Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Elliot Williams:

When you hire people who are unfit for the jobs they have, they’re not in good physical shape, they’re too old. You incentivize them behaving in a bad way by paying them gobs of money. Big civil rights violations are going to occur on a wide scale and we are seeing it now.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Elliot Williams. He’s a lawyer and legal analyst for CNN. Previously, he served as Assistant Director for Legislative Affairs at ICE and Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at DOJ. Now, Elliot is out with his first book, Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York’s Explosive ’80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation. He joins me to break down how ICE has evolved under the Trump administration and why the aftermath of Renee Good’s deadly shooting in Minneapolis is unprecedented. Then I’ll answer your questions about President Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act. The tariffs Trump wants to impose on European countries that oppose American control of Greenland and the State Department’s font change for official documents. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. What has happened to the leadership of ICE? Elliot Williams draws on his years working for the agency to opine. Elliot Williams, my friend, welcome to the show.

Elliot Williams:

Thank you so much for having me, my brother. Good to see you.

Preet Bharara:

So I’ve hired a lot of people over the years, both in the US Attorney’s Office and in other places. And I’m very proud of the brood overall. I must say, and people can speculate, I’m not proud of all of them. Proud of you, my friend.

Elliot Williams:

Aw.

Preet Bharara:

We worked together way back, way back in the days of, would you call them the aughts?

Elliot Williams:

The aughts. It was the aughts.

Preet Bharara:

The aughts. It was the aughts. I started in the Senate Judiciary Committee for the Senior Senator from New York in 2005.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

I think we hired you to come on in 2007.

Elliot Williams:

That’s correct.

Preet Bharara:

And one of the things I always appreciated, especially now, and especially, especially as we talk and have this conversation today about the fact that we all had different portfolio items for the Senate Judiciary Committee, and happily you had immigration and ICE.

Elliot Williams:

Oof. Yes.

Preet Bharara:

So we’re going to call upon that expertise and also your expertise as a high ranking official, not only within ICE some years ago, before it was its current incarnation, we should make that clear, but literally in the job of legislative affairs. So I’m going to get to that moment, but let me first talk about, or at least mention what we’re going to spend a good amount of time talking about later in the show. Congratulations, sir, on your new book. It’s very hefty. For the YouTube audience, I’m going to hold it up. Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York’s Explosive ’80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation, Elliot Williams. We’re going to come back to that, but congratulations on the book.

Elliot Williams:

Thank you, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

How’s it feel?

Elliot Williams:

It’s intense. You know how it goes. That first week is intense. It’s a lot of media. The hard thing about it is that everybody asks, “Oh my God, is it really exciting?” There’s no one day when you’re done. It’s like you hand in a draft and then a couple of weeks later you got this and then that and then promotion and this and edits. And there’s never a feeling of closure. It’s just constantly going. But yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Well, except that it’s in print. And then there’s a point-

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, it’s out. Yeah, it’s…

Preet Bharara:

… after which they tell you you can’t make changes. And so that’s one point for closure, Elliot.

Elliot Williams:

Pencil’s down, man. Pencil is down.

Preet Bharara:

Right. We’re going to come back to this book because it’s in the news. Could you explain a couple of basic things first without reference to current moments and current events in Minneapolis or elsewhere? What is ICE and what is its mission?

Elliot Williams:

Okay. ICE’s mission, it’s the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s in two buckets. There’s immigration enforcement, obviously, and customs. Now, what’s interesting is that they were smooshed together in 2003. The customs enforcement wing of ICE has never wanted immigration associated with them. They’ve thought… No, they have.

Preet Bharara:

They want to have their own building.

Elliot Williams:

Preet, in 2018, a lot of the top brass and guys that I worked with and women too, the top sort of special agents in charge, a term that’s been used on this show before, the folks that run the regional offices, wrote a letter to the secretary asking to be broken off as a separate agency because of the fact that immigration was tainting their law enforcement mission. It was making them look bad when they were trying to do whether it was aliens smuggling or customs enforcement issues or whatever. So really ICE is the nation’s interior immigration enforcement agency.

Preet Bharara:

I think that alcohol wrote a letter to ATF saying it wanted to be separated from tobacco. And fire…

Elliot Williams:

And firearms.

Preet Bharara:

No, I think alcohol was okay with firearms, but they were like anti-tobaccos. They wanted to be AF.

Elliot Williams:

Tobacco was commoner. Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Which has other meanings, which has other urban dictionary meanings as well. Okay. Is the mission of ICE today, at least as articulated and publicly embraced, the mission, not the execution of that mission, but is the mission the same today, Elliot, as it was a number of years ago when you worked at the agency?

Elliot Williams:

On paper, yes. Literally the mission is ICE is the nation’s interior enforcement agency, not border enforcement. Remember the borders are literally the lines that go around the country. The mission on paper is the same. They should be doing the same thing. Full stop.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So what in the hell has happened to ICE and what does it feel like to be an alum of that agency, given its plummeting support among the public?

Elliot Williams:

Yeah. It’s so funny, Preet, when someone who was an executive of the Obama ICE is looking at your actions going, “Whoa, we think you’re going pretty far right now,” because of the excesses, at least in terms of the number of people being removed from the country under the Obama administration. This is something different. Now, Preet, I think the biggest problem that ICE confronts or cause of ICE’s woes right now is actually the lack of a meaningful sense of oversight from Congress. The fact that there is nobody watching the agency to say, “Too far, too much civil rights violations, not spending money effectively, not hiring good people.” That’s not there. And that is something that even in the worst days for many people of Obama immigration enforcement, at least there was a critical Congress led by Democrats really holding the agency accountable.

When you hire people who are unfit for the jobs they have, they’re not in good physical shape, they’re too old, you incentivize them behaving in a bad way by paying them gobs of money and give them a mission that the government is simply not equipped to do. We are not equipped to remove a million people from the country a year just in terms of the infrastructure that exists. When that happens, big civil rights violations are going to occur on a wide scale and we are seeing it now. Congress needs to step in and say, too much, enough.

Preet Bharara:

So I hear you on Congress in the same way that you and I and others have criticized Congress for giving a blank check to the president on various matters, but it still is the case that the agency or the president or whatever institution you’re talking about has a duty and responsibility to police itself. The first thing is they’re supposed to do their job. Now, putting aside where Congress has fallen short-

Elliot Williams:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

… or been absent, what’s happened to the leadership of ICE? Does it rot from the top or has it been a creep over time? This is a sudden change in Trump too. What’s been the evolution or devolution?

Elliot Williams:

I don’t think it’s creep over time. I really don’t, because when I talk about special agents in charge and sort of the executive level, and you’ve spent a long time in law enforcement, a lot of those folks traverse presidential administrations and stay at agencies for 20, 25 years. And a lot of the workforce is largely the same. It is the political leaders of the White House and the agency that have put an aggressive extreme mission on the agency. And I keep getting back to this million people a year, because it’s a big deal. When you talk about the fact that even at its height, the Obama administration was removing 400,000 people from the country a year, which is a remarkable number. That is an enormous number of people, many of whom are not the kinds of serious criminals that you’re being told that they are, and then say, “Well, you now need to triple or quadruple that.” That’s when you see the problem. And that’s coming directly from the White House, quite frankly, from the campaign trail and on.

Preet Bharara:

Remind me what years you were at ICE.

Elliot Williams:

I was there from 2009 to 2013.

Preet Bharara:

And as I mentioned, you worked in legislative affairs, which meant that you were one of the people at a high ranking level who were supposed to be responsive to and responsible to Congress.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And you talked about Congress being supine now. Does ICE just blow Congress off or does Congress blow ICE off or is it mutually a blow off?

Elliot Williams:

No. I think, Preet, in this last 10, 12 months, since President Trump took over in his second term, it’s Congress just gelding themselves and simply not standing up to the president on anything other than Jeffrey Epstein. I think that is the one issue in which there was some bipartisan consensus that what the president was doing was wrong. But Congress has chosen to give the president a blank check on this thing that ostensibly he claims that America wanted tougher borders and strength, stronger immigration enforcement, but I don’t know if Americans really knew that they were getting this. I did, knowing just the numbers and the personnel, I had a sense that the abuses were going to happen and now mess around and find out this is what many people thought they were voting for and maybe even want.

Preet Bharara:

You say… Hold on, Elliot.

Elliot Williams:

Can I say it on Stay Tuned? What can I say?

Preet Bharara:

Did you say mess around? And we can believe that.

Elliot Williams:

I can’t, I don’t… Might be children listening to Stay Tuned with Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Mess around and discover what happens.

Elliot Williams:

Hey, I just…

Preet Bharara:

You can say reap what you sow.

Elliot Williams:

Reap…

Preet Bharara:

Say reap what you sow.

Elliot Williams:

You know I did, I did NPR earlier today, WNYC, local station.

Preet Bharara:

We definitely can’t say…

Elliot Williams:

Well, that’s the thing. She said literally, before saying hello, she’s like, “Don’t swear. Don’t swear.” And I was like, “Oh, shit, okay.”

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s why we have you on a three-day time delay. So I hear this statistic a lot now. I don’t know when this came to pass, if it was under your tenure, Elliot, or not, or during your tenure. When did ICE become the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country?

Elliot Williams:

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, DHS is the mothership that oversees the whole agency is a behemoth.

Preet Bharara:

New agency.

Elliot Williams:

Well, 2003.

Preet Bharara:

Combination of 22 other agencies, right?

Elliot Williams:

Yes. And it’s a behemoth. And quite frankly, I’ve long said DHS is too big to be successfully managed by anyone, let alone a governor from a state that’s not a border state and has no experience in law enforcement, Kristi Noem. And to give folks who don’t, listeners who may not have a sense as to what I’m talking about here, remember that under the roof of the Department of Homeland Security, you have the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, ICE, citizenship services, and a whole host of other agencies that have nothing to do with each other. And like I said, don’t really want to be partnered with each other. And then one person is managing all of it. It’s too big and too bloated and its mission is all over the place. And so that also affects how an entity like ICE is managed.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned people are not really necessarily up to the job?

Elliot Williams:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Training, we’re just going to pick on ICE for a little bit.

Elliot Williams:

Oh, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And see if what we’re saying is fair or not, because I think as an alum of the institution, someone who was there, you don’t have, I don’t think, an automatic need to want to bash the agency. And you’re an alum also of the Department of Justice, I should say, and of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as I mentioned. It hurts a little bit to see an agency that you served in the public interest as a public servant in government for a number of years fall down as we’re seeing the Department of Justice fall down and as we’re seeing ICE fall down. What’s up with the training over there, Elliot?

Elliot Williams:

Well, I don’t know what’s happening now. Now, under normal circumstances, they would get training at, you know the acronym FLETC, Preet, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center over immigration law, firearms, things like driving.

Preet Bharara:

Rolls off the tongue.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, FLETC, flexes, physical fitness. And in theory, that’s what they should be getting. But as we all know, we’ve read the reports that some of those standards have certainly relaxed. They’ve raised the age limit. Literally, the least interesting Superman of all the people who’ve played the role, Dean Cain, claimed to have been named an ICE, or at least a border patrol agent, suggesting that at least the age limits or the age requirements were being relaxed. Well, for law enforcement work, you want people, you know this very well, you want people who certainly are in physical shape, certainly have the academic or educational requirements, but also the most important firearms training and basic legal training, just understanding when they might be violating someone’s rights, what broadly, they’re not attorneys, but what broadly is protected First Amendment activity that they can’t get in the way of all of those things. If only they were getting that and we could be confident that they were, but the agency just simply isn’t transparent about any of these things and simply it appears just bringing folks on for the sake of making the agency bigger.

Preet Bharara:

You’ve made reference to this and the administration likes to compare itself to the Obama administration in terms of deportations and people sent back out of the country. Is that a fair comparison?

Elliot Williams:

No.

Preet Bharara:

What was the difference between what Obama did? Because you hear this all the time in debates and especially on cable television debates. What was the difference between what Obama did and what Trump is doing?

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, I think the big one… So the biggest example is proudly removing people from the United States to countries in which they’d have no background. So having a Jamaican immigrant picked up somewhere and apprehended and then deported to Congo or deported to a country in Africa in which they have no ties, no language proficiency or anything like that, they are allowed to do it. The law simply says that people need to be removed from the United States, not that they need to be removed to their home, but my God, what rank in humanity it is to try to deter people from coming to the United States by hanging over their heads the idea that if we catch you, we’re going to remove you to a developing country in a part of the world you’ve never been to with a language you don’t speak away from your family and you’re on your own. I mean, that’s the kind of action that makes clear that the cruelty is the point in a feature, not a bug of their approach to one deterrence, but also just carrying out immigration enforcement.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask you about a particular issue that we get asked about all the time, the ICE agents wearing masks and no identity. So is that a new thing, Elliot?

Elliot Williams:

It’s a new thing to me. I don’t have any knowledge of agents ever routinely wearing masks and even…

Preet Bharara:

You would know that, right? Five and a half years there?

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, I think so… Right. And again, maybe this is gaslighting. I’m checking my own, God, did I miss it? Did I not know? Did I not see it? And it just boggles my mind. I don’t know of law enforcement agencies routinely covering their faces. And the idea that, well, merely by showing their faces, they will be doxxed, therefore we have to hide their faces routinely. That is such nonsense. It is so ridiculous simply on account of the fact that if anyone’s doxing, that itself is a crime and we should target the doxers and apprehend them. But this idea that merely showing your face when engaging in law enforcement cannot happen is ridiculous.

Preet Bharara:

What was the major issue or the major set of issues you dealt with in responding to Congress in the Obama years?

Elliot Williams:

Oh, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

It was a workplace enforcement or something else?

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, so that wonderful question. So no, the big one…

Preet Bharara:

Well, I thank you, Elliot.

Elliot Williams:

The big one, and right when we came in, in 2009, ICE’s approach to worksite enforcement was to go to large places where people who are unlawfully present in the country would be meat packing plants, farms, and so on, and round people up there, check their immigration status, and detain and remove a lot of them. It was called worksite enforcement.

Preet Bharara:

And some people would say, “That’s cruel.” Is that not cruel?

Elliot Williams:

I mean, is it cruel on its face? It’s hard to say. I mean, it doesn’t look good and it’s dehumanizing. People are here to work and people are here to live their lives, right? I just think…

Preet Bharara:

The issue I remember that you and I used to discuss on the committee, and I don’t recall what the track record of Obama was. How about some enforcement actions against the employers?

Elliot Williams:

Very important.

Preet Bharara:

Who are the ones at the top of the food chain who are knowingly and willfully exploiting these folks, or if not exploiting them, at least knowingly and willfully breaking the law, what was the track record there?

Elliot Williams:

Yes, exactly. And so after at least one very high profile worksite enforcement action at, I believe it was a meat packing plant in Washington, Congress, Democrats in Congress really got quite upset and held ICE accountable for it. And ultimately, when I was there, I shifted to exactly what you’re talking about, which is called I-9 enforcement, going to doing audits of the managers, both the owners, the managers, and the people who had the paperwork and were knowingly bringing people into the country unlawfully and paying them to work. Now, that itself is a crime that many administrations choose not to enforce or choose not to prosecute or go after. That really characterized most of the Obama administration’s worksite enforcement for most of that, the eight years there, only that first few months after exactly what you said, the cruelty and aggressiveness of showing up with a van and sweeping people up at the time at their workplace.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to ask you the counterfactual question, the form of which is common. What would have happened if under Obama, ICE had gone and found, as I understand it, an otherwise law-abiding father of three Marines and taken him into custody? What would have been the reaction? You think the Republican Patriots Department of War guys would have said, “Fine, mess around, find out?”

Elliot Williams:

Mess around and be notified of your wrongdoing. You know what I would say that my cynical view is, well, it all particularly depends on the races of the people involved as well.

Preet Bharara:

Wow. Well…

Elliot Williams:

No, Preet, I really, so much of the lens through which all things Obama… It’s not just did Obama do it, it’s did Obama do it to white people? And I just think so much of the debate around immigration and what’s okay and what’s not, just look at who President Trump is prioritizing allowing into the country versus focusing in enforcement on.

Preet Bharara:

Was Obama ejecting a lot of Scandinavians?

Elliot Williams:

Scandinavians have always been welcome in the United States and white South Africans too.

Preet Bharara:

They were raiding IKEA or their IKEAs being raided.

Elliot Williams:

No, but I think in broadest terms, if Obama had done it and it were military or law enforcement, the father of military or law enforcement, I think people would be up in arms. But, Preet, the cynical view is, are they white immigrants or are they not white immigrants? Because that lens, I think, even if it’s not a lens, if it’s just a patina rushed over everything, I just think when applied to all things Obama and all things Democrats generally, but Obama, that I think might characterize some of the day.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Elliot Williams after this. I’m sure you’re getting a lot of questions about the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and the ICE agent that was involved there.

Elliot Williams:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

I’m sure there must have been agent-involved shootings during your tenure. And today on the Insider podcast, Joyce Vance and I, welcome Vanita Gupta, who I know you also know, who was head of the civil rights division for a number of years. And I can’t remember an officer involved shooting in New York City or anywhere in the Southern District of New York or an agent involved shooting, particularly one that resulted in death ever not being investigated.

Elliot Williams:

Absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

In part, for the truth to come out and for accountability to be had, but it was not only good for the victim’s families and also good for the public and also good for the institution, but good for the shooter often.

Elliot Williams:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

So that an understanding could develop as to why a charge wasn’t brought, as opposed to it being swept under the rug and there being professional unjust courtesy extended. From your perspective, given your background, both at DOJ for a number of years and at ICE, how bizarre or not is Todd Blanche’s statement, no investigation here?

Elliot Williams:

Well, it’s not bizarre in that it is what I’ve come to expect from Todd Blanche and-

Preet Bharara:

From these guys, yes, yes.

Elliot Williams:

… from these guys. Yeah. I mean, no, it’s absolutely bizarre. And I’ll add to some of the reasons why these investigations are a good thing. And often what… And I’m sure Vanita said this on the podcast, often the state and locals welcome investigation by the federal government because we want accountability, but we also want to be taken seriously in law enforcement. And whether there’s bad apples or not, whether our folks are doing their jobs lawfully, we think the public ought to know that. But I think a few things make it critical. Number one, there’s a difference between state and federal law, as we know, and the state of Minnesota or anywhere else has important equities that they need to investigate and ought to be a part of any investigation. If Minnesota law was violated in any way, the authorities there have an obligation to investigate it. So that’s one.

Number two, like I said, it’s good for policing for the public to have faith that if officers step out of line, they are going to be held accountable or the public can be informed that, well, this is an action that was lawful and here’s why. And also, finally, involving the state and federal government together in any investigation is good because they just have different resources, different access, different information available to them. And even recognizing that sometimes law enforcement agencies fight with each other, it’s fundamentally a good thing for them to at least attempt to work together. It’s just prejudging it, saying there’d be no investigation is just straight up bonkers, Preet. Par for the course now, but yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So on a scale from not an issue to hugely difficult and challenging to an impossibility, where do you put the likelihood of local authorities in Minnesota conducting a satisfactory and complete and thorough investigation of the shooting?

Elliot Williams:

I would say very high because an investigation need not necessarily happen between now and 2029, and I think…

Preet Bharara:

Okay, eventually, but in the near term…

Elliot Williams:

Oh, no. Zero.

Preet Bharara:

No, zero.

Elliot Williams:

Oh, no. No, no. I mean, no, but I wasn’t trying to be cute there. I mean…

Preet Bharara:

No, I got you. I got you.

Elliot Williams:

In a few years, I mean, granted a lot of the evidence and maybe even people might be unavailable or stale or whatever else, but they can still pursue whether it’s charges for crimes or whatever else down the road. But right now, no, the federal government, if anything, not only will make it difficult to investigate, also actively impede the state’s ability to do good work here.

Preet Bharara:

Well, there’s a lot to think about and watch. Enjoy your commentary, Elliot. You have a particularly poignant perspective, given only that you were at DOJ and on The Hill, but also where you were at ICE. Let’s talk about this book.

Elliot Williams:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

So books are hard things to write.

Elliot Williams:

They are hard.

Preet Bharara:

I know from one personal experience and books about subjects that people may perceive have been covered pretty well, even if not recently, are particularly hard. I think this is an incredibly important subject matter, and it echoes in the present, as you point out at many points in the book, but just why Bernie Goetz? And maybe first, you should explain to folks who Bernie Goetz was and what he did that made him really like for a while in the ’80s, a household name. I think I was 15 years old in Central Jersey and I was telling the team earlier before you came on that it was front page news all the time and the trial was too. You’re a bit younger than I. Were you familiar with Bernie Goetz in real time or not?

Elliot Williams:

Absolutely. And a note that I, or an anecdote that I tell in the preface to the book, my first memory, I was nine at the time of Bernie Goetz, is a story on the nightly news about how the Subway Vigilante, which was the nickname that he’d got knighted with, the subway vigilante was the subject or muse for hip hop songs. And they were playing hip hop songs about this. Literally Bernie Goetz is the least hip hop figure in American history, but was somehow being captured in this art form. Now, I didn’t realize as a kid what a profound statement that was and how… My goodness, let’s think about why literally the blackest form of musical art that we know of today, maybe not now with jazz, but somehow was heralding this person with demonstrated hostility to Black people. Wow, what’s that about? And what is it about him and this story that captivated pop culture and the public and law for so many years?

Preet Bharara:

So now, tell us in 90 seconds and then we’ll elaborate on it who he was and what happened in 1984.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah. So he’s this quirky engineer, bespectacled, runty white guy who had been mugged in 1981 and carried unlawful firearms with him everywhere he went. He was just a continual gun possessor. He bordered a train on December 22nd, 1984. A bunch of Black teenagers from the Bronx were on that train car goofing off, doing pull-ups, asking people for cigarettes. One of them…

Preet Bharara:

What time was it, Elliott?

Elliot Williams:

About 2:00 PM in the afternoon. One of them approached Goetz and either demanded $5, give me $5 or asked, “Hey, can I have five bucks?” Unclear, disputed fact at trial, but immediately Goetz pulled out his firearm, shot all five of them, one of them potentially twice in the chest, paralyzing him from the chest down and giving him brain damage. And then he becomes a cause celeb thereafter.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So going back to the shooting for a moment.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So you’ve mentioned some of the things that are unknown or unknowable or in dispute what the interaction was.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Over what period of time did the shooting happen? In other words, how deliberate was shoot the first guy, shoot the second guy? Explain to folks whether it was a spray of bullets or deliberate moment by moment by moment.

Elliot Williams:

It’s all within the span of under a minute, probably 20 seconds. The first guy, Troy Canty, who approaches him, gets shoots right away, thinking he’s about to be mugged or robbed, which New York law, quite frankly, allowed at the time and still does. Then thereafter, it’s bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. The most that might have happened the most, and this was also in dispute, was bang, bang, bang, bang, pause, you don’t look so bad, here’s another bang. It’s believed that Goetz says, “You don’t look so bad, here’s another,” to Darrell Cabey before.

Preet Bharara:

Because that was a big deal, I’m sure it was splashed across the New York Post, “You don’t look so bad, here’s another.” The evidence of that statement comes from where?

Elliot Williams:

From Goetz himself, he acknowledges in his… He confesses ultimately to the crime up in New Hampshire says he says it. There’s a little bit of a dispute because at least one witness thinks that he paused and said it. All the other witnesses thought that it was bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, but gets acknowledged or at least said, “I told the guy, you don’t look so bad, here’s another.”

Preet Bharara:

So it becomes a cause celeb why? And you spend a good amount of time reflecting on the intersection of crime, punishment, politics, race, et cetera.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And maybe, I don’t know, I remember, I was a teenager. Maybe there were other vigilante shootings like this that didn’t get as much attention. What’s your studied understanding that you describe in the book as to why this became literally household story, household name?

Elliot Williams:

A couple of things. One, New York City was historically rough at the time. As you will remember, many listeners will remember that at the time, New York City had a homicide rate that hovered around 2,000, which is four times what it is today. It was very high, covered in graffiti, litter. Crack was starting to take the city over. And there was a pervasive, and I want to validate this, a pervasive sense of fear among city residents. Many people, Black folks, white folks just felt that the city was really, really rough. And many people saw Bernie Goetz as an Avenger striking back finally on behalf of “Us,” the sort of aggrieved public in New York City. And he did generate a tremendous amount of sym… Tremendous, Preet, from the moment… Even before people knew who he was, he was running and hiding in New Hampshire. And the police tip line was lighting up, but not with tips about the case, literally with praise for the shooter, offers to cover his legal bills and suggestions that he run for mayor.

Preet Bharara:

Remind folks, speaking of mayor, who the mayor was.

Elliot Williams:

Edward Irving Koch born into a then very Jewish South Bronx who ran for office as a liberal with sanity. That was his tagline. And he was pro death penalty, consummate backslapping retail politician. Our friend Maggie Haberman and I have talked about the fact that she believes he was actually Donald Trump the same in a different packaging. No, just the same type of outer borough of New York.

Preet Bharara:

It’s certainly larger than life. Larger than life-

Elliot Williams:

Larger than life. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

… personality.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah. Personality-wise, certainly not on policy.

Preet Bharara:

So on politics for a moment, because everyone’s talking about the new mayor. What was the impact on the mayor’s office and on public officials who had to respond to the controversy and acknowledge the crime problem in a way that it had not been acknowledged before?

Elliot Williams:

Yes. So Koch certainly came out of the gate expressing some sympathy for the victims and some skepticism about Goetz in his action. Koch then started seeing polling out of Queens and Staten Island from the sort of ethnic white folks in those boroughs and started shifting his tone and really making it about public safety. Know that in general, the climate in the city, all of the papers, the Daily News and the New York Post in particular, were vociferous in stating just how bad and unsafe the city was and leaning on pressing politicians to go further. And Koch, it was somewhat of an issue that vexed Koch. It troubled him because of how much heat he was getting over it, but it also gave him a cause to appeal to white, moderate voters around the city. And remember, he wins three terms, including another one after this.

Preet Bharara:

Did white politicians ultimately embrace Bernie Goetz or did they remain ambivalent?

Elliot Williams:

No, not many. Frank Barbaro, who is, I guess, an assembly member out in Brooklyn, I think, or Queens, is one of the few white Democrats to really, really be out there with skepticism of Goetz. Certainly Republican white members of Congress and elected officials were adamantly pro Goetz. Alfonse D’Amato was unabashed in his support saying that we are the oppressed here. We are the aggrieved and so on. And then Black civil rights leaders, of course, uniformly…

Preet Bharara:

Want to name some of them?

Elliot Williams:

Well, sure. I mean, the big one’s Al Sharpton, but Sharpton was remarkably measured in my interviews with him in the book and back then, and back then being the key one. Because Sharpton framed the issue as not being about defending the boys and the individual boys and their conduct. He framed it as being about justice and Goetz. And Sharpton said literally on January 27th, 1985 at a press conference in front of Bernie Goetz’s house, “If those guys did something bad, they should go to jail too. But this is about Bernie Goetz.” But the whole Alton Maddox, C. Vernon Mason, the whole generation of Black New York, Charlie Rangel, Black Mandarins and civil rights leaders were out there on this case in public.

Preet Bharara:

I want to talk about the legal issues.

Elliot Williams:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

Since we’re lawyers here.

Elliot Williams:

We are. You’re a lawyer?

Preet Bharara:

And I’m talking about the lie… I am, on television and on podcasts and in real life.

Elliot Williams:

I know that.

Preet Bharara:

But before we get to that, did you learn new things about the case in excavating it 40 years later?

Elliot Williams:

It’s hard to say because the story of Bernie Goetz is so inseparable for me as a human being right now that it’s hard to know what I knew and didn’t know before. I didn’t re…

Preet Bharara:

Because of the work on the book.

Elliot Williams:

Because of the work on the book. Now, that said, I did not realize the NRA’s role in all this. And I did not realize that the NRA actually hasn’t always been a Second Amendment advocacy organization in its history. And right before this shooting, just a few years before, there was a literal coup within a takeover of the organization by its activist wing that really wanted to focus on the Second Amendment. Bernhard Goetz ultimately provided them with a great poster boy and someone they could rally behind. So that was a big surprise to me. Sharpton’s moderation when speaking about the case also did surprise me. And this isn’t an Al Sharpton appreciation post because I’m quite critical of him in the book as well and some of his activity in the 1980s. However, that was interesting.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So let’s talk about the legal aspects of it and then parallels to today.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Because obviously that’s what’s on people’s minds as they listen to this, I think, whether they’re familiar with the story or not. So Bernie Goetz’s defense was what?

Elliot Williams:

Well, his defense was, let’s allow the playing of his confession.

Bernhard Goetz:

The system, what if, just for example, if people were on the subway system then, what if they? The whole system geared up and went to work against this lawlessness, this atrocity. What if someone else in that subway system were butchered and you think the guys would have been caught? You think it would have been any big thing? It would have been one more statistic, one more statistic. And don’t nod your head yes because you know better. And if you don’t know better, if you don’t know better, you just don’t know New York.

Elliot Williams:

His confession will ultimately exonerate him because people will hear how frightened and terrified and out of his mind he was. That’s point number one.

Preet Bharara:

Sort of interesting, right? Because by definition, when you say confession.

Elliot Williams:

Literally called, you confessed to the thing we’re saying you did. It’s literally… So that’s point number one. And point number two was to vilify the young men. I think everything, the victims, every action that the defense took, starting with putting blow up easels of the guys looking their most thuggish in the courtroom in front of the jury box, just so they could constantly be staring at these images of these four dudes was an attempt to vilify and frighten the jury about these men. So it’s really a twofold strategy.

Preet Bharara:

How long did it take for the trial to commence after the shooting happened?

Elliot Williams:

Oh, my goodness. About two years because they were debating all the way up to the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, the definition of the word reasonableness. And there’s a reason why I have a chapter called reasonably reasonable reasonableness. It’s a very important word in the law.

Preet Bharara:

Can you explain what that is and how that defense worked?

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, sure. It’s…

Preet Bharara:

Because there’s going to be the predicate for asking about some more recent cases.

Elliot Williams:

Oh, sure. So ultimately, when adjudicating violent crime, the question is, were the defendant’s actions reasonable? Well, there was an open question in New York law at the time. Do we mean subjectively reasonable? Does a guy feel it inside?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Elliot Williams:

If he felt it, it’s okay. Or conversely, objectively reasonable. Did he do a thing that we’d expect normal people in society to do? And you sort of smooshed those together. How to smoosh those together was the subject of much litigation that I detail in one chapter of the book, just explaining how we get to the point at which New York crafts its notion of reasonableness. And it’s really, like I said, I said smoosh. That’s truly what it is. It’s a combination of what’s in the guy’s heart and how did other people act and how do we expect.

Preet Bharara:

Can we present sort of a hypothetical spectrum?

Elliot Williams:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

So presumably, it would not be objectively reasonable if you were Bernhard Goetz on the subway and a young man asks you if you have a light and that’s it, right?

Elliot Williams:

It may not even be subjectively reasonable. It’s…

Preet Bharara:

Right. On the other hand, if he’s approached with a drawn firearm, give me all your money or I’m going to shoot you in the head just to build up the extremes, clearly reasonable subjectively and objectively.

Elliot Williams:

Absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

Where on the spectrum did this thing about asking for money and horsing around on the subway fall in the court? And then what do you, Elliot Williams, legal expert, extraordinaire, alum of multiple federal agencies and the first branch of government, where do you personally, having done all this work, come out on the reasonableness of the action?

Elliot Williams:

I actually think the jury, I wouldn’t say they poo-pooed the question of reasonableness, but they were so… A big thing they focused on was that video and saying he was so objectively scared and was out of his mind.

Preet Bharara:

Video of the confession, there’s no video of the shooting?

Elliot Williams:

Oh, there’s no video of the shooting. The video of the confession. Pardon me.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Yeah.

Elliot Williams:

He was just so scared and so out of his mind that let’s disregard him confessing for it. And come on, everybody. We know it was really scary in those subway cars. He’s objectively and subjectively reasonable. I think they just went on vibes and their gut. I really do, and that’s how they defended it. I think in terms of what I believe after having researched all of this, Bernhard Goetz says he acknowledges that it did not feel like a mugging or a threat, just that he knew that one was coming. The mere request for money, he just felt like it was more. He extrapolated based on his own view, based on his own background or whatever else, but he extrapolated and sort of pushed aside any reality in the moment and said, “Regardless of what’s happening here, I just know even if the guy only said hi to me, I just know a mugging is coming.”

And that to me seems both objectively and subjectively reasonable. Even acknowledging how unsafe the subway was, he acknowledged himself. He didn’t feel immediately threatened and many other people on the train themselves said, “Yeah, I didn’t like how the guys were behaving, but all I did was clutch my purse a little tighter and maybe I’ll move to the next car, but a lot of guys goofing off, big deal.”

Preet Bharara:

What about the relevance of the following? Remind folks what evidence there was or wasn’t as to whether Bernie Goetz was a racist.

Elliot Williams:

Well, the big one that there wasn’t was his use of ethnic slurs at a co-op meeting and in 1980 or 1981, and we won’t clean up this neighborhood until we get the S’s and the ends out of here. You can extrapolate what the words are. He said he was just… The guys that they wanted to get out of the neighborhood happened to be Hispanic and Black, and that’s just the word he used. And well, I was high on weed and PCP at that moment and didn’t really know what I was saying. That’s his justification, did not come up at trial and the judge deliberately kept… Now, look, it wasn’t a civil rights trial.

Preet Bharara:

Should it have come in at trial?

Elliot Williams:

I don’t think so. Well, I think you could maybe squint and make a basis for saying that the defendant had a bias, but that’s a minefield.

Preet Bharara:

It’s very, very, very-

Elliot Williams:

Oh, God.

Preet Bharara:

… very prejudicial.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah. So I just don’t…

Preet Bharara:

But the public knew about it, but people who read the New York Post knew about it.

Elliot Williams:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

And how did that affect… I mean, the interesting part of that is, my recollection is, and from your book, it seems that that didn’t really necessarily affect people’s views of the act.

Elliot Williams:

No.

Preet Bharara:

That the actor himself was very likely a racist.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah. I mean, one of the jurors whom I interviewed and still writes me notes about all this, really they take sort of a moralistic, lofty notion of themselves, which they showed their jurors, but how race wasn’t a factor, how they didn’t consider it, how they didn’t think about race, how, my goodness, inconceivable. And we were just looking at the facts that were presented to us and he felt scared in that moment, full stop. And I don’t think there’s any getting any juror who worked on this case off of that notion of how it went down.

Preet Bharara:

Remind people of the makeup of the jury racially.

Elliot Williams:

It was mixed. There was, I believe, two Black people on the jury out of the 12, I believe. It’s in the book. I just don’t have it off the top of my head. The more notable statistic is that half of the jury had been victims of crime and a few of them having been victims of crime on the subway, leading Gregory Waples, the prosecutor to say and believe that it was actually a fool’s errand to even try the case once he saw what the makeup of the jury was.

Preet Bharara:

And so what was the result?

Elliot Williams:

He’s ultimately convicted of one gun possession offense. He’s convicted of…

Preet Bharara:

What’s the defense to that gun possession offense?

Elliot Williams:

None.

Preet Bharara:

There’s really not a defense to that.

Elliot Williams:

None. He acknowledged that he bought it, he acknowledged that he had it, that he carried it, and that’s the law. I mean, if someone’s carrying a gun outside of their house and it’s not a lawful firearm, he doesn’t have a permit, it’s illegal, right?

Preet Bharara:

And what was the consequence for him?

Elliot Williams:

He ends up going to jail for eight months total. He’s sentenced to a year, spends eight months, and gets two extra weeks for fighting about razors with wardens.

Preet Bharara:

So Elliot, what’s the lesson of the Bernie Goetz case?

Elliot Williams:

I think there’s a few lessons to take away. The figures of our childhood are not caricatures. They are not cartoons. And in fact, the best piece of praise I feel like I’ve gotten for the book Five Bullets is what came from the New Yorker commenting on my interview with Bernie Goetz, my conversation with him, where they said that if he does not come across sympathetically, which he does not, he comes across as three-dimensional. And I, as a journalist, as a lawyer, as a thinker, wanted to round out this entire story. It’s not a reductive, these guys were thugs or these guys were angels, or Bernie Goetz was just defending himself or… So it’s far more complex, number one.

Number two, the kinds of issues that characterized 1980s New York still live with us today in different ways. We still are debating safety in cities. You think Minneapolis and National Guard troops are not about what those on high think about how people live in cities and demonizing life in cities. So I think we’re still fighting about race. We are still fighting about vigilantism and where is the point at which it’s okay to step out and violate the law. And what’s old is new in many ways with the events back then and the events now, and it all ties together.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s a good transition to some of the cases that are in the headlines the last couple of years. I could list a number of them for you. There was another incident on the subway not that long ago that people said call to mind Bernie Goetz.

Elliot Williams:

Yep.

Preet Bharara:

Do you want to mention that case or a different case?

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, sure. I mean, I start the book with the Daniel Penny case where Daniel Penny…

Preet Bharara:

Just remind people Daniel Penny.

Elliot Williams:

Yeah, of course. Daniel Penny, as you might recall, is an ex Marine and college student who was on a subway car when Jordan Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator, but was not in costume, just came on screaming.

Preet Bharara:

And Daniel Penny, of course, was white.

Elliot Williams:

Jordan Neely Black, came on screaming, threatening, or at least frightening passengers. Daniel Penny comes up, chokes him, and ultimately he dies. Jordan Neely dies.

Preet Bharara:

Because he places him in a choke hold for many minutes.

Elliot Williams:

Many minutes. There’s a four-minute video that many people have seen. And quite frankly, we only see four minutes. Who knows how long it was going on prior to that. And he’s acquitted of criminally negligent homicide on a lot of these questions of reasonableness that we’ve talked about through this conversation.

Preet Bharara:

And is there a through line from Bernie Goetz to that case or is it totally different?

Elliot Williams:

The case law that governs it is identical. It’s State versus Goetz being the big case that sets the definition, at least initially, as to what’s reasonable. I think there is a through line in that there is a championing of the conduct that they engaged in. They were both celebrated for the action. Within days of getting acquitted, Daniel Penny is in Donald Trump’s box at the Army Navy football game in Philadelphia. Within days, he has a job from Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm. He got celebrated and patted on the back. Now, a lot of that’s social media and the ability to excite people, but that’s the huge similarity. And it’s also people perceiving that the subway is a safe place that individuals need to step up and try to defend on their own, even when that involves violating the law, potentially.

Preet Bharara:

What do you make of human nature in the following sense? And you’ve alluded to this and you talked about it in the book because it’s very wise. And it’s the pension for people to look at someone else in these extraordinary circumstances who was undertaking extraordinary action, whether it’s the ICE agent shooting Ms. Good or Bernie Goetz shooting those young men or Daniel Penny or whatever the case may be. And it’s a binary choice. They’re either a hero who you invite to your box or to the White House or that you toast or you buy a T-shirt depicting him, or total villain, racist, not deserving of any consideration at all when it is always the case. It’s always the case, virtually always the case, that there’s complexity and nuance and people are complicated characters and maybe the action was mostly bad or mostly not, or bad, but not lawful or unlawful, but not criminal, or there are various gradations in between. Anything you’ve learned about why that is, why we have to pick a villain or hero and we can’t be more complicated than that?

Elliot Williams:

I think number one, people have fantasies about vigilantes. Part of what made Bernhard Goetz so appealing is it was in the mold of Paul Kersey, the protagonist in the movie Death Wish. And it was New York, it was great, and we all need a hero, number one. And number two, I just think we have to graft race on top of it, Preet. My book covers a lot of different topics and a lot of different layers to all of this. However, what Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse, and even to some extent, Luigi Mangione have in common is they’re white guys. And I just think… Just do a thought exercise, ladies and gentlemen. Just stop and think if any of these men were Black, search yourself, what would you think? And how would you see it differently?

And I know we all, many people reflexively say, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s just the same. It’s just everything’s the same.” Really ask yourself that question. If you’d heard that a Black man had shot a CEO on the street and run away, how would you have reacted to it? If Bernhard Goetz were a Black man who’d shot four white teenagers and run away before turning himself, and how would reflexively knee-jerk. Not, do you think it’s guilty or not, but what’s the first thing you’d think? And I just think society’s very, very quick to have those biases in the back of their minds, but reflexive in denying that they exist.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Look, the great… I’m not sure it was kosher legally, but the great switch in the summation in A Time to Kill where Matthew McConaughey has the jury envisioned the victim of a rape and attempted murder and has them picture that victim. Do you remember the scene? Do you know the scene?

Elliot Williams:

And imagine if she’s white.

Preet Bharara:

Now, imagine if she’s white. And that’s the question you pose. Elliot, congratulations on the book. It’s a real feat, a real accomplishment. It is Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York’s Explosive ’80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Mation by my friend and former colleague twice over, Elliot Williams. Thanks, Elliot.

Elliot Williams:

Goodbye, sir. Thank you so much.

Preet Bharara:

How should New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, respond if the city faces another so called subway vigilante incident? My conversation with Elliot Williams continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. In the bonus for Insiders, Elliot and I discuss why it’s important to listen to people’s fears.

Elliot Williams:

But even if people are improperly scared, they’re still scared and you have to figure out how to deal with that question first and validate it.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Stay tuned. After the break, I’ll answer your questions about President Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, to quell anti-ICE protests in Minnesota, the tariffs Trump wants to impose on European countries that oppose American control of Greenland and the State Department’s font change for official documents. Now, let’s get to your questions. So folks, as I discussed with Elliot, I’ve been watching the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis that have intensified, following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has put the state’s National Guard on standby to support local law enforcement, though as of this taping, Wednesday morning, they have not yet been deployed. Meanwhile, President Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would be a serious escalation, which is an understatement.

Here’s what Trump posted on Truth Social late last week, “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the patriots of ICE who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the Insurrection Act, which many presidents have done before me and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great state.” So we’ve gotten some questions related to the issue. Deborah, for example, sent us an email asking, “Today, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota. Does that mean he will send the military into the streets against US citizens and residents? What, if any, remedies do we have against this if he does it? Can the courts order him to stand down? Can Congress?” Those are a really good series of questions that are on a lot of people’s minds, so thank you for it.

The short answer is the president does have authority here, but it’s not unlimited. As a reminder or by way of background, the Insurrection Act is a 19th century laws, that’s been around for a long time that allows the president in certain narrow circumstances to deploy the military inside the United States to enforce federal law or to respond to some kinds of domestic unrest. There are, in the law, a few broad triggers for when the president may invoke that act. One is when a state requests assistance or when the president determines that unrest has overwhelmed state authorities or is obstructing federal law. Another is when people are being deprived of constitutional rights and the state is unwilling or unable to protect them. Notably, the act repeatedly uses the phrase, “As he considers necessary.” The he obviously refers to the president, which underscores that on this point, unlike some others, Congress did vest in the president broad judgment in deciding when to invoke the powers.

So as a result, the Insurrection Act is an exception to another act that we’ve also talked about on the podcast before, the Posse Comitatus Act. The Posse Comitatus Act, generally speaking, prohibits deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement. You can’t have troops doing police work in the streets of New York or Chicago or anywhere else, but for the exception of the Insurrection Act. So does invoking the act mean troops in the streets against Americans? Well, let’s put it this way. Even when invoked, the Constitution doesn’t go to bed. It still applies. Legally, invocation of the Insurrection Act doesn’t suspend the First Amendment or the rights to due process, for instance, but it does authorize the use of federal troops in ways that are normally off limit, as I mentioned. So what’s the history of the act and its invocation? In the entire history of that law, it’s been invoked about 30 times. That’s 30 times in over 200 years that it’s been on the books.

In 1957, President Eisenhower famously deployed federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce court-ordered school desegregation against resistance by state authorities. And the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked by a president was quite a while ago. President George H. W. Bush in 1992, but that was at the request of California officials in response to protests after the acquittal of the policemen who beat Rodney King. So the last time that act has been invoked was 34 years ago. Now, turning to Minneapolis today, Governor Walz is very unlikely to ask President Trump to invoke the act, both due to the nature of their strained relationship and because Governor Walz doesn’t believe it’s necessary. He’s preparing his own national guard. Trump could still unilaterally invoke the act without a governor’s request if he deems it necessary and depending on the theory he relies on. So what remedies exist or challenges can be brought to bear if he does? Well, the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis could and likely will file lawsuits challenging that move. Might be an uphill battle though.

Courts are generally reluctant to second guess a president’s judgment about whether conditions justify deploying troops, especially when a statute uses the discretionary language I just quoted to you. That said, courts can review what the government actually does on the ground, like whether federal agents or troops violate constitutional rights. Despite also, by the way, has to be understood against the backdrop of the recent litigation over Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in multiple states, including California, Illinois and Oregon. Trump ultimately lost a lot of those battles, even one at the Supreme Court, but those cases arose under a different law, not the Insurrection Act. They arose under Title X US Code Section 12406. In those cases, the Trump administration argued that courts lacked authority to review the president’s decision to invoke emergency powers, but the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed with Trump’s claim, but the language of that statute is different.

That’s why Trump might have a stronger argument, probably would have a stronger argument, that his decision on the Insurrection Act is immune from judicial review due to its language. Moving on to the other part of your question, Congress. What about Congress? Well, in theory, and when we talk about Congress, it’s always in theory. Congress has the most power to reign in the president’s emergency powers by repealing or amending the Insurrection Act. That’s not happening anytime soon, so don’t hold your breath. The bottom line, invoking the Insurrection Act would be a major escalation, not just legally, but politically and operationally and historically, even for Trump. So we’ll see what happens. Stay tuned.

This brings us to a question from Tibbin who wrote on X, “What legal authority does Trump have to threaten tariffs on countries that disagree with him on Greenland?” Tibbin, thanks for your question. As you and other listeners are probably aware on Saturday, President Trump announced and opposed on Truth Social that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European nations because shockingly, they oppose American control of Greenland. He said that Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands and Finland would face the tariff and that it would climb to 25% in June 1 if a deal was not in place for “The complete and total purchase of Greenland” by the United States. Trump cited no legal authority for imposing the tariffs, and as of the time of this taping, there’s currently actually no executive order, presidential proclamation or implementing guidance that he’s issued, just a social media post.

Senior administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have stated publicly that the president could rely on a particular law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, commonly known as IEEPA, to impose the threatened tariffs. The administration’s reliance if they choose to do so on IEEPA is legally significant. The statute permits the president to regulate certain economic transactions during a declared national emergency, but it does not expressly authorize the imposition of tariffs, and it’s a little bit hard to see how it fits the Greenland situation. Bessent said on Meet the Press Sunday, “The national emergency is avoiding a national emergency.” Get it? He also said, “This is a geopolitical decision and he is able to use the economic might of the US to avoid a hot war.” What hot war are we trying to avoid in the annexation or purchase of Greenland? Lower courts have ruled that IEEPA doesn’t provide authority for tariffs, and those rulings are currently under review by the US Supreme Court, hotly anticipated opinion from the Supreme Court, which could come any day.

As of the time of this taping, the court has not issued a decision, but those other tariffs could be struck down at any time. US trade representative, Jamieson Greer said Monday that if the Supreme Court overturns Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the president will quickly rely on other tariff authorities. Perhaps the Insurrection Act. Hi, kid. But those delegations are more limited on what goods, for what reason, and for how long they can be imposed. They don’t allow tariffs for any emergency that Trump conjures for whatever political purposes he desires. Both European leaders and US Congressional leaders, including members of Trump’s own party, have responded to Trump’s tariff threats with outrage, raising questions over the legality, over the use of emergency economic powers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Following Trump’s threats, European country’s representatives met for an emergency meeting Sunday and French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly asked the European Union to activate its so called anti-coercion instrument, colloquially known, and I love this colloquial term, as a trade bazooka. The trade bazooka could block some of America’s access to EU markets or impose export controls among a broader list of potential countermeasures. So a lot of eyes are going to be on Davos this week where Trump is expected to meet with world leaders. Could be awkward. Speaking from Davos on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged European leaders to take a deep breath. Interesting, he wants them to take a deep breath and compared Trump’s threat with Trump’s April Liberation Day tariff announcement that set the US on a spree of trade negotiations. For more on the Greenland issue, by the way, make sure to tune in to the Long Game Podcast hosted by Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer. New episodes drop each Friday.

This question comes in an email from John who writes, “Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently banned the State Department from using Calibri in the department’s official documents, claiming the font is too woke. Instead, he opted for Times New Roman. How unusual is it for a cabinet secretary to weigh in on something as granular as font selection for official documents and what internal rules govern who gets to make those calls?” So it seems like not the most serious issue in the world, but it has real life consequences. So thanks for your question. It may seem silly to talk about the font of official documents, but as I alluded to, it’s actually just another small example of how the Trump administration tramples on initiatives that are aimed at just helping people with not a lot of cost and not a lot of resources.

In 2023, then Secretary of State Antony Blinken directed the State Department to replace the serif typeface Times New Roman with the sans-serif font Calibri in all official documents. Blinken ordered the change to improve accessibility and readability for people with disabilities, including those with low vision and dyslexia. It turns out that people find Calibri easier to read because its simpler letters and wider spacing make words easier to decipher. There are certain fonts that I can read more easily too, as my eyes deteriorate and age over time. But it seemed that the original sin was not the recommendation itself in my speculation, but where the recommendation came from. It came from the State Department’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Huh, must be a terrible recommendation then.

So last year, Rubio abolished that office, and in December, he issued a memo directing the State Department to return to tradition. Go back to Times New Roman. Now, it’s very odd that Times New Roman is considered the return to tradition. I’m old enough to remember typewriters and old enough to remember the font that’s been used in the Justice Department and may still be used in various parts of the government. And it’s not Times New Roman. It’s Courier. In any event, Rubio called the switch to Calibri wasteful and informal. He went on to say that the font switch failed to improve accessibility since it did not significantly decrease the number of accessibility-based document remediation cases. Not sure what that means. Rubio concluded that returning to Times New Roman would “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work products.”

Another way to restore decorum and professionalism is to get rid of the Secretary of War. To answer your question about process, I don’t think it’s in the Constitution what the font should be. There really aren’t any rules governing this. And as head of the State Department and perhaps also as national security advisor and interim prime minister of Venezuela and acting you as attorney in various jurisdictions, that’s a joke. Rubio has the authority to make a change even to something as seemingly minor as the font used in official documents. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Elliot Williams. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice.

You can reach me on Twitter or Bluesky @preetbarara with the hashtag askpreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes and more. That’s staytuned.substack.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The supervising producer is Jake Kaplan. The lead editorial producer is Jennifer Indig. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. The video producer is Nat Weiner. The senior audio producer is Matthew Billy, and the marketing manager is Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. Special thanks to Torrey Paquette and Adam Harris. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.