Welcome to another one of our exclusive event tonight featuring a Jeffrey Toobin bestselling author of true crimes and misdemeanors the investigation of donald trump. He will be discussing his book tonight with former u. S. Attorney Kent Alexander. Buster he joined Jeffrey Toobinn and the rank of offers of combustible readers with his book the suspect in olympic park bombing, the fbi, the media and richard tool the man caught in the middle. You are invited to be part of the conversation as well. Please type in your question at the bottom right of your screen and keyboard answer questions after hes finished with his. Before i turn it over i want to remind you about a couple of other events that we are involved in later this week. Wednesday 8 p. M. Hour Community Center of atlanta are presenting an event with kevin kwan with his latest novel and this friday at 7 p. M. , Pulitzer Prize winner will discuss her bestseller with another Pulitzer Prize winner jon meacham presented by the atlantic history center. A cappella books. Com for the details on these and other events. Thank you for your purchase tonight to join for the event and for your continued support during these extraordinary times. Now i will turn it over to Kent Alexander and Jeffrey Toobin. This book is fantastic. I look forward to talking with you about it. Im not going to get into more of an introduction because i think people know you really well. Have you written this book five years ago, i would have said that it was a thriller, page turner. I would have said that it was riveting fiction with the only caveat now reading it all if that holds true except it is nonfiction but you have written a masterpiece that was not only fun to read that will be a great piece for history. But i would start office to ask you a. Thank you for this kind words and for doing this event. I love independent bookstores and you were luck that you weren atlanta to have one of the best, and im delighted to be a part of this event and anything that can help them sell books especially my book but any book at all. Its great to see you. Ken and send me his book about the case and i thought whats there to say. I was just amazed by the book and how complicated and involved it was in not in a small way or in an impressive picture of my current profession. It was a fascinating book that shows one of the things that ive done in my career ive written books about highprofile subjects whether it is the count in 11 those are the stories people often say and do one thee thing i know for sure that you dont as a reader and i am professionally obligated to follow the stories of to finally answer your question what the book was about and what is with the title, i agreed with my editors at doubleday that id read a book about the Mueller Investigation almost as soon as it started, which was in may of 2017. It was an unnerving experience because i had no access for more than two years because they wouldnt talk to me while they were in business, so i had to trust myself that it would be an inside story to write. Basically the idea behind the book was to tell a story, to do a narrative. Thats one of the things i learned is that you always want to tell a story and obviously i think there are quite a few facts people dont know but more important than that is the story, what happens when you investigate a president. How does that work in this case. One of the questions i get as a journalist when im covering a big story and its bill clinton or what are these people like him who are they and if it is ththat is thequestion that i eng because [inaudible] so interesting and as for the title i switched it and of course i had no idea this was going to happen to an impeachment story that to make the point that as i elaborate, i do think President Trump committed actual crimes as well as impeachable offenses. I think a lot of us have seen the report and probably likely made about 37 pages through. Its very legalistic. One of the wonderful things about your book everything you would really want to know tells the story so youve got all of these incredible characters starting with jim comey i am curious about your take. They were very balanced in the way you treat him and very polarized but i think a lot of people on both sides of the aisle have criticisms and you quoted somebody so can you tell us a little bit and then compare him to Robert Mueller . One of the things i like about doing a book project where you have some time and space to write you can deal with the subject of complexity and its my experience that most people are complicated or complex and they are not all one thing or all the world add. They have virtues and their virtues turnout that certainly applies to. He is a unique figure. I am not sure thats the word. I dont know who was on the other poll somewhere, but i do think that he is a strong and highly intelligent person who has a clear sense both would he thinks the right thing to do is and how he should be perceived in the public. He is someone thats always been aware of his public persona and that isnt necessarily a bad quality, but i do think that it would to some errors here. Im not going to rehearse his letter. I suspect a group like the ones listening here are familiar. Kobe wanted to develop a relationship and so they started meeting. Its important to the fbi that the president rely on the fbi, trust the fbi, said he reached out to him and started having meetings within and immediately he saw someone who was trying to manipulate him using words and language that were not explicit in his demand. He said the language was reminiscent of the times he was prosecuting organized crime. He demanded loyalty. He wanted help. There is a lot to criticize. Hes no criminal and he knows the difference between right and wrong and he knows when they started taking notes and hes sharing it with a small group of people but he wouldnt give loyalty and the decisions and he was fired for the right reasons. Going back to make the decision what to do about announcing i was struck in your book you got in making his decisions aimed at and it goes all the way through the impeachment trials so we go from the beginning to the middle of the report. How would you compare the decision on making an announcement about Hillary Clinton when he has facts and thinks things should be shared and the decision on what he will share with the public about russia . Guest you are right to point out the contrast because it is extraordinary. They are very different people and comey wrote a successful book shortly after. He called it a higher loyalty which i think was a revealing title because he feels like he owes a higher loyalty to his conception of the troops for whats right and wrong. Robert mueller has a different approach to life and work. Robert mueller is an institution. Hes someone whos never particularly cared about how he is portrayed personally. Hes never written a book or has given a lot of speeches. Hes someone whos devoted his life to the institutions whether its the marine corps or the department of justice or the fbi. These are the Guiding Principles and one of the things thats important to remember in this investigation he was a special counsel in the department of justice with the Senior Leadership of the department of justice. It wasnt like Kenneth Starr who were independent counsels and had this legal basis for their investigation. He was always aware that he was working for Rob Rosenstein who appointed him and particularly at the end of the investigation here is where the story gets tragic he trusts that william barr the attorney general, someone of mueller has known for decades and was a close colleague of would treat him fairly and his investigation honorably and accurately. He betrays the trust that he puts in him and issues a completely distorted summary of what he actually concluded and not only that but the release of the report itself leading him suffer the stand as the Public Perception of what he actually found. He never protested because he is a loyal institutional list in a way that i cant imagine comey would have done the same. You really get into these characters and Rudy Giuliani, stone, among the cast of characters. [inaudible] guest ive written two books about the Supreme Court. We have a very interesting and important figure in the american law and he has personally a wild fascinating story host you may want to remind the audience of the role. Guest j. Grew up on long island. His family moved to atlanta when he was a teenager and he wasnt a particularly great student in those days and he wound up going to a school that i dont think goes by this name anymore, but Atlanta Baptist college. He goes because it is local and at that time he has a religious awakening and becomes a member of the group called jews for jesus. Its not really jewish its an evangelical christian group. He goes to law school at mercer but then he starts representing them as his lawyer and start doing First Amendment case is about jews for jesus being able to proselytize. I wont go through the whole story but he becomes a First Amendment advocate for these evangelical communities. He hooks up with pat robinson, starts a group called the American Center for law and justice. It was meant to be kind of a conservative counterpoint to the aclu and becomes a major figure in the evangelical legal movement. He tries a lot of cases, has a lot of media interest and ultimately he gets hired on for as a secondincommand to john dowd when he is a defense lawyer. Hes hired initially to deal with the constitutional issues that arise in the Mueller Investigation. But he winds up being the only lawyer that represents trump from the beginning to the end because he gets fired, giuliani comes in, but jay sekulow is the constant, and hes a very effective lawyer and particularly on the issue that i spent a lot of time on in the book, the issue of whether mueller was going to issue a grand jury subpoena for trumps testimony, and whether that would lead to a court fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Host speaking of First Amendment, you bring us behind so many doorsfor the fbi, the Mueller Investigation, the white house. Even the senate i dont know how to come up with this stuff but one that im particularly interested in is the journalism nor and that is as we take a look at this presidency and what happened in the field of journalism coming outside of the editorial it is at some point with a lot of publications and networks, journalists made the turn where before you would say the president is lying. You would report what other people said that a lot of people, in fact most journalists outside of fox i watch as a part of my milkshake is used outside of fox, most journalists have made the turn and it seems like you are very evenhanded and werd fashionable with everything in color. At some point it seems you have to have made the turn. What was it like as a journalist . Guest it was a process. Ive worked at cnn since 2002. I was hired in the days when cnn was an atlantabased company. I set up a bunch of times right across the street from the site of the bombing which is the subject of her book and there was a real culture cnn for many years of super scrupulous evenhandedness that one side says ex and that is our job to report it. Donald trump changed that. Donald trump frankly started telling such obvious untruths, and this pandering to campaign, that cnn spent a lot of time and attention on what they call, the words across the bottom of the screen and it was during the campaign when we started using the word fault because they were false. We decided, and this was made at a higher level than i am at, but there are certain facts, issues, statements that are not he said she said that they are simply true and false and they started labeling them that way and that was a cultural change but it is only the first culture change because frankly as a trump presidena trumppresidency evolvd using the word lied because we thought that it was an appropriate use and our job is to tell the truth. It is the truth that hes lied extravagantly and frequently and i said as much. So that was a cultural shift particularly at cnn. But i think that was reflected in the broad media as well. We should spend more time on trump. Aside from the mafia connection, you mentioned roy cohn which maybe shouldnt be surprising that how do they factor into the donald trump sensibility and ethos . Guest its fair to say that hes so far in the past n now. Hehe is a young lawyer in the 1950s, Joseph Mccarthys top aide. Someone who assisted in a particularly disgraceful way the red scare that mccarthy did. Later in the his 50s and into his 70s he went into practice in new york city and became not only the lawyer for donald trump and his father first, but he became a mentor to donald trump, and just to jump ahead, one of the things you often hear from trumps permanent lawyers is the cry in frustration from the president where is my roy cohn, and to what it means to have really come, he was a deeply corrupt and dishonest lawyer who was shortly before he died disbarred by the state of new york and if you know how bad a lot of new york lawyers are, it takes a lot to get disbarred in new york state, but he managed to do that. I think the fact that even today the trump used roy cohn as the idea of a lawyer tells you a lot about his own ethical compass, and its really just shocking to me. As for words tha the four wordsk defying the Trump Presidency are shocking but not surprising, and his affection for roy cohn fits that way because this was really bad. Host in the book talking about the approach, you speak a fair amount about the election and if donald trump made the pitch. Im curious based on this testimony by sally gates and others. As the election comes up and the topic of russian interference and now chinese interference comes up, what are your thoughts based on this research that youve done for this book and what youve written and what we might expect because you write a lot about the first one. Guest more of the same. One of the things about bullies is unless they are stopped, they get more and more aggressive and more and more demanding. And there is a perfect illustration of that inside story. As you said earlier, people would say oh come on. July 24, 2019 is the day Robert Mueller testifies before the house committees and he does a bad job, lets be honest. He is into being a clea clear effective witness. He didnt want to be there and he wasnt impressive. He was kind of the last gasp of the administration and thats something that they rejoiced in. The next morning july 25, donald trump has a long phone call with the new president of ukraine and thats where the famous transcript comes from and where he says look, i want dirt on joe biden and you are not getting the military aid unless you come across with material that will help. Trump does this because he gets away with what happened in 2016. Im cautious about what i conclude. I dont believe there was a meeting of the minds between Vladimir Putin and donald trump. Putin did extraordinary things to get him elected but i never saw any proof that trump himself made some sort of deal with the russians. Maybe someday such a deal would be exposed. He didnt go into his financial background or tax returns. Maybe theres something there but it needs to be pointed out that there was no proof of collusion between the russians and the trump campaign. But there was total collusion between President Trump and what he tried to do in ukraine. He said i dont care about the American National interest in ukraine. I dont care about the ukrainian people. All i care about in this relationship is getting dirt on my political opponent, and he did that because he got away with what happened in 2016. And finally to answer your question, if he gets the green light indicates elected, his verdict was read, and i think with some justification it was all okay. Host as the New York Times talked about, it is a chilling preview of whats to come if that happened. But going to the questions from the group. Scott said on the assumption that doesnt happen in th and ts out of office, how do you think fox news and the media more to the right, the journalists, and history will judge this presidency . Guest thats an interesting question. And i dont want to get ahead of myself based on my total failure to predict the outcome of the 2016 election. Im not going to be here predicting the 2020 election. I think its fair to say there is a reasonable chance joe biden will win this election. I think the question that he is asking is what happens next. And i think it is a very interesting question and there are several possible answers. One of the touchstones of this period in American History has been the abject surrender of the Republican Party to donald trump and its entirety. I know a lot of these republican members of congress. They dont think donald trump is an honorable honest man. They see the same thing everyone else sees. The Republican Party has been so intimidated that its become closer to a personality cult. If he were to lose, what happens then. A lot of the issues he stands for, any at all which are berating our allies, building the wall, being against antiimmigration, all of that is in Ronald Reagans party. Those are not traditional republican positions and i dont know if trump republicanism will survive trump or there will be a return to a different kind of republicanism. That is one of the big political questions that is hanging out. Host the next question from ch