Summary
As U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland approaches 100 days of leading the Department of Justice, the department’s recent legal positions in support of former President Trump have mystified onlookers. Is the department lost at sea, and can Garland right the ship?
Guest: Ankush Khardori, attorney and former federal prosecutor.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So you live in D.C., right? |
| 0:08.1 | I do, yeah. |
| 0:11.3 | Ancush Kodori is a lawyer, used to work at the Department of Justice. |
| 0:16.2 | If you were walking down the street and you ran into Attorney General Merrick Garland, |
| 0:21.8 | I'm kind of curious what you would do. |
| 0:24.5 | At this point, after the last week, I think I politely introduced myself and ask them if I could have a chance to sit down and talk to him. |
| 0:37.4 | When Enkush says after the last week, what he means is that the Department of Justice, under |
| 0:42.5 | Merrick Garland, has started racking up a series of legal decisions that have mystified observers, |
| 0:49.3 | decisions that seem designed to protect former President Donald Trump. |
| 0:53.7 | It's not exactly what you'd expect from a new Democratic AG. |
| 0:58.3 | I am very curious about what his conception of his job is, |
| 1:02.3 | what he wants to achieve in his job, |
| 1:04.4 | what has motivated him to take the job, |
| 1:07.3 | and what his sort of guiding values are. |
| 1:10.6 | Those are some deep questions. |
| 1:12.6 | They are. |
| 1:14.7 | I'm sort of struggling at this point with, you know, we're about, you know, as of this, |
| 1:18.8 | I think Thursday or Friday, he'll be 100 days into his job. |
| 1:22.8 | You know, it's sort of an arbitrary milestone, but it's, you know, |
| 1:25.9 | something that allows us to kind of take a step back. And I'm sort of struggling to make sense of his tenure at the moment. As a former DOJ |
| 1:33.5 | attorney, Ancush says one of the ways to understand these legal decisions is by looking at the |
| 1:39.1 | Justice Department not through the lens of regular politics, red versus blue, but through the lens of office politics. |
... |
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