How Trump Weaponized the DOJ – Insights from Former Federal Prosecutor Kristy Parker

In this episode, former federal prosecutor Kristy Parker returns to Faithful Politics to discuss the drastic shifts in the Department of Justice under Donald Trump. With nearly two decades of experience in the DOJ, Parker offers a rare insider’s perspective on the erosion of institutional norms, the consequences of mass firings, and the implications for civil rights enforcement. From the establishment of a controversial anti-Christian bias task force to unprecedented executive orders affecting legal representation, Parker outlines how the DOJ has become a tool for political retribution rather than a defender of the rule of law. Listen in as she explains the ripple effects on American democracy and why Protect Democracy is working to hold the line.

Guest Bio:
Kristy Parker is a senior counsel at Protect Democracy, where she focuses on safeguarding democratic institutions and the rule of law. A former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, she has extensive experience in civil rights litigation, police misconduct cases, and election integrity enforcement. Parker served under four presidential administrations, witnessing firsthand the transformation of the DOJ from a nonpartisan legal body to a political weapon under Donald Trump.

Resources:
Protect Democracy: https://protectdemocracy.org

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I am your political host, Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? Doing all right, thanks Will. And today we have with us Christy Parker. She's returning to us, actually. She is a distinguished legal expert and a formal federal prosecutor with extensive experience in civil rights litigation, government accountability. And she served in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she worked on high profile cases related to police misconduct, election integrity and constitutional rights. She is currently a senior counsel at Protect Democracy, an organization we like here. where she focuses on safeguarding democratic institutions and the rule of law. And we brought her on to help sort through the, I don't know, virtual cornucopia of issues happening at DOJ. So welcome back, Kristi. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we're so glad to have you back. I want to start off first by uh like, so you've been in the DOJ, was it 19 years or something? So lots of lots of administrations, lots of changes. Can you can you just start us off like just being a person on the inside? Like, what is it like when there is a presidential transition? Like, is it is it like getting a new boss and you're bringing them flowers or is it just super chaotic and hectic? So, you know, I served under four presidential administrations. So I went through the transition from Clinton to George W. Bush, from George W. Bush to Obama, and from Obama to the first Trump administration. And it actually, until now, you know, was not really anything like It was not a chaotic thing. It was something that was expected. uh Career civil servants who stay in the government for a long time expect generally to work under more than one administration, to work under more than one political party. You know, that's not true of everybody. Some people come with a particular... you know, ideological bent that they would rather pursue and they leave when a new administration starts if they're not on the same page with it. But that's it. That's just a normal a normal thing. But generally speaking, there are a lot of people in the Department of Justice who are there for the long haul and who, again, expect to make these sorts of transitions. And there are plans in place for how to conduct that. So when an election happens, people within particular offices usually start preparing to brief whoever the transition team is about what are our cases, what do we do, what have our priorities been, what are our key initiatives, what's going on, who are our personnel. So it's... Pretty typical of, I think, what you would expect, you know, if people stepped back and thought about it. Like, if the leadership at your company changes, you get a new CEO and they bring in a new management team, you're going to expect to, you know, go in and tell them, here's who I am, here's what my experience is, here's who our team is, and here's what we do. And you will expect that... there may be some new initiatives, some different focuses from what the previous folks had, and that's a normal thing. it was pretty, the four times in even with the first Trump administration that I went through it, um I would definitely not say there was anything chaotic about it, nor were people running for the exits or anything like that, even though people do have their own personal political views. And certainly in the Civil Rights Division, uh they have a strong dedication to the historic mission of the division. You know, I'm curious. if you were still at the DOJ and you were watching TV or whatever and you saw that ah Matt Gaetz had just been nominated to be the Attorney General, like, number one, what would be going through your head and kind of what's the sense that you get maybe from some of your peers and you don't necessarily have to answer that if you don't want to implicate them. ah But then the other question is, how important really is that position? Because I think a lot of uh folks, including myself, oftentimes think, hey, these secretaries are more figureheads. They're not like in the weeds type of people. uh So would Matt Gaetz have been a good AG if he's just a figurehead? Well, I think first of all, on the figurehead point, no. I can't speak to every single agency across the government and how it operates. But from the point of view of the Department of Justice, the attorney general is pretty important. That's a really important... cabinet position, the attorney general is really the nation's chief law enforcement officer. And because we have traditionally maintained a degree of separation between the Justice Department's law enforcement mission and the political mission of whoever the sitting government is, uh you know, the attorney general has historically been someone who's been viewed as having a really independent role outside of the political operation of the White House in pursuing the Department of Justice's mission, which is enforcing the law and maintaining the fair administration of justice. So, you know, I worked under a bunch of different attorney generals. attorneys general, you some of them were perceived as more partisan than others. But I think Matt Gaetz was really a departure from from previous nominees to that position. And if you even compare it to Trump's first term, his first attorney general was Jeff Sessions. People perceived Jeff Sessions as a pretty partisan guy who was one of the first really pro-Trump US senators. But Jeff Sessions was definitely a lawyer. He had been... part of important legal initiatives. He had even been in charge of overseeing an important uh federal civil rights law. He was one of the people who was very much a proponent of the Emmett Till Cold Case Act, for instance. So Jeff Sessions certainly was perceived as a partisan, but not a complete departure from the kind of person you would expect to see being the attorney general. Bill Barr, same thing, uh very partisan in a lot of ways. He did a lot of things that were very uh much in line with what the president wanted to do that I would, yes, say I would have some questions about a lot of those things. But again, he wasn't somebody who came from... you know, completely out of left field in terms of someone who you would think would be qualified to be attorney general. know, Matt Gaetz, I think, was most famous at the moment he was nominated for being the subject of a federal criminal investigation. And I think, you know, again, there were, it's not clear, but I think there were just a lot of questions about like how serious was Matt Gaetz even as a practicing lawyer? Did he even have experience relevant experience for leading an organization like the Justice Department. Yes, he had a law degree, but that was not really his primary pursuit in life, you know, being a being a prosecutor, even being a legislator necessarily. um So I think it was given some of the, again, some of the reported allegations against Mr. Gates and some of the things that he was known for being part of as a member of the House of Representatives, it was definitely a departure uh from what we had seen previously for him to be the first nominee out of the gate to be attorney general. Yeah, such a weird time that we live in. And I guess at some level, right, it's probably in some ways how things have always been with controversy surrounding politics. And yet it just feels like some of these people that have been chosen, you kind of just scratch your head a little bit sometimes. And, you know, I would love to talk about the what's happening in the DOJ in terms of major shifts, not only in personnel, but in focus. Could you kind of speak to what's going on in the DOJ in terms of the staffing, the leadership structure, if anything, and their focus right now? What have they been instructed to focus on? Well, I think from a general point of view, the focus has been very different from every previous administration with which I have been familiar in the sense that they are very overt about portraying themselves as not the lawyers for the United States, not the enforcers of the law on behalf of all of the people. but as lawyers for Donald Trump and his interests. And that really is a huge departure, certainly from the post-Watergate regime that I was referring to earlier, where the Department of Justice has maintained not a complete wall, obviously, because the president runs the is the head of the executive branch, but where there is is largely a wall of separation between the political operation of the government and uh law enforcement and where there's been a m separation between the president setting policy at a high level versus intervening in a day to day sort of micro level, like these are the cases we're going to do, these are the people we're going to target. That latter thing, getting involved in individual enforcement matters, targeting individuals, was a thing that was really considered to be verboten. And this group has made it very explicit that they don't observe that notion. They have, I think, as much as said, we don't buy this idea that the Department of Justice is independent of the White House and we don't buy the notion that we aren't primarily serving Donald Trump. And then, you you have Donald Trump going over to the Justice Department and giving an extremely partisan speech in the Great Hall uh where he talks about individuals who he thinks should be prosecuted, talks about entities he believes should be prosecuted, talks again about his own experience as a criminal defendant. so that is all just very, very, very different. And I think uh that some of their first moves were to... go in and remove people from their jobs simply based on the cases that they had done as prosecutors, not based on any finding of any misconduct, not based on based on any finding that they had done their jobs poorly, but simply because they were involved in cases that uh were perceived as adverse to Donald Trump from the obvious ones, you the cases where Trump himself was the defendant, but also the larger realm of January 6th prosecutions. you know, going in and just... just firing people based on the cases they were doing, ignoring the civil service laws that are supposed to provide for due process for people who are career employees of the Department of Justice or the government generally. That was all a really big departure. And from my point of view, what I would say to people listening, you what's important about that is that it's really a sign that uh one individual, the president and his loyalists are going to use one of, if not the most powerful tools the government has, the law enforcement power to go after people who may oppose the president. And I would suggest that that is not consistent with the government that our founders created or the idea that we all have, you know, free speech rights and the right to not necessarily, we have to respect who wins our elections and accept that they have done that and respect, except their right to govern. But we don't have to agree with them. And we don't have to say that we agree with them. And we don't necessarily have, and we certainly don't have to ignore when they do things that rise to the level of crimes and people choose to invoke legal processes to prosecute them. So all of that is very, very, very different in the history of this country. And I think something that should really be causing people to take notice and be concerned about because it may right now seem abstract, but it's not. It's never far away from becoming very particular. It can always be you or someone you know who is targeted by these sorts of things. You know, most people probably don't have a federal prosecutor they can call and bring on their uh their podcasts to find out like how bad things really are in the DOJ. and I'm going to switch over to civil rights here in a second. but for for somebody listening to this hearing you talk, because I look at our stats, most people will log off in about like five minutes from now. uh So like on a scale of one to 10. 10 being frowny face and 1 being happy face. Where would you say DOJ falls in that spectrum for either morale or threats to democracy or fill in the blank? Well, I would say to quote one of my favorite movies, this is Spinal Tap. I think this one goes to 11. I think on the frowny face spectrum, oh think we're really seeing, again, like I said, we're seeing a real departure in the way the department is led and in the way in which it is framing its mission. And again, that's different. And when I say that, I mean even from the first time that Donald Trump was president. I really do hope people will pay attention and think about, this something we really want or is this maybe something we want to adjust when we think about, especially folks who may have... supported Donald Trump, thinking that his agenda would be one thing, maybe having to do with the economy, maybe having to do with certain other types of policies. I would suggest to folks that they really do need to think about what's going on here and how it could really work fundamental changes in American life and what we have all come to assume is a... is just a given in American life, which again, I'll just go back to it again, which again is just really the right to think what we think and believe what we believe and say the things that we believe without fear of being targeted or retaliated against. Yeah, that is, I mean, I understand why and or how people don't focus on stuff like we're talking about because when you've got like five alarm fires in like every department, you it's just like you're just going to go to whatever fire is burning the brightest and in DOJ stuff, know. doesn't really seem to be that important to people unless like you're walking down the street and a bunch of people like kidnap you and take you to jail or something, you know, and then all of sudden you're like, wait, maybe I should be paying attention. talking about em civil rights, an area that I know that you're very familiar with, I know that there have been, I don't know if you call them layoffs or if it's like the fork in the road thing, uh but I don't. believe that the DOJ is operating at full capacity or at least whatever used to be considered full capacity. ah How does all that stuff play into DOJ's ability to do like civil rights um cases and stuff? Well, from what I understand, the Civil Rights Division most recently at full capacity had about 380 lawyers. And I understand that like 140, getting maybe closer to the far side of 150 people have either been ushered out or have voluntarily left. So you're talking about reducing the division. It actually may be more than that. I may have my numbers wrong on that. But they've lost a significant chunk of their staff. So and it wasn't a big division to begin with. You know, there are much bigger divisions within the Department of Justice. The Civil Division dwarfs the Civil Rights Division. And when you, you know, Think about the US Attorney's offices also that dwarfs the Civil Rights Division. So you're talking about not a big division anyway, with a fairly large mandate to enforce all of the anti-discrimination laws and all of the laws that enforce people's constitutional rights. So when you take away that many people, when you take that many people out of the game, then that by itself shrinks. uh, shrinks the footprint of the division and their ability to do things to enforce the law. So, you know, if you're a parent of a child with, who has, has disabilities, for instance, educational disabilities, that the people, the people in the disability rights section have been reduced down to a fraction of what they were. The people in the educational enforcement section have been reduced down to a fraction of what they were. So when you think about the role those folks have played in making sure that, you know, kids have a full right to participate in getting an education, it's going to be a lot harder for people. And I think people are going to start, are going to start feeling that. uh real fast, I don't mean to cut you off. Can you just talk about like the caseload? like, so, you know, for a non-DOJ person, you know, you say 380. In my mind, I'm thinking, okay, there's more than 380 probably situations that they are having to shepherd. So is it like, like each person has a certain portfolio that contains so much stuff. And then now with all these people leaving, you have to kind of like divvy it out. Yeah, so each person maintains a caseload of their own. This is just generally speaking, but yeah, each line attorney has a caseload of their own. They often also work together with lawyers in US attorneys offices all over the country and play a role in either an advisory role or a partnership role in many numbers of other cases. So you're taking people off not only of their own cases that they're doing, but you're taking them out of a huge consulting and partnering role that they play with other lawyers around the country. So you're taking all of that expertise off the table. Right, right, exactly. when an assistant US attorney in Chicago uh gets a civil rights case and maybe they are not themselves a specialist in civil rights litigation, they're going to turn to the people at Maine Justice to help them get going on that case, help them know what steps they need to take to make sure investigations are done fully and completely and in a manner most commensurate with making sure the law gets enforced. So you're taking just tons of information out of people's hands and making it just much more difficult for anyone anywhere in the country, even if they're not an employee of the Justice Department, to do that work. And again, uh people will start to feel it. uh They will start to feel it. They may not feel it today, but lots of people have issues in their lives. that impact the anti-discrimination laws. we're not just, you know, again, we're not just talking about race, national origin, we're talking about disability, we're talking about housing discrimination, we're talking about education, we're talking about religious freedom, religious rights. So all of these things that people have gotten very accustomed to in their lives uh are going to start disappearing. And it may take a little while before people really, really notice it, but they will. Hmm, you know, I get one of the things that comes up in my mind as I'm as we're discussing this is so when we say this is a departure from the norm Help us get a sense of what the norm is and like, know So I guess once one thing is that you know, I've heard accusations of the Department of Justice being used for you know ah partisan reasons political gain, personal reasons, just about in every president that I've actually paid attention to. Now I'm 39, so, you know, I didn't really care about Clinton and didn't really care about the first Bush very much. I mean, the second Bush definitely didn't care about the first Bush very much. um But then, you know, really with Obama and Trump and Biden, know, but even before then, like, you know, I think of Nixon, I think of Roosevelt, I think of presidents. in the past that have been accused of this sort of thing, uh help paint the picture. What is the norm and how much is this departing from the norm? You there's a lot of concern I hear and I totally understand that. How it just, I think sometimes it's not super clear what specifically are the issues that are coming up. or even something like, well, they're firing 100 lawyers. And you kind of spoke to that just now with some of that institutional expertise going. I think that's a great thought provoking reason to think about this. what is that norm and how is Trump departing from it as opposed to Obama or uh Bush or Clinton or Biden? Sure, and I'll just say at the outset that the firings are extremely abnormal. That is not a thing that ever happened in the way that it's happening now. Again, and not even close to happening, even in first Trump administration. So that is very different. uh But the norm really, and I can just give you an example based on the work that I did when I was in the Justice Department. I was in the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division. Our mandate was to enforce the laws against police misconduct. So the laws that held the police to constitutional standards. So police excessive force cases. prosecuted the hate crime, investigated and prosecuted the federal hate crimes laws. And we investigated and prosecuted the human trafficking laws. um I started in the division when George W. Bush was president. I continued all through the Obama administration. So politically, two very different administrations, two very different, you know, political points of view. My work in the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division really did not change very much across those two administrations. There was not intervention at the line attorney level around, we going to investigate police officers? for using excessive force or are we going to enforce the hate crimes laws? No one in the Bush administration ever suggested that we were not going to do that. We didn't have a big C change when the Obama administration took over. Yes, there were definitely different points of emphasis. em I would say that the Bush administration probably did not tout the law enforcement cases the way the Obama administration did. We would have bigger press releases, louder trumpeting of cases that we were successful in probably during the Obama administration. And I think the Bush administration probably focused on particular types of hate crimes. They were very focused on enforcing the human trafficking laws. But it's not like other administrations weren't. So our work really wasn't that much different. And we certainly did not have people from the White House reaching down into our offices, know, metaphorically, and telling us, these are the sorts of cases you're going to do, or these are cases that you're not going to do, or we're going to rewrite the entire mission of your office. So, and I think really one of the first things we saw that was really jarring uh when this administration took over was basically not, it's not so much even that they have their own perspective or their own ideas about what cases they're going to do or not do, but their unwillingness to allow line lawyers to express dissenting opinions or to disagree with them or to say, don't want to have my name on that case. Like what we saw with the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. uh ending up being essentially fired uh for saying, look, I don't agree with you about dismissing the indictment against Mayor Adams. That was really different. They have a right to set the priorities of the department and to pursue the cases that they want to pursue. But it was very different from my experience to see the leadership of the department essentially firing people for expressing their professional judgment about a case. And again, that is very dangerous. You do not want to have a situation where the lawyers who work for the government, the legal experts, cannot tell their bosses what they think the right course of action is in a case out of fear that the boss will disagree. So again, that is just really different. And again, I would just give the comparison. Yes, you're absolutely right. I remember all of the, we have a weaponized Obama DOJ. I remember that when I was part of the Obama DOJ. Same thing, weaponized Bush DOJ. Heard the same stuff. I'm just here to represent to you that I was there in both of those administrations, and it was just absolutely nothing like what you're seeing right now. in terms of political control over every single thing the department is doing. It seems to me that of the one group that you probably shouldn't break the law ah with it would be like the civil rights group, right? I mean like if you're going to like penalize them for doing something that I'm assuming is a constitutional right ah that you wouldn't do that because then it's like, you you're gonna have the fury of your whole department. going against you. like, mean, what's, what's the recourse for stuff like this? Like for, for the, the affected individuals. Well, and that's, think, one of the things that I say many times that this whole experience with um Donald Trump's um bursting into our national scene, it's been a long experiment in sort of sussing out where we have enforceable laws. and where we have norms or even laws that can just be run over if the people in charge don't respect them. You know, like there are protections for civil servants. uh know, people for years said, it's impossible to fire. It's impossible to fire a federal employee. um It never was, but you know, certainly they were supposed to have certain protections. as there were certain things you were supposed to have to establish and certain opportunities you were supposed to give them to, you know, respond to a suggestion that they haven't performed up to their, to the appropriate standard. All of that was supposed to exist and it does exist still now in the law, but the Trump administration has just chosen to disregard that. You know, they're they've just decided they're going to fire people first and ask questions later and let people try to come back with some sort of means of defending themselves. So people could certainly try to fight their terminations and some people have chosen to do that, but it's a long road through the court system. once you've been fired, you're in a different position. You're no longer employed. You're not drawing a salary. You're not making money. You've got to go find something else to do. You may or may not have time to spend the next 10 years of your life litigating whether or not you were appropriately terminated from your position at DOJ. So there is recourse. I don't want to suggest that there's not. And people are out there now pursuing it. But our system really does rest on the good, in large measure, on the good faith of the people who participate in it. You we have always expected that people, if there was a law on the books that seemed pretty clear that said you're not supposed to do X thing, that you would not in fact actually do X thing. And if you wanted to have a different law, you would go to Congress and say, okay, we need a different law. Or you would say, I don't think the law is being interpreted the correct way, so we're gonna go to court and try to get a different interpretation. You wouldn't just disregard it. But what we're finding out right now is the power of just simply disregarding the law, of simply ignoring the fact that the rule of law exists. And it places us all in a very tough position. But again, and it requires people to really do a lot more uh engaging with our government and how it works and what the proper structures are, then many people may really feel like they want to do. People took civics in high school or took some classes in college, they read the newspaper. A lot of people don't want to spend all day and all night thinking about the separation of powers. But I think we're at a point though where when we have somebody who doesn't follow the rules, we need to ask ourselves, well, are we just going to accept that or are we going to stand together and say, you know what, we do want people who at a minimum follow the rules. Yeah, so I want to ask you em about something that I think is going to be near and dear to our audience. uh Because we wrote a sub stack on it a couple weeks ago when we first learned about it of the establishment of a religious liberty commission and a anti-Christian bias task force. uh So kind of two questions. One. kind of tied into Josh's earlier question of like, is this normal? And then two, what evidence that you see under, I know it's not necessarily an area that you probably spent a whole lot of time in, but like, there a good case reason for why a anti-Christian bias task force exists? Well, first of all, let me say, know, religious freedom is a centerpiece of American constitutional government. Freedom of religion, freedom from religion. You know, we have an establishment clause that says we should not, we don't have an established religion in this country. We also have a free exercise clause in the same amendment that says everybody has a right to. uh practice the religion of their choosing or not to if they choose not to. So those are extremely important things and any sort of religious discrimination is something that the Department of Justice would have a mandate to take very seriously, you know, regardless of what religion it was. uh You know, having said all of that, you know, I question whether or not anti-Christian bias is the most prominent type of religious discrimination that goes on in the United States. mean, Christianity is the majority religion in this country, I believe. I don't believe we have ever had yet a president who did not subscribe to some form of Christianity. We've had a vice president who was uh married to a person who is Jewish, you know, recently. you know, so having said all that, you know, there's nothing wrong on its face with uh protecting any religious group from being targeted by discrimination. there's, so on the face of it, there isn't anything wrong with it. You know, where we have to be careful and where we have to watch out is you know, what is it we're really talking about here? And is this really an enormous problem in actual observable evidence, you know, as opposed to just a lot of rhetoric that is out there about, you know, things. And also, you know, bias, um there's, you know, people... We have lots of different belief systems in this country. uh People subscribe to different faiths. Some people subscribe to no faith. And it is okay to disagree with other people about theological doctrines, whether you're a Protestant or a Catholic or all these sorts of things. It's okay to disagree. And it's even okay to say, you know, I just don't really subscribe to that. And you could call that bias. um But then there's discrimination. There's preventing people from, you know, having jobs or getting positions wherever, you know, oh or participating fully in education because of their religious faith. And that is the stuff that the Civil Rights Division is supposed to be. concerned with making sure people are not discriminated against because of the religion they practice or don't practice or you know the the trappings of their faith. So again this is to me sort of a wait and see sort of thing there on its again on its face. Christians should not be discriminated against and I would hope that if the civil if lawyers in the Civil Rights Division are finding evidence that that's occurring anywhere. they would stand up and do something about it. And I will represent to all of you that I never once worked with a colleague who if they thought there was a religiously motivated hate crime occurring that had to do with somebody's Christianity, that they would not have aggressively sought to redress that wrong. You clearly don't know enough Democrat Christians. uh Because I get that all the time. You know, I am kind of curious on like, how does one decide a particular, you know, in this case, religion is more discriminated than another because, you know, so I went when they announced this commission. uh I looked into it, thought there was enough here for me to make a blog out of, so I did. So then like I did my research. ah I didn't realize ah about the, there was an FBI's official hate crime statistics uh stuff, so I just looked at it and then saw that, you know, it's like 70 % of all reported religious based hate crimes were anti-Jewish. ah And anti-Christian stuff was like pretty, like 10%. Anti-muslim, know stuff like that and then and then I even I even I didn't learn this uh until later is that if there is a Like racially motivated attack say like against a black church that it goes into a different. I don't know like Like category so it may not be counted against like a Christian church um And so that can kind of skew the numbers but but the numbers that Pam bond to you she said, you know, there's 900 attacks on churches. I believe that she got that number from the Family Research Council. They do research on that and they had a statistic, you know, those like 943 attacks on churches. And like the if you look at the data and and run it through AI or whatever, the large portion of those are like attacks against like like churches that have like pride banners. or like BLM flags, you know, like it doesn't necessarily comport with the focus of the task force. So like what conditions usually have to exist for like something like this to even come together? Yeah, and you know, I will confess that I am not familiar with the statistics that the attorney general is basing any of this on. You know, what I will say is that it's, generally speaking, um rather than singling out particular religious groups as being especially targeted, usually the best thing to do is to just enforce the law as it is written. You know, religious discrimination is not permitted in employment and education in any number of realms uh in this country. And we have laws that are designed to ensure that if it is happening wherever it is happening, that that. there's an investigation and there's some form of redress for that. you know, when I was in the Civil Rights Division, certainly in the criminal section, and we were dealing with religiously motivated hate crimes, you know, we just take the cases that come in, you know, we look and see what's going on out there and we don't make a distinction between what kind of, what faith it is. Now I will say, you know, I was in... I started in the Civil Rights Division shortly after the September 11th attacks. And one of the things the Bush administration decided to do was out of concern that there might be backlash against Muslim Americans, they created a 9-11 backlash. task force where we were charged with being on particular lookout for incidents that involved crimes against people who were Muslim or who were in some way perceived to be associated with the things that went on on September 11th on the view that we defend ourselves from attacks. against our country, but that Americans themselves should not be targeted because of their religious background, their ethnic background, national, their country of national origin if they were immigrants. So we did have that. There was also a church arson task force that was established. in the 1990s when there was a series of fires and you pointed it out at African American churches. And yes, there has been a lot of church violence in this country that has been directed at um Christians who are people of color. Christians, I'm not sure if you dug into the data that you would find that they have been... you know, uh targeted in an outsized way based on their religion. But again, what I go back to is we should enforce the law. um We should enforce it to everyone. Everyone in this country should have a right to practice whatever religion um they choose to. And if they're being targeted in unlawful ways because of that, the law should be enforced. I think as a general rule, um It doesn't behoove anybody to sort of single out um particular groups absent some sort of incident or series of incidents that suggest that it's an outsized problem. That's really helpful. You know, I think there's this underlying tension that I'm feeling when I'm in this conversation. And here's my best way to articulate it. Is what Trump is doing And people who've watched this program, know I'm not MAGA. I've been pretty outspoken, right? In terms of like, I didn't vote for Kamala, I didn't vote for Trump, I voted third party and both in 2020 and 2024. And so I'm not saying this like... I mean, I just want to point that out. This isn't like I'm trying to defend necessarily his actions. Although many people have been criticized because I don't defend his actions. So that's kind of what part of what I'm what I'm kind of thinking through here. And but but I am curious, is he doing something illegal? Is there something illegal happening? Or is it unethical and outside of the norms of what? would be expected kind of the unspoken rules and I totally hear you, not hear you, you haven't answered yet. I understand the idea that unspoken norms are important, right? uh You kind of mentioned we rely on the good faith of the participants, people that are essentially going to treat each other with a certain level of unspoken respect and courtesy and care and culture is super important. So I'm not saying if it isn't illegal, then it's okay. I'm wondering, if it is, yeah, no, if it isn't illegal, then it's okay. I'm not saying that. But is what he's doing illegal? Or is it more, this is just unorthodox and it's concerning, it's very concerning. So I think it and my answer is going to be, it depends on what it is we're talking about. Let's start with where we finished there. It's not illegal for the Justice Department to set up a task force to safeguard religious liberty. It's not uh illegal for the Justice Department. for the president to direct the attorney general to look into anti-Christian bias and ensure that Christians are not being prohibited from practicing their There's nothing illegal about that. You can debate as a matter of policy whether or not that is the right policy to focus on, whether it's the best use of resources in terms of like what is actually happening in the world. That's all policy. But then there are some things that, yeah, actually, you know, if they are brought to full fruition are illegal, like directing that somebody be prosecuted, let's just say hypothetically, directing somebody be prosecuted because Donald Trump perceives them to have been his personal enemy or to have come after him in a way that he did not appreciate. know, prosecuting somebody without probable cause um for animus-based reasons. If that were to happen, and I'm not saying that we have the fact pattern. on the table yet that it has. But if something like that were to happen, that has very serious constitutional implications. Some other things that you've probably discussed on your program and have heard about, refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress. That's not a crime, but it is illegal. Congress has the power to spend money. m um Or I should say, generally speaking, it's not a crime, like, you know, violating the separation of powers, like refusing to respect. laws passed by Congress, either not enforcing them or again in the spending context, like Congress said we should have a USAID, I say we shouldn't, I'm going to shut it down, I'm going to use executive authority. You know, I think those are things you could definitely consider to be illegal and are things that are challengeable in court. So it really does depend. And, you know, again, this is another one of those areas where it's, it does require people to be more measured and more uh rigorous in the way that they think about things and the way that they talk about things. Like, no, not everything Donald Trump does that I personally might think is not the best thing to do is illegal. uh But some of it absolutely could be, and some of it could be really illegal, if again, if it played out in the right sorts of ways. If things were brought to fruition, like he threatens against certain individuals. um then you could be looking at things that are seriously illegal, yes. my gosh, I've got so many more questions, but uh we're getting short on time. So I just want to kind of narrow it down. I'm going to give you a twofer and they, I don't think they have anything to do with one another. But I watch enough press briefings to know how journalists do it. ah So I'm going to try my best. So I've got a two part question for you. uh The first question is, I'd love to get your thoughts or opinions about the ah 1,600 people that were pardoned, um of thoughts about like what that, and especially maybe just from the viewpoint of just all the, I don't know, all the lawyers that were working on those cases and just the impact. And then the second question, if you may, uh is ah I'd love for you to Trump signed an executive order that that related to lawyers not being allowed to be in federal buildings, uh makes sense of that and why is that something we should all be concerned about. So the first one about the January 6th. Okay, so the pardons. You know, I think you're talking about large numbers of people who were duly convicted in court based on the evidence that was presented. You've got people who either pled guilty or who were convicted. you know, by juries of their peers under the reasonable doubt standard. uh None of those cases was called into question on legal grounds. You know, none of them were overturned. Like I said, none of them were overturned by courts. And the nature of those offenses were really an attack on our democracy, on our system of government, on the heart of that, which is free and fair elections. These were violent. A lot of these folks were violent offenders who assaulted, were found to have assaulted police officers and not very many of them who I have heard of have expressed any remorse for having done this. So from my point of view of what the pardon power is supposed to be for, know, it's supposed to be for situations where people have been mistreated by the justice system or where people have, you know, gone on and, you know, from their crime. and expressed remorse for it and have chosen to live a path of rehabilitation in a different life. right. So, you know, I think this these pardons really were very emblematic of the point of view of this administration, which is, again, the rule of law really only applies to other people and not to them. um If they don't like the results of an election, you know, the message that's being sent here is that it's a very beautiful thing um to undertake um unlawful and even violent means to overturn it. you know, I think that is, um you know, I don't see a very good basis for justifying um those pardons under the traditional um way in which the pardon power has been thought of and used. And your second question was targeting lawyers and keeping them out of federal buildings. I think I would direct people to look at the decisions that now three or four different judges have issued. when that issue has been brought before them. Several of the law firms who were targeted with orders that included your lawyers are barred from coming into federal buildings. uh They challenged those in court and I think the judges have made very quick work of those and said that's unconstitutional. That violates the First Amendment. You're punishing lawyers for bringing cases that you don't like. You know, we have a system for deciding who's right about the case, whether the lawyers are right about the case or whether whoever they're suing is right about the case. We have a system for that. um The president of the United States does not get to say um there are certain kinds of legal cases that I find. obnoxious to me and my interests, and I'm going to punish all the people who bring those cases. That strikes at the heart of our First Amendment again. Go back to where I started, I think, in this conversation, talking about like, you know, fundamentally, we have to have a right to disagree. We have to have a right to criticize our government. We have to have a right to object when we feel that the law is being enforced against us in a wrongful way. And The First Amendment is central to that and people may not like it. Lawyers may not be their favorite people, but lawyers are central to that because they are part of bringing people's cases before courts and helping them when they have something to say that is maybe in opposition to the government. And we have to have that or we don't have rule by the people and we don't have self-government. So I take a very dim view of those orders. That's funny. um Maybe it's not funny. Maybe it's sad. I don't know. Not that you're taking a dim view, but just that you have to take a dim view. did you want to respond to that by the way? You totally can if you want to. Okay. in a lot of ways that I will pick up on your point, you know, it is sad. You know, I think that um if we reach a point where we lose the democracy that has made this country a beacon of liberty in the world for over 200 years, you if we lose the thing that has distinguished us uh and, you know, led Ronald Reagan to call us, you know, a shining city on a hill. If we lose that, we're going to miss it when it's gone. You know, I do feel sad that we have uh collectively lost the will. to join together and defend, I think, the thing that should bring us together as Americans. um So, yes, it's sad, but I also hope that it's not too late. I have a lot of hope that it's not too late and that we can still get ourselves back to a point where we say, you know, we can disagree about a lot of things, but we don't have to take away people's basic rights. to disagree with one another or to go in different directions politically or religiously or whatever from each other. We can have policy debates, but we have to come together on these certain fundamental things that are the rules of our system. And we all have to respect it. And we have to defend each other, even if we don't agree politically, um when we are attacked in ways that are outside those rules. Yeah, I think that's really well said. I definitely agree. know, this is my last question. And I would love for... Okay, so one of the things that I always hear, right, or I hear a lot, I should say, is there'll be a criticism of Trump. And then I'll hear, well, Biden did this, Obama did this, no one said anything, or... the liberal news media didn't say anything or whatever. And I'm not asking you to answer any of that, right? In terms of like there are studies we can look into all of those big questions about any left leanings of media versus right leanings and and you know, the actual comparison between you know what happened. But I would love for you to kind of talk about the complexities of civil rights when it comes to sexual orientation and transgender rights as much as you can, as much as your expertise and desire lead you to that. And I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is because it seems like there's been a lot of just executive order, executive action back and forth, um rescinding, right? Don't ask, don't tell, uh putting in executive orders to allow trans in the military taking away that um right or that ability. it just feels like, and so at one level, someone could just be like, well, it just seems like Trump's just doing the same thing they did just on the other side. So I don't see what's, this just seems like this is a policy issue or an issue of difference of opinion or whatever it is. Help us understand the ground here as much as you can. on what's going on with the LGBTQ rights and the civil enforcement of that in America, especially as it clashes, it seems like, with religious liberty issues. Go ahead. Yeah, you know, and I understand that a lot of um people find oh a lot of tough questions presented in terms of like, how do you allow people to fully exercise their religious beliefs while also respecting, you know, the rights of other Americans to, you know, live and be. you know, the people they are and want to be. And I think, from my point of view with respect to enforcing the law and thinking about, again, how we approach these issues is just uh what does the law require? You know, we have had... quite a bit of landmark, both litigation and civil rights law passed in this country. We have the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We have the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We have major Supreme Court decisions that have held that people have a constitutional right to marry. regardless of whether they are, you know, gay or straight. So I think it's important to stay within the system, you know, as we navigate these sorts of issues and disagreements. You know, we do, there is a constitutional right for people to marry uh that has been recognized now for, um quite a while and we do have laws that prohibit certain kinds of discrimination and I recognize that there is a lot to tease out in terms of like you look at things like the Hobby Lobby case, it violate somebody's free exercise rights if they have to provide for some sort of health plan that has things in it that they personally. disagree with based on their religion. Not saying that those are easy questions. um You know, what I would say is that we need to try to keep our um discussion, just try to stay focused on what is the right process by which to decide how we're going to answer these questions. Um, we have a legislative process where Congress passes laws and we do have laws, very significant laws that are still on the books. My view is you cannot overturn those laws by an executive order. If you're the president, can't just like wave your magic president wand and say civil rights act of 1964 doesn't exist anymore. In the same vein, you cannot just wave your magic president wand and say court decisions that have interpreted, you laws to cover LGBTQ people, you can't just wave those out of existence with an executive order. And you certainly cannot eliminate the right to marriage. with an executive order. So you need to look at like, how does our system work? Who has which power? And is that power being exercised in an appropriate way? And for all of the rest of us, you know, we need to engage in the political process to um solve our disagreements. And, you know, the whole the whole executive order game, I will say, you know, I think presidents of both parties have overused executive orders. We have gotten way too far down the executive order path and everybody should take notice of that. the people who most need to take notice of it are our members of Congress who should start viewing themselves as an actual branch of government and who should... Congress... Senate and something with an H? run for Congress, they should have a little self-esteem and believe that being a legislator is actually important and that Article 1 actually comes like first before Article 2 and that they should conceive of themselves as having an actual role. in deciding what our laws are and what our laws are going to say and expect that they should be the ones, if a law is going to be changed, to make the change because they are the ones who are the representatives of the people in government. uh The House of Representatives is our closest to the people uh legal body. So I think I would just... say to people, we can have all sorts of debates, but we also need to think about what the rules of the game are and whether the rules of the game are being enforced and people are playing by the rules. And it's fine to say, I think X should be the law, but it's not fine to go running to a person who should not have the authority to make law and have them do it at the expense of you know, will of the people generally. So. Right, yeah, that's well said. That procedure is so important and it's like the most boring thing and then it becomes the absolute most important thing when, you know, when procedure is broken. And we're trying to figure this out, you know, and... all for, you know, I'm all for people getting very down on executive orders. Yeah. me too. mean, I'm just like sitting here like, how can one person have this much power? Like, what do we, what do we do? And we have a constitution where like that. Yeah. does, and I don't know if it's because he doesn't understand or because he wants to give a false message, but he'll sign these things and he'll say he's signing a bill. He's not signing a bill. He's not. Only Congress. Watch the Saturday morning show, how a bill becomes a law. A bill is passed by Congress. Oh man, yeah, that's interesting. So thanks for coming on, Christie. It's been such a pleasure to be able to pick your brain and tap into your expertise. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me. I always love to come and talk with you guys. Yeah, so fun. So tell me just before uh we close, what is Protect Democracy and how can people get involved with what you guys are doing? What projects do you have coming up? Sure, so Protect Democracy is a nonpartisan nonprofit whose mission is preventing our democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government. So our primary mission is making sure that those rules I've been talking about for the last hour, the separation of powers, you the idea that we have three branches of government, the idea that we're supposed to have free and fair elections, that the people are supposed to govern themselves. We don't do politics. We focus on what should the rules of the game be and what kind of government should we have. And we subscribe to the central views of our founders that we should not have a king. We should have a democratic republic and that... one of the best ways anybody has ever devised to try to make that happen is to have a government with divided powers. And, you know, we should definitely make sure that all three of our branches of government get equal love. That's good. I like that. Give them equal love. do you have a project coming up that you're working on in particular right now? We have a lot of different things that we are doing across the board. We have brought some litigation since the start of the year relating to some of those separation of powers issues, some privacy issues related to Doge. And for instance, we have a lawsuit right now that uh raises some privacy act issues with uh the access certain folks have been given to Americans very sensitive data. So we've got that. recently just brought a case involving some of the reductions in force in government. uh We've got a case involving the removal of some FTC commissioners. So, you know, very much focused on a lot of the things that we've been talking about, you know, not uh partisanship, not politicians, but on are the rules. that protect us all and protect self-government being followed. That's great. Well, we love you guys there and we're so thankful that there are organizations like yours out here talking, trying to keep the rules of the game known and trying to make sure that they're fair as best you guys can. Thank you again for coming on. Absolutely. I mean, we need people listening to shows like this and engaging with these topics because it really is. It's our government. Yes, it is, it is. And to our viewers and listeners, guys, thanks for joining us. This has been Christie Parker. We're going to put information on Protect Democracy and all that in the show notes so you can check it out there. Make sure you like and subscribe, hit the notification bell, share this with someone. We want to get this great content out to more people. It really is helpful. So we spent a lot of time on this and would just love if you could help reward us for that with just sharing it or... Subscribing that would be awesome and until next time guys keep your conversations that right or left but up. God bless Yeah.