Carol Leonnig
speaker
372 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 6 Nov
Carol Leonnig’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 2.
Appearances
The Bulwark Daily · Carol Leonnig and Robert Putnam: Lies and Moral Obligations · 12 Feb 2025
podcast
here he is threading this needle of not getting fired, but assuring his staff that he's not going to let them be illegally fired. And he's going to make, he didn't say these words, but between the lines and all of the memos he's been sending, staying in enormous contact with the staff, you know, large, all agency emails, he has said in a way, I support you. I value your service.
And I'm not going to let Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, fire you unless he goes through his paces.
So there's a lot that's gotten a buzzsaw taken to it in the Department of Justice's arsenal to fight corruption at home and abroad. And abroad, the FCPA is really about like American businessmen and women and companies and lobbyists can't bribe governments abroad to get their fork in that country.
we want to avoid corruption of other countries and we want to avoid aiding and abetting it and encouraging it because it's bad for us. It's bad for those countries, but that, tool is basically taken off the table for the government. And it's super worrisome. There are other executive orders by Pampandi, particularly about FARA.
That's the one where you're supposed to register as an agent of a foreign government if you're lobbyists for them. That enforcement tool is less worrisome, even though that's been neutered as well, is less worrisome to many of the sources that I speak to.
But foreign corrupt practices, you know, this has been a mainstay for keeping our city on a hill modeling as a country and demanding it of other countries. And so what's funny to me, funny is not the right word. What's ironic to me is this is what Trump wanted in 2017. And I reported on this in a book that I wrote with my colleague, Phil Rucker, a very stable genius.
Trump had basically confronted Rex Tillerson, not really part of the Justice Department firmament. He was the Secretary of State. And while they're sitting together talking, Trump says, look, I want to get rid of this Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, this bribery statute. It's just not a level playing field for American business people because they can't bribe. And that is so classic Trump, right?
Let's level the playing field so everybody can crime. And Tillerson, as I reported at the time, was aghast. First, he was saying, I'm your Secretary of State. Second, that's a law, so I can't undo it. And third, it's really great that we have that protection, that anti-bribery statute.
So Trump eventually forgot somewhere along the line, forgot that this was a huge priority of us because he kind of hit that roadblock with Rex Tillerson, though he may have tried to bring it up other places. It didn't go anywhere. But boom, here we are, Trump 2.0, and it's happening.
You know, what you said just made me think about the lens through which we watch Donald Trump, which is a person who's unapologetically transactional and a real estate investor who thinks about acquiring things. And now, you know, Greenland, Canada, Gaza, and a person who who isn't thinking about sort of the model of America, but is thinking of the model of Donald Trump.
And that's where we are leaning right now as a country.
Thank you, Tim, for shining a light.
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