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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hey everyone, Steve Adubato.

Way more importantly, our good friend, my media colleague Elie Honig, is in the house.

He's the author of an important book, "When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ, the Department of Justice, Pursuit of the President from Nixon to Trump."

Elie, my friend, good to see you, congratulations on the book.

- Thanks, Steve, it's always great to see you.

I feel like I'm home when I'm here with you, here home in Jersey.

- Yeah, by the way, give folks a sense of your Jersey connection, even though we all know you from CNN as a tremendous legal analyst.

Rutgers connection, Jersey Connection, tell us.

- Grew up in Cherry Hill, I am a 100% product of the New Jersey public school system up to and including where I went to undergrad at Rutgers, left for a few years to go to Harvard Law School.

Now I'm back, I live in Metuchen in Middlesex County, this is my blood, this is where I'm from, this is where I live now, this is where I raise my kids.

So I'm Jersey all the way through - Elie, I was so jealous, it was Saturday morning a few weeks back, I'm watching you with Smerconish, who I think is absolutely the best.

And you're talking about the book and I go, I need to, and I think I texted you right at the time we got the book, and I gotta tell you something, other than the fact that everyone needs to read this book, why is this so incredibly timely right now as we're taping this program toward the end of October, there have been several, Comey's been indicted.

Letitia James has been indicted, Bolton's been indicted.

How are those indictments from the DOJ connected to the theme of this book?

And then we'll talk about the title, which comes from a very interesting place, go ahead.

- Yeah, even more than I expected, Steve.

I mean, this book could not have been more timely, if I may say so.

The central theme, what I do in the book is I talk to firsthand participants, prosecutors, defense lawyers, white House officials, witnesses, cops, you name it, from Watergate up through the Jack Smith, Donald Trump case.

And that gave me a real view and readers will get a real view of the historical scope of this.

And it enabled- - When you say this, you mean the special prosecutor?

- Good point, yes.

I mean, it's had different names over the years, independent counsel, but outside prosecutors brought in by the Justice Department, - Outside of the traditional government DOJ system.

- Exactly, to look at highly charged political cases involving whether it's Nixon or the Bush administration or Clinton, up through Biden and Donald Trump.

I finished writing this book in May or so, so we were four or five months into Trump's second term.

- Did we have a special counsel then?

- No, not at that moment.

The last special counsel that we had went away when Trump won the election and basically announced he was gonna fire them all.

Exactly, Jack Smith.

So at this moment right now, we don't have a special counsel, which is actually a change.

We've had one pretty much one or more continuously since at least 2018.

My end conclusion is what Donald Trump is doing thus far in his second term is different in kind.

It is a break in the historical line from Watergate, and really earlier than that, but from Watergate all the way up through the end of Joe Biden's administration.

And I include Trump one in that.

What Donald Trump is doing now, and I say in the book, is he's made clear, A, there will be no inward looking investigation into me or my administration, and B, I will be seeking revenge on people who have wronged me.

Now, when I wrote it, Steve, there had not yet been the indictments that you just mentioned, Letitia James and Jim Comey in particular.

Now we've seen them, and that's really giving life to my thesis, which is we've entered this very dangerous age of payback, of retribution.

- Interesting, and by the way, let's go back to the title.

When You Come at The King, actually comes from one of my favorite series of all time, "The Wire".

Based in Baltimore, Omar, who, by the way, the actor who played Omar- - Michael K. Williams.

- That was one of the most interesting interviews I ever did.

Check out our website, you'll see that interview.

What does Omar say in "The Wire," when you come at the King, finish the sentence.

- You best not miss.

And nobody ever said it as well as Michael K. Williams, as Omar, yes, I pulled that title from Omar and his quote.

It actually goes back to I've learned, I didn't know, but to me it was just from The Wire, but I learned in researching this book that that expression or that sentiment goes back to Machiavelli, it goes back hundreds of years, it's been used many times, but nobody said it quite like Omar.

- Did anyone say Machiavelli?

- There you go, you had it ready to go.

- It had nothing to do with this segment, but go ahead.

All the way back to the 15, 16 hundreds, go ahead.

- Amazing, and the idea was really, the title to me meant two things.

One, from talking to these people who live these cases, Steve, they all understood this would be the defining moment, struggle, conflict of their lives.

That some of them said to me, essentially, I know that whatever else I've done in my career, whatever other accomplishments I've had, this is the only thing, or the main thing I will be remembered for.

Whether it was people involved in Watergate or Whitewater or Iran Contra all the way up through Mueller and Robert Hur and Jack Smith's teams.

The other thing though, is the payback element.

And this is what Omar is saying in that sentiment that you, you take a shot at the king, you best not miss.

And then the unsaid part is otherwise, there will be payback.

- The king was Donald Trump.

- Well, the king is Donald Trump, but the king is really any president, but the one who's enacting the payback scheme here, the, "I'm gonna get you back", is Donald Trump.

And look, no other president has actually gone and done that.

And I include Trump's first term.

- Oh, Elie, I'm gonna push back.

- Yeah.

- Nixon did not try to do exactly what Trump is doing?

Nixon did not try to use John Mitchell as Attorney General and others to go after his, he had an enemies list.

- No, no, for sure he had an enemies list.

The difference though is Trump is going after people who have investigated and prosecuted him, right?

I mean, Letitia James and Jim Comey being exhibits A and B. I don't know that Nixon, I mean, I do have a bit in there about both John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst who followed him.

And Mitchell, by the way, people should know, is the only attorney general in history to ever go to prison.

He was convicted of being part of the Watergate coverup.

I'm not sure I can point to a case where Nixon had somebody criminally prosecuted, certainly he had his enemies list, people he considered enemies and tried to undermine.

I don't know if there's an example where Nixon had his justice department criminally prosecute someone off that enemies list because they were seen as an enemy of his.

I think there's, that's the distinction.

- I wanna be clear, Elie.

There are half the country at least, and many people watching us right now, - Yup.

- are sitting there going, Adubato has got another person on, another CNN analyst, right?

Whatever they think that means.

Who wrote a book bashing Trump.

- Oh gosh, yeah.

- Just hear me out.

- Go ahead.

- And my response would be, look, we're big on the Constitution.

We are big on One-on-One, Think Tank, State of Affairs, all of our series.

We're big on the thing called the Constitution, the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary.

And I don't know if the president sends an email or a text or whatever the heck he sends to the attorney general Pam Bondi and says, I want you to get so and so.

That doesn't feel right, and then the response would be, from many people who love Trump, stop, Trump's just doing in public what everyone did in private.

Disabuse them of that, please, Elie.

- So let me disabuse them first of all, of any misperception about me.

Nobody was more critical in mainstream media of some of the prosecutorial overreach against Donald Trump than I was.

I was outspoken on air, CNN, and in this book against excessive uses of power against Donald Trump, by Letitia James, by Alvin Brat.

- You thought it was a very weak case.

- Yeah, I mean, I've said from the start, Letitia James' case was ridiculous, now it's mostly been thrown out by the Court of appeals.

I'm critical of Jack Smith in this book.

I'm the only, I don't know.

I must have missed the meeting where every legal analyst was instructed, you can only bow down to the greatness of Jack Smith.

I argue in this book that Jack Smith overextended and absolutely was political in his pursuit of Donald Trump.

- Were you critical of Comey?

- Oh my gosh, Jim Comey comes up horribly in this book.

Jim Comey is villain number one in this book, perhaps.

Balance it out for us.

So you've gone after people who you think judicial overreach, not doing what prosecutors should be doing.

And by the way, tell folks again, your prosecutorial background, please.

I was 14 years as a prosecutor federally in New York and then with the state AG here in New Jersey, running the division of criminal justice.

And that Steve, that's where this comes from.

To me, I'm a prosecutorial purist and I'm a sort of a media purist, I think as you are.

I don't view my job here is to support or cheerlead either side.

I will call out an abuse, especially of prosecutorial power, and I don't care who's on the other end.

I don't care if I love or hate the guy on the other end.

I'm very critical of Jim Comey in this book, but I'm also very critical of the way Trump is now pursuing him criminally.

Letitia James, I've been nothing but critical of.

I'm also critical of the payback prosecution.

So why does this matter?

We are now seeing, look, I understand the idea that, well Trump's just doing what other people have done, but he's doing it out loud.

But again, I can't think of an example of a prior president who has weaponized DOJ to go after people on really either questionable or piddly charges like we're seeing against Comey and Letitia James, purely for political payback.

I'm not saying anyone's a saint here, I'm not saying Joe Biden's a saint, I'm not saying Richard Nixon's a saint.

- Well, Joe Biden did what he did before he left by pardoning his entire family.

- Exactly.

- So therefore the judiciary had no role.

The prosecutorial arm of the government, no role.

No, listen, my family's off limits.

So let's be clear, but that has nothing to do.

That was wrong.

By the way, when people do, whataboutism, how do you respond to that?

Because yeah, that's wrong.

But when you tell the attorney general as president, I want you to do this.

Tell folks why that's a problem, for the rest of us, Elie, not just for Bolton, not just for Letitia James, not just for Comey, for the rest of us.

- Right, what if this becomes the norm?

What if the next president comes in and says, well, let's say it's a Democrat.

Well now it's our turn, now I'm gonna go and indict or, or investigate Lindsay Halligan and Ed Martin and Tom Blanche and all these people who are running these prosecutions for Trump now, it's going to spiral downward.

And by the way, let me also anticipate another thing that some of your viewers may be thinking, which is, well, fair play, turnabout is fair play.

As somebody said to me, a conservative friend of mine, when you lower the rims to nine feet, you can't complain when you get dunked on.

And that's a referral to the notion that there was some prosecutorial overreach against Trump, as we just talked about.

That said, I cannot bless or applaud when we go down the downward spiral, when it gets worse and worse each time.

And when the president says, DOJ, forget about the wall of separation, and it's been imperfect for sure.

I lay that out in the book, but I'm not even going to pretend that there's any independence here.

You are now my enforcement arm, criminal enforcement arm.

- You are my judges, my courts.

Are they his judges and his courts, Elie?

- And using criminal power, not just civil power or, or whatever else, criminal power to lock people up.

Even Trump himself in 1.0 did not do that.

For all his rhetoric about lock up Hillary, lock up John Kerry, never did that in Trump.

1.0.

Now we're seeing it done.

And just if this becomes the new norm, we're gonna keep on sliding down that slippery slope.

And the thing about slippery slopes is they're slippery and they go downhill and it gets worse.

- Let me try this.

So if there's a prosecutor again, when Chris Christie, whom you know very well, you worked directly with Chris Christie, right?

- He was governor and I was at the AG's office, so there was a bit of, he, look, Chris Christie respects that wall of separation, I lived that.

He was hands off with us at the prosecutor's office.

- And when Chris Christie was a US attorney in New Jersey appointed right about the time of 9/11.

I remember doing a series of interviews with him.

First time prosecutor in that role.

And so we've talked over the years about the role of judiciary.

So he is appointed US attorney, Trump appoints US attorneys.

There are US attorneys in different districts and areas around the country.

What happens when a US attorney, a lead prosecutor says there isn't enough evidence, excuse me, to prosecute a certain case.

And a president in this case, president Trump says, yeah, okay, you're out.

I need to now get a prosecutor, a US attorney, including in Virginia, I'm not mistaken, who will bring this prosecution.

The other one's out, my prosecutor's in.

What does that do to the judiciary and the prosecutorial arm of government if the only people in there are the people who will bring the cases that a chief executive demands get brought?

- Right, so two things.

One, you lose a level of independence.

You are now bringing in people who are essentially hired guns.

You are brought in because I want this case charged, often from a president.

I don't think Donald Trump has been ever briefed on the details of the Jim Comey or Letitia James case.

Two is you lose a level of expertise.

Look, a guy who was forced out in the Eastern District of Virginia, Eric Seber was by the way a Trump nominee put in that position, who'd been at DOJ for over a decade.

This guy was deeply experienced.

Now you get this new prosecutor, Lindsay Halligan, who was never a prosecutor before and has been bumbling and stumbling around.

And I do wanna say this about Chris Christie, I wrote about this in my last book.

He practices what he preaches when it comes to the political hands off from prosecution.

I tell a story from the time I was at the New Jersey AG's office, we got a call from some mid-level staffer or advisor in Christie's office asking for an update on a certain criminal case.

I told the Attorney General, the Attorney General let the governor's office know, and Chris Christie reamed his staff out.

He said, they are the AG's office, they're prosecutors.

You are hands off, you do not call over there and get updates on their cases.

That's for them, we're separate, we're the executive branch.

And I think that's a really good example and a model that the governor set.

- Okay, so let's go back to attorneys general.

Pam Bondi.

My understanding of who Pam Bondi has been is she's a good lawyer.

She understands the law.

She respects up until a certain point, the constitution, the separation of powers.

What is the appropriate role?

And by the way, the book is, "When You Come at the King", history of the DOJ, pursuit of presidents from Nixon to Trump," and much more than that.

What is the role of the Attorney General of the United States?

Is it the president's lawyer?

Is it the country's lawyer?

And what's the difference?

- So let me say first I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that came out the day of Pam Bondi's confirmation hearings.

And I said, essentially what you said, Steve which is- - It was positive.

- Yeah, it was, let's give her a chance.

She's qualified, she has a lot of prosecutorial experience.

She's been the AG of a state, a large state Florida for eight years.

And the question will be, does she show independence?

But she's certainly competent for the job.

So let's not all freak out, let's see how she does.

However, she has now shown herself to be completely non-independent, to be very much a political figure because two reasons.

One, she utterly refuses to investigate anything that might reflect negatively on Trump or the administration when you ordinarily would absolutely open an investigation, for example- - Does that include the Epstein trial, the Epstein case?

- Yeah, the Epstein case has been badly mishandled.

- But you don't talk about that much, that's not a big part of the book.

- No, no, no, the Epstein case doesn't factor, it actually factors a lot into my second book.

- Go ahead.

- But no, I would say the Signal scandal, when Pete Hegseth and the vice president were using Signal to communicate about a military strike that would a hundred times out of a hundred, 99 times out of a hundred.

- On a phone, and people heard it?

- Exactly, and then they tapped in a journalist from The Atlantic?

That would be investigated, no brainer.

She refused to even investigate.

She two days in, she said nothing to see here, everyone should just be applauding how great the military strike was.

On the other hand, she's carrying out these clearly retributive prosecutions.

Now the AG should be in the ideal, should have independence from the President.

But I grant you Steve, it doesn't say that anywhere in the Constitution.

It doesn't, there's no law saying that.

That has been a norm of practice, a good government belief that both parties have had over a long time.

But look, the countervailing argument is, the president's the head of the executive branch, he is the executive branch, and he can do what he wants with DOJ.

And nobody can point to, I can't point to anything in the constitution or in a statute that says the AG must be independent, there is no such thing.

However- - Is there a tradition in our country of that?

- Yes, yes, there is more than a tradition, I think there's just a longstanding norm, practice, understanding, belief and faith system that we have, and this goes, this transcends party lines that if we don't have some independence in DOJ, in the AG's office, then we're gonna, then we don't, the one agency, the one entity we don't want carrying out political chores is DOJ.

Because DOJ is the one entity that can deprive a civilian of his liberty.

And so DOJs always should be held a little bit separate or more than, a little bit, a lot separate and apart from your normal administrative body.

- But there's another piece to this, the courts, which you've talk a lot about in the book, when the United States Supreme Court and Elie, we talk, by the way, talking to Elie Honig, check out Elie's book, watch him on CNN.

I gotta ask you this one, and you understand this decision 'cause it's complex.

- Yeah immunity.

- In the United States Supreme Court, a majority of justices, associate justices, did they say that the President of the United States is pretty much immune from a whole range of actions that an executive may take and that you cannot literally prosecute that president.

And if in fact that's true, why should Donald Trump or the next president or next president after that be concerned about what he or she does or does not do in office?

- Right, so the Supreme Court in 2024 issued a very broad ruling in an immunity case, Trump versus United States, where yes, they said you cannot prosecute the president or a former president for anything that really touches on his core constitutional responsibilities as president.

And then there's a sort of gray zone, if it's still within the job, but not necessarily core constitutional, you probably can't prosecute him.

And I say in the book, look, that's a very broad ruling.

There's no question it gives presidents very broad coverage.

However, it doesn't mean, it does not mean that presidents have complete blank check to do whatever they want with no criminal consequences.

I'll give you an example.

It is clear, even if you look at the Trump ruling that a president can still be charged for something he does in his personal capacity or that's related to his political efforts, his campaign.

If we look for example at Nixon in Watergate, I think it's pretty clear that Nixon could still have been prosecuted for Watergate because that was a break in by his committee of the DNC and by his political committee of the DNC and then a coverup.

And I think that would clearly under, even under the very broad ruling, fall outside of the president's duties.

And I think if you look at the Trump case, the same was true.

It caused Jack Smith to have to narrow his indictment in the January 6th case.

But there was still a core there of political activity.

So no question the immunity ruling gives the president very broad coverage, but it also does not completely immunize him against any kind of accountability.

- All right, I got a couple minutes left.

In writing the book and doing your analysis on CNN and being a part of the criminal justice system as a professional and also as an academic.

I believe you've taught at Rutgers as well.

- Still do, teach Rutgers today, later today, yep.

- My alma mater.

- Yep, me too.

- But here's the thing, even for those people who love Donald Trump, voted for Donald Trump, love Donald Trump.

Talk to them, talk to all of us about the potential of all this, the writing of the book and your research about frankly moving away from three independent equal branches of government, the congress, the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive.

And that virtually all of the power in our country is being focused in one branch, the executive, and last time I checked, it's the reason why the Revolutionary War was fought.

Am I oversimplifying, Elie?

- No, so that's a great question.

- We're not supposed to have a king.

- Right, so even if you are a Trump supporter, then God bless.

And if you are a believer in very broad executive power, I would say not only God bless, but I tend to believe in a broader view of executive power, than probably the average lawyer.

I'm not an absolutist, but here's the thing, there's gonna be someone next.

This will not be our last president.

We're gonna have a 48th president and 49th president and a 50th president.

And the system as set up in our constitution, which we all ground everything we do in is meant to have three separate but co-equal branches of government.

Now there's arguments out, which is supposed to be the most powerful, but if we move too much into the executive branch out of the congress, out of the courts, we're going to end up with a model like the one we tried to break away from.

We are gonna end up with an executive.

- From England.

- Yes.

- From a king.

- Exactly.

- From a king in England.

We are gonna end up with a system.

If we keep, if we go to the far extreme of executive power, we're going to end up vesting, I think far more power in one human being than the founders ever intended.

And man, I hear Trump people, Trump supporters say with these prosecutions, what goes around comes around.

I get it, I understand that, like I said, I was critical of some of the initial Trump prosecutions, I'm critical of what Trump is doing now.

But the same thing goes for executive power.

If you want Trump to have free reign over immigration, deportation, executive orders over deployment of the National Guard, on and on.

If you wanna say the President can do whatever he wants, remember, take the Trump of it out of it.

I always find it's really helpful in doing your analysis.

Forget about Donald Trump, think about some other future hypothetical president doing the same.

If you're okay with it, with either party doing it, fine.

But if you only want it one way, then we're headed down a problematic road.

- Wow, lot to think about on the future of our country on the line.

This is not, for those of you who just watched, hopefully understand from our perspective, from Elie's mind, all of us in media who care, ain't about Donald Trump.

It's about our representative democracy.

And the book is called, "When You Come at The King: Inside DOJ's Pursuit of the President from Nixon to Trump."

National bestselling author, my media colleague, good friend Elie Honig.

Elie, thank you my friend, wish you all the best, - Steve, thanks always a real pleasure and privilege to be with you, thanks very much.

- You got it, I'm Steve Adubato, that's Elie Honig, we'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Hackensack Meridian Health.

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