Department of Justice - Obama Presidency Oral History

...of my colleagues were sworn in at the Justice Department , and we assumed leadership roles jus...

...do you wind up at—? You're sworn in at DOJ headquarters, right? Yes. So how d...

...right? Yes. So how do you wind up at DOJ headquarters? What do you do befor...

...down there together, and we were at the Justice Department pretty much all day, and we hadn'...

...because there was no way to leave the Justice Department , given that all of the Secret Servic...

...photos, but we were perched in the Justice Department , looking down on Pennsylvania Avenue...

...I was the senior political appointee at DOJ for the Obama administration, and w...

...and we just started—the business of the Justice Department doesn't pause. It doesn't stop. I...

...with the business of the day of the Justice Department with Mark Filip, who was the actin...

...then, all of the career people at the Justice Department , they're there doing the work. It'...

...the expectation of the public that the Justice Department will start to reflect, through it...

...our way through it, because at the Justice Department in particular, as an institutiona...

...policy changes are important. And the Justice Department is part of the administration an...

...want to maintain the credibility of the Justice Department , so that you don't have a situatio...

...have a situation where on Monday the Justice Department takes position x on a law, and then o...

...I think in February, around what the Department of Justice 's position or the administration'...

...that shift begin to be reflected in the Justice Department ? How do you all work that out? It'...

...the White House was frustrated that the Justice Department wasn't moving as quickly on some o...

...issues, the institutional needs of the Justice Department with those policy changes. DOMA i...

...statutes. The standard that the Justice Department uses is, if there's a reasonable basi...

...to defend the statute, then that's what DOJ should do. And at that point i...

...legislation, had been defended by the Justice Department , been upheld by several courts, an...

...all of the institutional biases of the Justice Department said, Well, we should continue t...

...that was freshly presented to the Justice Department to not be constrained by precedent bu...

...projects, or directives, but the Justice Department had a very major role in implementin...

...one last question about your time at DOJ . I know that after Attorney Genera...

...W. Bush administration—politicizing the Justice Department . And there were two big focuses o...

...it was very important to bring the Justice Department back to its roots of independence an...

...in the Oval Office to work at the Justice Department . Eric, of course, had been a caree...

...he held numerous different positions at DOJ , and felt very strongly about tha...

...I'll just start with your time in DOJ . Were you at all involved in tha...

...was. I was. There's a component of the Justice Department called the Office of Legal Policy, o...

...White House Counsel's Office and the Justice Department was a really critical one, and in orde...

...one—between the White House and the Justice Department . Bob had not worked in governmen...

...and certainly hadn't worked at the Justice Department . So he, I think, felt that he reall...

...world, and could communicate to the Justice Department in language that the Justice Departmen...

...Justice Department in language that the Justice Department understood, and understood th...

...he asked me, when I was still at the Justice Department , and before it was sort of publicl...

...at first, because at that point I was a Justice Department person, and I was like, “I don't kno...

...and I guess both the White House and DOJ have to decide what to do. So you al...

...a lot of work and consultation with the Justice Department around that and ultimatel...

...concerned about the tradition of the Justice Department in defending statutes, and were w...

...and the institutional norms of the Justice Department ? So there were lots of kind o...

...being very, I would say, lawyerly, and Justice Department -like—and I'll explain what I mean b...

...at it for a long time. I was at the Justice Department for a year, and then I was at the Whit...

...notwithstanding that my background was DOJ , and I think I had a lot of—I really...

...a lot of—I really, fundamentally, was a DOJ and still am considering myself a DO...

...a DOJ and still am considering myself a DOJ person. I knew, because I'd live...

...Beth Gibson. She had been at the Department of Justice with me as well, and she was deepl...

...he served as a career official in the Department of Justice , prosecuting criminal cases an...

...career was in law enforcement at the Department of Justice and as a prosecutor, and it is ...

...your tenure. Yes. When I was at the Department of Justice , I had focused on that area as ...

...work. We had collaborated with the Department of Justice for years on it. Some of the earl...

...I'll say that. Not just within DOJ but throughout a number of Cabine...

...on. As you can imagine, it's not just DOJ . It's the Department of Education...

...were going to live on long after the DOJ response would have moved on, or woul...

...is forty percent of the budget of the Department of Justice . That is a lot of money. So ther...

...things that were happening within the Department of Justice in order to try to institute some o...

...was the decision to locate it in the Justice Department instead of the Pardon Attorney'...

...The Pardon Attorney's Office is in the Justice Department . Oh, okay. Was there some differenc...

...AG Holder started this—was using DOJ funds to give grants to polic...

...our national security. So both DOJ , DHS [Department of Homelan...

...was set up as a new component of the Department of Justice . That was a lot of their mandate—t...

...appropriations bills. Said that none of DOJ 's money can be used to fund thi...

...it. And we spent a lot of time, both at DOJ and DHS, trying to come up wit...

...aware were you and other people in the Justice Department at the time of this rising, mor...

...that were taking place inside DOJ to put into effect new protections fo...

...Obergefell was decided. Those of us in DOJ , in main, Justice and in the U...

...came down to be ready. Part of what DOJ was tasked with doing was, let's fin...

...when the administration turned over, DOJ stopped supporting him, and the cas...

...the intelligence community of the Department of Justice , which is the FBI and my nationa...

...[Inspector General] sends a referral to DOJ , and says to us in essence, “A numbe...

...oversight committees that look at DOJ were calling me and saying, “Can yo...

...casts doubt on the independence of the Department of Justice , which is a department that I love. S...

...that was what it's all about. The Department of Justice , Civil Rights Division, is abou...

...efforts during that first term in the DOJ to remove discriminatory policies fo...

...with these other parts of the DOJ and coordinating to figure out how bes...

...resistance to working at all with the Department of Justice . What was the typical reaction o...

...a consent decree, or you've got the Justice Department doing an investigation, it's you...

...cases figured out that the Department of Justice , Civil Rights Division, was thei...

...was, Donald Trump was running the Justice Department . Bill Barr was not the people'...

...there was an independence between the Justice Department and the White House that is critica...

...of that. What kind of leader of the DOJ was Eric Holder? Well, he always ha...

...issues or stories from your time at DOJ that you wanted to make sure that w...

...him, “I'm proud of what I did at the Justice Department . I suspect there will be Republican...

...because of the work you've done at the Justice Department . We need that similar mindset at th...

...The majority of my career was spent at DOJ , and going back there to repair tha...

...work as a federal prosecutor and in the Department of Justice , and then your work as Maryland'...

...We had the disability docket at DOJ and DOL, a lot of overlap there. So i...