happened. we know that jeff sessions and rod rosenstein were terrified that they were going to get fired in this period of time. now, that puts an enormous pressure on a day-to-day basis on the department. what i m interested to see is that how did the justice department get there? how did they make these decisions? we do not have full visibility into that today. all right. michael schmidt, thank you so much for your reporting. my god, what a story. and willie, it bears repeating that these weren t just people that donald trump didn t like. these weren t just political rivals of donald trump. these were people who were investigating donald trump. they were in the middle of an investigation. he was trying to do whatever he could to stop the investigation. and now we find out he even went to the extraordinary lengths, his justice department went to the extraordinary length to seize their records.
you know, gets at the very heart of what the democratic experience is, an independent judiciary and the rule of the law, and the freedom of the press, as well. and whether people will say, this is a reminder of how terrible this was, we must always protect our constitutions. or whether people will look at this and say, donald trump, he s down in mar-a-lago, we don t want to think about him anymore, and we know he did crazy things. the answer is january 6th. if you ve got republicans who are willing to overlook january 6th, a literal, physical attack on our country. and the majority of republicans who think the election was not a legitimate election, this is something they can overlook very, very easily. this is a media story. obviously, it s bigger than that. it s a story about another attack on democracy. but we have questioned on this show many times, what is the line? what is the line that will push people to say, you know what, we will not consider donald trump
with which they went to muzzle the journalists and muzzle their ability to expose this story in realtime, by setting up these gag orders within the news organizations. and michael schmidt, i was just looking at what eric swalwell, who is one of those who had his records subpoenaed said. and you know, it feels like a donald trump-driven investigation. and i don t think i have a lot of faith in his ability to fairly interpret the law. that s eric swalwell saying, this was not the justice department, this was donald trump. but from everything what we know of what donald trump said, even in public, there s little doubt, is there, that this was coming from the white house? well, we don t know everything that went into these requests and this action. we do know that at certain points, federal judges should have been involved in it. and certainly, if the justice department was following its
department, that is the trump justice department. i can do whatever he wanted to do. and obviously, he chose to use that justice department to spy on political opponents in another branch of government. and time and again, the justice department was all too willing to play that role for president trump. and michael, i m interested, if we can take a step back, in what the justice department was looking for, specifically. okay, you go to apple, you say, give us these records, give us the metadata. what did they think they were going to find, number one. and there s another compelling piece part of the story where you say that apple had a gag order from the j why we re learning from a lot of media outlets about what exactly happened. and also, a couple of months ago is the first time that these members of congress themselves learned that they had their records subpoenaed, because the gag order finally expired on apple.
soon-to-be nominee of the democratic party. and unfortunately, that all came to pass, as we saw in the last clip, from january 6th. yeah. okay, i won t have anymore halting questions to you, willie. why don t we just bring in the bbc s katty kay. mika has the morning off. lucky her. and we re going to be starting, willie, with this new report on just how far the trump justice department went and, my god, seems like they crossed some real boundaries here, right? yeah, this is an extraordinary story. looking into the leaks connected to the russia investigation from attorney general barr and the justice department. according to the new york times, the justice department first under jeff sessions, subpoenaed apple in 2017 and early 2018 for the data of at least a dozen people tied to the house intelligence committee, including the top democrat, adam schiff. democratic congressman eric swalwell also confirms to nbc news his records were seized.