department very aggressively. he had an assistant who was a longtime department of justice employee who kind of guided the attorney general who knew nothing about washington or the department of justice. i actually worked at the department before i went to the white house, so i was familiar with the operations there. today it s a very different department. barr was a micromanager. typically the deputy attorney general often runs the department. par barr tran department. he was a former deputy, former attorney general. he knew which strings to pull to make different reactions throughout the entire department. now, of course i wish i had more time, because the question is what kind of a department is it now under a.g. garland. stay here on cnn, everyone.
public the department of justice doesn t seek to undermine a coequal branch s ability to check an abuse of power, and i humbly suggest you ensure that no one is above the law, even within the department whose job it is to enforce the law, because the stakes are too high to play cutesy or have words like the department of justice come down to semantics. i want to bring in cnn white house correspondent john harwood. glad to see you on a night like this. john, you covered the trump white house. we knew based on trump s twitter feed and his rallies exactly who he thought his enemies were. and now it appears that the doj was weaponized to go after those enemies. i m talking about democratic lawmakers and their aides, their families and media organizations. i mean, he was very public about his enemies list, and now here
thank you. and this is don lemon tonight. i m laura coates in for don. it is another big news night, lots of new developments in the wake of the fire storm over revelations that the justice department seized targets from apple. now we re learning the doj s inspector general when investigate. senator chuck schumer and dick durbin are calling for former attorneys general bill barr and jeff sessions to testify before the judiciary committee. but they re going to need the support of at least one republican, which, frankly, hardly is a sure thing. that as democrats on the intel committee want apple to look into whether any other members were targeted. bill barr tells politico he wasn t aware of any congressmen s record being sought, not while he was attorney general and all of that, well, brings me to this
learn more as the months go on, that his justice department not only targeted reporters, who cast critical scrutiny on him, but also on members of the opposing party who were bringing to light his cooperation with russia, his welcoming help with russia, as robert mueller later showed in his report. you know, it s such a shame because here we are trying to in many respects have the public reassured about the integrity at the justice department, and just a few months into the tenure of a new attorney general, the shadow looms large of the last one in a really profound way. attorney general barr is telling politico, john, that he wasn t even aware of any congressman s record being sought in a leak case. is that really plausible that something as serious as trying to pursue the private records of sitting congressmen on the intelligence committee wouldn t have crossed bill barr s desk?