Terry Gross

Well, we need to take another break, so I'm going to reintroduce you.

My guest is Andy Kroll, an investigative reporter for ProPublica covering the Justice Department and the judiciary.

He has an article in The New Yorker in collaboration with ProPublica about Russell Vogt titled Donald Trump's Deep State Wrecking Ball.

We'll be right back.

This is Fresh Air.

As part of your investigation into Russell Vogt, you got access to court records and you did interviews with people close to Vogt.

And you learned that Doge was guided more than was previously known by Russell Vogt.

What did you learn about his role that we didn't know before?

Was Russell Vogt the person behind Doge?

Was it his idea to start that?

Yeah, they're opposite in terms of approaches.

You know, Musk had the chainsaw.

And Russell Vogt is more of a technocrat.

Like, he knows all the ins and outs of congressional rules.

He drafts executive orders.

He works to break the rules by knowing the rules.

But, you know, one of the outcomes of Doge is a lot of lawsuits.

Can you talk more about that goal of creating laws to see how far you can push things and still, you know, and maybe violate law or push law and still be able to get away with it?

And in terms of the shutdown that we're experiencing now, one of Vought's plans when he was drafting his plans for a second Trump term was to use shutdowns as a way to accomplish his political goals.

So you gave us one example.