DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. If you read tomorrow that the Justice Department had charged a politician or a business executive in your community with fraud after an FBI investigation, how would you regard the news? Would you suspect that the charges were really an inside job, the result of a personal vendetta or a political rivalry rather than a genuine effort to root out wrongdoing?
Our guest today, veteran investigative reporter David Rohde, argues that in Donald Trump's four years as president and three years out of office, he successfully used online attacks, conspiracy theories and threats of violence to discredit, divide and intimidate FBI and Justice Department officials. His new book reviews years of Trump's interaction with the justice system, from firing his first FBI director to pardoning allies convicted of crimes to attacking the investigation of January 6 as a witch hunt. Rohde argues that the norms and practices implemented in the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal made law enforcement more vulnerable to Trump's attacks, since career government officials were reluctant to fight back, lest they appear to be involved in a political dispute.
David Rohde is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, who has worked for The New York Times, The New Yorker and other publications. He was twice kidnapped and held in captivity, covering conflict zones, once in Bosnia and once in Afghanistan. He's now the national security editor at NBC News. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI, And The War On Democracy." David Rohde, welcome back to FRESH AIR.
DAVID ROHDE: Thank you so much for having me.
DAVIES: You know, a lot of this book covers events in the Trump years that were intensely reported on - you know, the firing of James Comey, the Mueller probe, the January 6 attack and prosecutions. Why did you want to go back and revisit these events, speaking with people in the Justice Department and the FBI?
ROHDE: I was very interested in the career civil servants in the Justice Department and the FBI - these are people who work in the Justice Department and the FBI for decades; they serve Republican presidents and Democratic presidents - and get a sense of how they viewed the Trump years and also the Biden years, where there was intense pressure from Democrats for a prosecution of former President Trump. And I was impressed by them. I found a group, generally speaking, that are committed to being fair and being impartial to administering the law in an equal way, equal justice under law, that all Americans are treated the same in court, whether you're a president or not. And it's sort of, you know, their story, how the hyperpartisanship of the Trump and Biden years has impacted our most powerful law enforcement agencies.
DAVIES: You know, the title of this book, "Where Tyranny Begins," is drawn from a quote by the philosopher John Locke in 1689, long before the United States was founded or the Constitution written. You want to share that quote with us and tell us why you begin the book with it?
ROHDE: Sure. It's very simple. It's where law ends, tyranny begins. And I chose it because it was, you know, as you said, centuries ago, but one place where you see authoritarian governments emerge and democracy come under threat is when a legal system is co-opted by one side or another side in a country. And that's the danger here, I think, is - it's both - I think there have been some attempts to sort of co-opt the DOJ and the FBI for political purposes. But beyond that, there's a widespread belief on both sides of the partisan divide that the other party is co-opting the legal system, co-opting the DOJ and the FBI and using it unfairly against, you know, the president that an American voter might support.
You know, you mentioned in the introduction that I have covered two civil wars in the past overseas, and that makes me maybe biased in a way or maybe overly worried, but law is how we sort of resolve our differences, our political differences, through laws and elections peacefully. And so having covered civil wars in other countries, you know, I am very worried about the level of rhetoric in this country. I am worried about the suspicions each side has of each other. And to me, it's not a game 'cause I saw in other societies how, you know, both sides in a civil war think they're the victim, and they think their cause is just. And I don't think we're there yet. I don't want to, you know, overstate the situation. But part of my motivation is to sort of look at what actually happened in these institutions in an era when there's just so much charged, you know, rhetoric and claims from both sides.
DAVIES: Now, you begin the book with a meeting - I think it's in the FBI headquarters - just two years ago, August 2022, between senior officials at the Justice Department and senior officials in the FBI. What were they there to talk about?
ROHDE: They were there to talk about the Mar-a-Lago search. One official who attended it referred to this meeting - it came after weeks of disagreement and sort of paralysis about where the investigation should go. But this official referred to that meeting as a come-to-Jesus meeting. And it was an effort by Justice Department prosecutors who were eager to search Mar-a-Lago. They were convinced that there were additional classified documents being held there by former President Trump, and they were afraid that a foreign power could somehow - you know, an operative could get in Mar-a-Lago and get hold of these, you know, top-secret documents, endangering sources and American spies and other Americans, and - whereas the FBI folks were very hesitant. There was a feeling from the FBI agents that rushing this search played into Trump's narrative of the FBI being this sort of deep-state organization that was unfairly persecuting Trump.
DAVIES: Right. And we should note that this wasn't, like, the first time that they had sought documents. I mean, the archives had requested stuff, they were unable to get it, and then Trump's attorneys had finally handed over some stuff and represented that a thorough search had disclosed there was no more, then the FBI had gotten information that, in fact, there were more documents, that they had been moved, right? They'd gotten security footage that showed all this. So it seemed that documents were being hidden and that investigators were being lied to. Is that about right?
ROHDE: That's how the Justice Department prosecutors saw it. The FBI officials, particularly the head of the Washington Field Office, Steven D'Antuono, felt there was a way to keep negotiating with Trump and that there was some way to get to a consensual search. And this was this sort of heated meeting. Every person in the meeting is a male. That's very common, for better or worse, in the DOJ and the FBI. They're all in suits and ties.
And it begins, and prosecutors are just saying - you know, as you mentioned - they went down to Mar-a-Lago. Trump's attorney said, here are all the remaining documents, and then they got hold of surveillance video that showed that dozens of boxes had been moved just before the DOJ prosecutors showed up down there. So there were still documents there.
There's been accounts by other journalists about this meeting, but some of the details that I was told surprised me. One was that FBI agents were so suspicious of DOJ prosecutors working the case that they had - I don't know how they got the information, but they looked up the campaign donations of Jay Bratt, one of the main Justice Department prosecutors working the case. And it turned out that he had given donations years ago to various Democratic political campaigns. And that made these FBI agents very suspicious that Jay Bratt was maybe pushing too hard for this. Steven D'Antuono kept thinking, what's the rush here?
And D'Antuono wanted to be fair. He said maybe also it was ambition, that Jay Bratt and these prosecutors were pushing so hard because this is this incredibly high-profile case, the first, at that point, criminal prosecution of a former president. But it was extraordinary to me that America's hyperpartisanship had penetrated the Justice Department and the FBI to the point where it was infecting this key meeting about when to search Mar-a-Lago and delaying it.
DAVIES: Yeah, one of the interesting things here is that you have - you know, it's the FBI agents, in this case, D'Antuono, who headed the FBI field office in Washington, right? It's usually the investigators who want to go in there and get the stuff, right? We're going to knock the door down, whatever. I want to get this guy. And he's saying, hold off. And one of the things you report him saying is, if we search his place, meaning Trump's place, we're walking right into his MO. What did he mean?
ROHDE: He meant you're going to fuel every conspiracy theory that's out there about the FBI wanting to get Trump. And when the search actually happened, there was, you know, big questions around the country, and even inside the FBI, about why the search was done. There were, you know, conspiracy theories that FBI agents had planted the classified documents. That's not true at all, but D'Antuono was right in terms of just the incredible response. It was unprecedented. Instead of some, you know, members of the Republican Party supporting the FBI - and, you know, the FBI always pursues classified documents. The Justice Department always pursues them. This is, like, a key thing to them. They had dozens of cases they've handled in recent years which involve going into houses and searching and securing these documents, so that wasn't unusual, but one other thing that struck me was that among FBI agents, it was seen, at this point, as a career ender to get a highly politicized case like this. To work on it would ruin your career at the FBI, because no matter what you did, you'd be criticized by both parties. If you weren't aggressive enough on Trump, Democrats would attack you. If you were too aggressive, or perceived as too aggressive, Republicans would attack you, so, you know, everyone was sort of incredibly frustrated that this was dragging on and on, and even the Justice Department officials didn't relish this case. They all saw it as sort of a political hot potato and a lose-lose for them.
DAVIES: You know, one of the norms that the Justice Department is supposed to adhere to, and in my personal experience, it seems to me that they do, is that you don't talk about an ongoing investigation. And one of the reasons is that even if you suspect someone of a serious crime, and even if you've impaneled a grand jury and you're getting evidence, you know, they may not have done it. They may never be charged with a crime, and it would not be fair to tarnish their names and reputations by talking about stuff that's ongoing, and so in this case, once the search was executed, the Justice Department and the FBI did not disclose it. Trump took care of that for them, right?
ROHDE: Yes. D'Antuono was actually relieved, initially, after the search was completed. There was no incidents. Trump made no public statements. I think the FBI agents had left, or were close to leaving, and then there was a blast from Trump about how this was - you know, nothing like this had ever been done to a former president, which was true, and just, you know, an incredibly angry message about - and he also said that the FBI was occupying Mar-a-Lago. They'd actually left at that point, and one of the things that I discovered was that there was a case of - I believe it was the Cincinnati field office was, you know, attacked by an armed individual. He tried to get inside of it. The person fled, and was killed. That was one incident that occurred after Mar-a-Lago, but there were three more attempts to infiltrate FBI field offices around the country in the days after the Mar-a-Lago search, and the Bureau kept that secret. They didn't tell the American people that, and that frustrated some FBI officials, because there is a correct thing. You do not talk about a court case, a legal case, until someone's been indicted by a grand jury of their peers. It's going back to John Locke. It's a - you know, you don't just have a judge indicting people. You don't have district attorneys doing it on. There has to be a jury involved, but there's a frustration that maybe the FBI is too cautious, and the Justice Department, in terms of not even explaining their actions, which is what happened after Mar-a-Lago.
DAVIES: Right. This is a theme that runs through the book. I mean, once the search happens, I mean, the Justice Department's protocol says, we will do our talking in court. When and if there are charges, all of this information will be detailed. Until then, we're not talking about it, which leaves the field wide open for their critics to say whatever they want - like it was a Gestapo-style raid, right?
ROHDE: Exactly.
DAVIES: Was it a Gestapo-style raid (laughter)?
ROHDE: No. I mean, there were FBI agents who came in in windbreakers, and they, you know, did the search and - you know, and left, but, you know - and again, in terms of the hyper-partisanship of this era, you had President Biden separately investigated by a special counsel, Robert Hur, for his own, you know, mishandling of classified documents. And it was - the rhetoric, you know, I think, wasn't as strong, but there was a similar dynamic.
You know, when Hur published his report, and he - remember, he was explaining why he didn't charge Biden for mishandling documents. It was - you know, Hur said that he felt that, you know, President Biden would be seen by a jury as a, you know, well-meaning, older man with memory issues. Hur was savaged by the Biden White House and by Democrats for putting that language in there, and he was - Hur was trying to explain why he didn't think he could win a conviction, or a trial was merited for Biden. And, you know, I mean, some people can say it was wrong that President Biden dropped out of the race, but President Biden having memory issues is now a, you know, widely accepted thing, and that was just an example. And I really am trying to be fair in this book. I think it's really important to have journalism that is tough on Republicans and tough on Democrats, but that was Democrats going after a prosecutor who was stating a fact that the country soon learned after the debate between Trump and Biden.
DAVIES: You know, you described this intense debate among FBI agents and Justice Department officials about whether it's the right thing to go in unannounced, and execute a search on Trump's compound in Mar-a-Lago. On reflection, was it the right call?
ROHDE: That meeting I mentioned goes on and on and just ends in deadlock. The DOJ officials leave and go back to the Justice Department, and there's a private meeting among FBI officials. And again, Steven D'Antuono, the head of the Washington field office, says to his colleagues, I am not carrying out this search, you know, immediately unless I'm ordered to do so by my superiors, and the person who actually does this - there is a consensus at the top of the FBI that this is the deputy FBI director, Paul Abbate. He's a career public servant. There's only one political appointee in the entire FBI, and that's the director - that's Chris Ray - but it's Paul Abbate who orders the Washington field office to carry out the search. They do carry it out. Most senior FBI officials decided they had to. They had to hold the former president accountable, to be consistent and to uphold the rule of law.
DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with David Rohde. He is a veteran investigative reporter. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI, And The War On Democracy." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with David Rohde. He's a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize - currently the national security editor for NBC News. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI, And The War On Democracy."
You know, Trump and his allies accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of, you know, engaging in a witch hunt and of politically targeting them, which was offensive to career officials in the department. But, you know, you note that the Justice Department and the FBI have not always pursued justice impartially. Their authority has been abused. Do you want to mention a couple of those more notable cases?
ROHDE: Yes. And, you know, one of the best-known cases and the most familiar names is J. Edgar Hoover who throughout the Cold War, you know, ran - he helped create the FBI and then ran it for decades. And during his tenure as FBI director, he targeted political groups from both the right and the left that he saw as threats to the United States. He saw Martin Luther King as a communist and tried to smear him and plant evidence of wrongdoing by him that was false. And he also investigated the John Birch Society, a right-leaning group.
And one detail about Hoover was that he also provided eight presidents - the eight presidents he served - four Democrats, four Republicans - with dirt on their political rivals. And a lot of this came out after Watergate. And there were sort of sweeping reforms enacted to prevent FBI directors or attorneys general from using the FBI and DOJ for political gain, whether at the behest of a president or on their own.
During the Nixon years, John Mitchell, the attorney general under Nixon - he investigated anti-Vietnam War, left-leaning protesters and Black nationalists. And he also investigated people who leaked politically damaging information about President Nixon. So the idea was that these post-Watergate reforms would, you know, let the American people - that this would be an independent Justice Department, that it wouldn't, you know, act as a political arm of the president, and it would enforce the law equally against all Americans, including presidents and their aides.
DAVIES: Yeah. And we should note that the - Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, was himself convicted and went to jail for his role in planning and covering up the burglary of the Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate. So what were the reforms? What were the new rules or practices that were established to try and make, you know, the Justice Department and FBI clearly impartial and apolitical?
ROHDE: There were two key leaders. William Webster became the director of the FBI, the first one under these reforms. And he told FBI agents that they had to sort of, you know, enforce the law in the way the Constitution demands and that they should be defending the Constitution as part of their efforts to enforce the law and that - he really did change the culture of the FBI. And then there was an amazing attorney general in the mid-'70s named Ed Levi. He was the president of the Uni of Chicago, but - and he was appointed by President Ford. And he made a tremendous effort and gave speeches all around the country about why the role of the attorney general is somewhat confusing and contradictory.
On one level, the attorney general should carry out the policy priorities of a president. If a president - in terms of law enforcement - wants to, you know, crack down on corporate, you know, tax cheating, that's absolutely fine. If the president wants a crackdown on violent crime, that's absolutely fine. But the attorney general must be independent when it comes to individual criminal investigations.
And so it was vital that the attorney general not act on the behest of the president when they are investigating anyone. They didn't want to get into a situation where, you know, the president is telling an attorney general, go investigate, you know, that CEO because he didn't give me enough campaign donations. And that norm held for 50 years from Gerald Ford through Barack Obama that there was a political cost, that, I think, no presidents - no Republican, no Democratic president wanted to be seen as meddling or ordering a criminal investigation of a rival or defending an ally because they feared another Watergate. They feared being driven from office.
DAVIES: We're speaking with David Rohde. He's a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and currently the national security editor for NBC News. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI, And The War On Democracy." He'll be back to talk more after the short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. We're speaking with veteran investigative reporter and NBC News national security editor David Rohde. For his latest book, he spoke to many officials of the Justice Department and the FBI who served during the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations. He argues that Trump's relentless attacks on the justice system have discredited, divided and intimidated FBI and Justice Department officials, undermining public confidence in government employees generally. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI, And The War On Democracy."
Jeff Sessions, who was Trump's original attorney general, eventually resigned, Trump was furious at him for letting the Russia investigation get underway, and he was ultimately replaced by Bill Barr. And, you know, as you describe it, Bill Barr's term as attorney general was one in which he really followed Trump's practice of kind of shattering the norms of operation for the department that had been in place since the Watergate scandal of the '70s. You cite a lot of examples of this. Do you want to maybe focus on one or two?
ROHDE: Yeah, and Barr, to be fair, he really believed that the Watergate reforms had weakened the presidency too much. He gave a speech when he was attorney general about the United States was this big country, and when it really is in crisis during this civil war or when there's a national disaster, the only way to hold the country together is to have a strong president. And, you know, this is a widely held belief among many conservatives. And then Barr thought it was also appropriate for an attorney general to sort of be political. He felt that the Trump Russia investigation was very unfair, so he was very open about saying that this was - you know, he felt it was an outrage, that the Trump Russia investigation was one of the biggest scandals in the history of the Justice Department. And when - in the summer of 2020, when there's protests after the killing of George Floyd, he's frequently echoing Trump in terms of they're antifa activists who are out there causing this violence. And then in the lead-up to the 2020 election, he's criticizing mail-in voting. He's warning that there will be large-scale fraud going on in the vote. That's unprecedented. Attorneys general, again, are not supposed to be overtly political, according to the post-Watergate model, but Barr was.
DAVIES: Then there were cases of actual prosecutions, for example, when it was time for, if I'm remembering correctly, the sentencing of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally, and he intervened to reduce the recommendation for the jail term that he would get, right?
ROHDE: Yes, he did. Barr did that because he felt the sentence was excessive, given Stone's age, and he also generally felt the Trump Russia investigation was just illegitimate. And it was - again, he felt that was the right thing for him to do as the president's appointee. And if, you know, voters disagreed with his decision to reduce the sentence, then the ultimate arbiter should be voters, that it's OK for an attorney general to sort of be overtly political because they'll be held accountable every four years through the presidential election. But it infuriated many career Justice Department officials. Several resigned when that happened, and it made many liberals see Barr as sort of a shill for Trump. And it was very interesting and important because there was a real danger, people felt, that if you basically don't cooperate - Roger Stone did not cooperate with prosecutors - it showed that the president, you know, himself or the attorney general would pay you back for remaining silent, because before Trump did leave office, you know, he pardoned Roger Stone.
DAVIES: I want to talk about Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland was appointed attorney general by Joe Biden after Biden was elected in 2020, a very close election. Merrick Garland had almost become appointed to the Supreme Court. That didn't happen, but he had been an appellate judge for many years, and he inherited a bunch of really politically sensitive cases, right? I mean, they were investigating Rudy Giuliani and the Republican response to the Arizona vote recount and the Hunter Biden investigation. What kind of temperament and approach to handling these matters did Garland bring?
ROHDE: If there was a true believer in the post-Watergate Justice Department, it's Merrick Garland. It's the idea of the attorney general being completely apolitical. He served under Janet Reno, who frustrated Bill Clinton many times 'cause, you know, she appointed multiple special counsels, independent counsels as well, that led to Whitewater and other investigations of Clinton. But Garland's core belief was that by acting in an apolitical manner was the best way to regain the trust of the American public and to counter all the partisan criticism and some of the conspiracy theories about what was happening. And I think, unfortunately, that proved to not be true. Today, different polls show different things, but 75% of voters don't trust the - have very little or no confidence in the Justice Department, and roughly 87% of Republicans have little to no confidence in the Justice Department. So Merrick Garland has spent, you know, three years trying to do things by the book, and it hasn't had any impact, it seems, any significant impact on our deep partisan divide.
DAVIES: So had he not followed the book in a way - I mean, should he have publicly responded more often when the department was attacked as being, you know, motivated by a witch hunt and political vendettas?
ROHDE: It's a catch-22. He did respond publicly after the Mar-a-Lago raid, when there was this incident of an armed individual trying to get into the Cincinnati FBI office, and he stood up and said, I ordered this raid. This was a legal raid. A judge signed off on this search warrant. But there was a sense in the FBI - there's one former senior FBI official I talked to who was very frustrated that there wasn't more communication from the department and the Justice Department in those days and in general. Basically, this former FBI official said that in the digital age and in an age of hyperpartisanship, trust me doesn't cut it, that you can't sort of say, well, we'll file all this - you know, all these these documents and things later, that we'll explain in court why we were searching Mar-a-Lago. You actually - there is a way to get some information out, to explain to the public, to be more transparent to the public about how the FBI works, how the DOJ works, to counter some of the conspiracy theories.
DAVIES: You know, as a reporter, I covered a lot of federal investigations of local politicians accused of corruption, and I mean, try as I might, I could never get, you know, assistant U.S. attorneys, federal prosecutors, to tell me anything that was not in the public record. Defense attorneys - they would talk, but not the prosecutors, and I think they were bound by this tradition that is, you know, you do your talking in court. And part of that was that I think they felt they would jeopardize cases if judges found they were out there, you know, providing confidential information. Is that what was going on here?
ROHDE: It was, and I want to talk again quickly about Steven D'Antuono, the head of the Washington Field Office, who delayed the search of Mar-a-Lago, which in many ways, you know, you would think, oh, this guy's, like, in the tank for Trump or likes Trump. He was actually trying to defend the FBI. He was worried that if they did the search, it would play into all these conspiracy theories about the FBI.
Ironically, after the search is carried out, after the deputy head of the FBI orders it to happen, D'Antuono is like the focus of a Fox News monologue by Tucker Carlson. And Tucker Carlson accuses D'Antuono - he previously worked for the FBI in Michigan - D'Antuono was somehow part of a plot of men being accused of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. And he did have a peripheral role in that case. Then Tucker Carlson pointed out that Steven D'Antuono was the head of the Washington Field Office on January 6. And essentially, Carlson accused him, Steven D'Antuono, of being some sort of deep state agent. And D'Antuono told me how he was heartbroken about this.
He was a public corruption investigator for over 20 years. He told me, God and country for 27 years, and then you get blasted by Tucker Carlson and called corrupt. And my parents have been forced to see that and my kids, and that's not right. And D'Antuono said he felt like his job as an FBI was sort of akin to that of a baseball umpire trying to enforce the rules of a game fairly and prevent chaos. And he told me, all I was trying to do was call a good game. He said, all I was trying to do was to keep both teams from killing each other.
DAVIES: We need to take one more break here. Let me introduce you. We were speaking with David Rohde. He is the national security editor for NBC News. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI And The War On Democracy." We'll be back after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with veteran investigative reporter and NBC News national security editor David Rohde. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI And The War On Democracy."
You know, a central theme of the book is that the norms and practices of the Justice Department intended to keep it fair and impartial, things like you don't talk about ongoing investigation, so you don't, you know, taint the reputations of people who may never be charged - that those norms are simply no match for a president who would attack law enforcement publicly with great abandon, often with disinformation, you know, messages reinforced by, you know, an aggressive conservative media and members of his political party. I mean, it's a persuasive case that those things do kind of handcuff - well, I don't want to say handcuff, but it does make the department vulnerable. And I'm wondering what should be done about it? Should the Justice Department's rules be changed?
ROHDE: I think it's more important than ever that the Justice Department be independent. There are some very basic reforms. There were some proposals in Congress to limit the powers of the presidency. A lot of them came from Jack Goldsmith, who was he worked in the George Bush administration - George W. Bush - you know, basic things. Right now, the president has the power to invoke emergency powers under the Constitution with no limit, and they can do that unilaterally. He called for legislations that would prevent that. There are basic pardon reforms. It would make it a crime to use a pardon in exchange for someone cooperating in an effort to obstruct an investigation, that that would make it a felony to do that. And again, to deter a president from using the pardon power to stop criminal investigations. And even - you know, there's a very basic reform he made, he proposed - Jack Goldsmith - in terms of transparency that would require presidents to make their tax returns public.
None of those very basic reforms were enacted by our very divided, you know, Congress. And so this is again what worries me the most is the hyperpartisanship sort of preventing us from enacting the reforms we need to use the lessons of each presidency, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican who's abusing power, to refine our laws. And instead, we just seem to be more and more divided, more and more name-calling, more and more conspiracy theories from both sides. And again, I think the answer to stabilizing our democracy is more nonpartisan public service, not less of it.
DAVIES: And I guess in a way, it means winning elections, right? For people who believe in those ideals, because Congress has to do it.
ROHDE: And one of the - it was interesting. One person I spoke with in the course of working on the book and writing different stories was Jamie Raskin, the Democrat, you know, firebrand. He said that he was pushing forward with the January 6 committee, but he said it's very important that we win this battle politically. And he was saying, and a lot of Justice Department officials say this, that the legal system actually isn't the best way for us to resolve our political differences. If you look at what happened to Trump's ratings, his popularity ratings - they soared after he was indicted by Jack Smith. You know, every indictment, every case, instead of discrediting him, they actually increased Republican support for him.
And I had senior Justice Department officials say to me, that the Justice Department, the court systems, you know, trials aren't the way - you know, they're not equipped to resolve our political differences, that elections are the ways we resolve our political differences every four years and two years. But the problem with this sort of moment is when you know, honestly, when former President Trump will not accept the results of the election, then you've got a problem. You don't - that core, basic fact if there's no agreement on it, that's what, you know, puts us, I think, at great risk. And I just want to say, there's many skeptics out there who question what happened in 2020. Again, great example of nonpartisan public service - there was about 70 federal judges, including the Supreme Court, that considered the different challenges from Trump to the 2020 election results. He lost every time.
It is not true that there was massive fraud in 2020. Joe Biden won the election. These were judges, some of them appointed by Trump himself, some appointed by George W. Bush, you know, by George H.W. Bush, and they did the right things. A conservative state Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin talked about the deep threat that this represented to democracy to uphold a false claim of election fraud, how dangerous that was in the long term to our democracy, and he rejected Trump's claim of voter fraud in 2020.
DAVIES: You know, I've long felt that whatever happens in court cases about the 2020 election, if tens of millions of people believe that you can steal tens of millions of votes, and without leaving any evidence, we're in big trouble. You know, it's interesting that some Republicans, Steve Bannon, among others, have urged MAGA voters to get involved in elections more directly, in party committee races and actually run for precinct election boards, volunteer at polling places. And this kind of terrifies a lot of folks who think that they're going to try and steal the election that way. In some ways, I think it actually might be a really good thing because, I mean, having covered a lot of elections - have been to a million polling places - having observed recounts, if you do that, if you see it up close, you see that, you know, pollings are won in neighborhoods by people who were trying to follow the local election code and get it right. And when there's a dispute, they're handled by civil servants who - they're not going to risk their careers and pensions to, like, stuff ballots. You know, elections are always a little messy, but it's pretty much on the up and up. And I think if more people got involved and saw it firsthand, I actually think it might shake their belief in, you know, the stolen election theory.
ROHDE: That's democracy. That's people getting out and running for office. That's people coming out as volunteers. And there's a long tradition of a Republican observer and a Democratic observer sitting there and watching the votes get counted. And when you - and again, you know, I'm a mainstream journalist, obviously, and - but I've covered government officials around the world and here, and I see that, you know, there's definitely corruption. There's definitely problems with what happens. But there's a lot of people who are trying to do the right things, whether it's counting votes or carrying out a policy by a democratically elected president.
You know, my last book was about, you know, is there a deep state? And I found that the career civil servants are more biased towards their own organization. The FBI agents, I found, you know, were most interested in defending the FBI itself. DOJ officials or the Department of Agriculture - they would leak information to get a higher budget, you know, from Congress or do something to help their - you know, their friends, you know, their colleagues, their department, their tribe, if you will. There are bad actors. I think, you know, we've got to divide power between three branches of government. You need transparency. As a journalist, I love to see transparency. But, you know, most conspiracy theories in the left and the right that I've looked into haven't proven to be true.
DAVIES: Well, David Rohde, thanks so much for speaking with us again.
ROHDE: Thank you.
DAVIES: David Rohde is a veteran investigative journalist and currently the national security editor for NBC News. His new book is "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, The FBI And The War On Democracy." Coming up, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Paradise Bronx," the new book about the New York borough from Ian Frazier. This is FRESH AIR.
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