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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramis from this is episode 500. Thank you for listening.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For just shy of two years, we've been explaining the most important news stories in the world to you, Monday to Friday, but not on the weekends. We've done lots of stories on the environment, on tech, on popular culture, on conflicts abroad, and a good many about President Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ukraine explained is still pretty fresh, but remember that whole Mueller thing? Well, just in time for episode 500, we got a little throwback from the president this week. He made a big stink about his old pal Roger Stone, the man with the Nixon tattoo.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the stink was so bad that people are now questioning the integrity of the United States Department of Justice. Before we get to the stink, let's talk about Stone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you've heard all 500 shows, the fact that Vox's senior political correspondent Andrew Prokop is here to explain will come as no surprise. So back during the 2016 campaign, Roger Stone, who was an outside advisor to Trump and a longtime friend and advisor to Trump on politics, made efforts to get in touch with WikiLeaks to try and get a hold of damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So then in 2017, when congressional investigators started asking around about this, Stone gave them a false story and tried to encourage another witness to stick to that false story and not to reveal the truth about these outreach efforts.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: We had a very frank exchange. I answered all of the questions. I made the case that the accusation that I knew about John Podesta's email hack in advance was false.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eventually, he came under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. He was arrested and indicted in January 2019 for obstruction of Congress, witness tampering, and making false statements.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I will plead not guilty to these charges. I will defeat them in court. I believe this is a politically motivated investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He went on trial last November and he was convicted on all seven counts. And now he is ready to be sentenced on February 20th.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So long story short, he tried to obstruct the free election, tried to cover that up and then tried to obstruct an investigation into his obstruction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, the full story of what exactly Roger Stone did in 2016 is actually still pretty mysterious, whether his efforts to get in touch with WikiLeaks were total failures or whether there was something more to it.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But the gist is that he tried to cover up whatever he did do. He got caught and then he got convicted of it and now he is ready to be sentenced.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which brings us to this week. How does the story pick back up with his sentencing?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So how this works is that the probation office first comes up with technical guidelines for the range of what an appropriate sentence would be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What that probation office came up with was a recommended sentence of about seven to nine years in prison.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So after that, the prosecutors then have to submit their own sentencing memo to the judge in this case who will end up making the final call on this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in this case, what they did was that they said that a sentence of the sort recommended by the probation office, seven to nine years or so, would indeed be appropriate given the gravity and seriousness of his crimes.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So they didn't come up with that number or make it up out of whole cloth, but they said that, you know what, it fits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how did President Trump take the news?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So in a late night, early morning flurry of tweets and retweets after this sentencing memo was filed, Trump expressed utter outrage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He called this a horrible and very unfair situation. He said, cannot allow this miscarriage of justice, exclamation point.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I thought the recommendation was ridiculous. I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I look at others that haven't been prosecuted or I don't know where it is now.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But when you see that, I thought it was an insult to our country and it shouldn't happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we'll see what what goes on there. But that was.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So then on Tuesday morning, word leaks out to a Fox News reporter that the Justice Department higher ups in fact agree with Trump on this and they are going to override the prosecutor's recommendation for Roger Stone's sentence.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So do the prosecutors restructure their sentence? What do they do next?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In this case, they quit.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: We're following some truly stunning breaking news still developing by the minute this hour.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Two federal prosecutors in the Roger Stone criminal case have resigned this afternoon.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: This follows an astonishing decision by the Justice Department to pull back on its recommended sentence of seven to nine years prison time for Roger Stone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There were four prosecutors on the Stone team two of whom also served on special counsel Robert Mueller team previously
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And all four of them announced on Tuesday that they were going to withdraw from the case
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One of them quit the Justice Department entirely.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The other three will continue to work in the department on other matters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this was a very unusual, highly public, apparent act of protest against political interference from their bosses.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What does that mean for the case?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, what happened after they all quit is that a new prosecutor was put on and a new sentencing memo was filed saying that actually the memo that was just submitted one day earlier does not accurately reflect the Justice Department's position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And that a sentence of incarceration far less than that seven to nine year one would be reasonable under the circumstances.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in the end, they defer to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who will actually sentence Stone on what should actually be done here, as was always going to be the case.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Cool, cool, cool. So at least everyone's going to respect the judge's decision here?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So separately from all this, President Trump went after this judge, Amy Berman Jackson, on Twitter.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Never mind. Saying, is this the judge that put Paul Manafort in solitary confinement, something that not even mobster Al Capone had to endure?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And by this, Paul Manafort, when he was indicted, he violated the conditions of his bail by reaching out to a potential witness.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Judge Jackson ordered that he be taken into custody.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She did not decide to put him in solitary confinement.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That was a decision made by prison officials, and his solitary confinement conditions were actually pretty swank.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're not as unpleasant as you might have expected.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That's nice for Paul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not a great look for the president.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It's certainly unusual for the president to be attacking a judge who is handling the sentencing of one of his close associates in a criminal case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, the decision on this sentence is going to be made by Judge Jackson in the end.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Except, of course, if President Trump decides to overrule her decision by pardoning Roger Stone or by commuting his sentence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does the president's temper tantrum have any foundation in reality?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What's the typical sentence for your average criminal who's been convicted of obstruction of justice, witness tampering, terrible tattoos and making false statements?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So intuitively, I would say it does come off as a little high.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But generally, people who have looked at this think that the way that the probation office calculated the sentencing guidelines were appropriate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Stone, quote, engaged in a multi-year scheme involving false statements and sworn testimony, the concealment of important documentary evidence, further lies in a written submission to Congress, and a relentless and elaborate campaign to silence that witness, Randy Credico.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so the government has a case that there was a lot to this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This was not some one-off brief thing.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Stone's team has also argued that he has no previous trouble with the law, that he is in poor health, that Credico didn't actually feel that threatened, he claims.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there are arguments for leniency too.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Has anyone else weighed in on this publicly?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Democrats, Republicans?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Democrats are very concerned about what's going on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And congressional Democrats, especially on the House Judiciary Committee, have announced that Attorney General William Barr will testify before their committee later in March about what actually happened here and on other issues.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Republicans, meanwhile, are tending to say, well, this doesn't really look good, but in the end it will be up to the judge.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So why is it such a big deal?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: As unfortunate as this sounds, just the president potentially abusing the Department of Justice to keep his friends out of big trouble, it also doesn't sound completely foreign thinking back historically in this country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does this feel different to you?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think what's going on here is part of a broader pattern of, we can say, curious incidents that have been unfolding in the Justice Department under Attorney General Bill Barr in the past few weeks and months that have really started to raise concerns that the Justice Department is being very politicized and turned to serve the interests of Donald Trump rather than the impartial administration of justice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More with Andrew in a minute on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What is Adio?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, and within seconds you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You'll see all your relationships in a fully-fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Andrew, tell me a little bit more about how the President of the United States is turning the United States Department of Justice into his own personal law firm.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Amidst all the controversy about the Stone sentencing there was a report from NBC News headlined Barr meaning Attorney General William Barr takes control of legal matters of interest to Trump, including Stone sentencing.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the reporters here, Carol Lee, Ken Delanian, and Peter Alexander, make the case that this is really something broader that is going on, that from what they've heard from their sources, this is a concerted effort from Barr to centralize decision making and authority over political cases in advance of the 2020 elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How exactly is he doing that?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So there are a couple of big examples that, especially after this Roger Stone fiasco, definitely look a whole lot more like a pattern.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of them involves another close Trump ally who is due to be sentenced for charges stemming from the Mueller investigation, namely Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I have called on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race because she, she put our nation's security at extremely high risk with her careless use of a private email server.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I remember him. Lock her up, lock her up.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Flynn pleaded guilty back in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No handcuffs for Michael Flynn. He surrendered and walked into the federal courthouse in Washington to plead guilty to a single charge, lying to the FBI.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But along the way, things went awry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was actually scheduled to be sentenced initially back in December 2018.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Prosecutors were totally cool with his cooperation then.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Prosecutors wrote that a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration would be appropriate.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Then things took a turn at the sentencing hearing itself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Judge Emmett Sullivan, he shocked the courtroom when he opened this hearing by saying he could not hide his disdain for what Flynn had done.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He even went so far as to ask prosecutors why they weren't charging Flynn with treason.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Marie, that's a crime punishable by death.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Now, the judge later apologized for that particular question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he did give Flynn a last minute out.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He gave him the opportunity to delay his sentencing to get further credit for cooperation with the government, some of which wasn't yet complete.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Flynn jumped at the chance and asked for the sentencing to be delayed.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But then instead of actually doing that further cooperation, Flynn decided to dump his lawyers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He hired a hard-charging conservative, Sidney Powell, who has been basically laying the groundwork to argue that Flynn was set up.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And eventually he did argue that he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea, that he wasn't even really guilty, that the government set him up, that the fix was in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It just sounds like the kinds of actions you would only take if you knew you had sort of support from the higher-ups, you know?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It certainly was a bold strategy, but we didn't see much blatant interference from the Justice Department in a way that was designed to help Flynn until recently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So a very similar thing happened to Flynn that happened to Roger Stone.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Prosecutors this January were getting ready for Flynn's new attempt at sentencing and they decided to let the judge know that they had changed their position in light of Flynn's behavior over the past year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They said given the serious nature of the defendant's offense, his apparent failure to accept responsibility, his failure to complete his cooperation, and the need to promote respect for the law and adequately deter criminal conduct, they wrote that they recommend a sentence of zero to six months of incarceration for Flynn.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But then, mysteriously, about three weeks later, as both the prosecutors and the defense continued to send filings back and forth in this case, the government curiously shifted its position.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, prosecutors wrote on January 29th, all of a sudden, they agreed with the defendant that a sentence of probation is a reasonable sentence.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And this was a shift. They said that they recommended Flynn be incarcerated, and now they are saying that actually probation is reasonable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And according to NBC News, this change came about because senior officials at the Justice Department intervened.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So exactly the same thing that's happening with Roger Stone right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, in a less dramatic way that didn't lead to a bunch of prosecutors quitting, but it looks like these are closely related incidents.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the story gets more interesting as we learn what happened to the person who was in charge of overseeing Flynn's sentencing, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jesse Liu.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is Jesse a dude, a lady, somewhere in between?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Lady.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happened to her?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is a pretty important job.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It oversees a lot of these highly charged political cases involving government officials and the federal government.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And Lou, she is clearly a conservative, but she had a decent reputation for independence in the post.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She certainly didn't seem to be going easy on any of the Trump associates who were prosecuted in her district.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: She took over overseeing the Roger Stone trial, not as a direct prosecutor, but, you know, as the boss eventually of those prosecutors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she had been in this job for a couple of years at this point.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And early this January, President Trump nominated her to fill a post at the Treasury Department.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And at first, this seemed to be ordinary enough, like people move to different posts in the administration.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That is normal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then after this dust up over Michael Flynn's sentencing, Lou was unexpectedly removed from her job before being confirmed to her new Treasury Department position.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And who she was replaced with was even more interesting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Timothy Shea, who was a counselor to Bill Barr at the Justice Department and one of Barr's closest advisors, according to the Associated Press.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So the final capper on what happened with Jesse Liu is that it was reported by Axios on Tuesday evening that, in fact, Trump was going to withdraw her nomination to that Treasury Department post.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then on Wednesday night Jesse Liu officially submitted her resignation from the federal government now that that confirmation is no longer going to come
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It's not clear whether this was an effort to retaliate against the person who oversaw Roger Stone's prosecution, whether it was simply an effort to avoid her having to testify to a Senate committee, which was scheduled to happen this week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it certainly makes her ahead of schedule replacement look even more questionable.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So this all sounds dodgy and like William Barr is making sure the Department of Justice aligns with President Trump's interests or perhaps even protects him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But has there been anything more directly aligned with the president's reelection?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Yes, Barr has not stopped there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has issued new rules in the Justice Department for any new investigation to be opened about a presidential candidate, a presidential campaign, presidential campaign staffers, or even potentially illegal foreign contributions to presidential campaigns, any of those investigations would need Bill Barr's personal approval to be open.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And to know the backstory of that, you know, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were plagued by investigations in the 2016 campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what Bill Barr seems to be doing is ensuring that in 2020, there will be no surprises from pesky, independent-minded investigators who are turning rocks over or looking into things.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: If it touches a presidential campaign, Bill Barr is going to have to sign off on it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. So just to recap, this isn't just about getting Stone a lighter sentence.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It's also about getting Flynn a lighter sentence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's also about punishing people who administer justice to friends of the president.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And it's also potentially about preventing investigations into a president who famously has a proclivity for casual treason.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How bad is this for the Justice Department?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: How does this compare to Kennedy appointing his brother as AG or Nixon and the Saturday Night Massacre, where he illegally got a special prosecutor fired?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think since Kennedy and starting especially after Richard Nixon and Watergate, norms about the independence of the Justice Department and how it should make decisions on political prosecutions free of political interference started to become strong.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And we're seeing those norms deteriorate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That said, I do think there are some other examples that go against the narrative of Barr and Trump completely perverting the Justice Department to serve their ends.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: For one, we should remember that Rudy Giuliani's two close allies, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, got arrested last October, indicted by prosecutors from the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's Office.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there is an investigation going on imperiling Giuliani as well, reportedly.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You know, one would think that a Justice Department solely looking out for Trump's whims would not be investigating his lawyer for various crimes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But having said that, there has been other reporting that Justice Department leaders in Washington later ended up getting involved in that New York investigation into Giuliani.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the current state of it remains unclear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We just don't know what's going on.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So the big question is in all of these, is the Justice Department now going to act like President Trump's political attack machine?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or is it going to respect the judgment of legal experts and prosecutors and weigh cases carefully before bringing charges?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the signs lately have not been encouraging.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the recourse here basically non-existent?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I mean a congressional hearing isn't going to change anything, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Probably not.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I mean it would certainly be good to have Bill Barr answer questions under oath about a lot of the stuff and about how the Justice Department is even functioning these days.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, it's a bit of a red herring if the question is whether Bill Barr is doing this at Trump's behest explicitly or whether he's just doing it because, oh, he just so happens to have the same opinions as Trump on all these issues or he's preemptively trying to anticipate what Trump would want.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The point is that they have a mind build and that Barr is doing what Trump wants him to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump even sent a tweet saying congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case, that's the Roger Stone case, that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Now, after that, on Thursday, Attorney General Barr gave an interview in which he criticized Trump a bit for sending those tweets.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He said he thinks it's time for Trump to stop tweeting about Justice Department criminal cases and that the tweets make it impossible for me to do my job.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You think that'll be the game changer here?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Will President Trump finally butt out of matters involving the Justice Department?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think it's usually a bad bet to bet that Trump will change or improve his behavior on stuff like this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if you look at what Barr says, he seems to be objecting more to the public nature of Trump's comments than to their actual substance.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And look at what happened here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Barr did what Trump wanted and he got congratulations in a tweet.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You know, that's just how our government works now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, cut the music, Afim.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That's just how the government works now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, yes, Procop's clearly right, and that's distressing, and we'll surely revisit this in the coming weeks and months, but we can't end episode 500 like that, can we?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Can we?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, we can't.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think we should go out with a love song.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: When we come out, well you know we're gonna be
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're gonna be the show that makes your afternoon
--:-- Andrew Prokop: When you go home, yeah you know you're gonna be
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're gonna be so glad you don't sound like a goon
--:-- Andrew Prokop: When you're baffled, well we know we're gonna be
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're gonna be here to explain the news to you
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And when we space farce, well we know we're gonna be
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're gonna be the show you rate and you review
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And we would make 500 shows
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we would make 500 more
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Just to be the daily podcast
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That you love for
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Get those other four
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Robespura, Robespura
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Menhalima, Cecilia Bridget
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Noam, Jillian and Amanda
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Mixed by Aviv Javiro BMC
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Compose the Fimo
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And the Vox Media Podcast
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That we publishes to show
--:-- Andrew Prokop: For more information, visit www.fema.org
