The FRONTLINE Interviews
Ty Cobb
Former Trump White House Lawyer
Ty Cobb is an attorney who served as special counsel during the first Trump administration, managing the White House response to the investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. He previously served as assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group's Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on April 3, 2025. It has been annotated and edited for accuracy and clarity as part of an editorial and legal review. See a more complete description of our process here.
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Trump’s Speech at the DOJ
One place we’re thinking of starting the film is the moment that President [Donald] Trump goes to the Department of Justice and speaks at the Great Hall.What do you see in that moment of him going there and talking for over an hour?
So at 30,000 feet, given my experience as a former federal prosecutor in the ‘80s and subsequently as an independent counsel and White House counsel, I was sad to see that.I think it was clearly intended to make claim that the Department of Justice no longer is an independent part of the government.It’s now protective of him.That was not news to anybody, given the appointments that he had made, the fact that he had installed two of his criminal lawyers in senior positions and picked Matt Gaetz to be the original nominee to be the attorney general.It was clear that he had no respect for the Justice Department and intended to run it as an object of his fealty, but it punctuated all those things in a way that I was very sad to see.…
When he’s there, one of the things that he did was single out particular people, like Norm Eisen, who he calls “scum” and “vicious,” Andrew Weissmann.What does it mean for the president of the United States, at the Justice Department with the attorney general there and the director of the FBI, to single out people and describe them as scum?1
It’s offensive.It’s un-American.It’s all the things that—everything about it is something that I wish I had never seen or heard.Rare has been the opportunity for a president to speak in the Great Hall of Justice.I think typically when it’s been done—and I only really actually recall [former President Barack] Obama having done it; perhaps others have—but it’s usually ceremonial, to provide an award or congratulate somebody or say something uplifting about the rule of law or some major success in terms of moving civilized society forward.It’s rarely a campaign rally.Well, it’s never been a campaign rally before, and certainly it shouldn’t be the apparent call to vengeance that it was there.
I think, even before you get to Trump’s remarks, I frankly thought the most shocking thing I heard the whole day was not from Trump but was from [U.S. Attorney General] Pam Bondi, when rather than saying that all the Justice Department people there were assembled because of their devotion to the Constitution, she said emphatically that “We are all here for him.” That is a break of 240-plus years, I guess, in terms of the independence of the Justice Department.You’re not there for an idol, and you’re not there to be idolaters.You’re there to preserve and protect the Constitution.That’s the oath you take.
Why was it so different?Because I think it’s hard for people to understand why that would matter that the attorney general would say something like that or the president would present himself there in that way.
Well, I think it goes back just to the rule of law, the “no man is above the law” principle that most Americans think the country is founded upon.It’s gotten a little confusing because of the immunity decision, which is, I think, misrepresented, mostly by the mainstream media, because it does get reported as though that the Supreme Court somehow gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, which is not what they did.2Had that been the case, they would have reversed the D.C. Circuit and dismissed the case,rather than remanded the case to the district court for instructions to determine which of the official acts, or—which of the acts in the indictment—were official acts, and, of those official acts which have presumptive immunity. Were any of them not entitled to immunity because of circumstances that the judge found?
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Oyez: Trump v. United States
So I think the Trump takeaway from that opinion, and certainly his advisers’ and the way they messaged it, is he’s free to do whatever he wants.Now, he’s always felt free to do whatever he wants and always thought that it should be his approach, but only now, after four years to plan the approach, Project 2025, and the full-scale assault that’s underway on the rule of law, because the courts are there as an obstacle to the lawlessness that he has attempted so far, and the only obstacle under the Constitution, because Congress has neutered itself through its own cowardice.I think the cheerleading that went on there and, frankly, at the core of where the rule of law gets exercised by the government was just shocking and offensive.
You know him well.What did you see?Was he the same president that you saw?Was he more unbound in a moment like that than when you knew him?What did you see about him as a man?
So, yeah, I have some ethical constraints because of the position that I used to hold, and I worked closely with him and spent a lot of time with him.I’m not sure that I know him well, or I wouldn’t say that we were ever buddies or anything like that, but I did spend a lot of time with him.I think the man he is today, much different from the man I encountered, not necessarily in terms of character approach or personality but in terms of confidence and recklessness.
I think he was a little tentative during his first term in the sense of not acting out on every impulse.He had advisers, from the initial, largely qualified Cabinet that he had picked the first time around to his chief—the chief of staff who was there then, the bulk of the time, Gen.[John] Kelly, who would oftentimes try to counsel him, and others who would oftentimes try to counsel him to restrain himself in some way or raise the decorum issue or stature issue.I don’t think you see that anymore, not with the handlers that he currently has.
So I think you see a man that is determined to get his own way, knows what he wants to do, has people like Steve Bannon and others feeding him agenda items on a constant basis, some of which he’s very interested in and others of which he might toy with briefly and then discard, or toy with briefly and then become obsessed with, like, for example, tariffs, which I know is the issue of today, as we throw out several decades’ worth of prosperity and have seen stock markets around the world shake and the dollar drop.So we’ll see how long he plays with that.
But given the criticism that he’s taken on that today, I can assure you that criticism only inspires him to double down, because it’s not like they’re going to rethink the wisdom of this, these kind of things, and that’s sort of the tragedy of the president’s personality, which is, when attacked or criticized, his reaction tends to be very, very defensive and very, very vengeful.
His conflicts with lawyers, with the Justice Department during the first term, was very much public.The idea that [former U.S. Attorney General] Jeff Sessions would recuse himself, that the Justice Department wouldn’t go along with him on attempts to overturn the election or going after people who wanted him to—what was his relationship with the Justice Department, with lawyers?Was he frustrated?
I think the relationship with the Justice Department was, again, it was a little uncertain.He wasn’t really sure how far to push.He would push as far as he thought he could and then maybe pull back but then vent again.Sessions was a constant object of his ire, in part because of the recusal, in which—in candor, I think the president did have a gripe, because keep in mind that former Attorney General Sessions, a man who I have great respect for, he announced his recusal … without consultation with the White House.And so that was a little abrupt, and that rubbed the president the wrong way, and he has a right to react to that, but he never got over it.And I think that from that point on, the attorney general didn’t have the president’s confidence, and then when things would go badly there, it would cause him to be even more irritated than he might have otherwise been.
Because what I’m wondering is if, as he goes into his second term, if it changes the type of people he chooses; it changes what he’s looking for in an attorney general and in the lawyers who are around him.
Well, certainly, something has changed.Is it all on the president?I’m not so sure.He’s got some very close advisers who have been planning—a polite word for scheming—for this moment.If you look not just at the Justice Department in isolation but the whole of government, the quality of appointed personnel has never been lower.It’s sort of shocking.You replaced a bunch of statesmen with juvenile delinquents.That’s the best example I can come up with.And the theory that Matt Gaetz would have been an appropriate attorney general or that some of the other appointments that we’ve seen and endured to date with frustration I think demonstrate that he only—at this stage of his presidency and what he wants to accomplish, he really only values loyalty and virtually nothing else.
Because that’s the heart of, I think, one of the questions about who he’s choosing, is if it’s for loyalty, if it’s for—is he looking for his Roy Cohn, for somebody who’s going to go to battle for him?And who’s the client?Is it the president of the United States?Is it Donald Trump?How do you see that?How do you see what Trump is looking for in a lawyer?
So it’s interesting that you mentioned Roy Cohn.Roy Cohn, I think, had a big effect on the president.The—not because of anything philosophical so much as I think the president found Roy Cohn’s approach to problem-solving liberating, which was to learn that there really are no rules.Rules only matter if you care, and there’s no reason you should care about anything other than your self-interests.…
I’m not sure that he’s got any Roy Cohns, because Roy Cohn—Roy Cohn was somebody that Trump looked up to.I don’t think Trump looks up to any of these people.I’d be shocked.I think these are people that he thinks he can control and has great confidence that they’ll do what he wants.He’s not looking for them to tell him what to do; he’s looking for them to do what he tells them to do.
But do you get that sense that—because a lot of lawyers will say, “We don’t work for Donald Trump.” Government lawyers will say, “We don’t work for Donald Trump,” whether it’s in the White House Counsel’s Office or the Justice Department.“We work for the office.We work for the United States.” Do you have the sense that he sees it differently, that he sees them as working for him, personally?
Yes.Now, there are times where that distinction needs to be made.I had to make that distinction multiple times because my position, as special counsel to the president and in managing the [special counsel Robert] Mueller investigation, there were a lot of ethical issues.The president had personal attorneys.There were certain things that I could discuss and negotiate with Mueller on behalf of the White House, but there were certain other things that had to be negotiated by his personal attorneys.We would be in meetings.I would have to withdraw from meetings so that they could have discussions about his personal concerns or interests that were not White House or constitutional issues of consequence at the White House, with which I was entrusted.
So there are times that discussion makes some sense.And obviously, if I had been his personal attorney, I wouldn’t be here today, but I didn’t have that individual representation.I did represent the United States, and my oath was to preserve and protect the Constitution.I didn’t have a retainer agreement.He never paid me a dime, of course.
So there are nuances about those discussions.But when you talk about—so take Emil Bove and Todd Blanche.Take those two, for example.Pam Bondi’s a little bit of a different example, but take those two for example.They were both his personal attorneys.They have the burden of carrying around a great deal of privileged information about their client, and their devotion was to him, and I think it sort of begs credulity to think that their devotion is to anything other than him.…
And then I think the example I cited earlier with regard to Pam Bondi, when in her introductory comments at the Justice Department when Trump was there, made plain that we’re all here for him.Those words, a, should never be uttered, but they certainly should never be uttered in the Great Hall in front of an assembled group of high-ranking Justice Department officials, because that’s not their job.Their duty is to preserve and protect the Constitution.
Trump’s Executive Orders
… The very first day starts with just a number of executive actions, executive orders, starting in the Capital One Arena, going on to the White House.What do you see in the actions that he takes that day?Because a lot of presidents start out by signing executive orders.Was there something different about what he was doing?
Oh, sure.Every president is different.This is round two of his presidency.He learned a lot the first time around, I think, in terms of how far he could go.He had a plan to go further this time, and he went into his first day in consultation with his core team, of course, with a plan.And a lot of it’s theater; a lot of it’s acting; a lot of it’s entertainment.But they’re not unrelated.This is an orchestrated exercise to forcefully fuel the base, to “flood the zone” in a way that Congress and businesses and individuals feel the weight of his authority and respond accordingly in the way that he desires, which is to cower, and to overwhelm the courts.
Now the courts, I think, were initially overwhelmed.That’s sort of by design, the way the Constitution does it.The court sort of lags behind the president and Congress in terms of the speed with which they respond, and I think that’s, as I said, by design.The president has the freedom to act faster than the other two branches of government in some regards, and Congress has the ability to forcefully do things at a speed that sometimes the courts can’t sustain.But ultimately, when it comes to the interpretation of the law, as we’re dealing with in the Supreme Court this week, where I was just on an amicus brief3with one of your former guests on Frontline, Judge [J. Michael] Luttig, and others, with regard to the Alien Enemies Act, making the point that seems odd to be making, that since 1803, the law has dictated in Marbury v. Madison that the courts determine what the law is and interpret the law—not the president, not Congress.4
3
Who do you think it’s coming from, this idea of “flood the zone,” of overwhelm things?Is this Stephen Miller?Where is it coming from?
I have some thoughts, but I don’t have any real expertise on that.I think I’d be a little bit arrogant to try to pin it down, but it is definitely something that I’m sure that was put together by his advisers.Trump is eager to act quickly at any time.He likes to make decisions.He trusts his own judgment, right or wrong, and once he makes a decision, the likelihood of him ever acknowledging a mistake is not high.But he does like to move quickly, and I think his advisers play to that.They’ve designed this in a way that appeals to him, and he’s certainly executing at a pace that I’m sure they’re happy with.
Can you help me understand Stephen Miller, what he’s like or what his role is?
So I only really had a professional relationship with Stephen, and he’s a very smart person.He—not to denigrate anybody in the room—but he got his start as a journalist at the Duke newspaper, where actually, to his credit, he was instrumental in unraveling the Duke lacrosse case and the improper conduct of the district attorney down there.5But he’s very extremely conservative and very devoted to this president and sees this president as a vehicle for the philosophical things that he thinks should come about in America.I’m not sure that those are necessarily the things that all Americans agree should happen.
5
But Trump won the election, and Miller is one of his advisers, and he trusts him immensely.He has his public information.Miller was the scribe and editor of the now-famous Comey firing letter that the president had originally drafted when he terminated—when he was intending to terminate James Comey at the FBI.6And at the time, he was eight years younger than he is now.
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The New York Times: Mueller Has Early Draft of Trump Letter Giving Reasons for Firing Comey
… Let me ask you about one other thing that happens the first day, which is the pardons, the commutations for all of the people who were involved in Jan.6.Do you think that that sent a message when he did that on his first [day]?It was something he had campaigned on and sort of promised to do, but it would also surprise even some of his supporters.
I do think it was surprising.My recollection, which could be wrong, is that he keyed it up a couple times during the campaign, sort of backed away from it the last six weeks or so, not in a sense of disavowing it but just didn’t talk about it, and then made a decision to not only pardon everybody, including even the most violent offenders, but do it, and do it immediately.7I think that was a message, and I don’t think it was the message that actually people voted for him for, because while they wanted him to take forceful action and make an abrupt turn from whatever difficulties they perceived had hampered the Biden administration, I’m not sure that they elected him to rewrite history.
7
And we’ve seen him spend 70-plus days actually rewriting history, trying to take Jan.6 out of the history books and fire the prosecutors who were involved in the cases that emanated from what I think anybody who saw it on TV, or even read remotely about it, recognized it to be one of the darkest days in American history with many indignities, including violent crimes and deaths.8The theory that it was the bright, sunny, happy, glorious day to be revered forever by the MAGA [Make America Great Again] world is just lunacy, but that’s the narrative that they’re trying to sell now.
The Unitary Executive Theory
There’s long been theories about executive power, going back to Watergate, and the idea of the unitary executive and that the presidency had been constrained and needed to be sort of reinvigorated.What do you make of that in this administration?And is that the intellectual framework for the way that he’s approached the law, or are they doing something different than the discussion that had been going on for decades?
So I think—if I could parse that just slightly.So I think the power of the presidency was probably at its weakest in the post-Watergate few years.I think [former President] Gerald Ford was very cautious, and appropriately so, trying to calm the country down and give it a steady hand after those things.[former President Richard] Nixon had been deposed.Nixon had the character to listen to voices he trusted and do what they suggested, and I think he came to believe was the right thing for the country, which was to resign.I don’t think that had that been President Trump that anybody would have seen him leave the White House voluntarily.
[Former President] Jimmy Carter was no threat to the—to impose a unitary executive philosophy on things, so I think the country had some breathing space.And then gradually since that time, you’ve seen—and sometimes in part because of events.9/11, obviously, was a significant event that required strong executive action, and there have been others where, as the world gets more and more complicated, which it does every day, requiring a president to step up from time to time.
But as a philosophical, intellectual matter, I don’t think it really picked up steam until the post-9/11 era.And I think John Yoo may have been one of the initial legal minds to put pen to paper and articulate it in a way that actually turned it into a philosophy.9I could be wrong about that, but that’s sort of the recollection I have in terms of first reading about the creeping re-infusion of power into the presidency over the other two branches.
I do think that there’s never been anybody as unbound by convention or civility or norms as this president.And I think under this president, I think you see assertions of presidential power that you’ve never seen before, and you see a little bit of—well, you see a lot of gamesmanship behind it.I think some of the things that have accompanied many of the actions of the last 70 days really sort of diminish the unitary executive theory.
For example, I think in the Venezuelan deportation case that Judge [James] Boasberg has, where the Justice Department refuses to give really perfunctory information about what is clearly their defiance of the judge’s orders and playing games with, like, the State Secrets [Protection] Act, where the rhetoric, not only from the president but from the Justice Department, in pleadings, suggests that the reason they have to do this is because of bleeding-heart liberal judges that favor gang members and terrorists and those who would rob, rape and murder people on our streets over a president’s desire to clean up the country.10
Well, that’s not the issue at all in these cases.The only issue in the Alien Enemies Act case—now that it’s been resurrected after having last been used in one of the darkest legal moments in the history of America, in the Japanese internment case 80-plus years ago—the only real issue is, were these people who the government said they were, and did they have the associations that the government said they did?And those are simple probable cause standard findings.
They’re not—they don’t require a lengthy trial.They require a simple hearing and probable cause, not reasonable doubt or any other higher standard than probable cause as the standard.And people are, if determined to be who the government says they are and if determined that there is probable cause to believe they did what the government said they did, they’re whisked off.
Plus, none of those people were a threat to anybody.They’d all been detained.So you see the rhetoric in these false choices that are thrown out there as reasons to load the judiciary and delegitimize the judicial branch, it’s all made up.The judges, and particularly Judge Boasberg, had a simple task, and he, I think, has done a good job of trying to make that plain, although it’s not getting communicated very effectively within the current administration.
The Eric Adams Case
With the [New York City Mayor] Eric Adams case, what happens?Was it different than the way that that went down, your understanding of how the criminal justice system works, how U.S.attorneys work?
Never seen anything like it, ever.There is a common theme to that that penetrates almost everything else he’s done, from his attempts to punish law firms, law firms with tangential relationships to people who, in the course of just doing their jobs, were adverse to him.And not just law firms but colleges and institutions of higher learning, science—it’s all transactional now, very transactional.
And this was—as the judge who dismissed the case with prejudice this week observed in a very detailed, well-thought-out opinion where he didn’t do any violence to the separation of powers issues that were in play.11He acknowledged them all and rationally so, but he made it very clear that this was nothing more than a quid pro quo for Eric Adams to support one of Trump’s policy initiatives on immigration and roll over for whatever his Justice Department and administration wanted to do in New York with immigration in exchange for not sending him to jail.
But the wrinkle that was at issue this week, of course, was whether the dismissal should be with prejudice or not with prejudice.And Paul Clement, a longtime conservative Republican thought leader and government lawyer and somebody who was recently considered for the Supreme Court as a serious contender, who would make a good justice because of his intellect and experience—was appointed, which I thought was unusual, that the judge appointed Paul, who I know and respect, given his conservative bent.But he came out with a very lawyer-like analysis that made it plain that the with prejudice/without prejudice distinction was one where only dismissing it with prejudice, where it couldn’t be rebrought and didn’t hang like a sword of Damocles over the head of Eric Adams for the Trump administration, was consistent with traditional concepts of justice and the rule of law.12And the judge followed that recommendation, thank goodness, and appropriately so, to the frustration of the government.
12
And he made it very plain that what Emil Bove and the senior leaders of the Justice Department attempted to do there was straightforward quid pro quo in a case that had taken up great resources, where there was really not much question about the facts or the events that had occurred, given the number of other people that have been implicated, and some of whom have already been convicted or pled guilty.
So I think that’s an instance this week that I think may be a signal that the courts are starting to catch up to this and trying to right some of these wrongs and showing that they can do that.
Can you help me understand why somebody like Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S.attorney for the Southern District, would resign as a former prosecutor?Help me understand why she and a number of other people would either be pushed out or resign.
… I think that the circumstances faced by Ms.Sassoon and subsequently Mr.[Hagan] Scotten [former assistant U.S. attorney] in the Southern District [of New York] were similar to the circumstances faced by [former U.S. Attorney General] Elliot Richardson and [Deputy Attorney General] Bill Ruckelshaus at the Justice Department when the Nixon administration tried to get them to terminate Archibald Cox as [the Watergate] independent counsel, and they both resigned.I think it was the same consideration that there is a time when that oath you take to preserve and protect the Constitution matters and hits the road, and once you assess it in those terms, your duty is clear.I think she did that, and she did it eloquently.He did that.He did it eloquently.I have never personally met either of them, but I can’t wait to shake their hand if I do.
It seems like they see their job differently than if you read the letter from Emil Bove to her that says, “You work for this administration, and when you’re asked to do something, you should do it.13And in a way, you’re sort of violating your oath by refusing to do it.”
13
Department of Justice: Emil Bove's Letter to Danielle Sassoon
Right, which makes the subject that we talked about earlier—when Trump addressed the Great Hall and was introduced by Pam Bondi and she made a point that they were all there for him and devoted to him, that’s just not the way it’s supposed to work.They’re supposed to preserve and protect the Constitution, and they’re not there to preserve and protect the presidency.
What’s the danger of if it doesn’t work that way, if they do serve the president, if the United States Department of Justice or the U.S.attorneys are serving him in the way that they’re describing in those letters?
Well, it turns the Constitution on its head.It does turn the president into a king.And I guess if I had to epitomize the danger, the danger is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, Stalin, Hitler.
Explain that.
That all those leaders had this slavish devotion of anybody below them, all of whom knew that there would be serious consequences to them if they ran afoul of his desires and that that was really their only standard.In America, until recently, the only standard that federal prosecutors were to be concerned about was whether what they were doing was fair, just and consistent with the Constitution.
Were you surprised there wasn’t more fallout?Especially Congress doesn’t hold hearings about it, doesn’t call everybody in to find out exactly what happened.
No, not with this Congress.I think this Congress has neutered itself through its own cowardice.And certainly in the House, that’s the case.And I think in the Senate—while there are people there, as was demonstrated yesterday when four senators broke with their party to vote against the tariffs with Canada in good conscience and consistent with rational economic theory—the reality is, again, getting to the transactional point.14These people now know that Elon Musk and the president will go out and find somebody else to run against them, from the right, and raise hundreds of millions of dollars for them to put them out of a job.
Now, I grew up in a little town in Kansas, and I can remember thinking it was a pretty cool thing about America that you could serve your country and that your standard would be to do what you thought was right.I was in grade school when I read Profiles in Courage.One of the individuals profiled was a Kansan who salvaged the attempted impeachment of [former President] Andrew Johnson out of conscience.Whether or not it was the right thing to do, I have no idea, but it was clearly an act of conscience as portrayed in President [John F.] Kennedy’s book.Those things made a great impression on me.That’s not the America we have enjoyed the last 70 days.
Elon Musk and DOGE
How unusual, or what do you make of a moment like where Elon Musk and DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] show up and take a congressionally funded agency like USAID [United States Agency for International Development], say they’re shutting it down, take the sign off, pull the money away, in a moment like that?How unusual is it?How does it relate to what we’ve been talking about?
Well, I think it gets back to the form of government that we now have in terms of the philosophy of this administration, which is, “We can do whatever we want, and we don’t really care what it looks like.” This is the kind of thing you would typically see in a Third World country or in a highly autocratic country.And I guess the thing that I’m most shocked about is sort of less that they do it but how ham-handed it is.The cuts at USAID—USAID, I’m sure that there’s a significant amount of fraud and significant excess in terms of what is paid or has been paid historically that could have been and should have been surgically addressed through examination of the books and relationships and other things and largely but probably not completely rectified in the ordinary course of trying to fix that.
Instead, what it is, we just killed the agency.And this is an agency that, for what is a relatively modest outlay economically, produces incredible benefits to the United States and to the world.This is an agency where Ebola is controlled and contained, conditions designed to prevent diseases like that and pandemics and other tragic events have historically been the focus of those programs.It’s gotten us a foothold in any number of countries, where we have significant national security interests.…
And there may be people who disagree with you about the value of USAID, but that they do it to a congressionally funded agency, a congressionally created agency, and sort of shut it down themselves, what do you make of that?Is that—?
Well, so again, that brings us back to Congress being neutered.Congress is not fighting for itself.Congress is not having those hearings that you suggested clearly should be in order.Congress has even accepted—again, getting back to the gamesmanship of this administration, which insists that a woman who isn’t even important enough at DOGE to make it into the Fox News Bret Baier interview is actually the person running DOGE, and Elon Musk is just a spectator.15Everybody knows that’s a lie.It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to believe their lying eyes when they see he’s at every DOGE event, and he’s the guy holding the power saw.It’s sort of silly.
15
And the speed at which they’re moving virtually ensures chaos and ensures a lot of erroneous decisions, not unlike many of the other things that have happened in the chaos of the early days, where the military was told to take down everything DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion], and Jackie Robinson gets wiped out, and they later come back and say, “Well, that was a mistake.16I’m sorry about that.” OK, well, what about the Navajo Code Talkers?“Oh, that was a mistake too.” But mistakes are happening, and it’s only if somebody calls them out do they get corrected.
There’s not much that goes into the careful planning of these things, highlighted again today by the revelations that have come out about the way that the oddly configured tariffs, that the percentages were calculated.It doesn’t make sense to economists.It doesn’t even make sense to mathematicians.
Can the courts deal with it?You were saying they were playing around with who’s running DOGE, for example.These things are being defunded.Can the courts deal with this?
Courts can deal with some of it, but they can’t deal with all of it.For example, let’s take the example of the person that even the White House has acknowledged should never have been deported to El Salvador, the Venezuelan young man from Maryland who was arrested in the presence of his 5-year-old....And at least according to his lawyers and the other publicly available information, he was not a member of a gang, or otherwise supposed to be there.And the administration has acknowledged that they shouldn’t have done it and that it was a “administrative error.” I’m not sure what that means, but it was a mistake of huge proportions when you look at it from the perspective of … his family.
And they say, “Well, there’s nothing we can do.And by the way, he did have some traffic violations, and he has some tattoos.Bad, bad guy.” That’s the kind of thing, I think, that offends most right-thinking Americans.I don’t think—I know the evangelicals voted for Trump; 82% of the evangelicals voted for Trump.17But I think that many of them, in their core, understand that that’s not the kind of compassion that they’re talking about in church on Sundays.That’s not the kind of fairness that they have typically associated with America.And now the administration is saying, “There’s nothing we can do.” Of course there’s things you can do.18Bill Richardson went to North Korea nine times to lobby to try to get people back, and we’re not even picking up the phone and calling the country of El Salvador and saying, “Hey, we made a mistake.Can you give us this one guy back?”
I think the way that they’re playing fast and loose and unwilling to try to address the mistakes that they make ultimately may be the downfall of some of this aggressive and reckless conduct.
Do you think that firing the inspector generals [sic]—The USAID inspector general is let go, I think, right after he issues a report; he wasn’t in the first group of inspector generals [sic] who were fired. But the replacement—or the firing, really, and not replacing the inspector generals [sic]—is that part of this same pattern that we’ve been talking about?19
Oh, certainly, yeah.No, so you’ve got Congress neutered from doing their oversight because you’ve got Mike Johnson as the speaker, who takes his marching instructions directly from the White House on a daily or multiple-times-a-day basis, and then you’ve got the Senate, which is almost evenly split.And the message was made very crystal clear when [Sen.] Joni Ernst, a sexual assault victim and a military veteran, was bullied into supporting [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth by threats that they were going to run somebody against her and grossly overfund that person.20“This is going to cost you your job if you resist this.” I think that kind of transactional extortion, whatever you want to call it, response is what you see, and purposely so.And that’s what you see with the inspector generals [sic], because the inspector generals [sic]—while Congress provides the oversight generally for the executive branch, inspector generals [sic] provide it for agencies on behalf of Congress, so they’re there to report back to Congress about whether the agency is performing consistent with its ethical and legal obligations.And that’s the kind of oversight this administration can’t afford and doesn’t tolerate.
Trump Takes on the Courts and Law Firms
So the inspector generals [sic] have been pushed to the side.The Congress is sort of to the side.The Justice Department, as we’ve talked about, is being brought under control of the White House.And a lot of this has ended up in the courts, and it’s in that context that the president starts signing executive orders about law firms.What do those executive orders do?Where do you think they fit into this story?
Well, they are consistent with a picture that I think people are grudgingly starting to recognize about what’s really going on here, which is this is not only about immigration and the economy and other things that the president campaigned on, but it’s—vengeance is at the front and center of what many of the actions taken in the first 70 days have been about.
The law firms involved, some of whom have just the most tangential relationship to individuals that the president abhors or who crossed him in the course of performing their duties historically, there’s never been anything like it.Nobody’s ever done anything like this.It, again, gets back to the authoritarian regimes that the United States has long been distinguished from because of the rule of law.
The legality of these orders has so far been crystal clear that the law firms that have been courageous enough to contest him have prevailed, at least with regard to the patently absurd order that they can no longer go into federal buildings, thus keeping them out of federal courts and federal agencies, where citizens of all faiths, all political parties, and rich, poor, partisan, indifferent, whoever, who make an individual choice consistent with the right to counsel in the United States—another constitutionally time-honored concept—to represent them in those matters.21And it’s a grotesque interference in that, and the courts have agreed that that’s inappropriate.
One of the aspects of those orders is the removal of the security clearances of lawyers in those firms.Now that is something, when you were asking are the courts up to it, the courts are up to the issue of unlawfully prohibiting them from entering federal buildings, but the courts really actually aren’t up to contesting the president’s ability to pull a security clearance.
Now, under certain evidentiary circumstances, they may ultimately be able to do it.But in terms of an injunctive approach, they’re not going to be able to do that, so those clearances will be gone, unless and until those cases are tried and vindicated or resolved.But I think the law firms, for the most part, who want to contest it will certainly be able to stay in business and do their work at the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] or OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] or FDA [Food and Drug Administration] or other federal buildings, including federal courts.
But it sounds like a lot of the firms, even if they know they might be able to go to court and get an injunction, feel some kind of pressure because they’re settling.22Why?
22
The New York Times: How a Major Democratic Law Firm Ended Up Bowing to Trump
Why did some of the media outlets and some of the tech companies settle?Part of it’s sort of a sign of fealty to the president, not wanting to be at war with the president because his vengeful extortion aside is easily understood; that it’s not good business.It plays into the—as it should—the image of the president as a mob boss, and it’s sort of his way or the highway.If you get on the highway, you’d better be prepared to defend yourself vigorously, and it’ll be expensive.
It’s interesting you make that comparison.He says a lot of these law firms are bending to me.In the articles they say they’re “bending the knee.” What does that say to you?
It’s certainly the messianic way he sees himself and others portray him.
As what?What does it mean for a law firm to bend to him?
Well, I think people generally would associate Skadden [Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom] with enormous power, as a titan of the law firm industry, and firms that Trump historically, having been a New Yorker, looked up to as one of the blueblood, tough, successful, forceful, powerful law firms, and it certainly makes him feel good about himself that they’re yielding to him.23
And what’s the challenge in that?Does that deny people who want to challenge the government?What’s the overall strategy or effect of some of these firms making these deals?
It’s so new that we can’t be sure.But I think there’s certainly the danger that clients, judges, others will have some questions about the vigorousness of arguments that are made against the government by firms that have acquiesced to the president’s demands.I think it undermines, again, the confidence that many Americans have in the legal system, and any anxieties that people develop or get seeded about potential infirmities of the legal process or of Congress or other institutions other than the presidency feed the power of the presidency.
So diminishing all these institutions and historically consequential entities makes the presidency that much stronger and that much more powerful and transforms the American democracy from three co-equal branches to the situation where the presidency dominates in a way that it wasn’t intended.
As I’m listening to the way you’re describing him as transactional, as almost a sort of a mob boss, and these other institutions being marginalized, it almost sounds like that these are two sort of different systems, what you’re calling the rule of law and this other system that’s developed.What’s happening in the big picture?What are you describing?
So I don’t have an agenda or anything; I’m sort of trying to react to the circumstances.But I think what we have seen is a conscious diminution of the power of the courts, the integrity of the courts, the judges and the lawyers, many of whom were there either to challenge the government when the government is out of bounds, being unfair or overreaching, on the lawyer side, and then on the judge side, to determine whether that’s the case in a way that feeds the arguments that you hear from the White House about any judge who disagrees with him is a liberal rogue—even if it’s Judge Boasberg, who was the judge who refused to let the IRS share Trump’s tax returns, ruled in Trump’s favor,24forced the release of 14,000 emails that had been wrongfully withheld by Hillary Clinton and has taken numerous other actions that benefited Republicans and sometimes the president directly. But because he got assigned a case where the government clearly overreached and raised questions about it, not questions of his own frolic and detour but questions raised about compliance with the statute, that are framed by the statute itself, he’s under attack.25
24
Courthouse News Service: ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER v. INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
So I think what you see is this attack on the judiciary, the attack on law firms, the attack on really all things other than the power of the presidency are designed to inflate the presidency to a level where it dominates the power structure of our government in a way that was never intended by the Constitution or the framers.
Deportation of Venezuelan Migrants
When the moment happens with Judge Boasberg and the flights, what do you make of that, that there’s an injunction to turn the flights around, and it doesn’t?What happens in that moment?What does it tell you?
… The fact that a judge would have been asked to rule on that should have been a foregone understanding.The likelihood of doing something like that without having it contested in court was zero to none, and the fact that a judge asked the questions that this judge asked, those were questions that you should have answered in advance anyway.But they didn’t care.They were so determined to do this in a way that was “shock and awe” that they had people in the air within an hour or so of the signing of the executive order.
Now, again, that gets back to sort of being too cute by half because that’s not really the way America has worked in the past.Usually there are laws or proclamations that then are implemented in a careful, thoughtful way and consistent with due process.Careful, thoughtful and due process were considerations that never came up in this planning.
What you’re suggesting is that the White House wasn’t exercising good faith in carrying out the law?They didn’t have a lawyer before?Or what do you make of that?
So I don’t know whether—I don’t know how lawyered it was, and we don’t actually have much of an insight on that because of the Justice Department’s impertinent and unprecedented refusal to share information that the court has requested.But given the speed with which the actual execution of the deportations occurred following the signing of the executive order or the proclamation, whatever, however they want to frame it, I think it’s pretty clear that the due process, even the minimal due process required by the Alien Enemies Act, did not take place.
So what are they doing?What are they doing on this, on other things?Are they just testing the law, or is there a bigger strategy?
So I think that’s an excellent question.I think oftentimes the presumption that there is a grand strategy—and this is somehow encapsulated in "[Trump:] The Art of the Deal" and the myth of the businessman, notwithstanding the six bankruptcies—I think this is a mistake that this is a grand scheme that’s all coming together.26But I do think portions of it are part of a grand scheme, which is to do as much as possible, as quickly as possible, see where the chips fall and seize the opportunities that seem to arise.
26
The Washington Post: Fact Check: Has Trump declared bankruptcy four or six times?
And I think the administration has been relatively lucky so far, but their track record over the last couple of weeks, has been abysmal in court, where they lose sort of nine out of ten at this stage of the game, and which is a slightly lower rate than they lost in the President’s first term, when I think he was 63 for 64.27… You know, he’s won a few this time.And frankly, the ones that he’s won probably he deserved to win in terms of the Constitution, because, as we discussed earlier, the courts can’t remedy every reckless move he makes.They can only remedy the ones that raise constitutional issues or are clearly in violation of statutes.
And there are gray areas, and there are also areas that are exclusively entrusted to him, like we discussed before, the security clearances, so he’s going to win some.But he has made very plain what his priorities are, and his priorities are to do as much of what he wants as the courts will let him get away and then to denigrate the courts with the hope that he will be able to recapture even that territory.
I don’t know if they planned it, to take on immigration to be the thing that they were going to fight with the judge with, but they do seem to relish it, the idea, right, that the judge is letting gang members who they say are terrorists, and the comments that they make to reporters, seem to sort of be “Bring it on if you want to have a fight over this issue.”28
Well, it’s interesting because their argument, one of the arguments that they make and actually they said in court, which was, “A judge shouldn’t prevent the president from doing what he was elected to do.” Well, what does that mean?I mean, seriously.He was elected to do a lot of things: fix immigration, fix the economy, do some important things in both those fields, many of which probably needed to be done.
But he wasn’t elected to do it lawlessly.It wasn’t that he was elected to do it by any means.Americans have been raised on the principle that due process applies here, that no man is above the law, and that we will do the right thing.It may be harsh in the end, but whatever that harsh result is will have been insulated from wrong by due process.
And this administration has decided to remove the due process from the analysis and just go straight from whatever their whim is to action.
A lot of presidents have had conflicts with the court or not liked Supreme Court decisions and have been critical of them.Is there something different that you see in the way that President Trump is approaching especially the judge in this case?
Sure.If you go back in history, the [Chief Justice Earl] Warren court, for example, in the ‘60s and ‘70s took on a lot of water from conservatives primarily in terms of the expansion of the various freedoms under the Bill of Rights, right to counsel among them, civil rights, other things where the world changed quickly, as it should have.
And there was a great deal of criticism and a great deal of political rhetoric, not entirely dissimilar to what’s going on now, but it was never in the sense of that—it was never to the extent that the entire concept of three co-equal branches was threatened.
Here, the difference, I think, is we’ve gone way beyond criticism of the judicial process and liberal judges, conservative judges or conservative principles, liberal principles beginning to dominate into whether the judiciary should even be a restraint on the presidency.And I think that’s the primary distinction I would draw from the last 70 days that we have never really had before in America, and that’s something that’s a debate that we shouldn’t be having because without the judiciary to restrain overreach by the executive branch, we have a totalitarian, authoritarian system.
Do you know Judge Boasberg?29
I don’t.But I oddly am aware of him because of his time in the U.S.attorney’s office, where he tried a lot of homicide cases.When I was a federal prosecutor—because I was in Maryland, where there were a lot of government facilities and a lot of government property, uncharacteristically for federal prosecutors, I ended up trying a number of murder cases; he ended up trying a number of murder cases.So I did follow his career when he was in the U.S.attorney’s office, where he was a really highly regarded homicide prosecutor.So I don’t know him, but I’ve been aware of him since he was an assistant U.S.attorney.
And a “radical left lunatic”?
No, this is somebody who, at least to my knowledge and certainly within the circle of lawyers that I know, who know him well, find that sort of laughable.As we know, Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh is one of his closest friends, former law school roommate.They have vacationed together.He has made the rulings, I think I addressed earlier, where he ruled for Trump against the IRS [Internal Revenue Service], ruled against [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton in a matter of serious consequence in the 2016 election, and has had other far-reaching significant rulings that favored conservatives or Trump himself.
So there’s nothing in his background, until he asked a couple of questions that, frankly, the statute required him to ask, that would have ever gotten his ire from a conservative.And how he got labeled as a rogue leftist judge with TDS [“Trump Derangement Syndrome”], I think, well, I don’t know, but it’s silly.Keep in mind, this is also, people—Trump always talks about how he was an Obama-appointed judge.That’s true.He was elevated from his initial judgeship by Obama to the current judgeship that he has,but his original judgeship was from [former President] George W. Bush.So I think that the fallacies in terms of the attempt to stigmatize him with the rhetoric from this White House, is—I just think it’s silly.
Trump has said he would follow court order, but people around him, Tom Homan said, “I don’t care what the judge thinks.” There’s this talk that has begun that the judges can’t rein him in in this area, and talk has been, “Will he not comply with a court order?” What do you make that that discussion is going on?
I think the fact that we’re even having that discussion shows how far we’ve slipped as a nation just in a short period of time.It would have been unthinkable, even a year ago, that a president wouldn’t follow a court order.Now it’s being talked about as, “Oh, it’s a 50/50 ball.” I don’t think that the country would stand for it.I certainly hope they wouldn’t stand for it.Would he be impeached?Probably not, not in this environment, and certainly not with the current political makeup of the House of Representatives.
But could it bring about changes and maybe rally some more U.S.senators to vote, as they did yesterday on the committee on tariffs, with the Democrats against what’s obviously bad policy?Perhaps.
And is Trump capable of it, of not following the court order?Do you see that as a possibility?
Well, I don’t know how to answer that.I don’t have a crystal ball on that.… In terms of capability of lawlessness, yeah, perhaps.But ideally, ideally, he’ll find other fish to fry if thwarted by a court order and adhere to a court order.And ideally, somebody—I’m not sure who it would be in this White House, but somebody may urge him to follow the law.
Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court
… So all of the things that we’ve talked about, from the Justice Department, from Congress, from inspector generals [sic], from these attacks on the judge, how high are the stakes at this moment?
Never been higher in American history.
Explain why you say that.What is at stake?
What’s at stake is the structure of our democracy.We’ve gone 240-plus years or more in terms of the execution of this experiment with three co-equal branches of government.It’s out of balance now.The judiciary stands between Trump and Trump as president or Trump as king.And that’s what’s at risk.
Do you think that the judiciary can, on its own, handle that moment of crisis?
We don’t know.The judiciary doesn’t have an army.They don’t have an independent ability to enforce their orders.The judiciary is sort of alone in this battle because Congress is sidelined.And we’ll have to wait and see.
How hard a position is somebody like [Chief Justice] John Roberts and the Supreme Court in, in this moment, knowing that there’s this talk and threat of maybe not complying, that there’s attempts to be very critical of the judiciary.How difficult is the moment that he faces, that the Supreme Court faces?
So that’s a very hard question to answer for a variety of reasons, and foremost among the reasons that makes it difficult is for most of the justices, and certainly for Chief Justice Roberts, these issues, while weighty and more consequential than others in history, don’t get analyzed that way.The pressure of any one particular decision to the justices who do this best is really no different than the easier decisions because they follow their oath, they analyze the law, and they do what they think the law requires or, to the extent that what the law requires is inadequate, either enhance it or modify it in some way to fit the circumstance in an ethical, deliberative—in a manner that is not freelancing or imposing their own will.
And so is it a difficult position?Yes.Are the times unprecedented, urgent and consequential?Yes.Will that affect whether they do the right thing?I don’t think so.
And when Justice Roberts issues the statement about Trump or the president’s statements about impeachment, what does that tell you?30
So if you look at the statement, I think it’s only two sentences, and it didn’t single anybody out, and it wasn’t directed—it didn’t call out any individual, but it made the simple point that since the inception of our republic, that the appropriate response to a judicial order with which you disagree is the appellate process.That’s a fact.That’s a given.That’s at the cornerstone of—that’s one of the cornerstones of American democracy and certainly the most appropriate description of what the process should be.
So was it a pointed reminder?Sure it was.Was it necessary?Obviously Chief Justice Roberts thought so, just as he did when it was early in Trump’s first term, when there was a lot of rhetoric from the White House about Obama judges and Clinton judges, and he issued a similar statement about how we don’t have Obama judges, Clinton judges, Bush judges; we have a bunch of people devoted to the Constitution, trying to do the best job they can.31That’s like a paraphrase of what I’m sure he said more appropriately.
The president’s supporters have said, sure, maybe impeachment would not work, but just holding hearings, threatening to close the D.C.Circuit or replace it with something else sends a message to those judges.Do you think that that—and then there’s all the rhetoric around it.Do you think that kind of strategy works?Does it worry you?
Sure.Again, transactional, mob boss strategy.Yes, it’s intended to intimidate, intended to undermine institutions other than the presidency and intended to inflate the power of the presidency.
And it sounds like a real test for them, at this moment.
Yeah.And I apologize.I just have this sort of intellectual resistance to that, because I had the great privilege of being the chief justice’s partner for many, many years, somebody I don’t always agree with but somebody who I respect every day.And knowing him and the love that he has for the country and the seriousness over which he approaches his task and responsibilities, I think he would be the first to tell you that these decisions are all important.But all the decisions that they make are important, and he has to bring the same intellectual rigor and honesty and highest ethics imaginable to each of those tasks individually.
Trump’s Lawyers
[Producer Vanessa Fica]: I have one follow-up, if you don’t mind.So we were talking at one point about what Trump looks for in a lawyer or how he views lawyers, right?
Right.
And you shared a story that you said says it all, explains it all.… Can you tell me what your personal experience revealed about what Trump sees in a lawyer, and that story specifically?
Sure.So the president has a lot of experience with lawyers.Roy Cohn was the lawyer that he mentioned the most during our interactions of his historical lawyers, and he admired Roy Cohn’s fearlessness, as the president perceived it, and the results he was able to achieve by largely ignoring the rules.You got the impression from hearing him speak that Roy Cohn had no ethical restraints, and I think that anybody who’s watched the McCarthy hearings would probably share that view.
And it was also very clear that Trump admired the extent to which Roy Cohn would do anything for a client, anything.And that’s not a lawyer’s job.While it wasn’t intended as such, I did have an occasion at the White House when the president was frustrated with me.I’m sure he was frustrated on more than one occasion.But on one occasion, he expressed his frustration by telling me that, commenting to me that, “You’re no Roy Cohn.” I now have that phrase on a placard above my home office desk.I think that was probably the highest praise I’ve ever gotten professionally in my career.
Trump and the DOJ
[Director Michael Kirk] … This morning, we talked to Steve Bannon, who said that the Justice Department was weaponized against Trump and that all he’s doing now is just trying to balance the ledger.32Your thoughts about that?Do you think that the Justice Department was weaponized against Donald Trump when you were working with him?
… I think it’s very difficult, if you’re the target of that investigation, to view that as other than weaponization.… So I think there is a basis there to feel victimized if you’re the target.And the president, I know, obviously did feel victimized, and certainly his passionate supporters, like Steve Bannon, took it to an even greater extreme.So that’s why it makes that a difficult question to answer.
I wouldn’t say that the Justice Department was weaponized, but I think the process was ugly.But the process is often ugly.And this is so much different than that, though.What’s going on, what’s going on here in terms of suggesting that what Jack Smith did was somehow the product of weaponization—it’s not like Jan.6 didn’t happen, and it’s not like it didn’t happen on TV.
… So it’s very hard for me to equate the Russia investigation where I can sort of understand how you would take that personally with these things that he actually did, and it’s undeniable that he did, and then say that, “Well, this was somehow the weaponization of the Justice Department,” when they were just doing their job.
Was the Justice Department weaponized against Spiro Agnew and John Mitchell and [John] Erlichman and all of those guys?No.They did what they were charged with.They were found guilty.They went to trial or pled guilty.So yes, they were prosecuted.But that’s being prosecuted, or being investigated and being charged, is much different than suffering a weaponized Justice Department.And I think that the weaponization rhetoric is, again, that’s part of the rewriting of history.Rather than see these uncontested factual allegations that constitute crimes and have history remember that, they would prefer that history see this as a Justice Department vendetta.But it wasn’t.
So when people complain about Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, Bannon says, “Wait a minute.Who was Bobby Kennedy?He was Jack Kennedy’s brother of all things.Who was Eric Holder?He was Barack Obama’s best friend.” Why are we so exercised about Bondi and Patel?What’s the difference?
Well, so the difference, to me, is—I guess Holder came closer to this line than I would have preferred when he described himself as Obama’s “wingman.” And I know Eric, and I like him, and I think he did the best job he could.But I think that was a little too cavalier, I think, in terms of the relationships that most Americans expect between an independent Justice Department and attorney general and the White House, particularly in the wake of Watergate.But when Bondi introduced the president at the Great Hall of Justice and made a point about how the Justice Department was “with him,” I think that’s a line that shouldn’t exist.They’re not supposed to be with him.They’re supposed to preserve and protect the Constitution, and if he violates the law, he should suffer the consequences.And that’s not the impression that you have.
Now, Kash Patel is very difficult to talk about rationally, because if you compare him to Bobby Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy actually was a pretty good lawyer, and his experience in government dwarfed Kash Patel’s, and the respect with which he was held by his peers was real.…
I guess the distinction I’m talking about there is Bondi, on paper and by experience, is qualified to be the attorney general, and hopefully she’ll get her footing.I was more optimistic when she was appointed than I am today.But ideally, she’ll find her footing and do better.Probably, I’m sure my feelings were complicated by how relieved I was that it would be anybody but Matt Gaetz.…
When you talk about what Bondi said, why does that matter to Americans?Help us understand why that really matters to a lot of people who aren’t following this every day and haven’t grown up with the law and don’t understand even what you mean by “lawfare” and all of those phrases.What does it mean when the attorney general and chief law enforcement officer of the country says something like that to her staff?
Well, I think it—for those of us with a little or no or gray hair, who survived Watergate, it brings back the specter of those days, where John Mitchell’s obvious loyalty was to Nixon.And that was, in large part, what provoked that constitutional crisis.I think, certainly prior to that time and certainly definitely subsequent to that time, Americans expected that the Justice Department would be independent and that no man would be above the law.That’s not the philosophy of this administration, and it doesn’t appear to be the philosophy of the Justice Department.
Fear in Washington
This is my last question, sir.We’ve talked to maybe 20 people now about this in Washington, outside of Washington.They talk about a feeling of fear in Washington among the lawyers, of all people, and among many other people in the government right now.Do you feel that?Do you sense that, in all your experience coming in and out of Washington, right now?Is fear palpable, and why?
So yes, fear is palpable.Why?People who have, only because of the nature of the duties imposed upon them by the offices that they inhabited, crossed Trump or have been adversarial to him, have been fired, ridiculed, endangered by the visceral, vengeful rhetoric of the president and his supporters.I don’t think those are complicated questions.
Your friend John Roberts is going to face a moment—it’s almost inevitable they tell us—where one of them is going to have to blink.Is he the fearful type?
No.I don’t think I’ve ever met an intellectually more honest or dutiful lawyer, jurist, person than John Roberts.
… But having said that, he may not—he’s not going to—it will never be about him.It’s not—this isn’t going to be Russell Crowe and Commodus, or whatever it was in The Gladiator.That’s not the way Roberts perceives himself or his role, and frankly, if he ever had that thought, he’d probably resign on the spot.There’s nothing easy about being the chief justice, and there’s certainly nothing easy about being the chief justice in these times.
But he doesn’t see his role as to vanquish evil.He sees his role as to properly interpret the Constitution consistent with the trust that—with which the founders created the position that he occupies.And it may be that in so doing, he doesn’t go as far as some people would wish, and it may be that it imposes an obligation upon him to … announce results that he believes are dictated by the Constitution that aren’t popular, as was the case in the immunity decision.
So it may not be a yes or no proposition in the future.
Well, I think it will be whatever the Constitution dictates in his honest view.I know that sounds like a hedge, but it’s not.That’s how he sees his task.I believe that’s how he sees his task.I haven’t talked to him in over a decade, I’m sure, and so I don’t have any unique recent insights on that.But there’s nobody I have greater respect for.
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