ABOUT BARBARA MCQUADE:
Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches criminal law and national security law. She is also a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. From 2010 to 2017, McQuade served as the U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. She was appointed by President Barack Obama and was the first woman to serve in her position. McQuade also served as vice chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and co-chaired its Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee.
Before her appointment as U.S. Attorney, McQuade served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Detroit for 12 years, including service as Deputy Chief of the National Security Unit. In that role, she prosecuted cases involving terrorism financing, foreign agents, threats, and export violations. McQuade serves on a number of non-profit boards and served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team in 2020-2021. She has been recognized by The Detroit News with the Michiganian of the Year Award, the Detroit Free Press with the Neal Shine Award for Exemplary Regional Leadership, Crain's Detroit Business as a Newsmaker of the Year and one of Detroit's Most Influential Women, and the Detroit Branch NAACP and Arab American Civil Rights League with their Tribute to Justice Award. McQuade is a graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school. She and her husband live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and have four children.
RESOURCES:
Barbara McQuade on X (Twitter)
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU. I'm Caroline MacGregor, and today, I am joined by former federal prosecutor and U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Barbara McQuade, now a professor of law practice at the University of Michigan. We are talking about her new book, "The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government." First of all, Barbara, welcome!
Barbara McQuade: Thank you! I'm really glad to be here to talk about "The Fix"!
Caroline MacGregor: So, your book essentially argues that corruption, cruelty and chaos can become governing tools while also offering civic reforms and actions that citizens can take. What was the moment that convinced you that this book needed to be written now?
Barbara McQuade: Well, I think it was when Donald Trump, in his second term as President, started going after some of the institutions of democracy, like law firms, universities, the media. Even some of our foreign allies with his tariffs struck me as something I've seen in my work as a prosecutor, and the only word for it is extortion. I saw this in many cases that my office handled where people use power to amass more power, inflicting pain on your rivals, to coerce them to come to the table and negotiate their own punishment. I mean, we saw this with Donald Trump, just to talk about one of those examples with law firms, he issued these executive orders accusing them baselessly of engaging in lawfare and weaponization and other things and punishing them, telling them that they couldn't do, among other things, enter a federal government building, which includes courthouses. Good luck practicing law if you can't even enter a courthouse. Not just law firms, universities, taking away grant funds or limiting foreign students in exchange for demands about changing curriculum choices and academic freedom. And so, that is akin to the way a mob runs an organization.
Caroline MacGregor: In your book, you argue that corruption often becomes normalized gradually over time. What are the earliest warning signs that citizens tend to overlook?
Barbara McQuade: I think one of the things that we are seeing right now that citizens are overlooking is the way that President Trump is engaging in self-dealing and self-enrichment through his office in the presidency. In fact, President Trump himself said, "I realized, in my second term, that people just don't care." I think it may be that people don't notice or that he distracts them with other things, But we have seen this President embrace the cryptocurrency industry, really shut down all investigative efforts through the Justice Department and the SEC and other places to investigate cryptocurrency and create his own cryptocurrency business and sell a meme coin and profit to the tune of something like $2.2 billion last year alone. He's investing in the stock market. He talks up certain companies of which he's bought stock and has seen his own profits escalate. You know, he's received emoluments, which are prohibited under the Constitution, but this plane from Qatar that was given to him, and he intends to take with him--
Caroline MacGregor: With the security deficit.
Barbara McQuade: Exactly! He intends to take it with him for his presidential library when he leaves office. All of these things are a corruption of the public virtue and the public service that the President is supposed to have. He convinces people that everybody does it, and if everybody's corrupt, then nobody is.
Caroline MacGregor: Why is this seemingly being accepted? I mean, obviously not by everybody, but considering some of the points you've just mentioned, how does this President get away with so much?
Barbara McQuade: I think he is a very smart tactician. I think sometimes people criticize his intellect, his spelling or his sense of history may be lacking, but I think that he very much understands the power of manipulation. He's a snake oil salesman. He's been selling things all his life. And I think the way he has been able to accomplish so much is through a combination of greed and fear. So greed, he has pandered to billionaires by cutting taxes, by deregulating industries, by showing favoritism. You can keep your broadcast license, or you can have that merger that you want me to approve, so greed to appease the billionaires. And then, fear. You know, he panders to people based on fear of immigration, fear of the transgender community, fear of secularism, fear of globalism. It makes people fear a future that they don't recognize. He wants to make them believe that the reason they are worse off than their parents' generation, and they are. It's not because of political regulatory changes that began in the Reagan administration--corporate tax cuts and jobs moving offshore and CEO salaries that have escalated. Instead, he tells you that the reason you are not as well off as your parents is because of DEI, or immigrants who've taken your jobs. And so, because of that kind of pandering to fear, people care more about their own little nest egg than they do whether the President steals from the public trough.
Caroline MacGregor: Is it that fear that gives rise to so many conspiracy theories here in America?
Barbara McQuade: Oh, I think so. You know, two of our country's greatest strengths, in my opinion, are our First Amendment, right to free speech, and our diversity. But I think this President has exploited both of those things for his own political gain. But, of course, when you have the ability to post things on social media that are baseless, that are false, there is no criminal consequence for that because our First Amendment allows the President to say things that are not true. I also think that one of our great strengths is our diversity. One of the things that President Trump has done is to exploit the differences that inevitably occur when we have different voices at the table. He talks about "making America great again." And I think he harks back to a time in maybe the 1950s, post-World War II, when women were second-class citizens, when minorities were on the lowest rungs of society. And I think he liked that way. Only white Christian males had a place at the table. And certainly, there's room at a table for everybody. But now that we have a world when members of those groups want to have a voice, there will be differences and clashes of opinion. And we've always tolerated those kinds of differences of opinion, and we solve them at the ballot box or courts of law and not on the streets. But I think that President Trump wants to stoke those divisions by making those kinds of false claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs and men participating in girl sports as if that's the biggest issue in the world, instead of focusing on areas where we have common interests and common concerns in solving problems, trying to throw fuel on the fire and cause people to retreat to their own corners.
Caroline MacGregor: If you're just joining us, my guest today is Barbara McQuade. She's the former federal prosecutor and U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. We're talking about her new book, "The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Styled Government." How do democratic institutions recover after they've been weakened?
Barbara McQuade: Well, I think it's not going to be easy, but we definitely have the ability to do that. I think if President Trump has been good at one thing in his presidency, it is in exposing the gaps in the law, where a tyrant can expand his own power at the expense of the people. But I think that by exposing some of these gaps, we have the power now to shore them up. And so, I think, in the next administration, we need to focus on things like making the norms at the Justice Department that have been voluntarily complied with since the Watergate era making those legal regulations, so that it is not so easy to blow past them, things like not basing criminal decisions on partisan politics and refraining from communicating with the White House about case decisions, the way we select our members of Congress that have now become so entrenched in red districts and blue districts and to use other ideas like ranked choice voting or to do nationally what we've achieved here in Michigan, which is ending gerrymandering.
Caroline MacGregor: Are there particular institutions that worry you more than others?
Barbara McQuade: Yes, I think I'm particularly worried about the Department of Justice. I've really seen an erosion of the kinds of institutional norms that we always just took for granted. What we've seen in this administration is the use of the Department Of Justice to serve, in my opinion, as President Trump's personal law firm, going after his rivals like Jim Comey with the seashells case or the defendant in the Reflecting Pool case, which, ultimately, the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. realized could not go any farther and dismissed. But going after people like Letitia James, Jerome Powell, I mean, I could go on and on about the examples.
Caroline MacGregor: What can the ordinary citizen realistically do that would make a difference here?
Barbara McQuade: Oh, so many things! But in my view, the biggest group we need to energize are maybe the people who aren't paying attention. You know, certainly, there are MAGA loyalists who think all of this is great. And there are also plenty of people already doing things to try to protect our country. But we need help those people see just what is at stake in our country, and I think all of us have the ability to do things like getting out and participating in politics, joining up with groups like the League of Women Voters, which provide accurate information for elections. But I think the most important thing we can do is to speak to those people who are not paying attention. I mean, Donald Trump claimed he was going to go in and drain the swamp. And I think that Reflecting Pool is a wonderful metaphor for his inability to do it. In fact, it's worse than ever before. Studies show that we are most influenced by the people around us. We all have a responsibility to speak to those people to get them energized, so that we can take back our power.
Caroline MacGregor: If readers remember just one idea from your book, "The Fix," what do you hope it is?
Barbara McQuade: It is that we have the power to change our country. It is what makes America exceptional. And one data point of inspiration, I think, is some research done by a political scientist at Harvard named Erica Chenoweth. She has studied regime change all over the world, and she has concluded that if even only 3.5% of the population participate in peaceful protest, they can effect regime change. So, next time you have an opportunity for a No Kings protest or to get out there and make your voice known, remember just how powerful we the people are.
Caroline MacGregor: Today, I've been joined by former federal prosecutor and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Barbara McQuade. We've been talking about her new book, "The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government." Barbara, thank you for joining us today!
Barbara McQuade: Thanks, Caroline! It's been my pleasure!
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