Justice Dept. Under Trump Faces Allegations

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Bianna, so there were really two groups of people who appear to have been targeted by this surveillance that are of great concern, first of all, members of the media, including Barbara Starr, one of our colleagues at CNN, and other outlets that had been publicly targeted and attacked by Donald Trump, second of all, members of Congress, importantly, only Democratic members of Congress, who Donald Trump had publicly said he suspected of leaking. Why is this such a problem? Because the Justice Department fundamentally must stand above and apart from all of our other political institutions and from politics itself. And, really, the most dangerous thing that can be done with the Justice Department is to turn it into a weapon, to use it to carry out the president or any other powerful person’s personal or political grudges. Now, there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered by the current Justice Department and by Congress perhaps about why this happened and how this happened. However, it raises that fundamental concern about the independence of the U.S. Justice Department.

GOLODRYGA: and this isn’t the first time that the Justice Department has issued investigations and surveillance warrants, right, on journalists in particular. We saw that happen in the Obama administration. There were an unprecedented amount of leaks that took place that came out of the Trump administration too. We know that they wanted to crack down on that. But it does seem to be an unprecedented response that we have seen as well. What is your reaction to the news from people like Bill Barr, from Rod Rosenstein, from Jeff Sessions, who claim they knew nothing about these orders?

HONIG: Yes, that is hard for me to believe and understand and accept given the way that things work within the Justice Department. There is guidance within the Justice Department that essentially says, if you have an investigation that begins to touch on members of the media who, of course, have important First Amendment protections or politically sensitive targets, you need to start sending notice up the chain of command. And any, I think, responsible prosecutor would know to do that. One of the fundamental questions that we need an answer to is, how high do this go? Who authorized these intrusions? And why? What was the basis? What was the justification for this? And, Bianna, you’re right. This is not brand-new to the Trump administration, prior political administrations of both parties, Democrats and Republican have, at times, intruded on the privacy rights of the media, of journalist, and it is a concern no matter who does it. And what I think is different here, we’ll see how strongly they adhere to it is that after the story came out, this is the power of the media, President Biden said, my Justice Department will not do this. That is an important first step, that is an important step to take to protect the rights of the media, the First Amendment rights, that their privacy will not be intruded on for political reasons or really any other political reasons. So, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the coming months and years.