that s doing investigations and oversight on that president. let s bring in one of the reporters of this story, new york times reporter and msnbc national security analyst, michael schmidt. he s the author of the great book, donald trump versus the united states: inside the struggle to stop a president. and we should note that michael is one of the several new york times reporters who had his own records subpoenaed by. the trump justice department. so, michael, we obviously, last week expressed concerns about you and other members of the press. having their records sifted through by government agencies on leak investigations. that had happened before. it s happened before. it happened also during the obama administration. they were very aggressive. i m trying to remember, though whether we ve ever had a president and his administration spy on members i m sure, if nixon didn t do it, he certainly
we cannot have a justice department who feels like they should work for the president and not the american people. we cannot have a full wing of our democratic republic, a full party that only works for the president. and we haven t even touched the supreme court and the courts throughout the country. so, sadly, we re in a point where we re excavating all of the things that donald trump did over the past four years and all of the people he was able to corrupt and how they so quickly fell in line. i m hoping that joe biden is really taking stock as he finds out more and more each week about his predecessor. katty kay is with us and has a question for donny deutsch. katty? okay, donny, you study people and trends and how people respond to things. we ve had so many incidents kurg the trump presidency where the world was kind of shocked by what donald trump was doing. and i just wonder whether you think people are going to look at this story, which is clearly,
deutsch, and with fordham university, christina grier. the bbc s katty kay still with us, as well. so we ve been talking about this bombshell story in the new york times this morning, joe, about the justice department under donald trump and what it did, the lengths to which it went to secure these records. apple was under a gag order until just recently, which is why these members of congress and their families have now been told that their records, were, in fact, subpoenaed by the justice department. kasie hunt, i ve got to believe. i was talking about this last hour. i ve got to believe even some republicans on the hill, who actually have read the constitution and understand what article i of the institution means and understand madisonian checks and balances and how important those are and see themselves set apart as a separate and equal branch from the executive branch find it hard to believe that republicans
house, they can do that, boths on issues like syria and things like that, they decided they want to deal with it. i don t know you ll see any republicans in this case come out and criticize the former president in any way, even though, i am sure that they actually do feel that way. this is unbelievable. and it goes back to the creation of the senate select intelligence committee and the house intelligence committee and the church committee investigation into how nixon was using the federal government against american citizens. and the idea that the justice department would be getting records from these members while they were actually conducting an investigation is beyond the pale. i ve already heard from a number of members in the last 12 hours or so, since this story first came out, saying, i m sorry, what?! and to go unknown for so many years, quite frankly, because of what they did with apple. it s just incredibly remarkable.
increasingly in other european countries, but i wonder if it s encroaching into western european countries, as well. service interesting that in 2016 it was, america s democracy was downgraded to a flawed democracy. and that s not just because of donald trump being elected, it was done before that. because the system doesn t work. and when the system doesn t work, as we saw under donald trump, somebody with autocratic tendencies can take advantage of it, as the story we were talking about earlier. they can take advantage by getting elements of that system to work in their favor, not in the favor of democracy. and i was wondering, it s not just as easy to look at countries like russia and to look at countries like turkey, nominally democracies where autocrats are increasingly taking power, but you re also looking at countries where you might not expect that to happen. countries that are democratic, but where the systems are being chipped away at or undermined in a way that means those d