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[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, I'm Steve Adubato.

This is a program you're not gonna wanna miss.

Everyone says that in broadcasting, but this is when I really mean it.

We're honored to be joined by Elie Honig, who is a senior legal analyst at CNN, former federal and state prosecutor and author of a really compelling book called "Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the United States Justice Department."

Elie, good to see you, my friend.

- Thanks for having me, Steve.

- Elie, let's get right into it.

This is not a book you put down easily, especially as you start reading your analysis of Bill Barr.

What is the prosecutor's code that he broke?

And how badly did he break it?

- So, the prosecutor's code, Steve is all those things, the unwritten rules that you learn as a prosecutor.

And that I argue in the book, you can only learn from actually doing the job in the trenches like I did in Manhattan and in New Jersey.

Now, Bill Barr, interesting fact about him, he's one of two people in our history who was ever Attorney General of the United States twice.

His first tenure was 1991 to '93 under George H. W. Bush, and, of course, then under Donald Trump.

However, Bill Barr never prosecuted, never tried a single criminal case in court.

And so, what I do throughout the book, is I contrast my experiences as a real prosecutor and the things I learned the hard earned lessons from the courtroom, from judges, from defense lawyers, each one of them sort of amplifies a principle that you have to learn, the unwritten rule, the prosecutor's code, which Bill Barr shattered during his tenure as Attorney General.

- So, I wanna read this section.

"Bill Barr's unprecedented abuse of power as Attorney General, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

He broke the prosecutor's code.

Bill Barr self-image rehab tour has begun, don't buy it."

Says Elie Honig, "Barr tells tales of denying the big lie after the election of 2020, but omits that he aggressively promoted that lie in the crucial months before the election."

What does the Attorney General have to do with the big lie quote-unquote, "The big lie of the 2020 election?"

- It's a good question, Steve.

He should have had nothing to do with it.

And he is on an image rehab tour.

This is a big reason why I wrote the book because I believe history needs to be told.

So, Bill Barr has been reminding us, he's doing these sort of one-sided interviews lately where he's reminding us that in December of 2020, he came out and said publicly, there's no evidence of election fraud.

- He did.

- Yes, he did.

I mentioned that in the book, I give him credit for that in the book.

This is three weeks after the election however.

What he fails to mention during his rehab tour, and what I mentioned in the book, is that for about six months leading up to the election, when the big lie was being created by Donald Trump and spread, Bill Barr was one of the main people fanning those flames.

He went on national TV, he went on national radio.

He went in front of Congress and he said, there's this massive threat of election fraud, foreign ballots, counterfeit ballots, things we can't possibly police.

And every time when he was asked for evidence, he said, "Well, I don't have any, but it's common sense.

It's something I know."

And by the way, several times, DOJ, or the station that put him on had to issue corrections after the fact, because he was spreading falsehoods.

- To what end?

To what end... And by the way, Donald Trump is not particularly positive about the, in terms of... After everything you just said, Elie, Donald Trump, former President Donald Trump doesn't say nice things about Bill Barr, so to what end?

He's not even on the in with the former president.

- Yeah, they did split at the very end.

So, I think Bill Barr's motivations, I think changed.

I think initially, he was hoping and trying to help Donald Trump get reelected.

And he has said publicly, before the election that he was hoping to serve a second term.

Bill Barr clung very tightly to the Attorney General's position because he is a legal extremist, he believes the president should be basically, above the law entirely.

And I talk about that in the book.

And Bill Barr was driven by a deep seated religious incentive, religious motivation.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being religious.

However, Bill Barr tried to bring that religiosity, what he calls God's law to the Attorney General's position, to our general public.

Now, when the election came, when it was over, when it was clear to any right-minded individuals, certainly Bill Barr is a sane, rational, smart person that it was over, Bill Barr at that point made a conscious decision, I'm gonna try to rescue my reputation.

I don't wanna be lumped in with the true loonies, the Rudy Giuliani's, the Sidney Powers, the Jenna Ellises, and so, we had this partial turn on Trump at that point.

- Let me I ask you something?

Do you think that... Again, there are some people who are confused and think that the Attorney General is the president's lawyer.

He is not, she is not, correct?

- Correct, Steve.

Decidedly not.

When the Attorney General gets sworn in, he or she does not swear to represent the president, but to represent the... To protect the people of the United States, and the U.S Constitution.

And that is sort of my fundamental critique of Bill Barr.

- To what degree do you find that the respective judiciary committees in the House and the Senate give a darn about what you're saying right now as the oversight body (chuckles) for not just the president but for the Attorney General?

Executive branch of government?

- Yeah.

Look, I think Congress has a real job to do here.

I'm fairly critical of Congress in the book.

I argue Congress failed to do its job to follow up on, for example, the Mueller Report- - I was just gonna ask you about the Mueller Report.

- Yup.

- And Bill Barr, but go ahead?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So, look, I think that I want Congress to understand its role.

I want DOJ to get back to the basic principles of its role, that they don't represent the president, that you have to tell the truth, something Bill Barr frequently did not.

I want the general public to understand how abnormal and how destructive Bill Barr's tenure was.

- You know, let's stay on the rule of law.

And this, again, we try to separate our interviews, but on the second half of this program, we interview Barbara Res who worked for 18 years with Donald Trump.

For and with Donald Trump on the construction development side.

She's a quote in the book where she said, he basically, there was no law he wasn't willing to break.

If that's true, even remotely true that the rule of law meant nothing to him, means nothing to him.

Then what would that say about his Attorney General's role working for someone, for whom the rule of law not only has no place, but I won, my rules.

- I'll take it a step further.

Not only did that apparently have no resonance for Bill Barr.

But Bill Barr enabled and protected Donald Trump in what I argue are dishonest and counter to the law ways.

I mean, start with the Mueller Report, right?

I argue in the book, Bill Barr, single-handedly enabled Donald Trump to escape the consequences of the Mueller Report.

- How?

- By lying to us about it.

So, let me give a timeline here.

Bill Barr is the first person essentially, outside of Mueller's team to get the Mueller Report.

He gets it on a Friday.

Two days later on a Sunday, Bill Barr issues, his infamous four-page letter, in which he essentially declares Donald Trump free and clear altogether.

Now, here's the thing people may not remember that I point out in the book.

Bill Barr then held onto the Mueller Report, kept it away from the public, kept it away from Congress for 27 days.

And during that crucial month, all we had, all the public had, was Bill Barr's slanted report, where Bill Barr says he leaves out all the bad stuff for Donald Trump, and gives us only the good stuff.

He declares Donald Trump did not commit obstruction of justice contrary to my view and the view of over 2000 other prosecutors who have since signed a letter saying so.

So, Bill Barr was not only dishonest.

And by the way, don't just take it from me.

Robert Mueller wrote Bill Barr letter complaining about the way he characterized the report.

Various federal judges have said Bill Barr was dishonest in the way he handled the report.

Not only was he dishonest, he was manipulative in the way he withheld it from us all.

- Let me ask you something, Elie.

They're gonna people who...

They're gonna be some people who watch this program, and also the second half with Barbara as you say, "Adubato's doing a program that just bashes Donald Trump, that bashes those who are connected to Donald Trump like Bill Barr."

Where's the value in that?

That's quote, "Left wing, fake news, et cetera, et cetera."

We're public broadcasting, we have no horse in the race.

If there's someone who writes a book out there that talks about what a great president Donald Trump was, what a great Attorney General Bill Barr was, and does it in a substantive way, we look forward to that conversation.

Here's the long-winded point to that question.

Do you have an ax to grind?

Do you have a point of view, or is it the rule of law, and the Department of Justice and its sense of integrity moving forward?

- The only thing I'm a purist on, Steve is the role of the prosecutor.

I don't care about left or right Democrats or Republicans.

And I can prove it by the way, that I had no ax to grind with Bill Barr.

I quote myself in the book because it just so happened, the day Bill Barr's name was announced as the person Donald Trump would be nominating as Attorney General, I was sitting there on set at CNN.

And they got my earpiece and said, "Can you give us a comment on that?"

They gave me a couple of minutes, I looked him up.

I knew who he was 'cause he had been AG in the past.

And I just sort of did some research.

And I sat on air, I asked a producer to pull my quote, so I had it exactly.

But I said something like, "He's serious, he's respected.

He looks like a strong pick."

I put that in there because I think it's important for people to know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and then some.

And by the way, on day or two later, it came out that he had written this, what I call the audition memo, where he on his own, wrote a 20-page letter and sent it into DOJ saying that Robert Mueller's investigation was quote, "Fatally misconceived."

At that point, I started to have some concerns, I think rightly so.

But no, I don't have it out for Bill Barr whatsoever.

He earned this with his own conduct.

- Yeah.

By the way, this is the book "Hatchet Man."

Real quick, as a former, as a grad.

You're not former anything, you're, I'm an alum of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

You have a connection to the Institute, and our good friend John Farmer the director there.

What is it?

- So, I... Well, first of all, I am an Eagleton undergrad associate.

I was back in the '90s when I graduated from Rutgers.

It was a thrill to do it, and it's great to go back to the mansion now.

I'm now a faculty associate.

- But Mansion Eagleton is, let's just say the Woodlawn Campus is gorgeous.

Let's just say that?

- It is a beautiful, old mansion, and it is a thril...

It was a thrill to walk in there the first time.

I since have given speeches and done programs with them.

And I'm teaching, to put an ad in, but it's our public university.

I'm teaching a course there in the spring at Eagleton on politics and prosecution, which should not mix, that's the bottom line.

But yeah, so I'm an Eagleton guy just like you, Steve.

- Yeah.

Before I let you go, how can...

I'm gonna ask this the right way.

Are you optimistic for the Department of Justice to regain what its appropriate role is in our very delicate federal government and its independence?

- I am optimistic, Steve, because I worked there for equal time under Republican and Democrat administrations before Bill Barr was ever there.

I know that what really drives DOJ, is the thousands of women and men who are prosecutors, and investigators, and victim service specialists who put their heads down and do their job.

Bill Barr did enormous damage to DOJ, but DOJ is too resilient and they will be back.

- Elie Honig is the author of "Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Department of Justice."

And you can catch him on CNN, and he's down there with our good friends at Eagleton Institute.

Elie, all the best.

- Thanks Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- Stay with us, we'll be right back.

To watch more Think Tank with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We are now joined by Barbara Res, who is the author of a compelling book called "Tower of Lies: What My 18 Years of Working With Donald Trump Reveals About Him."

Barbara, so good to have you with us.

- Thank you, it's my pleasure.

- You worked 18 years with Donald Trump, former president, Donald Trump, from when to when?

- I worked from '78 to '80 as a member of the construction team through HRH Construction.

And then I worked for Trump from '80 to '84 and then from '87 to '91 and then from '91 to '98 as a consultant.

- But you were in a lead position as it kind of relates to Trump Tower.

You were one of the key players in the development there, right?

- I was in charge of the construction of Trump Tower.

I was a big piece.

- I'm sorry, I'm a student of leadership, I'm fascinated by leadership traits.

And then, listen, you don't have to go very far in the book.

Do you mind if I read just a little section right on the inside sleeve?

It got my attention.

I'm a big fan of taking ownership from mistakes, most of which I make here on this show.

This is a quote in the book.

"You're making me look bad," this is President Trump talking to you at the time.

"You're making me look bad with all this cheap S-H," you know the rest.

Trump screamed, his face beat red with his lips white.

"Who told you to buy this?"

This is you now.

"I showed it to you with all the other marble and you pick this one," I said, "It was the cheapest and it's what you said to use, so don't blame me."

And then you say, I've never seen such anger and hatred in his face, for a moment, I believed he might hit me.

And I was ready to just go down.

Was Donald Trump the kind of leader who took responsibility for himself, his actions and his mistakes?

- Absolutely not, never.

- What do you mean never?

What do you mean never?

- Whenever something went wrong, the very first thing he did was try to figure out who to blame.

And then yeah, we'd deal with what happened.

- And would there be pushback?

I'm a big fan of, we do a so-called Lessons in Leadership on another network.

And where I'm a big fan of getting honest feedback, constructive feedback, trust me, my team doesn't hold back telling me when I screw up, how I've screwed up and I better not screw up again.

What was the culture around then developer Donald Trump?

- Way back, back in the '80s, he had good people, really good people, myself included, but some very strong people and they were smart and he listened to them, he listened to us.

I mean, he yelled and everything else, but a lot of times, when you had an idea that that was the right thing but you needed to get him to buy into it, you would try to work him into thinking it was his idea somehow.

Or you would try to hammer, whatever you did, you did want to talk to get it done.

But he did listen to people and he did change his mind.

- But you also wrote in the book and you've said publicly, I've seen you on other networks.

And you've said, he's "changed significantly as a person and as a leader over these many years."

What do you mean by that?

- Well, the word change, it implies that he's totally different and he's not different.

That's the point of my book is that that is what the initial Trump was.

And then you watch him develop over my book and then over time.

But the changes are, he let everything go to his head.

My first thing, the big change I said was that he used to listen to people and pay attention, architects, engineers, me, lawyers.

And now he does not do that.

Clearly, I mean, he'll listen to somebody like Sean Hannity, or Rudy Giuliani, which is insane.

But I mean, he doesn't really, he thinks he knows everything.

He has repeated it 100 times, I know more than the generals, I know more than the scientist, know more than the doctors.

And he does really think so.

So he doesn't listen to anyone.

So in that, he has changed.

He's gotten more vicious, I think, although he was pretty vicious when I was with him, but things like, I mean, way back in 2016, where he made that horrible remark on television about women and assaulting them, I was surprised at that.

I didn't think he had that in him.

- What about mocking a reporter who had a physical disability on camera and then said, I wasn't really doing that.

Did that surprise you?

- It did surprise me that he did it.

No, it didn't surprise me that he would deny it.

Absolutely not.

I mean, he used to make fun of people all the time.

That was his big thing.

As a matter of fact, in one of the new books that he talks about, somebody who calls him Fat Tony, and we had someone that we worked with in the government that Donald called the Fat F. And that was the name he had.

He didn't like fat people he feared them, he just, He was just turned off by them.

So he was kind of mean like that.

- Okay, let me try this.

And by the way, there's a new book out as we do this program on the 20th of July called "I Alone Can Do This."

And Phil Rucker from The Washington Post and his colleague wrote it and we're gonna be bringing them in.

"I Alone Can Do This", it's about Donald Trump.

And again, this is not here to vilify President Trump, former president, Trump, try to understand from someone who worked closely with him, the way he thinks.

So as president, when you were watching what was happening, particularly during the virus, when he's in a public press conference, and he turns to Dr. Birx and says, you can shoot the disinfected under the arm and, what were you thinking in that moment?

- Well, it was familiar to be honest with you.

I mean, he would get a ridiculous idea and he would put it forth as if it were a good idea or make a statement that was not true and put it forth as it was true.

And if he could find a flunkie, he found Birks, with all due respect, she was a flunkie back then, to go along with him or not to correct him, you're insane Donald, you can't do that, just didn't surprise me at all.

It's just having people think, oh, Trump's got the answers, even though they're not the answers.

- What redeeming qualities does he have?

I think, how about empathy?

- Empathy?

- Why are you making a face when I say empathy, compassion, caring for others?

- In my book, I talk about a time when he actually showed kind of compassion and it was very rare, but I think that's completely gone.

I don't think he has empathy for anything or anyone.

- How do you believe as president over those four years, the leadership style, the personality and the way it manifests itself, take policy out of it again, as a leader, how do you believe it has effected our nation and the presidency?

- I would love to say he's a terrible leader.

And I do believe that in many ways, but he has got his base.

And I think that the way he did that was not honestly, I think it was by firing up people and letting them be what they are, which is racist and xenophobes and things like that.

by the way, do the honesty thing.

He accuses others.

Fake news, you're a liar.

You've said in your book that he lied compulsively, consistently.

- We used to joke about him lying about the time for practice.

- What do you mean?

- He lied.

I mean, it was almost like he didn't have to lie.

He would lie about anything and all and it didn't make a difference.

Some things were not, he still lied about how many books he, how many apartments he sold or something like that.

But he would lie about things that didn't matter at all.

I mean, it would gain nothing for him.

It was like it was an impulse, he couldn't resist it, he had to come out and lie.

But he lied about very, very important things.

- Let me ask you this.

There are a lot of friends I have, a lot, and I don't mean a few, I mean, a lot of friends watching right now who said to me, I love Donald Trump.

I love, he just says what's on his mind.

And he speaks "for us".

I mean, a lot of them, and you know who you are and it's not a criticism.

It's just a fact.

And I'll point out certain things that he's done, not even on policy, just in terms of how he treats people.

So I get caught up on this.

I'll say to our friends, many of whom are working men and women, disproportionately men.

I say, if you don't pay a contractor, if you don't pay someone for the work they did and then say, listen, well, take me to court.

I'll give you 10 cents on the dollar.

I said, we're big into loyalty in the community I grew up in.

Loyalty?

Donald Trump?

- He doesn't care about people.

I mean, and his base.

I mean, he totally disdains them and looks down-- - What do you mean disdains them?

They love him.

- I know, and it's hard to, and he says, I love you, and he says, I'm one of you.

And I'm watching this all through the building of Trump Tower, you said, glad hand with the guys in the field.

You know how I'm doing it.

And what do you think, this is racist, blah, blah, blah.

But he did it with disdain.

He hated them.

We had a big party, and this is my book to celebrate the tapping out of the building, which we always do.

He didn't want to invite the men to it.

- What do you mean, the men who were the people out there doing the work?

- Workers, yeah.

Which is what the party is for.

And he said, why do I have to have them there?

I said, what, are you kidding me?

And then he said, well, can we limit it to just the foreman?

I said, no, absolutely not.

But that was his mindset.

These people were unimportant to him and were meaningless to him.

- Any redeeming qualities?

- No, you asked that before I didn't get a chance to answer.

- None?

- He's quick study, I'll say that.

Because he doesn't concentrate.

He doesn't have the ability to concentrate.

He doesn't read, he doesn't listen.

But when you finally get him to pay attention, he learns it pretty quickly.

He's a quick study.

He's a bright guy.

He's not a genius by any stretch of the imagination.

- Listen, we're not legal experts, but the Weisselberg situation.

The chief financial person in The Trump Organization?

- Yes.

- As we speak, facing 15 felony counts, criminal offenses, grand larceny, falsifying business records, fraud, et cetera.

We don't know what's gonna happen.

How serious do you think this is, A, for former president Donald Trump, and B, what do you think he thinks this is about?

- Well, I think it's a big deal for Weisselberg.

I think Trump would like to think it's another witch hunt, but clearly he knows that he broke the law.

He knows it because he did it.

And the New York Times article a couple of years ago about how they set up this thing to avoid paying any taxes for the family, that was clearly a violation of the law and he could have been prosecuted for that.

Now with this lying about the presidency and whether he won or not, to me, and I may be the only one that does the assesses.

I think he knows he lost.

I think he knows it's all lies that he's just promoting because that has been his success, that has worked for him.

- Finally, before I go Barbara, if you were predicting, you know his personality well, do you believe that he, in 2024, will attempt to get the Republican nomination for president again?

- I said no as a knee jerk initially.

And I'll tell you why.

I think that he would lose, well, right now we would lose.

And I think that he couldn't withstand another loss.

He wouldn't be able to do it.

But I'm not sure he's gonna be around in 2024.

I'm not sure that he's gonna have, he may be in trouble with the government, his companies may have to go bankrupt.

We don't know about that.

He may start losing his base and you have the DeSantis picking up a lot of his-- - Down of Florida.

Hey Barbara, thank you.

The book is called "Tower of Lies", Barbara Res is the author.

She knows Donald Trump pretty well, 18 years working with him.

Hey, Barbara, all the best to you and your family.

Thank you.

- Thank you, you too.

- I'm Steve Adubato, thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

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PSE&G, Summit Health Johnson & Johnson.

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The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Clean Energy program.

And by ADP.

Promotional support provided by Jaffe Communications.

And by AM970 The Answer.

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