General segues resigned abruptly on the day of the elects in 2018 and the president appointed me that die be acting term general to bridge the gap between jeff session and bill barr. Host how did you become jeff session chief of staff. I only met Jeff Sessions opposite before i was selected to be his chief of staff. He i interviewed with him and talked to him many times but it was mutual friend, both in the white house and at the federal body that recommended know them and his people, and we bonded quickly over College Football and our love for good barbecue. It was a match made in heaven. Host one over to things you say but mr. Sessions recowsal from the russia investigation that it was personal and fact driven. Guest i wasnt there when he did the analysis. He took over in february of 2017 after he was confirmed and after the new administration came in, but having done sort of my own analysis it took five weeks for me and my staff and the department of justice to moat. Its very factdriven. It is very personal decision. Kind of how its done, methodical, and i know that general sessions has been very jut spoken and believes he did the right thing and i all can i do and i describe how hi icked our work at the department of justice and created two Power Centers at the department of justice. The Attorney Generals Office and deputy Attorney Generals Office who for the purposes of the Mueller Investigation was the acting attorney general. So just was very difficult to operate in that environment, as you can imagine, but also when i was appointed acting attorney general i was able to consolidate that and return to regular order in a normal chain of command like the department is used to. Host and in your poock, you write that every american, regardless of personal politics, should be concerned by what i saw happen to President Donald Trump inside the u. S. Department of justice between 2017 and 2019. What did you see . Guest well, you in the, i talked to so many things. What i saw was a depth of justice that department of justice that at its best was a force of good and for law and order and doing justice, and then at it worth was a depth that when it didnt follow regular order, not predicating investigation, was glossing over basic and fundamental practices of investigations. For example, when there was no evidence or counterevidence was developed, they continued to go down a path and investigate crimes that ultimately as you sea the Mueller Report for example, were never established and never was any evidence that supported those investigations. So, again issue think one of the reason is wrote this book was to remind professionals in the department of justice, prosecutors and investigative agents, we need to do all we do the right thing for the right reason and follow the time honored practices that have put the department of justice in its place in society and really have been unfortunately kind of hurt by these recent chapters that we saw the department of justice, but by no means what i suggest in my book doesnt try to make the case that somehow this was all people and eave investigation. Quite frankly, one reason i wrote this book was to highlight the important work of the great men and women at the department of justice. 110 110,000 professionals and almost all of them do things the right way without aexplain make our country better because theyre involved in the claim justice system. Host but one of the recuring themes in your book above the laugh is this, quote what bothered me most were those numbers of the executive branch who put their owns and above those of the president. Can you give some examples of that . Guest one example is one were all familiar with and that is how jim comey conducted the fbi and how he and members of his senior staff were often times shaping stories in the media. Theres a lot of evidence on the Public Record now of how leaks were made to correct stories that were inaccurate or representations i know another person, andy mccabe, who familiar mostly leaked the store huh he conducted the Deputy Attorney general in the obama administering regarding an investigation. So, all that was all sourcessed from him through lisa page and those examples and other examples where i really believe that one of the ways we get off the path at the department of justice and the fbi was individuals putting themselves in their own reputations ahead of the interests of the executive branch, and the i want to say the interest of the exec consecutive branch, the constitutional interest that makes our constitutional sim so balanced and work on an everyday basis. Host do you believe theres a deep state . Guest i would have to say i think there are those individuals within the permanent bureaucracy, if theyre career officials, that do not believe that in the president s agenda and its a lawful and ethical agenda and they resist it, small r resisted, the implement indication of that agenda, and so the language whether the deep state is for others to decide how to define it. What i saw is i saw people that were not only working against the president s agenda but those that were unwilling to advance the president s agenda and it is my point, what i say in the become is those people if they really believed they cannot accomplish or support the president s agenda, as long as its lawful and ethical, which it is, they should run for president based on the world view, and i think the president s priorities that we saw at the department of justice were lawful and ethical, and so everyone in the executive branch because of another thing i talk about in the become the unitary executive theory, everybody should pull in the same direction, and i am surprised it is controversial as it is but ultimately the person poem who are the Electoral College elect the president s and those president ed are entitled to implement their agenda and priorities. You describe the attitude of those people at doj. They view donald trump as a, quoteunquote, dangerous interloper. Snow yeah. I think the viewed self of news that way. They view us at outsiders, those that are not of washington and of this, i guess, elite world, but this is the beauty of our system in the United States, is that people with good ideas can come to washington, dc, can win elections and can tried to a vans priorities and i you can tell from the way i describe it, i believe so much in the system and i believe in america and not just sort of the elites that are in our major cities, like washington, dc and new york and other places, but all of us. Were all a part of it and i think one thing that donald trump did which surprised a lot of people, gave voice to a lot of people who forget felt forgotten. Places like flyover country where im from and are you believe the coastal elites dont understand why you val you way of life, why you like having a grill in your backyard and like having sort of an above ground pool and the things that and target shooting, those kind of things we celebrate and do in places like ioway im from. Host were you prepared for the media when you calm into the acting ag position . Guest i am not sure i could have ever expected the attention and the suddenness with which i was thrust on the National Stage. Was ready for the job. Id done 13 months as chief of staff to the attorney general. Knew how he department of justice operated. Had relationships with everyone in the executive branch and other places. Ive been a u. S. Attorney for five and a half years in the Southern District of iowa so i knew the department of justice very well, its mission and its people. The media was even though aid been a contributor on cnn and fought that i knew how the media covered stories. Was not ready for the amount of not only reporters that were following these stories but just their insatiable desire for new angles, new breaking news, and just how bit early partisan it had become, and i do continue to believe that the mission of the department of justice is not political, its to do justice in every case, and at the same time i would have to say i was surprised by the media spotlight that was that bee phil mel when i became acting attorney general. Host now, operationally, when the attorney general recused himself from the russia investigation, how does that work in doj and how were you kept up to date on developments . Guest well, i wasnt. Once i became chief of staff to attorney general sessions, the whole office of attorney general, oag, was recused as well. So when i became chief of staff i one all i knew bow the russia investigation is what i saw on tv and what every night after work i would be subjected to if i wanted to if i cared to watch the news. So i didnt learn anything about the actual investigation until after i became acting attorney general. Host and when you became acting, were you briefed into the full investigation at that point by rod rosenstein. Guest i was and others but not immediate. This is one thing i think we all need to appreciate about the moment in time. I was smart enough to know that it could if i wanted it to, it could dominate my every waking moment and i knew there was so much more work we were doing. Obviously the highest profile work we were doing and so much other work so i brought in a u. S. Attorney from Eastern District of california named greg scott. He just is kind of a great individual with a ton of experience, not only as elected county da and twotime u. S. Attorney in the Bush Administration with me and now returned in this administration to do it again because he enjoys so it much. The perfect person to come in and i put him in as my eyes and ears and made him responsible on my behalf to manage it to interact with the mueller team because i knew i could not i just didnt want to put that amount of time and attention with Everything Else that we had to do and the priorities we had, i needed help and i brought him in to help. Host what your impression of and interactions with rod rosenstein. Guest ive know the former Deputy Attorney general since 20042005 time frame when he came in as u. S. Attorneys. So ive known him for over a decade, and he has spent he had spent 30 years in the department of justice, he has an impressive resume and an impressive educational background and a lot of experience inside of the department of justice, and i describe in this book kind of my impressions on him of. I think the person people saw him again on National Stage in the hearings last week. And i think he is i dont thing theres any doubt that he would say he was doing the belles he could in a difficult circumstance. Obviously i have a lot of questions for him especially the decisions he made along the way before i was ever at the department of justice. Host what is the period on this whole thing . Now, judge sullivan has online gleeson investigating the department of justices view on this. When does it end . Guest thats a great question. I think when it ends is when we really have a full conditioning of this period of time and as i watch sort of the various pieces and parts, whether its Mueller Investigation, the Senate Issuing new subpoenas to get the bottom of it, i think everywhere i go and travel, the first thing folks ask me is, when will anybody be held accountable for this . Questions we can learn the lesson john will bar was just talking about that earlier this week how to some extent the job of the attorney general is to figure out what happens to make sure it doesnt happen again. Certainly this will be around through the summer i think john durhams support is can be very important i think obviously what Lindsay Graham doing in the Senate Judiciary committee is good to be very important. Everyone has to come to their different conclusions deborah nunez, congressman devon nunez wrote the forward. He did. One of the things on my book came out a couple weeks ago devon nunez put out a very important fact i knew at the moment i was appointed but i found myself in this obstruction of justice trap that was set because really if you look at every moment in time whether january 2017 when they Mueller Investigation even happened when it was crossfire hurricane there was no evidence of the collusion theory you look at the text between strauch and page the fbi agent lawyer days suggested that there was no abif you look at the Mueller Investigation itself they didnt find any relationship between anyone from the Trump Campaign and russian government. I think what we found ourselves in including myself is this obstruction of justice trap that was set looking for anyone to interfere with the conduct of the investigation what became the Mueller Investigation and i sensed that that as soon as i got briefed for the first time like we talked about. Mr. Whitaker, what are the rules that govern its independent counsel as opposed to special counsel . The independent counsel statute expired in 1999 and thats what camstar was appointed under most famously. That was a statute had oversight of judges it was sort of separate distinct from the department of justice and didnt really have a role for the executive branch. A lot of people saw what happened to bill clinton the whitewater investigation. It was almost bipartisan agreement that we dont need that to happen again to the way it happened. In an attempt to not have the repeat of that camstar investigation the department of justice pastor regulation called specials counsel regulation and that governs what bob muller was appointed a aits been used from time to time where the independence of the department of justice and independence of the executive branch could be put into question and its a very discretionary as to when it can be implemented but it puts protections especially in the firing of the special counsel. He makes of sort of be for cause instead of just at the well and this discretion of the department of justice openly. It is something that i think as outlined in the book is unconstitutional and i think should be eliminated or dramatically reformed and i sent out a couple ways that can happen but i think we have 93 u. S. Attorneys in the United States that all do their jobs every day with great discretion and great judgment and i think often times as you see general sessions in general bar do is appointing new civic attorneys not only to continue to do their own jobs but to screen functions within the department of justice in a tried and true way to ultimately make sure that there is insulation in these investigations but also to make sure that they continue to report to and be a part of it. And i shouldve asked you this before we started the interview but as the acting attorney general you get the honorific or title of general whitaker as well . People give it to me i dont know if its something you received but ive been called that matt, ive been called hey you and general. It was an honorable time to serve in this administration and serve as acting attorney general. The one thing i dont get is a painting of the department of justice. That is certainly something that doesnt come with the office. Matthew whitaker, was Robert Mueller well utilized . I really think that what happened in one of the subjects i talked about in this book with bob mueller we all saw with our own eyes and testified and i think there were a lot of hopes and dreams put into his testimony that that would be that would turn this 400 page report into Television Event it would bring to life and make a movie out of the book. Obviously we saw that he did not seem to help command a lot of his investigation. I know that i testify from house Judiciary Committee if i had answered a question with, i take your question and waited for another question upon saying that statement, i think most people would have been baffled like a lot of us were in watching Robert Mueller testify. I think ultimately he is a leader hes a marine decorated vietnam veteran who obviously he served more than 10 years in the fbi as director hes a u. S. Attorney he had done everything he could do well at the department of justice with the distinction i would add, i said a lot of positive things when he was appointed to special counsel and i still believe that today. But i think he was taken advantage of by his staff. I think ultimately that product that is the Mueller Report is not a product he wrote i think it was written by people that wanted to score political points. Its too bad and its something i criticize in my book and if it could have been done a different way it was unnecessary under the regulation and it seemed gratuitous in hindsight. What he learned about doj oversight of the fbi . I used to say when i was United States attorney before i ever came to washington dc that the fbi was phenomenally part of the department of justice and i think one of the things that everyone needed to make sure we do and continue to do is to have the fbi director follow the proper recording mechanisms because its not an independent branch of the executive branch or the department of justice. There is a chain of command. I think especially jim call me and i dont talk about this in the book but i talk about this before is that i think jim cawley really tried to make the fbi independent from the executive branch and the department of justice and i think it was a really brilliant attention. He can see that in some of the anonymous reports and stories that came out during the Obama Administration as to how jim was running his own plate. Famously manifest in the what he did with Hillary Clintons case where he did not follow regular order and he announced really kind of what the declination which we never do we never announced declination that