STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Elliot Williams has been listening with us. He is a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. Welcome back.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS: Hey. Good to talk to you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Good morning. If you were still acting as a prosecutor, could you have made the case for vandalism here?
WILLIAMS: I absolutely could not, Steve, and quite frankly, if I tried, I'd be risking my law license, to be honest, because I would be making claims in court that are not supported by fact or law. Look, the standard for vandalism in the District of Columbia is maliciously injuring, breaking or destroying private or public property. And nowhere in any of the president's claims of vandalism was that evidence established, other than simply saying that it was - that this damage was caused by vandals. Nowhere - not once - did anyone credibly pin on Mr. Hearn or any of these three people this idea that they'd committed acts of vandalism, and these were just useless, junk prosecutions.
INSKEEP: I feel that you've identified something that's really important in our political discourse - just to note so that people are aware of it, can notice when it happens. You're telling me that there was no evidence, but the president applied a label to someone - vandal - and just said it again and again and again.
WILLIAMS: That's a really important point here. And I want to be clear - vandalism of federal property or monuments is a very serious thing. People should go to jail if they do it. But we don't live in a world of just ideas or feelings. We live in a world of laws. And if a prosecutor is going to come forward with a serious allegation that someone has done or engaged in an act like this, they should - prosecutors need to, under the law, come forward with where that evidence is of that person's criminal intent to commit that act, and nowhere was that ever said. Certainly not even from Jeanine Pirro at the time that she announced the charges.
INSKEEP: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that she announced charges and then withdrew them because she seems, in recent days, to have done what you would want a prosecutor to do, which is follow the evidence as she sees it. But...
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Why do you think that Pirro spoke so differently at the start, saying, for example, that David Hearn acted violently and forcefully?
WILLIAMS: I - God knows, Steve. I don't know, and I don't think Jean Pirro should be let off the hook here. Of course, it is a good thing and legally and professionally the correct thing to have dropped these charges at the time she did now, but let's be clear, she should never have brought them in the first place.
Now, at the time this all came out, I was out talking about this as well, making the point that if there is evidence, it certainly wasn't made public at the time, but maybe they have it and maybe they could come forward with it and establish that it was the case. We've learned from reading this 20-page memo that she submitted that there never was. And, quite frankly, that memorandum in which she lays out why they're dropping the charges is a master class in throwing your coworkers under the bus. They really take the investigators of this case to task, saying that they failed in any duty to really establish the circumstances of what happened when - in this alleged act of vandalism that wasn't an act of vandalism.
INSKEEP: Now, as we heard in Rachel's story there, President Trump is not happy - says he is not happy. Todd Blanche is the acting attorney general and the nominee to be permanently the attorney general. Is it the attorney general's job in a situation like this to stick up for the prosecutor?
WILLIAMS: To some - that's an excellent question. To some extent. However, it's the attorney general's job to establish that his prosecutors are following facts and law and only bringing cases that are supported or supportable. Now, I will note that a case like this - a relatively small vandalism case in a local jurisdiction - probably isn't the sort that would bubble up to the attorney general of the United States. Now, D.C.'s a little bit different, obviously, 'cause everybody lives in this town here. However, the only things that would really make it to the attorney general's desk would be if you - if an elected official were charged with vandalism or something like that, you know, or a famous actor.
INSKEEP: I'm just wondering if the right action for an attorney general in this situation is to maybe call the president and say, listen, probably you don't want to fire that person. They were acting...
WILLIAMS: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Correctly. Like, educate the president a little bit.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, or simply back off because of the fact, Mr. President, you are putting our prosecutors in a very dangerous position of having to stand up in public and substantiate charges that simply aren't supported in law.
INSKEEP: How would you rate the credibility of the Justice Department overall at this moment?
WILLIAMS: It's really low, Steve. It's - and it's not just with the public or anyone else. It's with judges and courts, which are increasingly finding that they don't trust the things the Justice Department are saying. Judges are starting to put this in rulings, that they just simply can't believe what they're hearing as prosecutors stand up in court, and it's really heartbreaking.
INSKEEP: Elliot Williams is a former deputy assistant attorney general. Elliot, thanks so much.
WILLIAMS: Always great to talk to you, Steve. Take care.
(SOUNDBITE OF FRENIC'S "DEATHLESS AUDIO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
