[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On behalf of all the nonprofits in the world, especially the nonprofit news organizations, Happy GivingTuesday. We talked on yesterday's show about the 100-year history of fascism or right-wing authoritarianism in the Western world. That was mostly a history segment and only contained a little bit about how Donald Trump's first presidency and his plans for Trump 2.0 might take the United States further down that road. Talked about that risk just a little.

Coming up in a minute, we'll get more specific about the present and very specifically about Trump's new nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, who is far enough out on that ledge that he has said, "We're going to come after the people in the media who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections." Do they really plan to use the FBI to renew the authoritarian project of claiming the 2020 election was rigged and take journalists to court for reporting what is actually not a controversial fact?

We'll dig into the implications of Kash Patel for FBI director and of Pam Bondi for attorney general with a perfect guest for this. Journalist David Rohde, who some of you know before the election, released his book, Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy. Remember, David Rohde knows something about being imprisoned for reporting the truth.

Again, some of you may remember this. He was kidnapped by the Taliban. Yes, that guy, that David Rohde. He was kidnapped by the Taliban when he was reporting in Afghanistan for The New York Times. We'll get to David Rohde in just a minute, but today is also GivingTuesday in the United States and around the world. We do have a brief request and challenge to start the show today. About that, what is GivingTuesday? I thought you might like to know since you've heard the term.

It was developed here in New York by the 92nd Street Y in 2012 to try to plant on the calendar a day for giving to the nonprofits in the city and around the world on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving specifically. Why? The idea was after we start our holiday season shopping sprees on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, let's remember to give an end-of-year gift to our favorite nonprofits before we spend everything we have on the [unintelligible 00:02:42] in our personal lives.

GivingTuesday was born back in 2012. Today is GivingTuesday, year 13. WNYC obviously is a nonprofit organization. We are hoping this morning that you will call or go to our website right now to make one of your GivingTuesday gifts. Thank you for considering it at WNYC.org or 888-376-WNYC. That's 888-376-9692 or WNYC.org before we get to David Rohde. During our show this morning, we have an opportunity to get an extra $20,000 for the station. A generous supporter of WNYC programming will add $20 to any donation that you make during The Brian Lehrer Show today.

Again, a generous supporter of WNYC will add $20 to any donation that you make during The Brian Lehrer Show today. That goes for any donation, no matter how small. If you chip in $20 as a GivingTuesday gift, that'll become $40. If you donate $40, that'll become $60. It's a $20 add-on to any donation you make on this GivingTuesday, but only this morning, only during The Brian Lehrer Show today until noon. Will you help us maximize that GivingTuesday offer? Call 888-376-WNYC, 888-376-9692, or go to our website at WNYC.org.

I'll just say one more thing about this for now. I'll geek out a little bit here and do a little math. As I said, our generous supporter is putting a maximum of $20,000 on the table for this. That means they'll give us $20 for up to 1,000 of you. We would like to take as much of the $20,000 as we can this morning. I don't know that we can get to 1,000 donors just during the show to earn the whole thing, but that doesn't matter. Let's just see how many we can get to by noon to unlock as many of the $20 add-ons as we can.

Listeners, thank you for helping us to maximize this donor's gift with any small gift of yours. That'll have $20 tacked onto it. 888-376-WNYC, 888-376-9692, or at WNYC.org on this GivingTuesday. Frankly, I hope you give to a number of nonprofits today. Obviously, we hope WNYC is one of them and we have this opportunity right now, so thanks for considering it. Now, to David Rohde and Kash Patel for FBI director. Here's that quote I mentioned a minute ago about a Trump government going after media outlets that reported that Biden won the 2020 election. This is Kash Patel on a Steve Bannon podcast.

Kash Patel: We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out.

Brian Lehrer: Kash Patel, who will be the next FBI director if President-elect Trump gets the Senate to go along. With me now is David Rohde, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, now the national security editor for NBC News, and author of the book, Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy. David, thanks very much for your time today. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Rohde: Thank you so much for having me back.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to Kash Patel specifically, but that chilling clip of Patel reflects a larger idea in your book generally that many FBI officials, among others in the Justice Department, are wary of criticizing Trump because they're afraid of retribution against their careers or even physically against themselves or their families, you say. Can you set that scene for us a little bit based on your reporting?

David Rohde: Sure. There's a real wariness. One of the biggest challenges in writing the book was getting even former FBI or DOJ officials to talk to me and be named. This was before Trump won the election. There is a sense that if you investigate Trump or even if you get involved in any of these very politicized cases, the Hunter Biden case, which partisans are very passionate about.

It's a career ender. It's a lose-lose if you're trying to work your way up the FBI or the DOJ ladder. That's just a concerning situation because someone needs to be able to investigate powerful government officials and their relatives for the rule of law and for our democracy and be able to do so without fearing retaliation by either political party. There was more fear of Trump and the situation we're talking about right now that Kash Patel possibly running the FBI.

Brian Lehrer: Did it happen in Trump's first term or is this mainly a fear that people have because Trump 2.0 is shaping up to be more of Trump unleashed?

David Rohde: It definitely happened in the first term. Folks may remember all this, but Trump aggressively attacked. At that point, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked Andy McCabe's pension. He was the deputy director of the FBI. He had worked there for decades. They took that away from him. He eventually received it back in a court battle, but that was a real shot across the bow, more so than I realized as I talked to more FBI and DOJ officials in recent years for the book, in that they don't make much money. They can make more in the private sector.

Losing your pension got into a lot of people's heads. It made them very nervous and then Trump publicly attacked. There was a former DOJ official who was named by Trump. He didn't want to be named either in the book who said that he was plotting against Trump and being unfair to Trump. That DOJ official talked about how physically frightening that was. At that point, President Trump in his first term had 70 million Twitter followers. That DOJ official talked about walking home at night and not knowing if someone would be lying in wait to get him. This definitely happened in the first term and these concerns continue today.

Brian Lehrer: I was actually going to get to that story you were just telling a little later. We haven't even spoken in detail about Kash Patel yet, but this also pertains, since you brought it up, to the person who would be Kash Patel's boss if he becomes FBI director, and that is Pam Bondi, who would be United States Attorney General. Bondi was Attorney General of Florida and has her own inflammatory quotes about how she would use the Justice Department for what sounds like vengeance against enemies within. Here's a sound bite that's an example of that.

Pam Bondi: The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated. Because the deep state last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows. Now, they have a spotlight on them and they can all be investigated.

Brian Lehrer: Investigating the investigators, prosecuting the prosecutors. Can you put that clip in context for us? Who is she referring to there and why?

David Rohde: She said that last year. It was after, at that point, former President Trump was indicted in Georgia in that the racketeering and election interference case. She was on Fox News. It's interesting because she was careful. She said, "We're going to prosecute the prosecutors, the bad ones." As we talk about Pam Bondi today, the nominee for attorney general, and Kash Patel, the nominee for FBI director, Bondi does have far more experience actually running an operation like the Justice Department.

She was a local prosecutor, I think, for 16 years in Florida and then was state attorney general for eight years in Florida. There's Democratic lawyers who've come out and said that she wouldn't make up facts. She wouldn't flagrantly, didn't in Florida, violate the Constitution. There is this post-2020 history of her backing Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen. She went to Philadelphia and held press conferences saying that votes were being stolen in Pennsylvania.

That dropped off, I think, after courts ruled that that wasn't happening. Then this most recent quote, the one last year where she is adopting this. There is a widely held belief among Trump supporters and officials in his incoming administration that there really is a problem of political bias in the FBI, in the Justice Department. I didn't find that in my research. We can talk about that in more detail, but it's a very deep belief among, I think, many Trump voters and then particularly among people like Kash Patel.

Brian Lehrer: When we're talking about criminal prosecutions, you reported for NBC News that multiple current and former senior officials in the FBI and the Justice Department have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the new Trump administration. To take it maybe one step beyond Pam Bondi, I know there's a Steve Bannon quote out there now. I think it's something he wrote that named names. "Watch out if you're Jack Smith. Watch out if you're Andrew Weissmann," your NBC colleague who was key on the Mueller team in the Russia investigation.

I guess my question is, what are these folks who are reaching out to lawyers afraid of being charged with in the context of their job upholding the law, if you have any examples? They may not like that Trump was investigated by Jack Smith or whoever, but they were doing their jobs. That's different than committing a crime. What would the criminal charges against them even conceivably be?

David Rohde: That's a great question. One person in particular who-- again, I'm being vague because no one wants to be named, but was involved in recent Trump criminal investigations is definitely hiring a lawyer but not worried about being convicted of a crime because this person just said there's nothing illegal in terms of what they did during the investigation. There are some Trump supporters, some lawyers who say one possible crime would be one of the charges that Jack Smith made against Donald Trump.

This was in the January 6th case, but it's denial of rights. It's a federal statute. It actually relates to the post-Civil War era. It was originally about denying Americans, particularly Black Americans, the right to vote. It is a federal statute. It was used by Smith as part of his theory of the January 6th case was that in the six battleground states where he tried to reverse the results, he was denying those voters in those six states the right to have their votes correctly counted.

I'm not sure how this would be applied to a DOJ official or an FBI official who conducted a criminal investigation against Trump, but that is one of the specific charges that people have said they are looking at bringing at these people. Again, I want to emphasize. It's just a very different worldview among Trump supporters and some Trump officials that it was completely unjustified for there to be an investigation into Trump's mishandling of classified documents and it was completely unjustified for there to be an investigation into Trump on January 6th. That's what they say and I think many sincerely believe.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is David Rohde, national security editor for NBC News and author of the book, Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy. We can take some phone calls, questions, or comments for him at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text. We will get back to Kash Patel in a minute, which is where we started. As it pertains to the media, I'm curious if you see the act of Jeff Bezos, as owner of The Washington Post, canceling their endorsement of Kamala Harris before it published as a successful intimidation of the free press, per that threat from Kash Patel in the clip, even without explicitly shutting them down or taking them to court.

David Rohde: That's the concern. Obviously, Bezos said that wasn't happening. A challenge is that Amazon gets a lot of government contracts. There's a lot of computer services and other support that they provide to the federal government. That shows the kind of leverage that exists here to put pressure on business leaders. Again, Bezos said his goal was it was wrong for newspapers to endorse people. That practice should stop. The Post always didn't do it.

It was only something that had been done since Watergate, but the timing and Amazon's contracts raise a concern. Again, in Trump's first term, I believe he tried to take away or he talked about taking away contracts from Amazon. It didn't actually happen. Again, the threat, this broader theme of politicizing the federal government and Trump using it to punish his enemies or perceived enemies and help his allies.

Brian Lehrer: That would be an example of your book title, Where Tyranny Begins, right? In yesterday's segment on the history of fascism and other right-wing authoritarianism over the last 100 years, our guest talked about pressures on the media, sometimes explicitly shutting down the media. They're not talking about that in that way, at least not now, or Putin putting pressures on the media in the current era in Russia. Here's one example of would you say where tyranny begins, where a news organization like The Washington Post is intimidated into one thing or another, or at least that's what they're trying to do by holding over their heads contracts for Amazon, the other thing that the owner owns.

David Rohde: Yes, I think that's an example. Then I was thinking more specifically of the weaponization of the criminal justice system, of using the Justice Department and the FBI to criminally investigate and prosecute your rivals. In many authoritarian regimes, that's one of the places where it starts, prosecuting a rival politician even if they're acquitted.

We can talk about, again, the-- There are some checks and balances in terms of people actually being convicted of crimes that still exist, but it's a tool to discredit, distract, and also cost your rival a lot of money. Defending yourself from a federal investigation is very time-consuming and costly. What I was arguing is where tyranny begins is when the criminal justice system is a weapon used for political gain.

Brian Lehrer: Right, so as it pertains to the media, still, we know Trump has been out there for years calling the press "the enemy of the people," but that's a rhetorical act to discredit the press in the public's eye. Using the criminal justice system, as Kash Patel indicated they might in that clip, raises the question, "How else do you think the Trump administration could actually go after journalists, either criminally or civilly?" Again, he said maybe it'll be criminally. Maybe it'll be civilly to go as broad as he goes, if you have anything on that.

David Rohde: Well, this is the danger of what Kash Patel is talking about. Pam Bondi, for instance, hasn't said that you go after the reporters, the members of the media. She hasn't gone that far.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, he didn't say "journalists." He said "media," if that distinction matters.

David Rohde: I'm a journalist, so it matter. Either one makes me nervous. What he's saying is that members of the media, he was specifically talking about the 2020 election and that he's going to investigate, take them to court, he said members of the media who were part of this effort to sway the 2020 election. He's talked a lot about and many Trump supporters and allies talk about the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was just raised actually by a Republican senator this Sunday on Meet the Press.

There's a belief that there were roughly 50 current and former-- I think they were all former intelligence officials who said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Many reporters didn't cover it that aggressively because they couldn't verify it, but there's a view on the right that that would have dramatically changed the 2020 election. This is just, again, the two realities. I just want to bring it up. It's just this process of writing this book was just how starkly different the really fervent Trump supporters and certain officials, again, like Kash Patel, what they see.

I haven't met Kash Patel. I don't know. It's very possible in his mind, he really thinks he's defending democracy. I think he talks a lot about a deep state. I would go as far as I think he maybe genuinely believes there is this secret cabal that was trying to overthrow President Trump in his first term and he was the democratically-elected president. He will be again in January. He may really believe that sincerely. That doesn't justify what he's doing, but it's certainly alarming that that's-- Part of what we have here is an information crisis, but that's a whole separate conversation.

Brian Lehrer: When we continue in a minute with journalist David Rohde, NBC national security editor and now author of the book, Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy, we'll play another Kash Patel clip and talk more about his background specifically. One thing I noticed is that on paper, parts of his background make it look like he might make an interesting candidate for FBI director, but then all these things that he says make him seem way, way out there with all the power that he might have as you've been beginning to discuss. We'll go more into that. Also, relevant to one of the things you were saying a minute ago, I noticed that The New York Times review of your book has the headline, Why Were Justice Department Officials Scared to Talk to This Book's Author? We'll continue with David Rohde. We'll get to some of your calls and texts.

[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with David Rohde, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, now the national security editor for NBC News, and author of the book, Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy. David, let's talk about Kash Patel now specifically. We played a couple of clips or one clip of him. We have another one coming up.

On paper, parts of his background look like he might make an interesting candidate for FBI director. He was a public defender in Florida for a number of years. That's usually a job for progressive lawyers who want to defend poor people. He's been a federal prosecutor, which is mainstream Justice Department stuff. He comes from an immigrant family with roots in India via Africa, which, on paper, one would think might make him likely to be sympathetic to the plight of many immigrants, a main Trump target as we know. How does he go from those starting points to a threat to democracy as many people you report on see him?

David Rohde: You're correct in that he works as a public defender actually in Florida for nine years. I'm reading his memoir now. The title of it explains the concern. He talks about his experience in Florida and then his experience in the federal government as a prosecutor, but the title of the book is Government Gangsters. A theme that he talks about is when he worked as a public defender in Florida, there was a case.

He really believed in the legal system, but there was a case that involved a defendant that was being prosecuted by the DEA and by federal prosecutors. He discovered that one of the Colombian police officials in the country of Colombia where his defendant was from was their salary was paid by the United States government. That was part of, [clears throat] excuse me, American aid programs there.

The prosecutor didn't reveal this. He saw that as a violation. It's called a Brady violation. It's just the theme of these federal civil servants he feels are acting in nefarious and illegal ways. He describes that belief first in Florida, then when he works as a prosecutor for about three years for the federal government. That all accelerates dramatically after Trump is elected. He starts working for Devin Nunes, a Republican heading the House Intelligence Committee.

He sees the FBI opening the criminal investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia, as I've said earlier, it's completely unjustified, and writes a memo that does correctly see that there are mistakes made in an eavesdropping warrant that was filed with a federal court for Carter Page, who was an advisor to the Trump campaign. He's right. There were mistakes in that warrant. There was a Justice Department or an FBI lawyer who pled guilty to changing a document, but he sees a much bigger conspiracy.

I'm sorry for the long answer, but he sees a much wider conspiracy. There's an Appendix B of his memoir that lists about 50 people that he says are current members of what he calls the executive branch, deep state. This is where what he found goes farther than I found in this book about the Justice Department and the FBI, Where Tyranny Begins. Then my last book is called In Deep. That was actually a look, and it came out in 2020, about deep-state conspiracy theories. I investigated, is there a deep state? We can talk about that more as well, but I did not find what Kash Patel is alleging.

Brian Lehrer: Well, there's a line from William Barr's memoir. You said you're reading Kash Patel's memoir, William Barr's memoir that is suddenly in the news. William Barr, to remind our listeners, Donald Trump's attorney general in his first term for much of it. You write about him in your book. William Barr, who spun the Mueller report to make it seem like it exonerated Trump and the Russia investigation much more than it really did. That William Barr.

Well, Barr may have been a Trump spinmeister while in office, but he also cared somewhat about the justice system as you describe. He wrote in his memoir about Trump's suggestion that Kash Patel be made deputy director of the FBI. Trump wanted Patel for that role at one point. Barr said Kash Patel would get that FBI job "over my dead body." Do you know more of that story? Why did William Barr object to Kash Patel that much?

David Rohde: I don't know specifically why Patel. I tried to talk to Barr for a long, long period and had just one brief conversation with him for my book. In this time period, Barr did the right thing. This occurred in the fall of 2020. I believe it was after the election. Barr said that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Barr stood up and said, "There is no evidence of massive fraud." He ended up resigning. Trump berated him and publicly attacked him. I give Barr credit for doing that.

I think he did this about Kash Patel because he's simply not experienced. This is a very clear thing I'm hearing. He's 44 years old and not ready to run the FBI. Then I assume that part of what Barr is citing was these conspiracy theories. What's unusual, four years later, is that you still have Kash Patel arguing that the 2020 election was stolen. There were many people who worked under Trump. There are many Republicans who are conservatives who don't support the Biden/Harris administration, but they also don't believe the 2020 election was stolen.

I don't mean to be pejorative, but I've heard from sources that in the Trump transition planning team for the Justice Department, there's a battle going on between the normies and the crazies, and that there are committed conservative lawyers who also respect the Constitution. Bill Barr did that in the end. It's important. I want to talk about them because I don't want to label everyone that supports maybe conservative policy positions as being willing to violate the Constitution.

Brian Lehrer: Sure, of course. Ellen in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with David Rohde. Hello, Ellen.

Ellen: Yes, hi. It was just something you said earlier, David. By the way, thank you both for covering this so well. It almost sounds to me like when you say that these people, some of them really believe certain things. In a way, it sounds like there's some kind of moral equivalence that because they believe it that the election was stolen or what we see as insanity on the other side, it doesn't make any sense.

If Hitler said that all the Jews needed to be exterminated and then people believed it, because they believed it, it doesn't give it any credence. I don't know how we get around this. This seems like there's no way to deal with it. Speaking of dealing with it, what can we do? How do we protect all of these people who are going to be dragged in front of committees, investigated, harassed, and whatever? These are our heroes.

I was even going to make a very long list of people that we admire and want to protect and support. Then I decided, "No, I can't do that." I don't want it even to be in a public email because then we'll only be drawing attention to these people. People in the media, for instance. I'm not mentioning any names. What can we do? How do we not fall into the trap of saying, "Well, because somebody believes that Trump won the election, they get some sort of pass or something"?

Brian Lehrer: Let me get an answer for you. Ellen, that is a great call. I love that call. I wonder how you would answer Ellen's fundamental question there. Is it any better if a Kash Patel or whoever really believes that the 2020 election was rigged? Is it any better than if he or Trump or anyone was just making that up because they wanted power? Is believing the obviously wrong thing demonstrated in 60 court cases wrong thing any better than making it up?

David Rohde: It isn't. I guess this gets to the information crisis I mentioned earlier. I'm a mainstream journalist, have been for decades. When we publish stories, we can get sued for libel. We have lawyers checking every word we put out. A bit of a digression, but one of the biggest challenges I see in terms of the information crisis we have today is that social media platforms cannot be sued for libel. It's a separate conversation.

There's a huge amount of false information circulating online. Many of it is conspiracy theories. I'm explaining that because it's now having such a direct impact on our politics at least. I'm not at all justifying any of these actions that are being taken. Whatever anyone believes, you cannot break the law. You cannot deny someone their right to have their vote counted. Part of the challenge to American democracy right now is this gulf in terms of the information people are getting, how dramatically different it is.

Brian Lehrer: Her analogy is very stark and very clear. Was it any better in Nazi Germany when people really believed the Jews were a threat and needed to be exterminated as opposed to just saying they were a threat and exterminating them, trying to exterminate them because it was good for the Nazi Party? That's quite a spit to be on.

David Rohde: I completely agree. Brian, you brought up earlier my experience being held by the Taliban. That experience, the danger to me, and a broad philosophical point about human nature. The danger with human nature I found from my time with the Taliban. I was also briefly held by Bosnian Serb soldiers. There is the human ability to rationalize that they are somehow defending their nation, defending democracy from some sort of foreign plot, some evil threat.

Hitler did that and lied and had horrific, awful propaganda, utterly false to justify the Holocaust, which is sick. Excuse my language. I think there are some humans who are sadistic and know they're doing wrong and, I don't know, enjoy that power. What I saw, the Taliban who held me, the younger fighters believed that the 9/11 attacks were staged and that it was a secret effort by the CIA and the Mossad to create a pretext for the invasion of Muslim countries and then that American troops were forcibly converting Afghans to Christianity.

Bosnian Serbs, the Christians thought they were defending Europe from Bosnian Muslims. The Muslim hordes were trying to take over Europe. They thought I was being paid money by OPEC to write stories about Muslims who I had correctly covered that had been killed in mass executions by Bosnian Serbs. The power of conspiracy theories alarms me. Maybe it makes me more have a certain bias, but we are not at that stage yet in this country. I'm worried about political violence, but not civil war.

My last thing in terms of what do we do is an excellent question from Ellen. Participate in politics peacefully. Demonstrate for what you believe in apathy is the biggest thing that opens up these spaces or will weaken our democracy. My last thing, I was going to say this last, but I think what we need partly right now in this age of hyper-partisanship is more nonpartisan service, not less. We need nonpartisan voting election clerks who are counting votes.

We need nonpartisan judges who make fair decisions about elections and other things that are based on the facts. We need nonpartisan journalists who are putting out basic facts so voters and partisans can make decisions. I believe in American democracy. I wrote these books because I believe in American democracy and I just worry that cynicism-- the answer to a bad democracy is more democracy. I hope that message is clear. That's why I wrote this book and keep at it and why I keep at it in journalism.

Brian Lehrer: Well, keep at it, David. Keep at it. David Rohde, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who, yes, once was held by the Taliban in Afghanistan for months as he was reporting there for The New York Times. Now, the national security editor for NBC News and his latest book is, Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy. David, thank you so much for sharing it with us.

David Rohde: Thank you, Brian.

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.