Dave Davies

And the interesting thing is that once he, you know, takes on that task, he does impanel a grand jury.

But he doesn't have an army of investigators, right?

No agents assigned.

And in order to get agents permission, right, to subpoena witnesses and records, there's a whole other battle, right, to get the FBI to go along.

And I wonder how much of this arguably excessive caution on the part of senior FBI officials and some senior justice officials is attributed to the experience during Trump's first term when he intervened directly.

I mean he wanted them to indict the former deputy director of the FBI and he wanted them to give Roger Stone a lower sentence and there were real battles over that.

People felt bruised I guess.

We need to take a break here.

Let me reintroduce you.

We are speaking with Carol Linig and Aaron Davis.

They're veteran investigative reporters.

Their new book is Injustice, How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department.

I spoke to them last Thursday.

We'll hear more of our conversation after this short break.

This is Fresh Air.

You know, while the Justice Department was gearing up an investigation into the possibility of a conspiracy by Donald Trump and allies to undermine the results of the 2020 election, the Congressional Select Committee on January 6th was moving full steam ahead, headed by Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson of Mississippi.

The Justice Department's prosecutors were way behind at some point when they realized they really wanted to investigate this.

They approached the committee staff and said, how about sharing with us all of your interviews with people so far?

What was their response?

I remember moments in those televised hearings of the select congressional committee like when we heard about these dramatic meetings in the Oval Office in December of 2020 when Donald Trump was trying to reverse the results of the election and he wanted to appoint Jeffrey Clark, this conservative attorney who didn't really have the experience to lead the Justice Department.