Barbara McQuade
speaker
424 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 7 Feb
Barbara McQuade’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Sure.
So after Watergate, when we saw President Nixon abuse his authority in a couple of ways, I mean, one certainly was in an effort to stop the FBI's investigation into his own involvement in
the Watergate break-in, he directed that the FBI be told that the CIA was investigating and that they needed to stand down.
And so that kind of meddling by the president was seen as politically based and inappropriate.
Now, norms were put in place to prevent that kind of thing.
One is a limit on communications between the White House and the Justice Department.
They are not supposed to talk about cases.
There is an exception for people at the highest level, the attorney general, White House counsel, but that is to make sure that the nation's interests are being protected.
So if, for example, the Justice Department is about to unseal an indictment against the president of Iran or the head of a terrorist organization, you might get the State Department in the room.
You might get the White House in the room to make sure this is not going to disrupt some diplomatic negotiations that are going on at the moment.
So that kind of coordination occurs.
But what's never supposed to happen is the president directing who should be charged or not charged.
That is a post-Watergate norm.
Yes.
So among them are some of the things we've already talked about.
One is this idea that you neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.
And that is to protect the reputation of someone who's investigated who might never be charged with a crime.
Another of these principles of federal prosecution, which provide a number of factors that prosecutors should consider when deciding whether to exercise their discretion to bring a case.
What is the public safety benefit of the charges?
What is the deterrent effect on other would-be criminals?
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