Carol Leonnig

So I want to start by saying there is no comparison between Merrick Garland and Pam Bondi in terms of the way they ran the Department of Justice.

But it's important to note one guy was an institutionalist trying to protect its independence from the White House and its credibility.

And the other says basically Donald Trump gives me my –

orders in the morning and I follow them.

So what we learned in Injustice in our reporting for the book was kind of made my hair stand up, which was that starting in December of 2020, a little known team of investigators at the National Archives were noticing that these fake elector certificates had been sent into the archives and to the Senate, and that they all looked boilerplate, phony, bogus, and they also

looked the same, coordinated, right?

And they came from swing states where a bunch of Republicans from those states, party officials said that they were...

the sworn electors, which was false.

And they said that Trump had won the election, which was also false.

So these investigators at the National Archives went to the Department of Justice and said, hey, not sure, but this looks like a conspiracy.

This looks like a potential crime at the base, like mail fraud, wire fraud.

They submitted things that were bogus.

What was their intent?

DOJ is in the middle of investigating the riots and a prosecutor in the U.S.

Attorney's Office in D.C.

eventually gets back to the National Archives investigators and says, yeah, we don't see a case here.

So that was the first missed opportunity because they could have started looking there.

It's not like you're looking at a violent riot and you're going to get to eventually building the brick one by one as Merrick Garland wanted to do.

You're not going to get from the rioters

to the fake electors coordinated in swing states.