Transcripts For CSPAN2 James Stewart Deep State 20240713 : c

We are quite pleased to be hosting James Stewart this evening anyone that has followed the journalism to help launch the American Lawyer magazine in 1987 of the stockmarket crash and in 1992 left the journal to establish the money magazine and start writing for the new yorker. For the past eight years hes been a columnist for the New York Times in his weekly column in the sense look at the world of business, one for distinguished commentary in 2016. In his spare time he is a professor at columbia universi university. He has written nine previous books among them from nearly 30 years ago as wall street journal covered and adults into the Insider Trading scandals of the 1980s and other works included a blood sport in 1996 about the Clinton White house and about a doctor that was a serial killer part of a soldier in 2002 retracing the life of a single victim september 11 attacks and disney war in 2005, recounting the carpet in triggering the 20 year tenure at the walt disney company. The new book deep state examines the handling of the investigations going on during the campaign and then of course we learned later the investigation of the links between russia and trump campaign. The attempts on the investigators simply meant to close his own illegal conduct. These are among the central questions that jim gets to in his book and he performs an important service. I just hope the attorney general for the russia probe read deep state. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome jim stewart. [applause] legendary politics and prose, we still have bookstores like this supporting authors like me he favored a bunch of my work and haunted my journalistic career and they are Rudy Giuliani who figured in my second book reappears and goes back in deep state. The states. Hillary clinton was a central figure in this very prominently back in the state and not as wellknown i had a brief period covering none other than donald trump. I was working as a wall street journal reporter 1985 covering the merger acquisitions omitted from the resume he went through a brief unsuccessful period as a corporate raider and this is when he bought the airline and was making threats from other airlines. Just as a routine part of my job i called him up and i said can i meet you and interview you and he said definitely, come see me. I want it completely off the record no one must know that you are meeting me so i went to trump tower to the lobby and i was showing his office and we were chatting briefly when his secretary cain and interrupted and said mr. Trump, so and so is here and he said to show her in. So much for the completely secret meeting with me. They said she is the Richest Woman in the world. He turned to her and said so and so this is James Stewart, the most famous journalist in america, at which point i knew she was not the Richest Woman in the world. Kind of funny in a mean way i went down to washington to do reporting and mentioned i had to leave to catch the plane. He said i will give you a free voucher and i said no, i couldnt possibly do that. He said at least with my shoulder drive you to the airport. No, a taxi is finally will be in the same traffic. For weeks after that he was always trying to give me something, tickets to this, helicopter flights to Atlantic City. I had no interest in Atlantic City so i said no to all of these things which was just as well because a few months later the wall street journal reporter wrote an article about him and he stepped forward and said he took three tickets to the prizefight in his career was over, it ruined him. Hes all about leverage. I could sense that from day number one. Anyway, so deep state. The background here i as a journalist like to pursue mysteries and questions that do not have an obvious answer. As the runup to the 2016 election was taking place as you all know ahead of the fbi stepped forward and said it wasnt recommending charges against Hillary Clinton, he exonerated her only of human leader to reverse himself and then days later said we didnt find anything. I will come back to this later, but that mystified me. Like other americans i didnt know at the same time that donald trump was being investigated for the plot with the russian and one that emerged i thought why do we know all about the Hillary Clinton investigation but we havent heard about donald trump and russia . I didnt understand that. So i knew comey, hed been the ambassador and i figured it in my last book about perjury she prosecuted Martha Stewart just a case i wrote about so i had a lot of confidence in him but i was mystified by this and that is the kind of thing i like to explore. In may of 2016, i had been trying to see comey. There was already conflict with the white house and suddenly nobody would take your phone calls. I could go through the press conference but everybody back to their phones worldwide attacked. Out of the blue i got an invitation to give a speech to the fbi in washington friday week of may 9 and i said yes, definitely i will do that. I figured i would drop in to see if i could enlist his cooperation in this book that i am trying to do. Monday i wake up and tuesday i wake up and he was fired. So much for my plan to slip into the fbi and the than i thought i still supposed to go down there so i said if you want me to come talk, so i did. I was there the friday after he was fired and it was horrible. I name, people were completely shellshocked. Nobody liked him there and i knew right away it was a preposterous idea that everybody i met was completely demoraliz demoralized. That is when i know for sure ive got to do this because these are historical events so that is when i really started to decide. While trump or hate trump he is a great character and he didnt agree to talk to me for this book he tweets all the time. The other characters on a political level and a human level are very compelling characters. I cant imagine two characters working together differently. He is sometimes criticized for being overly virtuous. They are such polar opposites that im amazed he got through that first dinner. But there are a number of important questions that i hope it helps to explain in a way that americans will trust. Im not a political reporter or partisan person. I worked for the wall street journal which most people consider a conservative paper. I grew up in the worlds midwest where half the people were democrats and half were republicans. There was a twoparty system thabuti was always raised to bee to do what is best for the American People and dont look only at your own selfinterest that act in a way that is best for all. The two biggest role models for me were probably in was on the license plates in illinois and is still hailed as the greatest to produce and across the river from where i grew up, hes one of the great storytellers of American Literature and i sometimes skip the epigraph but i want to read this to you because i love it so much. Patriotism is supporting your country all the time. Before he was president now anybody who doesnt support him is part of the deep state said he is certainly changed his tune. I dont know if he were he announced his campaign a few months ago in northern florida he spent part of the speech talking about the accomplishments of his First Administration they are monitoring and looking at their cell phones and all of a sudden he realized he can read the crowd very well and its a jolt of electricity everybody was upright and they are all chanting lock her up. So the story lives on. Hillary clinton was investigated by the fbi, very, very thoroughly. The story of how that happened and the strain reemergence of the emails on the laptops, it is a highly dramatic story. But, in and, theres no question classified information david moved. It was probably negligent to have done that but i can barely cope with two or three accounts. I wouldnt have wanted another one. Most importantly there was no strand of evidence to show what to say for the benefit of argument that maybe she did. There were people in the fbi that felt she could have been charged. The precedence in this area for mishandling classified information are many. They are almost all involving men in some cases there was an egregious example involving the attorney general under president bush and guess what, none of these people were ever charged under the statute. Theres a handful of other cases that are misdemeanors that resulted in a slap on the wrist but no prominent politician or appointed Government Official had ever been charged under the statute so what could have happened if they decided to recommend charges at the time she wathat she was the first won candidate for the presidency. By the way he was very consistent with this and never charged Martha Stewart with Insider Trading because there was no precedent for doing that in those circumstances and he didnt want to be attacked for bringing novel charges against a successful woman executive. There would have been a massive uproar if he had kept the election by charging Hillary Clinton fan and i think there could be no serious disagreement that the right result was reached. I was very critical since then. But how did they respond when she became the subject of a publicized fbi investigation of potentially criminal conduct did she call it a witch hunt, no, did she call people a deep state for prosecuting her, no. Did she attack the prosecutor and indeed, no. She behaved than way that most do and trust in the system and use whatever is at their disposal to a provide evidence and answer all the questions anyone had to ask and she turned over tens of thousands of those emails. I would contrast that with the way when he became subject of the russia investigation. Did he cost the election and remember the sequence is trying to keep it alive and suddenly in october, the top aide put the emails on her husbands laptop and hes engaging in illegal activity with minors and it all comes out and you couldnt make any of this up. But suddenly there were all these new emails that had to be investigated. He felt he had to make an announcement and one reason the new york office is where the laptop was and everybody knew that they had been found. I can tell you with 100 certainty if he hadnt made that announcement it would have been so much more destructive both to Hillary Clinton and the fbi reputation if it emerged through the media that this had been uncovered in the American People havent been told. I think it is very hard to criticize the decision but i remember being in a Board Meeting in the midwest i would say 60 of the people in the room are what id call moderate republicans having a hard time coming to terms and it was like a cold wind swept through the room and i could tell it crystallized and he got a lot of votes at that very moment. They did a very indepth survey to show how the few key votes in pennsylvania, wisconsin could have shifted it and he was the determining factor. The fact is we will never know. Its not like a science experiment we cant go back and run it without the variable of the thing being reopened. I think to blame it all on kobe is a great oversimplification because the fact is when it was reopened, she had a decades long history of being accused of selfserving at times in illegal behavior. There were questions about the building record of showed up at questions about how she covered up her husbands philandering and questions about who she had attacked into this narrative fell on fertile ground. That was not his fault. Days later he was able to exonerate mrs. Clinton once again and the media showed very little interest. I demonstrate here after they were first found that was the lead story in the Major Network news and papers it wasnt the lead story in the outlet. The story that day is a group of people have brushed him at a rally after someone yelled at the work done in the crowd yet that overshadowed the exoneration and i dont think you can blame that on. Was he wrong to take matters into his own hands and not leave that to the attorney general that is why he had to make the announcement all over again when he did reopen it. The reasons for that are fascinating. You see it in the context in the narrative that is the most controversial thing he did with the benefit of hindsight i would have urged him not to do it. At the time he was concerned the American People would feel it was partisan and it wouldnt be fair. Loretta lynch said a few things that made them suspicious, president obama dismissed it but the thing that put him over the edge is when bill clinton barged onto the tarmac in phoenix, sat down and stayed there for 35 minutes. There was a rampant speculation that he had intervened to affect his wifes investigation and in a way i have the most detailed account of what happened and my heart goes out to loretta lynn. Shes a nice person and a very polite lady. Bill clinton is a force of nature and just when she thought she was going to get him, he decides to sit down and spend another 15 minutes talking but it wasnt about his wife. Unfortunately the appearances were so bad this massive coverage that went on for days and that is what tipped him into feeling he could not inspire confidence. You cant really quarrel with the motive. Ive been fascinated for so long and im sure that bill clinton wasnt trying to sabotage his wifes campaign that if he was, this is the single best thing he could have done. One of the central characters is the Deputy Attorney general. He came to washington as the deputy and was the longestserving u. S. Attorney in the country. Hed been a u. S. Attorney for maryland in baltimore and wendywhenhe was first appointey asked what he thought of him and he said he is a survivor. Rosenstein was also highly respected, considered to be very independent and who would do the right thing. He stepped into a Justice Department and white house that was so untethered from standard norms of behavior from the rule of law and ethical behavior that you see in these pages he became increasingly unnerved. You may recall sessions recused himself from russia which meant rosenstein was now in charge of it. So trump decides hes going to fire him. He said i do think they kind of mishandled the administration. He perks up and says can you write me a memo to that investigation and he writes a memo critical and hands it back to the white house. All of a sudden, trump who had already decided on his own to fire him for the reasons completely unrelated grabs the memo and says this is the reason he must be fired. They say you were the one that insisted they be fired because of the clintons. It was not his idea to fire comey and to his credit he refused to do that. He said that is a false narrative and we are not going to put it out. Days later, she call called himr and he has become the acting fbi director with just a brief passage they were talking about something relatively innocuous and i report as follows he shifted toward the closed room somewhere off in the distance and his eyes looked glassy and his eyes teared up. He said he couldnt believe what was happening. They tried to make it look as if it were his idea to fire him, but that wasnt true. They asked him to write the memo only after announcing he was firing. He was obviously struggling to keep his emotions in check. He was shocked that he was complaining and him calling the president a liar. They barely knew each other but he wanted to become passionate. Are you okay, he asked, no. Are you getting any sleep . No. Is your family okay . He said there were news trucks parked outside his house an with his wife and family were upset. There was a pause and then he said there is no one here i can talk to you about this. He asked if he thought he should appoint a special counsel and he said he thought it would be a good idea. He always considered him a friend and mentor, someone he looked up to. The one person i wish i could talk to. Well, good luck with that, he thought. This is who he just fired. Theres a sequence of events where he offers to wear a liar and call the president and invoke the amendment all of which is true and by the end of the investigation, he is a new person. He has survived. There are two locations where it is drafting press releases he goes to the white house that comes out and his job is intact. He and the new attorney general rush that hes been exonerated. This is and what the report said that its more damaging than anything they were willing to say. This is a classic example of the wellintentioned aircraft to get into the trump orbit and are drawn into this web of falsehood and irresponsible if not illegal behavior and then are asked to protect the president , and the president again leveraging the theme here because he lied about the liar and in the amendment he had leverage over him to fire him whenever he wants. Finally i just want to address the issue of the deep state. He has again just this week accused the whistle blower of being part of the deep state and people in the white house who told them what was happening as being part of the deep state. I could just read the end of the book as he says the same thing hes already said many times before that part of the deep state and they are traitors and he hasnt said explicitly that he has implied that the punishment should be as it has been sometimes in the past, the death penalty. I want to say this about the deep state. Its origin is from the middle east. Turkey, egypt where an entrenched militaryindustrial bureaucratic complexes from time to time would step in and overthrow and sometimes the dictator running the country in order to preserve their own powers and privileges. In the United States, the deep state concept has been more recently used in another variation on the militaryindustrial complex the deep state was traditionally considered to be primarily people on wall street, the big banks, goldman sachs, the lobbyist in washington, the corporations, the Technology Companies that yielded enormous influence. That is how it was translated in the James Stewart<\/a> this evening anyone that has followed the journalism to help launch the American Lawyer<\/a> magazine in 1987 of the stockmarket crash and in 1992 left the journal to establish the money magazine and start writing for the new yorker. For the past eight years hes been a columnist for the New York Times<\/a> in his weekly column in the sense look at the world of business, one for distinguished commentary in 2016. In his spare time he is a professor at columbia universi university. He has written nine previous books among them from nearly 30 years ago as wall street journal covered and adults into the Insider Trading<\/a> scandals of the 1980s and other works included a blood sport in 1996 about the Clinton White<\/a> house and about a doctor that was a serial killer part of a soldier in 2002 retracing the life of a single victim september 11 attacks and disney war in 2005, recounting the carpet in triggering the 20 year tenure at the walt disney company. The new book deep state examines the handling of the investigations going on during the campaign and then of course we learned later the investigation of the links between russia and trump campaign. The attempts on the investigators simply meant to close his own illegal conduct. These are among the central questions that jim gets to in his book and he performs an important service. I just hope the attorney general for the russia probe read deep state. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome jim stewart. [applause] legendary politics and prose, we still have bookstores like this supporting authors like me he favored a bunch of my work and haunted my journalistic career and they are Rudy Giuliani<\/a> who figured in my second book reappears and goes back in deep state. The states. Hillary clinton was a central figure in this very prominently back in the state and not as wellknown i had a brief period covering none other than donald trump. I was working as a wall street journal reporter 1985 covering the merger acquisitions omitted from the resume he went through a brief unsuccessful period as a corporate raider and this is when he bought the airline and was making threats from other airlines. Just as a routine part of my job i called him up and i said can i meet you and interview you and he said definitely, come see me. I want it completely off the record no one must know that you are meeting me so i went to trump tower to the lobby and i was showing his office and we were chatting briefly when his secretary cain and interrupted and said mr. Trump, so and so is here and he said to show her in. So much for the completely secret meeting with me. They said she is the Richest Woman<\/a> in the world. He turned to her and said so and so this is James Stewart<\/a>, the most famous journalist in america, at which point i knew she was not the Richest Woman<\/a> in the world. Kind of funny in a mean way i went down to washington to do reporting and mentioned i had to leave to catch the plane. He said i will give you a free voucher and i said no, i couldnt possibly do that. He said at least with my shoulder drive you to the airport. No, a taxi is finally will be in the same traffic. For weeks after that he was always trying to give me something, tickets to this, helicopter flights to Atlantic City<\/a>. I had no interest in Atlantic City<\/a> so i said no to all of these things which was just as well because a few months later the wall street journal reporter wrote an article about him and he stepped forward and said he took three tickets to the prizefight in his career was over, it ruined him. Hes all about leverage. I could sense that from day number one. Anyway, so deep state. The background here i as a journalist like to pursue mysteries and questions that do not have an obvious answer. As the runup to the 2016 election was taking place as you all know ahead of the fbi stepped forward and said it wasnt recommending charges against Hillary Clinton<\/a>, he exonerated her only of human leader to reverse himself and then days later said we didnt find anything. I will come back to this later, but that mystified me. Like other americans i didnt know at the same time that donald trump was being investigated for the plot with the russian and one that emerged i thought why do we know all about the Hillary Clinton<\/a> investigation but we havent heard about donald trump and russia . I didnt understand that. So i knew comey, hed been the ambassador and i figured it in my last book about perjury she prosecuted Martha Stewart<\/a> just a case i wrote about so i had a lot of confidence in him but i was mystified by this and that is the kind of thing i like to explore. In may of 2016, i had been trying to see comey. There was already conflict with the white house and suddenly nobody would take your phone calls. I could go through the press conference but everybody back to their phones worldwide attacked. Out of the blue i got an invitation to give a speech to the fbi in washington friday week of may 9 and i said yes, definitely i will do that. I figured i would drop in to see if i could enlist his cooperation in this book that i am trying to do. Monday i wake up and tuesday i wake up and he was fired. So much for my plan to slip into the fbi and the than i thought i still supposed to go down there so i said if you want me to come talk, so i did. I was there the friday after he was fired and it was horrible. I name, people were completely shellshocked. Nobody liked him there and i knew right away it was a preposterous idea that everybody i met was completely demoraliz demoralized. That is when i know for sure ive got to do this because these are historical events so that is when i really started to decide. While trump or hate trump he is a great character and he didnt agree to talk to me for this book he tweets all the time. The other characters on a political level and a human level are very compelling characters. I cant imagine two characters working together differently. He is sometimes criticized for being overly virtuous. They are such polar opposites that im amazed he got through that first dinner. But there are a number of important questions that i hope it helps to explain in a way that americans will trust. Im not a political reporter or partisan person. I worked for the wall street journal which most people consider a conservative paper. I grew up in the worlds midwest where half the people were democrats and half were republicans. There was a twoparty system thabuti was always raised to bee to do what is best for the American People<\/a> and dont look only at your own selfinterest that act in a way that is best for all. The two biggest role models for me were probably in was on the license plates in illinois and is still hailed as the greatest to produce and across the river from where i grew up, hes one of the great storytellers of American Literature<\/a> and i sometimes skip the epigraph but i want to read this to you because i love it so much. Patriotism is supporting your country all the time. Before he was president now anybody who doesnt support him is part of the deep state said he is certainly changed his tune. I dont know if he were he announced his campaign a few months ago in northern florida he spent part of the speech talking about the accomplishments of his First Administration<\/a> they are monitoring and looking at their cell phones and all of a sudden he realized he can read the crowd very well and its a jolt of electricity everybody was upright and they are all chanting lock her up. So the story lives on. Hillary clinton was investigated by the fbi, very, very thoroughly. The story of how that happened and the strain reemergence of the emails on the laptops, it is a highly dramatic story. But, in and, theres no question classified information david moved. It was probably negligent to have done that but i can barely cope with two or three accounts. I wouldnt have wanted another one. Most importantly there was no strand of evidence to show what to say for the benefit of argument that maybe she did. There were people in the fbi that felt she could have been charged. The precedence in this area for mishandling classified information are many. They are almost all involving men in some cases there was an egregious example involving the attorney general under president bush and guess what, none of these people were ever charged under the statute. Theres a handful of other cases that are misdemeanors that resulted in a slap on the wrist but no prominent politician or appointed Government Official<\/a> had ever been charged under the statute so what could have happened if they decided to recommend charges at the time she wathat she was the first won candidate for the presidency. By the way he was very consistent with this and never charged Martha Stewart<\/a> with Insider Trading<\/a> because there was no precedent for doing that in those circumstances and he didnt want to be attacked for bringing novel charges against a successful woman executive. There would have been a massive uproar if he had kept the election by charging Hillary Clinton<\/a> fan and i think there could be no serious disagreement that the right result was reached. I was very critical since then. But how did they respond when she became the subject of a publicized fbi investigation of potentially criminal conduct did she call it a witch hunt, no, did she call people a deep state for prosecuting her, no. Did she attack the prosecutor and indeed, no. She behaved than way that most do and trust in the system and use whatever is at their disposal to a provide evidence and answer all the questions anyone had to ask and she turned over tens of thousands of those emails. I would contrast that with the way when he became subject of the russia investigation. Did he cost the election and remember the sequence is trying to keep it alive and suddenly in october, the top aide put the emails on her husbands laptop and hes engaging in illegal activity with minors and it all comes out and you couldnt make any of this up. But suddenly there were all these new emails that had to be investigated. He felt he had to make an announcement and one reason the new york office is where the laptop was and everybody knew that they had been found. I can tell you with 100 certainty if he hadnt made that announcement it would have been so much more destructive both to Hillary Clinton<\/a> and the fbi reputation if it emerged through the media that this had been uncovered in the American People<\/a> havent been told. I think it is very hard to criticize the decision but i remember being in a Board Meeting<\/a> in the midwest i would say 60 of the people in the room are what id call moderate republicans having a hard time coming to terms and it was like a cold wind swept through the room and i could tell it crystallized and he got a lot of votes at that very moment. They did a very indepth survey to show how the few key votes in pennsylvania, wisconsin could have shifted it and he was the determining factor. The fact is we will never know. Its not like a science experiment we cant go back and run it without the variable of the thing being reopened. I think to blame it all on kobe is a great oversimplification because the fact is when it was reopened, she had a decades long history of being accused of selfserving at times in illegal behavior. There were questions about the building record of showed up at questions about how she covered up her husbands philandering and questions about who she had attacked into this narrative fell on fertile ground. That was not his fault. Days later he was able to exonerate mrs. Clinton once again and the media showed very little interest. I demonstrate here after they were first found that was the lead story in the Major Network<\/a> news and papers it wasnt the lead story in the outlet. The story that day is a group of people have brushed him at a rally after someone yelled at the work done in the crowd yet that overshadowed the exoneration and i dont think you can blame that on. Was he wrong to take matters into his own hands and not leave that to the attorney general that is why he had to make the announcement all over again when he did reopen it. The reasons for that are fascinating. You see it in the context in the narrative that is the most controversial thing he did with the benefit of hindsight i would have urged him not to do it. At the time he was concerned the American People<\/a> would feel it was partisan and it wouldnt be fair. Loretta lynch said a few things that made them suspicious, president obama dismissed it but the thing that put him over the edge is when bill clinton barged onto the tarmac in phoenix, sat down and stayed there for 35 minutes. There was a rampant speculation that he had intervened to affect his wifes investigation and in a way i have the most detailed account of what happened and my heart goes out to loretta lynn. Shes a nice person and a very polite lady. Bill clinton is a force of nature and just when she thought she was going to get him, he decides to sit down and spend another 15 minutes talking but it wasnt about his wife. Unfortunately the appearances were so bad this massive coverage that went on for days and that is what tipped him into feeling he could not inspire confidence. You cant really quarrel with the motive. Ive been fascinated for so long and im sure that bill clinton wasnt trying to sabotage his wifes campaign that if he was, this is the single best thing he could have done. One of the central characters is the Deputy Attorney<\/a> general. He came to washington as the deputy and was the longestserving u. S. Attorney in the country. Hed been a u. S. Attorney for maryland in baltimore and wendywhenhe was first appointey asked what he thought of him and he said he is a survivor. Rosenstein was also highly respected, considered to be very independent and who would do the right thing. He stepped into a Justice Department<\/a> and white house that was so untethered from standard norms of behavior from the rule of law and ethical behavior that you see in these pages he became increasingly unnerved. You may recall sessions recused himself from russia which meant rosenstein was now in charge of it. So trump decides hes going to fire him. He said i do think they kind of mishandled the administration. He perks up and says can you write me a memo to that investigation and he writes a memo critical and hands it back to the white house. All of a sudden, trump who had already decided on his own to fire him for the reasons completely unrelated grabs the memo and says this is the reason he must be fired. They say you were the one that insisted they be fired because of the clintons. It was not his idea to fire comey and to his credit he refused to do that. He said that is a false narrative and we are not going to put it out. Days later, she call called himr and he has become the acting fbi director with just a brief passage they were talking about something relatively innocuous and i report as follows he shifted toward the closed room somewhere off in the distance and his eyes looked glassy and his eyes teared up. He said he couldnt believe what was happening. They tried to make it look as if it were his idea to fire him, but that wasnt true. They asked him to write the memo only after announcing he was firing. He was obviously struggling to keep his emotions in check. He was shocked that he was complaining and him calling the president a liar. They barely knew each other but he wanted to become passionate. Are you okay, he asked, no. Are you getting any sleep . No. Is your family okay . He said there were news trucks parked outside his house an with his wife and family were upset. There was a pause and then he said there is no one here i can talk to you about this. He asked if he thought he should appoint a special counsel and he said he thought it would be a good idea. He always considered him a friend and mentor, someone he looked up to. The one person i wish i could talk to. Well, good luck with that, he thought. This is who he just fired. Theres a sequence of events where he offers to wear a liar and call the president and invoke the amendment all of which is true and by the end of the investigation, he is a new person. He has survived. There are two locations where it is drafting press releases he goes to the white house that comes out and his job is intact. He and the new attorney general rush that hes been exonerated. This is and what the report said that its more damaging than anything they were willing to say. This is a classic example of the wellintentioned aircraft to get into the trump orbit and are drawn into this web of falsehood and irresponsible if not illegal behavior and then are asked to protect the president , and the president again leveraging the theme here because he lied about the liar and in the amendment he had leverage over him to fire him whenever he wants. Finally i just want to address the issue of the deep state. He has again just this week accused the whistle blower of being part of the deep state and people in the white house who told them what was happening as being part of the deep state. I could just read the end of the book as he says the same thing hes already said many times before that part of the deep state and they are traitors and he hasnt said explicitly that he has implied that the punishment should be as it has been sometimes in the past, the death penalty. I want to say this about the deep state. Its origin is from the middle east. Turkey, egypt where an entrenched militaryindustrial bureaucratic complexes from time to time would step in and overthrow and sometimes the dictator running the country in order to preserve their own powers and privileges. In the United States<\/a>, the deep state concept has been more recently used in another variation on the militaryindustrial complex the deep state was traditionally considered to be primarily people on wall street, the big banks, goldman sachs, the lobbyist in washington, the corporations, the Technology Companies<\/a> that yielded enormous influence. That is how it was translated in the United States<\/a> context. Trump has now weaponize to the concept to apply it to the federal bureaucracy and the fbi and the Justice Department<\/a> and intelligence communities. I never thought i would see the day where a republican president turned on Law Enforcement<\/a> communities and branded them along with journalists like me as enemies of the people, but that is what has happened. He said something very important and profound to me which i quote in the book and that is he never heard the phrase deep state but if what he means is that men and women of the fbi and Justice Department<\/a> have devoted their lives to serving the American People<\/a> into taking the oath of allegiance to uphold the United States<\/a> constitution and who do not work for the president of the unitepresident ofthe unitedd specifically this president , then thank god we have a deep state. These are important checks on the powers of the executive branch. We are a nation of checks and balances and one of those checks are bureaucrats are appointed people, career Civil Servants<\/a> it doesnt matter whether they are republicans or democrats everyone has a political view but their duty is to uphold the law and serve the people in the United States<\/a>. When you have a whistleblower coming forward and standing up to the president telling him you cant do Something Like<\/a> that, then you have the essence of what the constitutional system calls upon them to do. So i think that the state can this context is something we can all sleep easier knowing is in place and i would say good for them so i would welcome your questions. [applause] i think anyone that wants to ask a question can come up to the microphone. I am a retired member of the deep state and worked for the federal government for 20 years. Did you look into the origins of the russia investigation . It seems to me the theory the italian professor was supposed to have been working for the cia when he gave his information over about the emails. Why hasnt anybody noticed that the information that he gave was true and could only have come from russia backs as you may know it is now the subject of another major investigation. The attorne attorney general his been traveling around the world trying to gather evidence. Why the attorney general is involved in a daytoday investigation is completely beyond me. Today it is a massive waste of his time and taxpayer money. I dont mean to just be plugging myself, but i wish that he would read the book. It is not a mystery about how this began. First of all, it was originated from the australian ambassador in the United Kingdom<\/a> who heard that he had his information. He gave it to the government in australia. They did nothing with it. Going to your plaintiff was only when it turned out that the russian really did have these emails which proved the intelligence was correct but australia then transmitted to us to the intelligence agencies in the United States<\/a> who in turn handed it over to the fbi. Australia is one of the closest allies of the United States<\/a> and the Intelligence Community<\/a> of australia and new zealand and United Kingdom<\/a> then he acted like he was going to shut the whole thing down. Thanks for doing this im really looking forward to it. I have a question that you might answer in the buck. Regarding the emails you make the point that its justified up to file criminal charges of the classified information, but more broadly it was troubling to me that she moved all these emails onto the private server which raises the issue she might have been trying to hide them from open records were outside scrutiny. Its justified and the skepticism and suspicion. She didnt move it onto a private server it was always on a private server it originated on a private server. What happened then command of us grew out of endless hearings. They segregate what is considered purely personal one of the things did the that theyy hide something that should have been turned over and that is one of the interesting things about the ones that showed up on the avenue. They had access to all of this and again the numbers in the buck but it was maybe 30 or 50,000 it was an enormous number and it was almost all duplicates of thing is that were turned over there were maybe one or two exceptions and they didnt find anything of significance, so there is no evidence yet that clinton withheld anything of relevance to the inquiry. I wonder if you have an opinion on the history of bill barr. He had a reputation in washington as being a moderate conservative and institutional list may be like Rudy Giuliani<\/a> or roger stone. How did this transformation have been . Stanek that is a very good question. He is a character in the book and a few significant things about him, he wrote an editorial after he made his announcement about clinton praising him and the decision, a little known fact. Then as you may know as sessions came under repeated attack and again you see here a lot of people thought that he wasnt qualified for the position but putting that aside, no one deserves to be humiliated repeatedly the way that trump gave him largely because he was mad that he reduced himself on the russia investigation but it was clear the drumbeat was going on praising trump and basically saying he cant be held guilty of anything. Hes auditioning for the job to the white house he later acknowledged its the only time hes ever sent an unsolicited memo like that to the Justice Department<\/a>. Willing to behold he then gets the job. He said in his hearings i dont need to be the attorney general. Ive already been the attorney general. Why do i need to do that. Let me tell you the attorney general is a very good job. Its a powerful job among other things. Have you ever been to the offices of the Justice Department<\/a> . They have their own dining room, they have a whole suite of offices. They have their own airplanes that they can fly and they have enormous power. Its an incredible job and i think that he desperately wanted to back. Hes a shrewd observer of thing how do you keep a job like that . You do with trump wants. Frankly i believe that it has less than congress. They are appointed by the president and the answer to the attorney general but i dont think that they would dare now to fire this u. S. Attorney and i applaud him for being independent and doing something frankly that i was afraid he would never do. Did you say all you wanted to say and talk about him in the book. His handling of the report was disgraceful that was number one. Fullstop number two he has honored the tradition now its the obstruction of justice that includes perjury and tampering and threatening of what this is you cant find out that someone is guilty if somebody is running around intimidating everyone so it is a chicken and egg thing. The innocent and the guilty must be subject to the same obstruction of justice. I cant believe he would have the nerve to take the opposite position. There are only a few extreme lawyers that would agree with him can be played. My brother is a conservative but forgot he was an anticommunist. How do you feel the extradition will play out . It sounds like different parts of the United States<\/a> government will want him here or be frightened of what he could say in situations in the future. I cant really answer that. Im not an expert, but i dont think theres any doubt that this administration is going to bring all the powers they have down on him. I mean, they dont like weeks and they want to string them up and hang them in the town square to make sure anybody else but a kind way of putting its whistleblowing doesnt come forward in the future, so i think they will do everything they can to make an example out of him. Why do you think that rosenstein did write that memo about him to trump . Like many people that get drawn into the orbit, he was asked to do it. Trump is his boss and you want to please the boss and kerry out the exercise. Its hard to believe that he didnt see how he might use it. This is what many people i think ive been surprised by. Could he have been so naive that he goes back and does his homework and write this report and brings it in and then what did he think trump was going to do with it, use it as a bedtime reading . I dont think so. But he did seem truly and genuinely stunned that he seized upon it and then made it the sole basis and was about to put all the blame for getting rid of him on rosenstein. I cant reconcile that. Its hard to believe he had been a u. S. Attorney for decades. He understands what evidence is and how the document was going to be used. He also it turned out trump wrote a long memo while he was at the golf club the previous weekend in which he explained the real reason he wanted to get rid of comey and he had given a copy of the nanotube rosenstein. Thats why he knew he was lying. It had nothing to do with clinton. Interestingly, you will see on the page is here a few days later when he is so shocked by all of this, he gave a copy of that amount and he immediately took it back to the fbi and locked it in a safe to preserve it as evidence because that was written consent of any as evidence of the real reasons that he was firing him and it remains today documentary proof that all the statements about clinton and rosenstein ordering him to fire him or all wise and i think he wanted that memo in say ten to protect him from any future accusations and he was the one behind the firing. [inaudible] the question is did the resignation and timing of the resignation of kenneth e. Strike me as being strange in any way. I havent done any independent reporting on that, but there is a lot of theorizing and i think some evidence that it was orchestrated to pave the way for a particular nominee. We may never know the whole truth about that. [inaudible] the question is what did i think of trump saying to Justice Kennedy<\/a> at the end of his address say hello to your boys meaning his former clerk. What, he shouldnt have said it. Thats going to be exhibit a that there was some kind of a quid pro quo but do i need to tell you trump says things that he shouldnt say . [laughter] let me say this about the whistleblower. Somebody the other day asked me to yodo you wish that you waitea few months to write this book you could write about the whistleblower and i said not really because what happened is so predictable from the events of the book just read the last couple of pages and you will see the whistleblower coming a mile away because at the end of this whole thing, after putting the country through years of turmo turmoil, trump seems to have learned only one thing which is he thinks he was exonerated. He was totally vindicated. He did nothing wrong so he doubles down. He, the reason that there was no crime in the russia thing is because they didnt find evidence of trump himself either instigated or participated in a direct conspiracy with the russians to interfere. So what did he do with ukraine . He asks ukraine to do it. He hands them the one missing piece of evidence from the russia case. Its astonishing anyone would do that. That he would actually learn anything in the previous investigation, but he only lives in a binary world of winners and losers. He won and then keep up the good work, do more of it. [inaudible] in watergate, all the president s men say to bob woodward, Robert Redford<\/a> these people are not as smart as you think in the white house who are running the white house and i just was wondering if any of the people that presently run this ever bothered to pay any attention to watergate because how these things keep repeating themselv themselves. That is an interesting point because there is a scene in the book where there are fbi agents that say you know, i think i better go back and read that book. [laughter] but in terms of the skill level, im not in the position to judge it. Thats what i can say is all of the people who restrained trump, you see them in the course of the state. Agree or disagree with their politics, but dawn mcgann is probably the unsung hero of the story and trump ends up humiliating him and should have been down on ended the thanking him for restraining him from his worst impulses but he gets thrown out. Session widely criticized for his performance as the attorney general nevertheless has sent him a monster fire mueller or engage in what could be a legal conduct the same with rosenstein, even cory leelanau ski he says go tell sessions that he has to fire buehler and if you do something firing him. He managed to never do it. He had enough sense not to do that. All these people are out. He has now a white House Counsel<\/a> and attorney general who seemed to be doing exactly what and that is a dangerous situation and one in which Something Like<\/a> the whistleblower was bound to happen. So, i thought we could wait until the election but now im starting to worry a whole year what could he do in a year before the election. We have to see how this all unfolds. The impeachment is a political process, not a legal proceeding and it isnt held to the standards of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I dont know if it is for me to opine on that, but the factfinding process that is going to go on is absolutely essential and thats why it is so important the president not be allowed to stonewall and abstract or bar anyone from providing testimony because whether he is impeached or not, the American People<\/a> need to know what happened here. All of the voters need to be able to make up our mind about whether this indicates someone that honors the rule of law. And when we do come around to voting next year thats why i think this process is extremely important. To entertain a little controversy, eminent is the re release of the Inspector General<\/a>s report on the fbis role in this matter. I strongly suspect that it will be different than your own conclusions and opinions with respect to those parties. Do you have any premonitions as to what this report will reveal . I think i have more than premonitions because many of the people that were sources for my books and ive interviewed him by the Inspector General<\/a> understandably, some of them have reviewed because they no longer believed that he was fair and they were upset about his report on the clinton didnt emails. All of them have told me that it is going to be highly critical of the fbi and kobe because they believe that is what the white house wants and the attorney general wants. The Inspector General<\/a> is independent, but he works for bar now and is known to be very close to grassley in the senate. He was an obama appointee and he has been highly regarded through his career. And i dont want to prejudge this. I havent seen the report but there are concerns of people interviewed him its like so many people are drawn into this orbit similar to rosenstein. He isnt a person today that he was when he was first appointed because the pressures bearing down on him are very intense. He said he was going to release the report in may and i was hoping to kind of way to finish my manuscript so that i could absorb that and use some of the material. It became clear to me he was going back. Whatever he decided, somebody said this isnt good enough, go back and get more. Find something on these people. If he actually finds something i will be very surprised. But who knows. And maybe hes got something i dont know about. I will be openminded about it. How much damage do you think has been done to the fbi and cia, state department by these relentless attacks . Enormous damage has already been done and its very worrisome to me. These are institutions and tradition that has been both up over decades and they are being obliterated in a matter of a few years. I talked to a lot of fbi people. You dont work for the government for the money. The fbi particularly has been long held they have had their problems. There have been some issues. Im not saying theyve never behaved, but by and large they then held up a society as honorable trustworthy people and as people tell the truth too and they will tell the truth to you and they are revered in their communities. Suddenly they are the enemy, they are being reviled and humiliated him fired in any cases. And its not enough to fire them than they are being investigated for crimes. Mccain has a grand jury sitting on him right now under investigation. They launched a criminal investigation. He was exonerated but nevertheless he had to go through all that. Just yesterday there is now a criminal investigation of Robert Mueller<\/a> its not enough to just criticize them. Its not a good thing. You have to have lawyers and its expensive and the threat of prosecution hanging over you is terrible, so how do we attract the best people in these agencies in the future that is what worries me. A lot of good people are leaving. They are demoralized and upset. Why should they put up with this and how are we going to get good people to come in there . I think ray is so far doing a good job at th the example is vy dispiriting as we have seen recently. What do you see as the role of the pardons in this and is there a chance that he might try to pardon himself . Or any of these. I think anything is possible. And you will see he is constantly dangling the idea of the pardon of people under investigation to keep them from testifying against him. Its one of the more blatant aspects of the instruction charge and one that he is uniquely positioned to do because he is the president. Pardoning himself, that is may be pushing it pretty far, but i wouldnt put anything beyond a doubt. Or that he would pardon himself and then whatever happens after that. That wouldnt surprise me in the least. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. [applause] copies are available please form a line to the right. You are watching the tv on cspan2. Here is a look at what is coming up. Next, bob recalls the life and then our Author Interview<\/a> program after words with former Obama Administration<\/a> National Security<\/a> advisor susan rice. Good afternoon","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia803109.us.archive.org\/15\/items\/CSPAN2_20191014_020100_James_Stewart_Deep_State\/CSPAN2_20191014_020100_James_Stewart_Deep_State.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20191014_020100_James_Stewart_Deep_State_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}