Preet Bharara on ’Doing Justice'

of Wall Street. His book is entitled Doing Justice, a Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law, and he joins me now in our New York studios, Thanks for coming in, Thanks for having so. The Southern District has long been known for those in legal circles as the most independent of federal prosecutor's offices. Now the general public is starting to hear that is it independent enough to bring the investigations into President Trump and those

around him to a proper conclusion without interference? Yeah? I think so. I mean, if you if you look at the book and read it, it has a lot of interesting things to say about the criminal justice system and about decision making. But it also reveals a lot about the character, the philosophy the people in that office, how they deliberate over decisions, how they decide to bring a case, how they decide when appropriate and in the interests of justice,

to walk away from a case. So they have an aggressive streak, an independent streak, but they also know color within the lines. They don't do things that are inappropriate.

They don't defy Department of Justice policy or law. And as we've been talking about for a lot of weeks and months now, whether you like it or not, there is a policy in the Justice Department, in an opinion at the Office of Legal Counsel, the Special Subdivision of the Justice Department, that says you cannot indict or prosecute a sitting president. So I don't think that the Southern District that I let for almost eight years will do that while the president is in office. But short of that,

I think they'll follow the facts where they lead. They'll do with the law permits, and they'll be aggressive and fearless about it. But also fair is there a lot of interference from main Justice when you're at the Southern District and you're running the office. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say interference that. You know, people want to know what's going I don't know what's going on. You look the

Southern District of New York. Your attorney's office is within the Justice Department, and there's a healthy back and forth between the mothership in Washington and the office is like the Southern District and others. But you know, people may not appreciate this. The attorney generally United States is confirmed by the Senate, nominated by the President. But so is the US attorney. It's not like the Attorney General at

the Justice Department picks all the US attorneys. The US attorneys are picked by the President and confirmed by the Senate. So of course we're part of the fabric of the Justice Department, and there has to be you know, back and forth, and you comply with the department policies and you make sure people are in the loop. But the system itself, you know, creates a form of independence because every single unitate attorney, for good reason, is independently appointed,

independently confirmed by the Senate. And the presumption is that that US attorney knows within reason what you know, the priority should be and the best way to use resources in that particular district. If you have a lot of organized crime, then you should be spending money on that and resources on that. If you have you know, cyber crime in your district or terrorism, then you should be

you know, allocating resources to those things. And generally speaking, I will say that the the Washington folks generally left us alone. Al Right. Speaking of when you're u S attorney, you oversaw a crackdown on insider trading that was well publicized. Why did those cases gained so much attention? Did they merit that much attention? Probably not. Actually, maybe this will surprise some people. I would go on programs like this and I would be asked to press conferences like, go,

why are you so focused on inside of training? I said, I'm not, I said, you are. You know, we have a handful of people who do the insider trading cases, like we had a handful of people doing public corruption cases, a handful of people doing mafia cases, a handful of people doing gang cases. The gang cases didn't get the same attention, you know. Nope, nobody ever died and inside a trading case in the gang cases. In the gang investigations,

they did, but there's no Bloomberg Radio on gangs. There's no CNBC not to mention your competitors. I apologize, so I would draw that, but but there are no there's no twenty four hour networks that cover gang violence or narcotics violence or terrorism unless there's an attack. So I think the interest in the inside of trading cases stemmed

from sort of, you know, a mysteriousness about them. I think there's a purin interest on the part of people, whether it's good or bad, when wealthy, privileged people break the law, and when they break the law in particular way, which is by telling secrets. I means are trading as a prime of secrets. And there were some salacious things that were not relevant to the legal case, but they came out during some of those cases, in those trials

that I think captured people's interests. I mean, there's a reason why people watch the Showtime Serious Billions. It's not portrays the United States Attorney for the Southeriders of New York, and in various ways it is highly highly fictionalized, but you know, people are interested. It appears in seeing, you know, the takedown of healthy, privileged people who decide that the amount of money they have is not enough. You know, we we charge people who had a billion dollars not enough.

They cheated to get a little bit more money. There's something fascinating about that. And when you sent the word out that, you know, Wall Street, if you're listening, we're coming for you. Basically, do you think that frightened people into behavior? I don't know if I don't know if it frightened people. The the reason I said something like

that was before my time. My predecessors decided to use a pretty aggressive tactic, which makes a lot of sense when you realize that inside of trading is basically a crime of communication. You communicate an inside tip to someone else and then they act on it, they trade on it.

So we use wire taps, fully authorized by the statute, hadn't been used before because, as I say in the book, you know, lots of things seemed very obvious after the fact, and you know, creative people who preceded me in the Southern District began to use wire taps to pursue insider trading cases, insider trading conspiracies. We pursued those further, and we built on those, and we use it ourselves and

I thought it was important for people in Oh. You know, you can decide to make a particular trade, you can decide to convey inside information, but just be aware law enforcement is listening and you want to have a turn effect on folks. That's the correct quote. I got it a little bit wrong there, paraphrasing. So you reached your dream job really early in your career. I did. So

what's your next dream job? I know you're podcast now, I know, and you're teaching at m Y you but what about a judge ship or u S attorney, the

attorney general under a perhaps a different president. I'm spending my time telling people about the book, how they should read it, if they care about justice as they care about truth, if they understand that what's happening in America is unusual and we've got to get back to basics and first principles, and if they want some page turning stories about inside our training cases like you mentioned mafia cases, terrorism cases. We had a case once involving the so

called accountable cop. And so I want to emphasize that it's not a book for lawyers or for people involved in criminal justice, but for everybody who has to make a decision about things West, under stand what truth is and who likes a good story it is. And as I mentioned to you before we started on air that my favorite quote is from your daughter who said, Daddy stopped being such a drama queen or words for those effects. Understand what that means and why that's in the book.

You'll have to buy one exactly Before we go, one last question, what do you regret? What did you not do in your role as as U S attorney. I don't have any particular regret, which is not to say we did everything perfectly, which is not to say I didn't make mistakes. I mentioned some things in the book where I thought, you know, maybe I I spoke a little too valuably about a couple of things. Um, but you know, I feel I feel pretty good about the tenure.

We didn't We didn't get a conviction in every case. We didn't bring every case that maybe justice would have required because we didn't have the evidence. But overall, I'm proud of the fact that we we kept up the principle in that place, which I say in the book repeatedly that was told to me, and I said to them that the dimission of the places to the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons and only that, and to the extent people lived up to that, and

I'm very proud of it. The book is doing justice of prosecutor's thoughts on crime, punishment and the rule of law. That's pret Berrard, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg