The Justice Department, Congress and the Press
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2021
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A spree of stories has emerged over the last week or so that the Justice Department under the prior administration obtained phone and email records of several journalists, several members of Congress and staffers, and even family members. It has provoked a mini scandal, calls for investigation, howls of rage and serious questions. To discuss it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, former FBI agent Pete Strzok, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic and Berkeley law professor and Lawfare contributing editor Orin Kerr. They talked about what we really know about these stories and what happened in these investigations. Was it all legal? Was it legitimate? How should it be investigated and by whom? And what does it mean that none of the prior attorneys general or deputy attorneys general seem to remember it?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | There are questions here that are much greater than the nuts and bolts |
| 0:39.0 | propriety of whether or not the FBI Department of Justice followed procedures. |
| 0:42.0 | There is a bigger issue here about whether or not these leaks were bad |
| 0:48.0 | and whether or not they married it, it responds to this large. |
| 0:51.0 | And whether or not it is appropriate to learn more information |
| 0:55.0 | from the current Department of Justice and Administration |
| 0:58.0 | about the behavior of the past administration to satisfy ourselves. |
| 1:02.0 | I'm Benjamin Widis and this is the LawFair podcast June 15, 2021. |
| 1:09.0 | A spree of stories has emerged over the last week or so |
| 1:14.0 | that the Justice Department under the prior administration |
| 1:18.0 | obtained phone and email records of several journalists |
| 1:23.0 | and several members of Congress and staffers and even family members. |
| 1:29.0 | It's provoked a mini scandal, calls for investigation, |
| 1:34.0 | Howls of Rage, and serious questions. |
| 1:38.0 | To discuss it all and figure out what we can say we gathered |
| 1:42.0 | in the virtual jungle studio, gay broughtmen of the reporters committee |
... |
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