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Brian Lehrer: The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll begin today by talking about that fateful search warrant, that no-knock raid that increasingly looks like an abuse of power by law enforcement in the state. Did you hear about it? It turns out the search warrant was obtained from the judge under false pretenses. It turns out they lied to the judge about what? Well, they lied about knowing that packages that could be drugs were being delivered to the home.

According to The Washington Post, a detective in the case will plead guilty next week to conspiring with another officer to include false information in the affidavit, including the claim that a postal inspector had verified that a suspect in a drug investigation was receiving packages at the rated address. Well, if you're a little confused, here's why, that's not about the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, of course, we'll get to that one in a minute.

It's about the news that broke this weekend, but got much less media attention about a detective who obtained a warrant to search the home of Breonna Taylor, the search that led to her death by police gunfire in her Louisville, Kentucky Home in 2020. Apparently, there was no postal inspector who said packages were being recently delivered to Breonna Taylor's boyfriend there.

The guilty plea by the detective acknowledges that the detective named Kelly Goodlatte lied to a judge about that, in order to obtain the warrant that led to the no-knock raid that left Miss Taylor dead. As The Washington Post for buying says Taylor 26 was killed when plainclothes police officers burst into her apartment to carry out a search warrant in a drug probe. Kenneth Walker, Taylor's boyfriend fired one shot with his legally owned gun striking an officer in the leg. He later said he did not realize the people who entered the apartment for law enforcement officers. Several officers shot back killing Breonna Taylor.

By the way, no drugs and no drug money were found by the police in Breanna Taylor's apartment. Now an officer will reportedly plead guilty to obtaining the one on false pretenses and then trying to cover that up with another lie after the fact it's the first conviction in connection with Breonna Taylor's death, other charges are pending. Maybe you didn't hear that story over the weekend as it didn't get a whole lot of play.

Now about that other search why that was made public on Friday about that search that Donald Trump was able to watch as it happened on closed-circuit surveillance cameras, according to his lawyer, in the safety of his office building 1000 miles away. Let's get the latest. With us now is Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst, former federal and state prosecutor, host of the podcast Up Against The Mob, and author of the book Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department. Elie, thanks for starting the week with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Elie Honig: Thanks, Brian. Always glad to be with you. I know we have a lot to discuss here.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Let me start with a couple of very basic questions that I think remain unanswered. Why and how was Trump allowed to take highly classified documents home Mar-a-Lago when he left office in the first place? Isn't there a protocol during the departure of a president for checking things like that?

Elie Honig: Well, they're supposed to be, Brian, and I can't answer that question. I think you've identified one of the biggest most fundamental questions. I think the two biggest questions here are how on earth did Donald Trump or his people or whoever packed him up, walk out of the White House with a couple of dozen, at least we now know, boxes? The second big question is what exactly was in those boxes? We do now, though, have a little bit of a better sense, because, on Friday, the court officially released some of the documents relating to the search not all, not the big one.

The big one is the affidavit, that's where DOJ lays out chapter and verse on their probable cause that crimes were committed, but we didn't see the property receipt, for example. I think the biggest news on that property receipt were that many of the documents, some of the documents were classified and not just classified, there's four different levels of classification all four levels of classification were included including the top level top secret SCI, which is Secure Compartmented Information.

Not only was there classified information in those boxes or information marked classified, but the highest level of classified information, why Donald Trump thought he could take those, how he was allowed to are some of the biggest questions that remain here.

Brian Lehrer: Well, one of my other basic questions is one that you just cited, why would trump want these documents that are anywhere from secret to very top Secret, only to be viewed in secure locations, nuclear weapons info if the report is accurate in that way and The Washington Post, or any other classified information, what possible use what do you have for it?

Elie Honig: The possibilities there range all through the human imagination. It could be anything from it was a mistake, I think that's pretty clearly not the case now. It could be that there was just a sense of, "I'm taking that that's mine." There have been stories of Donald Trump not exactly understanding in the past that distinction between something that is government property, or White House property, or executive branch property and something that he gets to take and keep as president. It could be the bad motives. It could be he had illegal murders, it could be he had very dangerous motives, but what on earth would motivate him to take these documents? What was he planning to do with those, we still have very good old reliable indication on those questions.

Brian Lehrer: Well, is anyone doing a damage assessment, Elie, has Trump share classified information with anyone he shouldn't, putting any US intelligence sources abroad at risk of retribution? Has he allegedly done anything with this information? Other than keep them as a bizarre collection of White House souvenirs at Mar-a-Lago?

Elie Honig: I think that's one of the main questions we need to know. Look, it's really bad that these documents ever were sitting at a resort in Florida, but it's even worse if there's some evidence that these documents got out of that complex, got out of that building and were shared in any way were disseminated any way were destroyed, altered, tampered with all these, any of those possibilities I think substantially ups the ante here. We don't know.

What we do know, Brian, there did come a breaking point for DOJ, we know that there came a point and this was on the day they did the search warrant where they just said enough is enough, because it's important to remember, DOJ tried to do this the nice way, the easy way. First of all the National Archives, requested and tried to get some of the documents back and Donald Trump's people sent 15 documents back to the archives. Turned out though there were others that they did not send and this is a big question I have, by the way, who made the decision and why let's send the archives these 15 boxes, but not these boxes over here.

When DOJ got involved, they had meetings with Donald Trump's people, they brought a subpoena, that's the easy way. That's just a piece of paper that says, "Okay, Donald Trump or your people, you are now to hand us over these documents." Even after that, the reporting is that DOJ learned that there were still documents and still classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and at that point, they went and got their search warrant. I'm wondering what it was that pushed DOJ to the point where they felt they needed to do a search warrant. One of the possibilities is that maybe they had evidence that some of those documents were being moved around, Maggie Haberman, in the New York Times has some new reporting to that effect.

Brian Lehrer: Moved around how?

Elie Honig: Her reporting I don't want to get it wrong. I just heard her say it this morning and I saw that CNN but that they had evidence that documents were being taken in and out of certain rooms within Mar-a-Lago, if I understand that reporting correctly. Not that any documents are being taken out of the entire Mar-a-Lago complex still though cause for concern.

Brian Lehrer: Although about the seriousness and the judgment behind conducting this particular search, I am still scratching my head to some degree, like this issue of the documents is new to most Americans in the last week. I think even though it's been going on between Trump and the government since he left office, mostly when the public has been thinking about egregious things Trump may have done.

It's been in connection with the big lie in January 6th, all the things the January 6th committee has been presenting about trying to subvert the peaceful transition of power, which seems so much more serious than keeping boxes of papers at his home, and not doing anything with them as far as we know.

Yet, this is what prompted the Justice Department to risk inflaming the violent extremists and inflaming politics generally, even more rather than save their fire for charging Trump with dereliction of duty maybe, for allowing a riot to go on in his name when he had the power to call it off or anything else related to that. I'm not sure I understand the judgment that sent this to the head of the class, when the Justice Department probably had to be very selective in when to provoke the bear. You know what I mean?

Elie Honig: I do. One of the things that's really interesting and that people need to keep in mind this search for the documents that Mar-a-Lago has nothing to do on the surface, or I think probably even beneath the surface with January 6th. There perhaps could be some documentation in these boxes that relates to January 6th, that's possible but that's not the purpose to based on any reporting and based on the court documents for this search, and I've done the same math as you I've tried to get inside Merrick Garland's head here.

Now, the thing to keep in mind is the January 6 prosecution. Excuse me. There are prosecutions, but not of Donald Trump yet or anyone in power. The January 6 investigation is a traditional DOJ criminal investigation. What you have to do is the AG is sit down at a certain point and decide, does the evidence here a charge? The situation of Mar-a-Lago is very unusual because, yes, at some point, I'm sure, Merrick, although we'll have to make that same decision, but you also have an operational issue.

You have documents out there on the loose in the world, and it wouldn't surprise me, and there's been reporting again to this effect that part of the motivation for going into Mar-a-Lago's, we just need to get these things back for national security. It's important to note this. A prosecutor, DOJ, FBI cannot just go to a judge and say, "Hey, Judge, there's these documents out there that we need to get back for national security." You have to allege and you have to prove by probable cause, lower standard than beyond a reasonable doubt, a specific federal crime.

DOJ did that here with respect to three crimes, which we can get into detail if you want, but it's important to know, again, this does not mean anyone will be charged necessarily with those crimes. Sometimes search warrants or predecessors to indictments, but certainly, not always. Also an important detail. DOJ's papers do not say, and typically, search warrant papers would not say, "Judge, we believe this person, Donald J. Trump, in this case, has committed a crime." They say simply, "We believe that these crimes were committed, have occurred."

We will see. There's a chance, Brian, that nothing else happens on this in terms of on the record docket sheet coming through the courts unless and until someone gets charged with something. At that point, we will get a lot more information.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, if you have questions about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and what we've learned about it since for CNN legal analyst and former prosecutor at the New Jersey level and the federal level, Elie Honig, who was also author of the book Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department. We can take those questions or your own observations, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet your question @BrianLehrer. The New York Times reported, and you mentioned that there are three particular potential crimes that they're investigating to see if they were committed.

The Times reported that even if Trump did declassify these documents before he left office, as he claims, none of the three potential crimes cited by the department in seeking the warrant depend on whether a mishandled document had been deemed classified. Do you understand that? What would these crimes around handling documents that are not classified be?

Elie Honig: Sure. That is correct. There are many federal criminal statutes that relate to whether the document is classified. They only apply to mishandling or destruction of classified documents. There is a whole separate folders worth of federal crimes that apply to destruction or mishandling of documents, whether they are classified or not. To look at the warrant, the papers that came out on Friday, the three listed crimes here have all three of them have nothing to do with whether the documents were ever classified or declassified.

It's a smart move. I don't know whether DOJ did that on purpose or not, but it's a smart move. The three crimes they do list, I'll just tick through them quickly. First one, what's grabbing a lot of attention is the first one is part of the espionage. Now, you hear that word espionage, and you think of what James Bond and Jason Ford. There are versions and variations of espionage in the law that do relate to extremely dramatic activity selling secrets to other countries, spying on the United States.

The provision that they cite here really relates to mishandling of defense information. That's still a very big deal. Essentially, the crime is to conceal or take or disseminate or destroy documents that relate to the national defense and could impact national security. That's very serious, but it's not necessarily 007 spycraft type of stuff. The second crime here is destruction of federal government documents. It doesn't matter if they're classified. If you take something that's an official federal government document and you destroy it or remove it or conceal it, that's a federal crime.

A little footnote on that one, Brian, if a person is charged and convicted with that particular crime, the law says they're actually disqualified from ever holding federal office again, including the presidency. Let me drop a footnote. It's not clear whether that provision of the law is actually constitutional. It certainly would be litigated. We can talk about that more if you want. The third crime is obstruction. That basically means, and I think this is actually one of the more interesting crimes here that essentially means that they remove the documents or handle the documents in some way intended to keep them out of the hands of investigators.

This could refer to the way the documents were being moved around within Mar-a-Lago. It could refer to the removal of documents to Mar-a-Lago in the first place. Yes, indeed, if prosecutors charged those three crimes, they wouldn't ever even have to get into the issue of whether these documents were declassified.

Brian Lehrer: The third one, obstruction, is the one that makes my eyebrows go up the highest and make me think, "I wonder what's really there." Because I tend to think, what would make this document hoarding the most serious offense would be Trump trying to hide something that incriminates him in some way. We remember the Mueller investigation, the Russia investigation. The most serious thing that they found was multiple 10 examples of Trump trying to obstruct the investigation.

Maybe he's trying to obstruct the investigation of January 6 or something else, because if all he has is information that does not incriminate him, even national security secrets that he already knew about his president anyway, people could ask, "Why is it such a big deal?"

Elie Honig: Yes, whether the information incriminates them or not, that is one, of course, the possibilities. Whether he has it or not, I think that DOJ and national security apparatus would be concerned about this because the information definitionally impacts national security in order to be classified, the law says, essentially, these documents have, to varying degrees, impact national security. Brian, I do want to stress this TSCI that is the highest level of classification. That is very serious stuff.

Even as a federal prosecutor, I never had that level of clearance. I wasn't doing terrorism cases. I had top secret clearance, but not top secret SCI. By definition, those documents are vital to national security, and their loss or dissemination outside of the government would put us at risk.

Brian Lehrer: The Trump people argue that from what we know, there is no potential crime here worth actually charging him with, according to the standard set by the Hillary Clinton emails investigation in 2016, as you remember, the FBI Director James Comey concluded that in placing her government emails on her private server, she handled classified material in an extremely careless way.

That was commis language, extremely careless, but with no criminal intent and no harm done to national security in reality.

Do you think this is different or is it fundamentally the same as far as we know, extremely careless handling of classified information, but with no nefarious intent, as far as we know, so it doesn't rise to the level of a crime?

Elie Honig: I think it's clear that this is extremely careless. That much I think we can take to the bank, but the key distinguishing factor here or not is going to be intense. The FBI James Comey's conclusion with respect to Hillary Clinton was that she did not have criminal intent, she was careless, handled things in a way she should not have. The question with these documents is, was there some intent either to obstruct an investigation, to take these documents out of the hands of investigators, to, God forbid, do something worse with them, to disseminate them, to put them out there, to endanger us?

We don't know that yet, but I think that's one of the big questions that will determine whether this is similar or dissimilar to Hillary Clinton. I understand why a lot of people are looking at that, and there are certainly some similarities in a way, just taking these documents and keeping them at Mara Lago with nothing more is the low-tech version of what Hillary Clinton did, which is using electronic means to transmit and discuss certain classified documents. The question is, did Donald Trump have intent that was more or worse than that?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I saw a Republican congressman on your network, CNN, yesterday saying this is potentially less serious than what Hillary Clinton did because with electronic transfer, there were ongoing transfers of classified material that would theoretically have been vulnerable to hacking. With this, its boxes of physical papers sitting in some closets in Mar-a-Lago [unintelligible 00:19:20].

Elie Honig: Yes, that's an interesting point. I saw that interview as well with Brianna Keilar and the Representative Turner. That's an interesting point. On the other hand, paper documents can be disseminated, they can be copied, they can be photographed. You sure as heck would not, under any circumstances argue that they are being kept securely down at Mar-a-Lago. Yes, there are distinctions here that counsel both ways not to quote both ways this, but it's not just none of this is black and white, and there's still so much that we don't know about the Mar-a-Lago situation.

Brian Lehrer: George in Newark has a question about the Espionage Act. George, you're on WNYC with CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig. Hi, George.

George: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

George: I have a question, and I'm not asking this question as a defender of Trump, but because I'd like to get the answer to it. Under the Espionage Act, it's my understanding that it's the unauthorized concealment, or removal of documents, et cetera. It seems to me, if anybody has the authority to remove or conceal documents, it would be the president, it can't be the case that some bureaucrat has the authority or some member of his cabinet, but that the President himself does not have it. That's a question that occurs to me when I read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and they keep mentioning the Espionage Act, but it seems to me the word unauthorized, tremendously weakens this argument. I would like to know what your guests has to say to that.

Elie Honig: Well, look, I'm not sure I don't have the statute in front of me. I'm not sure the word unauthorized, is actually in there, but the gist of the crime is to mishandle conceal or destroy documents in a way that you know will harm the US national security interest. I doubt that our law would permit the President to say I hereby authorize myself to give national secrets to foreign adversary knowing that it would harm our national interest, but I authorized it. I don't believe a common sense understanding of the law would permit that.

There is this related question of, could Donald Trump have declassified documents? Now, as we discussed earlier, that wouldn't necessarily get him out of any potential criminal issue. The President does have very, very broad declassification powers. Smart people know what they're talking about, have argued that that power is unlimited, and he doesn't need to follow any particular procedure. Others have pointed out that typically, you would follow certain procedures, there's there would be a paper trail, but Donald Trump does things differently. There's no specific law statute that says he has to declassify in any particular way.

I think as a common sense, this matter, if there was declassification, you would see some evidence of that. You would have a witness who said, "Yes, he declassified." You would have some paper trail. I thought it was interesting over the weekend, John Bolton, who was the national security adviser said, "I never heard of any such thing. I never heard of some blanket declassification order." That will be a factual dispute moving forward, whether these documents were actually declassified or not, but again, not necessarily part of some of the applicable crimes here.

Brian Lehrer: Well, in fact, Trump's defense that he declassified these documents, actually contradicts one of his other defenses. We're going to get into that right after a short break with Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst. Will take more of your calls for him too. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we continue talking about the search of Mar-a-Lago last week and its implication, so much news broke about that over the weekend. Our guest is Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst, former federal and state prosecutor, and author of the book for which he was here for a book interview. We're going to touch on this before we run out of time in any way that might be relevant to this conversation. The book Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department. Natalie in Manhattan has a theory about why Trump might have taken these documents home. Natalie, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Natalie: Hello. I'm so happy to talk to you. Well, I have an idea that it doesn't. I can understand why nobody else has mentioned it. Trump loves money, and these documents have value. Maybe he didn't know exactly what he do with them, but he took them in the hope that possibly he could sell them at some point. I wouldn't put that past him because these documents have value, and they were right there in front of him.

Nobody was stopping him, so he walked out with them. That's one thing. Another thing I can't understand why we don't use the word treason. What he did was treasonous. What those people on January 6 did was treasonous. Why do we not use that word treason? Could you explain that to me, please?

Brian Lehrer: Natalie, thank you for both questions. You want to take the treason question, because you know she's not the first listener who's asked with respect to January 6.

Elie Honig: Yes. Look, you have to show that a person's intent was to overthrow their own country. I think it's vastly premature to say that with respect to Mar-a-Lago. With respect to January 6, legally speaking, you look at it and you think, this is the most difficult crime to prove, and prosecutors usually look for what's the easiest way, what's the crime that I have the most straightforward proof on. I don't think any prosecutors are going to be looking at the term treason here, but just in the normal everyday colloquial use, if that's your view of Donald Trump's conduct and motivations, so be it. I'm not sure everyone shares that. That's extreme view. I hate to keep saying this, especially with respect to Mar-a-Lago, but there's still so much we don't know.

Brian Lehrer: Profit motive sell them at auction on Christie's?

Elie Honig: Speculation. One of many theories, I sort of doubt. There's no evidence, I doubt that even Donald Trump would try anything. [chuckles] I know you're joking about Christie's, but even just sell them under the table, that is so brazen. I have my doubts about that.

Brian Lehrer: Jerome in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jerome.

Jerome: Hi. I was wondering, Donald Trump possibly had advisors-- Hello. Are you there?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We hear you.

Jerome: Oh, okay. --advisors, or certainly other people involved who helped him with this effort. Is there any investigation or would that be a worthwhile thing to pursue?

Brian Lehrer: That's an interesting question, Elie, isn't it, because Trump himself couldn't have decided to remove these boxes on the day that he left the White House and he didn't personally carry them to the airplane, et cetera?

Elie Honig: That's a very good question, and I addressed this earlier. The search warrant affidavits, don't say we believe judge, we DOJ believe that Donald John Trump committed these crimes or probable cause that he committed these crimes. They say we have probable cause that these crimes were committed. Surely, as you say, Brian, I don't see Donald Trump sitting there packing up his boxes, duct taping them closed, or anything like that. I'm sure other people did it.

The question as to whoever those other people are is really the same as to Donald Trump. What did they know, and what was their intent? If you just have someone who, let's say, works for a moving company, and was told, "Yes, those boxes they go down to Mar-a-Lago, obviously, that person has not committed a crime. If there's a person who understands that there's a plan here, one of the crimes we talked about, keep it away from investigators, destroy them, violate the Espionage Act, any of that, if you can show this is within the realm of possibility that somebody had that knowledge and intent, then that person too could have criminal issues.

Brian Lehrer: Listener asks on Twitter, and then I'm going to elaborate on this for question for you. Listener asks, "If the Republicans want the warrant affidavit, why don't they just make a motion to unseal it, they would lose." For listeners who don't know the difference between a search warrant and a search warrant affidavit, come back to this a little bit. I mentioned it in the intro, but what about the affidavit that the FBI had to file with the court requesting the search warrant that gives the details as to why?

Now, that's where the detective pleading guilty in the Breonna Taylor case committed a crime, falsifying evidence in the affidavit to get the judge to approve a search warrant. Can you explain the difference between the two, search warrant and affidavit anymore, and can we see the affidavit?

Elie Honig: Yes, that's a great question by the listener there. The documents that we saw on Friday are essentially formal checklists, they amounted to seven pages total. That is what we call, first of all, the receipt for property. Second of all, the search warrant itself. There's only chunks of information much of it general in there. The big one, the one that you really want to see, if you want to understand what's going on here is the affidavit and that is the document, I've done more of these than I can count that a prosecutor has to sit down and type out to the judge. "Okay, here is the basis for probable cause. Here's our evidence."

It's essentially a narrative statement of the case. Those can be 20 pages, 40 pages. In the Michael Cohen case, they ended up being 200 pages. This will tell us many, many times more than what we know already, but here's the thing, that document, only two groups of people in the world right now have access to that document, the prosecutors at the DOJ, and the judge, and it's under seal with the judge, with the court, meaning it's not available to the public. Donald Trump does not have that document, and he would not get it. Nobody would get that document in the normal course, unless and until there's an indictment.

If there's an indictment based on something they found at Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors would then turn that affidavit over to whoever gets charged so that that person could challenge the warrant. Brian, just like you said, maybe argue there's false information in here. It does not establish probable cause. There were other sorts of technical defects with it. I should note, there are pending lawsuits right now under FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act to try to get this very document, the affidavit filed by various media companies, including my own where I work, CNN, asking the judge to unseal this document.

I will just say, and some lawmakers have called for it to be unsealed. I'll say this, given the track record that those motions are very unlikely to be granted. I don't know that either side, Donald Trump or DOJ, would want this unsealed, DOJ certainly would not want it unsealed because it would completely expose their investigation. It would say it could reveal who their informants are, who their sources are. This is an ongoing criminal investigation. Brian, the last thing you ever wanted to do is show the other side, your playbook. There's a reason NFL coaches don't share their playbook with the guy across the other sideline.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder if we're in a catch-22 situation where the reason they asked for the search was because Trump had highly sensitive classified information. The reason they won't be able to tell us the reason is because it's such highly sensitive classified information.

Elie Honig: Yes, it could be. Again, this is a pending criminal investigation. By the way, this also protects the accused. Let's take ourselves for a moment out of the Donald Trump frame of reference. DOJ is investigating surely thousands, probably tens of thousands of people right now. I'm sure they did a hundred other search warrants on Monday.

Imagine if those affidavits became public, these are people who have not yet been charged with any crime and we'd be putting documents out there in the public realm saying while we haven't charged John Doe with the crime, but here's a whole long explanation of why we think he might have committed one. That would be unfair to John Doe.

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Brian Lehrer: Person was not even a defendant not charged with the crime.

Elie Honig: Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned before the break Trump's defenses are contradictory on the one hand, he says he would've given them anything they asked for. No search warrant was needed. At the same time, he says he doesn't have to return any classified documents because he declassified them before leaving office. Those things can't both be true.

I want to ask you one last thing before you go, we're almost at a time about your book Hatchet Man, about William Barr. How much does it change your view of him that he testified before the January 6th committee that he called the stolen election claim BS and went into detail on the record? This is one of my favorite moments from the whole January 6th committee presentations. People don't talk about it much. He went into excruciating detail on the record debunking some of the specific theories that Trump world was floating about how the election was stolen.

Elie Honig: He was a very interesting witness. I was shocked to sit there watching him testify. How much credit do I give him? I do give him some credit. I don't think everything's Black and white. I don't think you have to brand someone a sinner or a Saint. I think most of his tenure as attorney general was disastrous.

I think he was dishonest. I think he bailed Donald Trump out of certainly the Mueller investigation in a way that was completely unjustified and dishonest. I do note with Bill Barr, one thing that does get washed over a bit and Bill Barr likes to encourage us to forget this is that in the months leading up to the election, Bill Barr was one of the biggest proponents of the lie about the threat of election fraud.

He went on NPR and he made all these outrageous comments and NPR, issued an article a couple of days later entitled something like NPR allowed the attorney general to tell falsehoods on our air. He came on CNN, he lied to Wolf Blitzer about a case involving 1700 false ballots that actually involved one false ballot, one. He went in front of Congress

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: How does it hang together with what he told the committee?

Elie Honig: He changed. For whatever reason, he changed his tune. He may have been willing to go on these national media networks in front of Congress and say, well, there's a threat. You're always hedging, I guess, if you say there's a threat, this could happen.

I think when it got to this point, when Donald Trump was pushing an outright factual objective fabrication, that everyone's got their breaking point and Bill Barr, for whatever reason, maybe personal reasons, maybe professional, maybe good, maybe bad decided enough is enough and I'm not willing to go that far. For that reason, I do give Bill Barr credit for that, but I'm not willing to absolve him altogether.

Brian Lehrer: Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst, former New Jersey and federal prosecutor, and author of Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department. Elie, thank you so much.

Elie Honig: Thanks a lot, Brian.

 

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