Rachel Maddow has spent years examining American politics, power, and the people and institutions that shape our democracy.
Now, the Emmy Award-winning journalist and bestselling author is turning her attention to the United States Department of Justice.
Her new book, "Department of Fate: The Promise, the Power, and the Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institution," comes out Tuesday, Nov. 10.
It takes readers through more than 150 years of American history, exploring the times the Justice Department has lived up to its mission — and the times it has fallen dramatically short.
Maddow is coming to Boise for a conversation about the book, our democracy, and the political moment we find ourselves in. She will be at the Morrison Center on Saturday, Nov. 14.
Our Gemma Gaudette will be joining Maddow in conversation, but first she joined Idaho Matters for a preview.
Read a transcript of the entire conversation below:
Gemma Gaudette: From the studios of Boise State Public Radio News. I'm Gemma Gaudette. You're listening to Idaho Matters. Rachel Maddow has spent years examining American politics and power, and the people and the institutions that shape our democracy. Well, now, the Emmy Award winning journalist and best selling author is turning her attention to the United States Department of Justice. Her new book, Department of Fate, The Promise, The Power, and the Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institution, comes out tomorrow, November 10th. It takes readers through more than 150 years of American history, and it explores the times the Justice Department has lived up to its mission and the times that it has fallen dramatically short. And on Saturday, Maddow will be in Boise. Yes, you heard me right. She will be at the Morrison Center this Saturday, November 14th, for a conversation about the book and our democracy and the political moment that we all find ourselves in. And I'm actually going to have the pleasure of joining her on stage for that conversation. But first, she was gracious enough to join us here on Idaho Matters for a preview. Rachel, it is so nice to have you join us today.
Rachel Maddow: Gemma, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for doing the event with me in Boise this Saturday. I'm so excited about it, but it's really nice of you to have agreed to talk to me for that event and also to have me here today.
Gemma Gaudette: Okay, so my first question is why Boise? I mean, as you well know, especially after last week's election. Boise is I mean, not Boise necessarily, but Idaho is definitely a true tried and true red state.
Rachel Maddow: Yes. And I love Idaho and I love Boise. And so that's kind of the that's kind of the full story of it. I grew up in Northern California. Um, and I, one of the things that I used to do, um, for fun in the summers when I was in college between high school and college, and then in college is that there used to be a thing called drive away cars where somebody it was like a thing that would be like arranged in the classified ads. Remember classified ads? Oh, somebody would basically pay you to drive their car from one coast to the other. And if you got a good drive away car deal, they didn't make you commit to a specific route. And so I would often, I mean, I did this 7 or 8 times driving cross country by myself, somebody else's car. And I would almost always try to go through Idaho because I thought Idaho was so beautiful. So, I've always had an attraction to the Pacific Northwest, to that part of the country, to Idaho in particular, just because it is, I think, the most beautiful state in the nation. But I've also, in my day job at Miss now, been fascinated to watch thousands and thousands and thousands of people from Idaho protest in and around Boise over and over and over again during this second Trump term. And, you know, I'll be going through footage of Footage, protests and demonstrations and rallies. All from all over the country. And every time I come to something in Idaho. It's a shockingly large number of people. And I just thought, you know what? I would like to go see Boise again. It has been a long time. Clearly there's something going on there. Honestly, I felt the same way, a little bit about Salt Lake City, but I'm going to be in Utah, in Salt Lake. I'm going to be with you guys in Boise and I just can't wait.
Gemma Gaudette: Well, so let's talk a little bit about the book because you, I think, have really written some pretty fascinating chapters of American history and looked into them. I mean, you've written about the rise of fascism in the United States. I mean, all the way to political corruptions. I'm curious about what sparked your interest in regards to the Justice Department that made you think, you know what, I need to look into this and tell this story next.
Rachel Maddow: So, the I'd say the main impetus for me writing this book, um, is that I think I was really wrong about something. Um, at the end of the first Trump term, I was really affected by really, um, almost agitated by some of the things that happened in the Justice Department, particularly the treatment of the FBI agents, um, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. You might remember the controversy around them. Um, we saw the Durham investigation, which was the effort to try to sort of turn into a criminal scandal. The fact that Donald Trump was investigated around the Russian interference in the 2016 election. Um, there were Justice Department officials, U.S. attorneys who were fired or pushed out because they refused to bring like a bogus prosecution against John Kerry. Remember that? Or, or, um, President Obama's White House counsel, Gregory Craig. There was these strange things that happened towards the end of the trumpet first Trump term, most of which are forgotten now. But that affected me at the time. And because of those things, I really thought that if President Trump ever got back into office, that the Justice Department would become his nuclear weapon, that he would supersize the Justice Department, that he would invest it with tremendous resources and that he would make it.
Rachel Maddow: I think the phrase me and a lot of other people used his sword and his shield to effectuate the most controversial, most aggressive elements of what he wanted to do with the second term in Washington. And we haven't seen that at all. Instead, we've seen the Justice Department really wither away. It's lost thousands of headcount. Um, the National Security Division is basically gone. The Public Integrity Division is shut down. The tax division is shut down in many ways. The institution is hollowed out and is not a, um, potent force, certainly in court. It's not a potent force, even if it's still being used to sort of menace people who I think the president wants to menace. And that is a surprise to me. And I wanted to figure out both what that means, why that happened, but also what it costs us as a country to effectively lose that institution.
Gemma Gaudette: In the book, you call the Justice Department America's most consequential institution. That's a pretty big statement. Why do you see it that way? I mean, especially when we look at the, you know, the executive branch, right. And also Congress and the Supreme Court. What is it about the Justice Department that, in your opinion, is, you know, this is the department that we really need to be looking at and understanding just how consequential it is.
Rachel Maddow: Yeah. And it's, it's a, it's a book length argument for that assertion. I recognize it's a really, it's a provocative assertion. But in the book, I look at a few. It's not a, not a tip to tail history of the Justice Department. I basically look at 6 or 7 different instances in the Justice Department's history to make the case that more than we have appreciated, more than we acknowledge, more than we talk about in politics, certainly the Justice Department sets the course of the nation. It sets the course of what is allowed in terms of political organization. It sets the course in terms of what's elite, what's considered to be legal and illegal. It sets the course in many ways, and I think this is really underappreciated for who's allowed to compete in our economy, for who has the right to compete in our economy, for who has a leg up in our economy. It sets the course for what regions of the country prosper and which ones are beaten down. And again, I realize these are provocative assertions, but the book is, is, is a book length argument to try to prove that point.
Rachel Maddow: And I think that because of that, because the Justice Department is so consequential, because it doesn't just, you know, subpoena people and, and, and try to convict them because I think it does set the course of who we are. We need to be really careful and really take a lot of, I think, attention and a lot of time figuring out how to do it right. When we refound the Department of Justice after what I think is a as a fallow or worse period that it's in right now, because it's so consequential, I think the Department of Justice should have really stronger guardrails, really stronger strictures in terms of what kind of people can get appointed to them and what broad, what how broad the consensus should be in politics about who's qualified to serve there. I just think it's a different kind of cat. I think it's a different kind of institution, unlike anything else we've got in our government or our country, and we need to make sure that it is very, very resilient and can't be warped and can't be turned off.
Gemma Gaudette: You know, one of the things that I find really interesting about your work is that even when you've written about some pretty dark chapters of American history, you often find people, though, who stood up, who made a difference. Did you find that in writing this book as well?
Rachel Maddow: Absolutely. Um, I really think and this is across sort of all of my work over all the time that I've been in public life. I feel like when we tell we as Americans tell each other stories about our country and our history, I think it does us well to find people who exhibited civic heroism, people who didn't necessarily pick the fight, who didn't set out to be a leader or get elected to high office or, uh, to be at the front of the parade in some way. But when a moral fight came to them, they rose to it and they did the right thing even and maybe even especially when it didn't pay off for them personally. And one of the, one of the people who I talk about in the book, who I think fits that and who ought to be kind of a household name, is a guy named Louis Post. And at the start of the book, we meet Louis Post, um, in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the Justice Department has just been formed. And the first attorney general with the new Justice Department is fighting the Klan in the South and is bringing thousands of prosecutions of the Klan. It's really breaking the back of the Klan at that point, and trying to make sure that the protections of the Constitution extend to all Americans, even those who were formerly enslaved. And Lewis Post is there as a stenographer. He's there literally taking notes as these prosecutions are brought, as these investigations are brought, and as this incredibly robust effort to try to make the country live up to its ideals is being led by this crusading and now forgotten Attorney General, Amos Akerman. Decades later, Lewis Post has a very under the radar, not impressive sounding job at the Labor Department and the attorney general at the time, and a young man by the name of J.
Rachel Maddow: Edgar Hoover, who would go on to lead the FBI lead what's known as what's come to be known as the first Red Scare, the Palmer raids, these massive raids, these massive federal police actions against immigrants and leftists all over the country. And they're lawless and they're sloppy, and they're incredibly violent. And Louis Post has this job in the Labor Department at this point, and he doesn't go looking for this fight. But this fight comes to him and essentially thousands of cases cross his desk at the Labor Department, where he has a deciding role in whether or not people are going to be deported because of their political views, which is absolutely against the Constitution of the United States, both then and now. And he just rises to the occasion, having been morally educated by that earlier fight in the wake of the Civil War, where he was a stenographer, literally, he sort of formed that into a moral cornerstone for his own actions, and that gave him bravery and a sense of civic purpose to do something both right and superhuman in terms of the effort that he exerted to save the constitutional rights of thousands of people in the middle of a moral crisis in this country. And Louis Post is somebody who nobody I mean, scholars remember, he's not a. Not a household name. I would like to make him famous. And, um, and I think his example is one that moves me and I think can be a really signal story for a lot of Americans who are thinking about their own civic responsibilities and the call of citizenship in the kinds of difficult times that we're in right now.
Gemma Gaudette: Well, Rachel, I want to thank you so much for taking time for us today. We are so looking forward to your time in Boise. But thank you again for making time.
Rachel Maddow: Thank you so much, Gemma. I'm really looking forward to getting to Idaho. Really looking forward to being back in Boise. Thank you.
Gemma Gaudette: Rachel will be live at the Morrison Center in Boise Saturday, November 14th. The event starts at 6 p.m., and I will be lucky enough to join her on stage for a conversation about the book, but also the very latest in American politics. There are some developments that have happened in the last few days and what history may be telling us about this time.
