs viewers. It's
Speaker 1: not cattinet for Fox viewers. Right. We recognize, and you
Speaker 1: guys recognize as part of your daily lives that there
Speaker 1: are there are different viewers for these for these networks.
Speaker 1: So is there any I mean, is there any return.
Speaker 1: I mean to me, it reminds me of you know,
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds when newspapers were starting to rise
Speaker 1: up in the United States, first national newspapers were coming
Speaker 1: to existence, and they were completely partisan. There was a
Speaker 1: federalist newspaper and a Republican newspaper. And I sort of
Speaker 1: feel that we're there again. Now. Do you see a
Speaker 1: path back to neutrality or objectivity for the media in
Speaker 1: terms of the partisanship. I think that I think that
Speaker 1: it has the possibility to change, and I certainly think
Speaker 1: that the media right now is trying its darnedest to
Speaker 1: hold people account and figure out how to do that
Speaker 1: in a way that does not come across as that
Speaker 1: we have our thumb on the scale either way. I
Speaker 1: think the problem is that do people believe us when
Speaker 1: we when we say that, right, do viewers trust it,
Speaker 1: especially if politicians are saying otherwise, If politicians are you know,
Speaker 1: convincingly making an argument that actually, know, we're just part
Speaker 1: of this machine and we're just you know, in the
Speaker 1: pocket of the DNC or the RNC or it is,
Speaker 1: if we're just you know, pawns to be used in
Speaker 1: this If they make that argument effectively, and they make
Speaker 1: an argument about fake news all day long, and people
Speaker 1: hear a drumbeat of that. I do worry that, you know,
Speaker 1: some of that gets through, But I think we just
Speaker 1: have to keep doing our jobs and hope that at
Speaker 1: some point people will be able to cut through some
Speaker 1: of the noise. But I don't think that we figure
Speaker 1: it out a perfect solution for it yet. I mean,
Speaker 1: in a way, you're just like you're like the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice that you cover. They've also experienced the present
Speaker 1: saying again and again and again and again, both before
Speaker 1: and he went into office and since then that they're biased,
Speaker 1: that they're not objective, that they're not neutral, and he's convinced.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people that prosecution and investigation
Speaker 1: are politicized, even though many people inside world thought otherwise,
Speaker 1: And ditto for news. So I guess that you and
Speaker 1: the people that you're covering are going to have a
Speaker 1: joint challenge going forward, right, And I think that there
Speaker 1: has been a fair um, you know, criticism by some
Speaker 1: that DJ is playing by an old set of rules,
Speaker 1: or at least Muller was playing by an old set
Speaker 1: of rules, and Trump sort of you know, has reinvented
Speaker 1: the wheel. But I don't I don't know what the
Speaker 1: alternative is for the media, right I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know that that we have an alternative other than to
Speaker 1: keep doing what we're doing and just try to keep
Speaker 1: doing it better and be as accurate as possible. You know,
Speaker 1: all we can do is just keep moving forward. Laura.
Speaker 1: I feel like you took us through the full experience
Speaker 1: that you've had over the last yet, from that's not
Speaker 1: over yet, from day one and the shock of the
Speaker 1: new all the way to prime time day after day
Speaker 1: after day, covering the most pressing and exciting story we have.
Speaker 1: Thank you, They thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Talking to Laura about the process of covering the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice in this crazy time of Trump and Muller
Speaker 1: and Bar, I'm left with partly a sense of gratitude,
Speaker 1: gratitude that there are reporters out there who have the
Speaker 1: legal chops to analyze the issues and the instinct to
Speaker 1: make the story come to life. We also are really
Speaker 1: trying to understand the internal motivations of people who don't
Speaker 1: want us to know their internal motivations, and that requires
Speaker 1: strong journalism going forward. We're going to have to avoid
Speaker 1: the kind of rush to judgment that the media has
Speaker 1: found itself pulled into, and which, according to Laura, was
Speaker 1: in fact a real factor in their reporting in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the summaries of the Mueller Report produced by
Speaker 1: Attorney General bar When Bob Muller testifies in front of Congress,
Speaker 1: we're going to have an instinct to run right out
Speaker 1: and say exactly that we know all of the relevant
Speaker 1: parts of his thinking. We won't. We need to take
Speaker 1: a deep breath. We need to get behind the stories.
Speaker 1: We need to do the deeper reporting, and then from
Speaker 1: that deeper reporting, we have to go to a more
Speaker 1: profound analysis, one that locates the problems of our current
Speaker 1: historical moment against the backdrop of the separation of powers
Speaker 1: and the investigation of a sitting present of the United
Speaker 1: States for potential crimes including obstruction of justice. Deep Background
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is
Speaker 1: Lydia Ganecott, with engineering by Jason Gambrel and Jason Rostkowski.
Speaker 1: Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed
Speaker 1: by Luis GERA 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