0:15

Pushkin from

0:19

Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background,

0:22

the show where we explored the stories behind

0:24

the stories in the news. I'm Noah

0:27

Feldman. Recently

0:29

we got some big news. Robert

0:31

Mueller, despite saying he did not want

0:33

to, is going to testify in front

0:35

of Congress about his investigation into

0:38

Russian interference in the twenty sixteen

0:40

election and into possible obstruction

0:43

by President Donald Trump. When

0:45

that happens, it's going to be a media

0:47

circus, which made me think,

0:50

what's it like to cover a story like that, How

0:53

does it work? What is the

0:55

news behind the news? To

0:59

talk about this? We are incredibly fortunate to

1:01

have with us Laura Jarrett, one of my favorite

1:03

people of all time. Laura

1:05

covers legal affairs for CNN, and

1:08

she has the DUBI distinction of having joined

1:10

CNN at exactly the moment

1:12

when the Trump administration exploded into

1:15

the headlines. Laura, you're either

1:17

the smartest person in the world were the unluckiest

1:19

in terms of when you started your job. It's

1:21

not boring, it's not boring. Before

1:24

Laura joined CNN, she was a

1:26

practicing attorney in Chicago

1:28

and private practice, doing all sorts of

1:31

high powered litigation. Not the sort

1:33

of person who usually turns into a journalist. And

1:36

before that, she was a law student

1:38

at Harvard Law School, where I had the great pleasure

1:40

of meeting her, and she was the standout

1:43

student in a course I taught way back

1:45

when when Barack Obama was just running for president

1:48

with John Jackson of University of Pennsylvania,

1:50

who's now the dean at the end and Burg School

1:52

at the University of Pennsylvania. And I've

1:55

been following her career with tremendous

1:57

and totally undeserved pride, and I'm

2:00

thrilled that you could join us. Thank you, Laura for being here,

2:02

Thank you so much for having me. So

2:05

start at the beginning. You're sitting in your law

2:07

firm, you're earning your big law from salary,

2:09

You're a mover and shaker in Chicago. Why

2:13

turn to journalism? Other

2:16

than the fact that I had a

2:18

killer shoe collection, I

2:20

was miserable. And I

2:23

think part of the issue is,

2:25

you know, unless you have a

2:27

legal background or you have parents that are at

2:30

law firms, a lot of people don't realize

2:33

that much of the day is

2:35

spent on phone calls and in

2:37

meetings planning for different

2:40

eventualities, but not actually digging

2:42

into the substance of the law. And so when

2:46

by the time I left, I was a

2:48

sixth year associate, and which that means

2:50

is I'm basically managing other associates,

2:53

but it also meant you're on the cusp of partnership.

2:55

I mean making it to the sixth year. Usually people go

2:57

for the go for the gold. Sure, but

3:00

that requires seeing

3:02

somebody's life who

3:04

is serving as a partner and

3:07

thinking, oh, you know what if I just work a couple

3:09

more years, work really hard, put my head

3:11

down, that's the life I can have. And

3:13

there was nobody for which I could point

3:16

to and say that's what I want. So

3:18

why journalism and why not going off to become

3:20

a ski bumb Because I knew that I

3:22

still love the law, and I knew that I still

3:24

loved digging into

3:27

legal issues, but I didn't want to be an

3:30

advocate anymore. I didn't

3:32

like the idea of having to just

3:34

take a position coal

3:36

hog, no matter whether I thought it

3:38

was right or dumb. I was

3:41

loathed to go in every day knowing

3:43

that this is what they're paying me to

3:46

do. So whether I

3:48

think they're wrong or right, I'm supposed to argue

3:50

for it, and you're penalized if you're not as

3:52

aggressive as possible about it. And I

3:54

wanted to just dig in on the facts, and so

3:56

I try to think, well, what can I do where I can cover the

3:58

facts, I can cover legal

4:01

issues, but do it in a far more fulfilling,

4:03

an interesting way. It turns out local

4:05

news in Chicago is very competitive. They

4:08

really want you to have you gone

4:10

through the ranks of other local markets.

4:12

And it turns out more sort

4:14

of nationwide networks,

4:17

especially Cable, are far more flexible

4:19

about taking someone with an unorthodox

4:22

background that's actually fascinating. I

4:24

would have had no idea about that, and I was

4:26

gonna my next question was actually going to be how

4:28

does someone who's a great lawyer with

4:31

an impeccable legal pedigree but has

4:33

never actually stood in front of a camera and explain

4:35

things to people before suddenly end up

4:38

on air at CNN. So

4:41

part of why CNN

4:43

ends up being such a great fit for me, especially

4:46

coming directly from Latham

4:49

and Watkins having never been on air once

4:51

in my life, is because

4:53

it's on all day long, so they

4:56

need people. They need people on

4:59

all day long, and there's so much more willing

5:01

to take a chance on you. And it was really

5:04

CNN that came up with this idea

5:06

of well, you have the legal background, why don't

5:08

we leverage why don't you cover the Justice Department?

5:10

And again they remember, this is

5:13

the summer of twenty sixteen,

5:15

So the Justice Department that they envisioned

5:17

for me was, I would say,

5:20

the pace was going to be slightly different, and they

5:22

thought, well, you know, in

5:25

your account, your account, Laura.

5:27

They hired you because they had nothing to lose, because

5:29

if you weren't good at four am, they just would never

5:31

put you on, you know, at nine pm. And

5:34

they give you the very boring beat

5:36

of the Hillary Clinton Justice Department,

5:38

where nothing especially would happen, and antitrust

5:41

laws wouldn't be strictly enforced and you know, etc.

5:43

Etc. Right, we would be dealing

5:45

with, you know, the twelve Benghazi

5:48

hearing and congressional document fights about

5:50

stuff like that. So you took a boring job and you

5:52

got an interesting one. I knew it would be interesting.

5:55

I just didn't know that it was going

5:57

to be like this. Shall we say,

5:59

Yeah, I knew, I knew it was going to be great, and I

6:01

knew it was going to be the right move for me, and it

6:04

was certainly going to be far more fulfilling

6:07

the managing document review for large

6:09

corporate litigation. I had no

6:11

idea it was going to be like this, and it

6:13

has turned out, I think,

6:15

to be, you know, such a memorable

6:18

and incredible experience for me to

6:20

have as my first formative

6:24

job in journalism. So

6:26

tell me about what it's actually like on a daily

6:29

basis. I mean to those of us who are I would

6:31

say at the periphery of the media like me,

6:33

I write a column, but I'm not, you know, I don't

6:35

have to respond in every live moment.

6:38

Sometimes Trump's legal news seems

6:41

like drinking from a fire hose. You

6:43

know. Every morning we wake up, we turn

6:45

on CNN or we open the newspaper,

6:48

and we hear the latest story of what's

6:50

happened. But that means that if we're doing

6:52

that, you've already been up for hours

6:54

before us. You've already assimilated

6:56

what's happened, and you've already presented

6:59

it as a as a story. So how

7:01

do you usually first hear that

7:03

the president has done something or that

7:05

the Department of Justice has done something

7:08

what's your usual, Well, do you usually know about it

7:10

before it even happens, So it kind

7:12

of depends on what the issue is.

7:14

A perfect example of where

7:16

unfortunately we had no heads up was

7:19

when the Special Council decided to break his

7:21

silence after two

7:23

years of stoicism. That

7:25

day, walked into the Justice

7:27

Department at nine am, got some

7:29

coffee, sat down, was just sort

7:32

of casually going through my emails,

7:34

and what do we get is a media

7:36

alert from the Special

7:39

Counsel's office that he's actually going

7:41

to speak in an hour and a half. And

7:43

the challenge of something like that is

7:45

immediately everyone turns

7:48

to you with what is he going to say? And

7:50

does that mean that the people within CNN call

7:53

you. They say, well, you're on the Department of Justice, bead.

7:55

We need to be prepared for when he speaks in an hour

7:57

and a half, So we expect that you will already

7:59

know what's going to happen before it's happened. That's what they're saying

8:01

too. Absolutely, go find out

8:03

exactly what he's going to say, and

8:05

then not only go out and find out

8:07

what he's going to say, but get on TV right

8:10

now and talk about it and tell

8:12

us first find out and then tell

8:14

us about it. But actually you want to we want to do that in reverse order,

8:16

but really maybe simultaneously. Maybe

8:19

maybe maybe that And that's

8:21

that is Again one of the challenges

8:23

with how fast everything is moving right

8:25

now is while you are on trying

8:28

to report about what you just found out

8:30

about, it's there's still incoming.

8:33

So why did you how did you do it? I mean tell us concretely,

8:35

what did you do? Ninety minutes you get the email,

8:37

suddenly you go into action. What did you do for

8:39

the next ninety minutes? So for the next

8:42

ninety minutes, I was literally running

8:44

all over the building, or I should say waddling,

8:46

because I'm eight and a half months pregnant difficulty.

8:49

We don't make this too easy for you, waddling

8:53

all over the halls of Justice, um

8:56

knocking on doors to whomever

8:58

I thought would be best positioned to know

9:01

about what exactly he's going to say.

9:03

And the challenge with someone like Mueller

9:06

is that group is very

9:10

tight lipped and to say the least, And

9:13

so it's probably not that surprising that we didn't even know

9:15

he was going to speak that day, because

9:18

they don't, you know, frontload things with the press.

9:20

They just they don't operate like that. And

9:22

so I waddled around Justice and then

9:24

I made as many phone calls as possible

9:28

while doing live hits, saying

9:30

I don't know what he's going to say, but it should

9:32

be interesting. And did you did you engage

9:34

in any pre analysis? I mean, I will say

9:37

I watched the thing live

9:39

on CNN, and then I muted

9:42

it to start writing my own column explaining

9:44

what I thought had happened. And then when I saw you

9:46

come on the screen, because about ninety seconds later,

9:48

then I unmuted it and to listen to

9:50

you. Appreciate it that I didn't hear you before

9:53

the event. So did you do any pre analysis?

9:56

I did, and what I tried to do there,

9:59

because I don't think it serves the viewer

10:01

to do like too much speculation

10:04

about what he will say unless I've been told he's

10:06

going to say X. So I was told it was going

10:08

to be substance. I was told that

10:10

he had spoken with the Attorney General before

10:13

about this, and that the Attorney General wasn't blindsided

10:15

by that. So those types of nuggets,

10:18

you know, we have now an hour and a half of air

10:20

to fill. So that's helpful to

10:22

give the viewers sort of a little bit of a peak

10:24

behind the curtain on that. But in terms of, you

10:27

know, actually predicting the words that are going to

10:29

come out of his mouth, I don't. I don't see any value

10:31

in doing that unless I had gotten a copy of

10:34

the remarks myself, which I hadn't, But

10:36

I did try to give our

10:38

audience a bit of a frame to understand

10:41

why it mattered that he was speaking. And I

10:43

think that that's what we try to do in

10:45

all of these things, because most people aren't

10:47

following the minutia of this as

10:50

you know closely, as all of us are sometimes

10:52

in the media, and so I try my hardest

10:55

to pull back and think, like, if someone

10:57

is just tuning in right now and they

10:59

haven't you been following every last

11:01

indictment, but they know who Robert Muller

11:03

is vaguely, and they see his

11:05

face, and they see b roll of him on our air every day.

11:08

Yeah, that's all there is of Mother's brow. There's no

11:10

way roll, right, So why should it

11:12

matter to the average person that he's decided

11:14

to day is the day he wants to open

11:16

his mouth? So now he speaks. Now he gets

11:18

up there, he says his piece, he

11:21

says he won't take questions, and

11:24

you know, you have at most a couple

11:26

of minutes before you have to go on and

11:28

offer an authoritative analysis. I noticed that

11:30

CNN first went to a panel of people who

11:33

kind of free associated No offense to

11:35

them, They're doing their best, but

11:37

they were kind of free associating, right, and then

11:39

you came on and actually said something. Again, part

11:41

of that part of the dance there

11:44

is logistics, right, So

11:46

the press conference happens on the seventh floor

11:48

of the Justice Department. I then have to waddle

11:50

back down to the first floor

11:53

where my booth or slash closet

11:55

is, and you know, get miked

11:57

up, get everything on so that I can be

11:59

back on air. So there has to be a little

12:01

bit of a well, who's going to sort of fill

12:04

the time until we can get the reporters and correspondence

12:06

back on. And so a lot of times if you see

12:09

panels, even on the day when

12:11

the report was released, she'll notice when

12:13

it first gets released, there

12:15

is a panel of probably eight

12:18

or ten people on set talking about

12:20

it. But before Evan Perez, who's

12:22

my colleague, who also covers the Justice Department, and

12:24

I could get back to our positions

12:26

to come on and talk about what the report actually says,

12:29

because it just there just has to be something to fill

12:31

the time until we can get in position. That's

12:33

amazing. You know, in my fantasy, I somehow thought

12:35

they were giving you a minute or twould actually think about

12:38

what you were going to say. But of course that's totally wrong. They

12:40

were just giving you time to walk down the stairs. I'm

12:42

supposed to have done that. I'm supposed to

12:44

have done that while I was walking or brushing my

12:46

teeth this morning. My goodness.

12:49

So then how do you do it? I mean, maybe

12:51

it's too hard to explain. Maybe that's like you know, asking

12:54

Michael Jordan, how does he make to move under the basket? But

12:56

in reality, you have to assimilate a

12:59

lot of information extremely

13:01

quickly and provide not

13:03

only a summary of it that's accurate, which

13:05

is relevant in the molar context because we've learned that not

13:07

all summaries are accurate, yes, and

13:10

also an analysis so that the

13:12

very first thing the listener

13:14

or the viewer sees or hears is

13:18

Laura explaining what just happened, and

13:20

Laura also saying what

13:22

it meant. And that's really different,

13:24

we should just point out than traditional journalism, in

13:26

which there were really two different jobs. One job

13:29

was tell us what happened, and

13:31

that was the fast in immediate job. Yeah,

13:33

and the other job was tell us what it means. And you

13:35

used to have a little more time to do

13:38

that part of it. So how

13:40

did you do that? I mean, what do you do on a regular basis

13:42

when you know you have to analyze as well as

13:44

described. Well, you know, part of the benefit

13:47

is that because I just get

13:49

to cover one beat, I

13:51

spent an enormous amount of time thinking about

13:53

this stuff all day long, and it kind of helps

13:56

if you're sort of marinated over it

13:58

for a long period of time. I think it

14:00

gives you a little bit more context. It gives you

14:02

a little bit more flavor of what's

14:04

happening, and so it's not like you're just sort of just dropped

14:07

in cold without having any

14:09

sort of heads or tails of what's

14:11

going on. And for

14:13

the times when it's

14:17

about doing both, as you said, what happened

14:19

and the analysis, I actually like

14:21

that better because what

14:23

happened people can now find out, you

14:26

know, in so many different ways, and so I hope

14:28

part of the reason that they would tune in is

14:30

for our analysis of how to make sense

14:33

of it, to how to see it in the larger context,

14:35

how to understand why it matters. I

14:37

think that that's, you know, hopefully, what would differentiate

14:41

myself from you know, another

14:43

justice reporter on the beat. That

14:46

should be sort of what we're offering

14:48

as a brand. Can I ask about that? In

14:50

fact, because one of the things that strikes

14:52

me is actually there is

14:54

almost no way anymore to find

14:57

any source of news that would

14:59

just tell you what happened without

15:01

already hearing the analysis, at least if you want

15:03

it in real time. And here's what I mean, nobody

15:05

waits till the next morning to read the news story

15:07

anymore. In fact, if I want

15:09

to know what's happening right now, I'm going

15:12

to turn on a cable news network, and

15:15

you know, I've got you guys, I've got

15:17

MSNBC, I've got Fox News.

15:20

All three will show

15:22

Mueller live and then

15:24

instantaneously all three

15:26

will give you description

15:29

plus analysis, and

15:32

in many cases that will

15:34

be the most important way that anyone

15:36

can get that information. I mean, there's no there

15:38

isn't a network, cable network that just says, we

15:41

just tell you what happened, and we don't analyze

15:43

it. And one of the results of that, and this is actually something that

15:45

worries me, is that we get

15:47

the news already analyzed. It already

15:50

comes out analyzed. And if you watched Fox,

15:52

which I then turn to, you've of course heard

15:54

radically different analysis then you've

15:56

heard on CNN or MSNBC. And that's

15:58

true of every breaking story nowadays.

16:01

And I do share that concern,

16:05

especially when you know this stuff

16:07

is not always straightforward.

16:10

It's sometimes actually requires

16:12

a beat to sort of process it and

16:14

think about it. And a good example,

16:17

I think is the day that the Attorney

16:19

General Bill Barr released his four page

16:21

memo on what

16:24

he took away to be Muller's principal

16:26

conclusions. And in

16:28

subsequent days and weeks and everything

16:31

that's followed, I think there's been a more fulsome

16:33

understanding of what happened there. But

16:36

in the first I would

16:38

say, thirty minutes of that memo coming

16:40

out, if you look at the coverage, the

16:43

coverage is the special counsel

16:45

has cleared the president of

16:48

conspiracy or as he likes hiss a collusion.

16:52

The analysis that Oler

16:54

gives is far far

16:58

from that. But because we

17:00

were so quick and so lightning

17:03

speed trying to get on the

17:06

takeaway and

17:08

I think trying to be actually

17:11

as fair as possible to Trump,

17:13

which I know many people

17:15

may not think that that's what this was, but it actually

17:18

I think was an attempt to say, you know,

17:20

for two and a half years, the president's been under this cloud.

17:23

If the Special Council's cleared him, we have to say

17:25

that right away. And so I think there was actually

17:27

a jump to do that without

17:29

taking a second to really process

17:32

what Muller was saying, and that I think it

17:34

is an example of the danger of this.

17:37

But aren't you being a little hard, a little too hard on yourself?

17:39

I mean, you're leaving out in your description

17:41

just now you're being so neutral. You left out the fact that

17:44

Bar's memo, the Attorney General's memo misrepresented,

17:48

at least in my view, the

17:50

conclusions of the Muller report with respect

17:52

to half of it. Right, So, just to remind

17:54

listeners, the first half of the Mueller

17:57

Documents report do say

17:59

that there wasn't sufficient evidence of conspiracy

18:02

or collusion to bring a charge. But then in the second

18:04

half of the report. In fact, there's

18:07

this very complicated business where there begins

18:09

by saying that if we had concluded

18:12

that the president didn't commit a crime, we would have said

18:14

so, and we can't say that. And

18:16

then he goes on to say, on the other hand, because

18:18

we can't put a sitting president on trial, we're

18:21

never going to say the president

18:24

probably committed a crime. But read the details,

18:26

where sure enough we lay out all the elements of the obstruction

18:28

of justice, and in a handful of instances

18:30

five or six, we actually do say

18:33

that probably the president satisfied

18:35

all those requirements. And none of that second

18:37

half, none of it appears in Bar's

18:39

summary of the principal conclusion. So didn't

18:42

Bar play you. I mean, you can't really beat

18:44

yourselves up for that. You trusted the Attorney General to some degree,

18:47

and I wonder if we just should have been

18:50

more like shown our work a

18:52

little bit more to say, Look,

18:54

this is a four page summary of even

18:57

at that time we didn't know how long it is. So this is a

18:59

four page summary of a report

19:01

that could be massive, and

19:03

just to provide I think the

19:05

viewer with a little bit more understanding

19:08

of what the limitations were, But even within

19:11

that four page memo, I felt

19:13

like there were things that may have

19:15

gotten lost the initial sort

19:18

of understanding of it. But then you again,

19:20

you see it switch. So the language

19:22

switches from there's no evidence of

19:25

conspiracy to Muller

19:27

couldn't find sufficient legal

19:30

basis to charge members

19:32

of the Trump campaign with a

19:34

conspiracy with Russia. It's just you're not the same thing

19:36

at all. Yet which are not the same thing. But if

19:38

you notice, even in digital rights,

19:41

from the Washington Post to US to the Times,

19:44

there's a switch that happens in language

19:46

once people take a minute to process it. So

19:48

let me ask you a question that I'm actually obsessed with, and

19:51

it's actually steps outside of just the issue

19:53

of how you make your judgments, And this actually goes to substance

19:56

of what we think happened. Why

19:59

do you think in your heart of hearts that

20:02

Bob Muller opened the door in

20:04

the way he did to have

20:07

his conclusions distorted by bar And here's

20:09

what I mean by that. There are plenty

20:11

of ways that Muller could have

20:13

written the second half of his report the Obstruction

20:15

of Justice party to make it much

20:18

clearer to an ordinary English speaker, not

20:20

a crazy lawyer like we are, that

20:22

there was substantial evidence to

20:25

support the conclusion that

20:27

the President committed an obstruction of justice crime, which

20:29

unquestionably is the substance of what he's saying.

20:32

Why did he bend over so far

20:34

backwards to say we're

20:37

not going to say that president committed

20:39

a crime, even if we think so, because

20:41

he can't defend himself. I mean, that's a that's

20:44

a very questionable thing for him to have

20:46

said. Remember his reason, his stated

20:49

reason is it's not fair to accuse someone of a

20:51

crime if they can't defend themselves in court. But

20:53

of course the reality is Donald Trump can defend himself

20:55

far more effectively in hablick

20:57

and has than he ever could have defended himself

21:00

in court. There are limits to what you can say in court. There's

21:02

no limit to what you can say on Twitter, at least not if you're Donald

21:04

Trump. So what happened with the obstruction

21:07

section is one of the more fascinating

21:10

and confounding elements of

21:12

this and I share I share your obsession

21:15

with it, especially knowing a little

21:17

bit behind the scenes of how this all

21:19

sort of went down. Tell us more about

21:21

that too, Yeah, so at least as I

21:23

understand it, and again you have your understanding

21:26

of it is only as good as your sources and your skepticism,

21:29

So as I understand it.

21:31

For a long time, the Special Counsel's Office

21:33

struggled with the obstruction

21:36

issue. They went back and forth

21:38

with it on Main Justice. They were being supervised

21:40

by the Deputy Attorney General's office, so

21:43

they're in regular contact with Main

21:45

Justice, as we like to call it, about these issues.

21:48

They're doing research, you know, what are applicable

21:51

precedents to even look at this is obviously

21:53

a unique situation given that it's the president.

21:56

They're trying to get their arms around this. At

22:00

some point they all sit down

22:02

meeting Mueller's whole team, not the whole team, but the senior

22:05

team. So Mueller himself, his

22:07

top two deputies, James Quarrels

22:09

and Aaron Zebli, who's been his chiefest staff essentially

22:12

forever, They sit down with the Attorney

22:14

General, the Deputy Attorney General, Rod rosen

22:16

Signed and other senior members

22:18

of DJ and Mueller's

22:21

team says we can't

22:23

get there on obstruction, and

22:27

Barr says, okay, are

22:29

you saying that? But for the

22:33

Office of legal counsel that has provided this

22:36

decades old policy opinion

22:38

essentially that says Canada died sitting

22:40

president. Are you saying but for that opinion?

22:43

And, according again to

22:45

bar, Mueller says no.

22:48

They asked three different times, they're

22:50

told no. They

22:52

ask well, what

22:55

is your reasoning for

22:58

how you're going to explain the obstruction issue?

23:00

And they say, well, we're still working on

23:02

that. I find that amazing

23:05

that that late in the day. I mean, because Barr wasn't

23:07

atturne General for very long before the report came

23:09

out. It doesn't add up to me, and it

23:11

has not adequately I think, been fleshed

23:14

out or reported on it. And I still

23:16

am trying to dig into how do you

23:18

have such an enormous breakdown

23:21

in communication such that the Special Counsel's

23:23

office thinks we can't even

23:25

make a traditional judgment and

23:28

everyone is looking around surprised about

23:30

that. How does that happen? It's

23:33

not like the OLC opinion was new, right.

23:36

I mean, one thing about your reporting

23:38

there is that it suggests

23:40

that the rationale ultimately

23:43

given by Muller for

23:45

why he wasn't going to

23:47

address whether the president committed a crime wasn't

23:50

really the rationale that it had been driving them in

23:52

the course of the investigation. I mean

23:54

that to me is bombshell might be too strong

23:56

a term, but it's very striking. I mean it suggests

23:58

that there was some other reason for them to say

24:00

no, we can't get there, and that

24:03

they only later came to the conclusion

24:05

that the way they should explain or justify themselves

24:07

was by saying, well, we can't say the president

24:09

committed a crime. Right, And

24:12

the fairness issue in particular, how

24:15

they get to that, the

24:17

worry that somehow it's unfair to the president to

24:19

say he committed a crime. Poor a little Donald

24:21

Trump, And how that

24:23

wasn't discussed. You would think that that would

24:25

have been in constant consultation

24:28

with DJ throughout the two years,

24:31

or that would just be a premise of the investigation, right.

24:33

I mean, if you think that there's a legal matter you

24:35

can't say the president committed a crime,

24:38

then that should affect everything you do in your

24:40

investigation. And I don't

24:42

really even understand how it didn't affect the

24:44

conspiracy part of the investigation,

24:46

other than perhaps what maybe happened

24:49

is they realized, Okay, we

24:51

don't have enough here for conspiracy.

24:54

Given that we don't have enough for conspiracy, maybe

24:57

then that also affects our obstruction analysis.

24:59

I don't think they make that connection, but I sometimes

25:02

wonder whether that is what happened. You

25:04

know, there's another theory that they

25:06

didn't want to put bar in a

25:09

sort of tough spot, saying we think the president

25:11

committed a crime, but we know we can't

25:13

do anything about it. They didn't have to worry about Bill

25:15

Barr. He knows that to take care of himself more.

25:18

I know we're cheaping the weeds here, but I just want to ask you one

25:20

more thing about that that big climactic

25:23

meeting that you're describing and obviously only

25:25

answered if your sources will let you. Do

25:27

you know about that meeting at all from

25:30

people who might be more inclined towards

25:32

Mueller as opposed to people who are more on the

25:34

bar side of the fence. I

25:37

think we now have it from multiple sources that

25:39

I feel confident with

25:41

the facts of it, that's what happened.

25:43

That that's what happened in the meeting, I think from

25:46

I think from the Mueller perspective,

25:49

they think that and you notice

25:52

this again in the press conference that

25:54

Bar does on the day the reporters released, I asked

25:56

him about the OLC memo, and

25:58

I asked him about whether I

26:00

asked him about the impact of it, and you know,

26:02

whether I had any effect on the analysis. And again he

26:04

goes back to the butt for formulation. And

26:06

the problem with the butt for formulation is one

26:10

that wasn't how Mueller was looking at it, or

26:12

at least that's not how the team

26:14

I think, formulates

26:16

their explanation for it. And indeed, Barr

26:18

has since dug in on that, and he has said

26:21

he actually has gone so far as to say he doesn't buy

26:23

the fairness explanation, that in

26:25

fact, it would have been perfectly fine to say

26:28

that the president committed the following acts, which

26:30

cons studio crime, which is kind of I

26:32

mean, it's incredibly clever. I mean, I am never I

26:35

never ceased to be impressed by Bar's cleverness,

26:37

just as I never ceased to be impressed by

26:39

Mueller's strong belief that the year is nineteen

26:42

sixty five. Yeah, and that he doesn't

26:44

have to play it by contemporary rules. But

26:46

you know, I think that Bar is correct

26:48

to say that that fairness justification makes no sense.

26:50

But he's ironically used that to

26:53

make the president look better. Right,

26:55

He says, well, they could have said it, I don't think

26:57

it would have been unfair. And so therefore the fact that they

27:00

didn't say the president committed a crime essentially

27:02

vindicates the president. And here is Mueller saying

27:04

basically one hundred and eighty degrees the opposite,

27:07

and the Special Counsel's team, i think

27:10

again thinks to the extent that

27:13

Barr was asking, but for um

27:16

this DJ guidance, would

27:18

you have found the president committed crime? They would

27:20

say that was true. The answer to that

27:23

is no, because we didn't even we

27:25

didn't even go there, we didn't even start

27:27

that analysis. Right. But again,

27:29

that's

27:32

right, right, that's literally not true if you actually read

27:34

the report, right,

27:37

they go through every element of

27:39

the crime and they say whether

27:41

it was satisfied or not. I mean so right. The

27:44

way I've tried to talk about this with my students is, as

27:46

you will recall painfully, I'm sure you know, when

27:48

we teach legal writing in law school, we tell people

27:50

it's got there. There are these different steps you have to follow.

27:52

You stayed the issue, you state the rule, you

27:54

apply the rule, and then you write a conclusion, and

27:57

this had all of those things except the conclusion.

28:00

There's just no conclusion there. So they did the analysis,

28:03

they just don't say the line of conclusion,

28:05

and of course, the most curious

28:07

line of the entire thing, saying although the fairness

28:10

thing might I don't know, it might

28:12

be a tie, here is the line that

28:15

if we could exonerate him, we would

28:18

so state yes, which is very very strange.

28:20

I mean that to me is just what

28:23

is that what people

28:26

hate lawyers? That's why people hate lawyers, because

28:29

only a lawyer could have thought of that sentence.

28:31

Right, we're not exonerating you, and if

28:33

we could exonerate you, we would exonerate you. But

28:36

we're also not not exonerating you. I

28:38

mean, the only lawyers talk that way. No human

28:40

being has ever talked that way before coming through the gates

28:42

of a law school. But for the average I

28:44

think for the average lay person, and

28:47

certainly for our viewers, that

28:49

is cat nip because politically

28:51

it's saying, I can't tell you

28:53

whether he committed a crime or not. Laurie,

28:57

you're from a political background, You're you're from a

28:59

political family, and you you're no DC

29:01

very very well and you've seen it in different

29:03

eras now and two very different eras. Do

29:06

you think that the way the

29:08

way we think about politics

29:10

and the fights that we have in Washington and

29:12

beyond have really changed in

29:15

the Trump barra compared to the Obama era or

29:17

do you think it's it's actually deceptive

29:19

to think of them as different, that we were already so profound

29:21

the partisan in the in the Obama

29:23

era that you know that this is just

29:25

a natural evolution. You

29:28

know, that's a great question. I don't I don't know

29:31

that it has changed. I certainly

29:33

think that the media's sort

29:36

of role in this dance has

29:38

changed. And I was sort of always

29:41

advised when I first took

29:43

this job and I've seen it throughout is you know that you never

29:45

want to become the story. We're supposed

29:47

to be covering the news. And because

29:50

of for better or worse,

29:52

how things have gone over the last

29:54

two and a half years, the

29:57

media has become so

29:59

much part of the narrative.

30:02

And because of Trump,

30:04

you know, calling on fifty million

30:06

people on his Twitter feed to

30:08

his actually boycott

30:10

an entire network which happens to

30:12

be your network. But I mean, well, you're describing

30:15

is not that. I mean the media, you know, CNN

30:17

doesn't want to be part of the story necessarily, or maybe

30:19

didn't want to at least at the beginning. And Donald Trump

30:21

just didn't allow that option, right, right, He made

30:23

he knew very effectively that he could make the media part

30:26

of the story. And at some level the media

30:28

does love that. Sure. But what

30:30

I what I what I've noticed

30:33

and what I struggle with is that, of

30:35

course everything in DC is always partisan, but

30:38

the media ends up getting accused

30:40

of being partisan because

30:43

it's doing his job and it's asking questions,

30:46

and somehow just even

30:49

raising the question is seen as taking aside

30:51

sometimes or even just a fact checking

30:53

exercise is seen as sort of adversarial.

30:56

Is there any going back? I

30:59

mean you mentioned earlier or something was you mentioned

31:01

earlier? You know, the claim of

31:03

the Mother report that they couldn't exonerate

31:06

the president is katnip for your viewers, That's

31:08

right, It's for CNNs viewers. It's not cattinet

31:10

for Fox viewers. Right. We recognize,

31:13

and you guys recognize as part of your daily lives that

31:15

there are there are different viewers for these

31:17

for these networks. So is there any

31:19

I mean, is there any return. I mean to me, it reminds

31:21

me of you know, the early eighteen hundreds

31:23

when newspapers were starting to rise up in the

31:25

United States, first national newspapers were coming to existence,

31:28

and they were completely partisan. There was a federalist newspaper

31:30

and a Republican newspaper. And I sort

31:32

of feel that we're there again. Now. Do you

31:34

see a path back to neutrality

31:37

or objectivity for the media in terms

31:39

of the partisanship. I

31:42

think that I think that it has the

31:45

possibility to change, and I certainly think

31:47

that the media right now

31:49

is trying its darnedest to

31:52

hold people account and figure out

31:54

how to do that in a way that

31:57

does not come across as that we have

31:59

our thumb on the scale either way. I

32:01

think the problem is that do people

32:03

believe us when we when we say that, right,

32:05

do viewers trust it, especially

32:08

if politicians are saying otherwise,

32:11

If politicians are you know, convincingly

32:14

making an argument that actually, know, we're

32:17

just part of this machine and we're just you

32:19

know, in the pocket of the DNC or the RNC or

32:22

it is, if we're just you know, pawns to be used

32:25

in this If they make that argument

32:27

effectively, and they

32:29

make an argument about fake news all

32:32

day long, and people hear a drumbeat of that. I do

32:34

worry that, you know, some of that gets

32:36

through, But I think we just have to keep doing our jobs

32:39

and hope that at

32:41

some point people will

32:43

be able to cut through some of the noise. But I

32:45

don't think that we figure it out a perfect solution

32:47

for it yet. I mean, in a way, you're just like you're like the

32:49

Department of Justice that you cover. They've

32:51

also experienced the present saying again and again

32:54

and again and again, both before

32:56

and he went into office and since then

32:58

that they're biased, that they're not objective, that

33:00

they're not neutral, and he's

33:03

convinced. I think a lot of people that prosecution

33:05

and investigation are politicized, even though many

33:08

people inside world thought otherwise,

33:10

And ditto for news. So

33:13

I guess that you and the people that you're covering are going to

33:15

have a joint challenge going

33:17

forward, right, And I think that there has been a

33:19

fair um, you know, criticism

33:21

by some that DJ is playing by an old

33:24

set of rules, or at least Muller was

33:26

playing by an old set of rules, and Trump

33:28

sort of you know, has

33:30

reinvented the wheel. But I don't

33:32

I don't know what the alternative is for the

33:35

media, right I don't. I don't

33:37

know that that we have an

33:39

alternative other than to keep doing what

33:42

we're doing and just try to keep doing

33:44

it better and be as accurate as possible.

33:47

You know, all we can do is just keep

33:49

moving forward. Laura.

33:52

I feel like you took us through the full

33:55

experience that you've had over the last

33:57

yet, from that's not over yet, from day

33:59

one and the shock of the

34:02

new all the way to prime time

34:04

day after day after day, covering the most pressing

34:06

and exciting story we have. Thank you, They

34:09

thank you so much. I appreciate it. Talking

34:16

to Laura about the process of covering the Department

34:19

of Justice in this crazy time of

34:21

Trump and Muller and Bar, I'm

34:24

left with partly a sense of gratitude,

34:26

gratitude that there are reporters out there

34:29

who have the legal chops to analyze the issues

34:31

and the instinct to make the story come

34:34

to life. We also are really

34:36

trying to understand the internal motivations

34:38

of people who don't want us to know their internal

34:41

motivations, and that requires

34:43

strong journalism

34:45

going forward. We're going to have to avoid

34:47

the kind of rush to judgment that the

34:50

media has found itself pulled into, and

34:52

which, according to Laura, was in fact

34:54

a real factor in their reporting in

34:56

the aftermath of the summaries of

34:58

the Mueller Report produced by Attorney General

35:01

bar When Bob Muller testifies

35:03

in front of Congress, we're going to have an instinct to

35:05

run right out and say exactly that

35:07

we know all of the relevant

35:09

parts of his thinking. We won't. We

35:12

need to take a deep breath. We need to get behind

35:14

the stories. We need to do the deeper reporting,

35:16

and then from that deeper reporting, we have

35:18

to go to a more profound analysis,

35:21

one that locates the problems of

35:23

our current historical moment against the

35:25

backdrop of the separation of powers

35:28

and the investigation of a sitting present of

35:30

the United States for potential

35:32

crimes including obstruction of justice.

35:38

Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.

35:41

Our producer is Lydia Ganecott, with engineering

35:43

by Jason Gambrel and Jason Rostkowski.

35:46

Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our

35:48

theme music is composed by Luis GERA

35:51

special thanks to the Pushkin Brass Malcolm

35:53

Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel.

35:55

I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter

35:57

at Noah R. Feldman. This

36:00

is deep background