Authors at the q a button at the bottom right of the screen. Kent will ask your questions. Before i opportunity it over to kent and jeffrey i want to remind you but a couple of other Virtual Events were involved in alert this week. This wednesday at 8 00 p. M. Our partners the marcus Jewish Community sir . Atlanta are presenting a free event with coverage kevin quan if his latest novel, sex and vanity, and this friday at 7 00 p. M. Is Bell Wilkerson will discuss her latest best seller with jon mecham. Thank you so much for your purchase tonight. Join us for this event and for your continued support during these extraordinary times. Now ill turn i over to Kent Alexander and jeffrey toobin. Thank you. Jeff, this book was fantastic. Im so looking forward to talking with you but it. Innovate going to get into more of an entry duke of you because i think people know you really well, but had you written this book five years ago, i would have said it was a thriller, paymentturner, a pageturner, absolutely riveting fiction with the only caveat that some over the stuff would just strain credulity. Now all of that holds true except it is nonfiction but you have really within a masterpiece that was fun to read and a great piece for history, and i the book is called true crimes and misdemeanors and i thought i would start off and just ask you to give people a sense of the book because just came out, most people havent read it. And also be the significance of the name. Thank you, kent and for this kind words and thank you to a cappella for doing this event. I love book stores. I love independent book stores and youre lucky in atlanta to have one of the best in a cappella and im delighted to be part of this event and anything that can help them sell books, especially my book, but any books at all, thats lets i want to make that clear. Kent, its great to see you. Kent sent me his book about the Richard Jewel case, and i thought, really . What is there to say . And i was just amazed by that book, and how complicated and involved it was, and not in a small way and not a very impressive picture of my current profession, the journalistic profession; to lot of bad journalism about Richard Jewel for which he paid a terrible price. And it was just a fascinating book that just shows, one of the things i have found in my career, ive written becomes but high profile subjects, whether its the bill clinton Monika Lewinski matter or the oj simple con says or the recount in 2000. Those are stories that people often say i think Richard Jewel was another we know that story. We know everything about that story. And the one thing i know for sure is that you dont, as a reader, because i didnt, and im probably im professionally obligated to follow these stories closely. And the just to finally answer your question, what your back. What the book is about and what is with the title, i agreed with my editors at double day id write a book about the Mueller Investigation, almost as soon as it started, which was in may of 2017. It was an unnerving experience because i had no access to the Mueller Office for more than two years because they wouldnt talk to me while i was while they were in business. So i had to trust myself that it would be an inside story to write. Fortunately i dead get access to them somewhat later. But basically the idea behind the become the book was to tell a story to do a narrative. Thats one of the thing is learned from my first editors is that you always want to tell a story, and obviously i think there are quite a few facts in this book that people dont know, but more important than that, is the story, is like what happens when you investigate a president . How does that work in this case . Who were these people . One of the questions i always get as a journalist when i am doing a covering a big story and theres bill clinton or its oj simpson or Robert Mueller, people have the same question. Whats he like . What are these people like . And who are they . Thats the question i really enjoy answering because [loss of audio] so interesting and as for the title, obviously [loss of audio]. In the constitution, and i switched it because not only did my story of course i had no idea this was going to happen evolved from just the mueller story to also an impeachment story, but to make the point that as i elaborate in the text i think President Trump committed actual crimes, true crimes, as well as impeachable offenses, high crimes and misdemeanors and i thought it sounded kind of cool. It does good choice. Really good choice. Speaking of mueller, i think a lot of us have seen the mueller property and bought it and probably like me have on your night stand and made it 37 pages through and just its just very legalistic, and one of the wonderful things but your book, it adds everything you would really want to know as you said, jeff, tell the story. You have incredibly colorful characters and starting with jim comey. Jim comey is the fbi director, and got had some issues with Hillary Clinton emails and all of that and im curious about your take on jim. So, youre very balanced in the by a you portray him and fairly polarizing as a viring guess but beth people have criticisms and you quote somebody as calling the sank moanous, phony, attention junky with a messiah complex and that was a republican. Tell us but comey and then compare him to bob mueller. Well, again, one of things like about doing a book project where you have time and space to write, is you can deal with the subject of complexity; that and its my experience that most people are complicate or complex and they are not all one thing and they are not all good or all bad. And they have virtues and they have flaws. Sometimes theyre actually the same qualities. Virtues turn out to be their qualities and thats certainly applies to comey. He is a unique figure in that its funny, he said polarizing. Im not sure that is the word for someone who is hated equally by the republicans and the democrats. I dont know who is on the other poll somewhere, but i do think that he is a strong, highly intelligent person, who has a very clear sense of legislate rat the thinks the right thing to do and is howl he should be perceived in the public. He is someone who is always been execs question sitly aware of miss public persona and that is not necessary lay bad quality but i think it led him interest errors here. I am not going to rehearse the story of his letter that sabotaged the clinton campaign, i suspect a Learned Group like the ones listening here are familiar with the story. Once trump became president , comey understandably wanted to try to develop a relationship with the president. Never met him before and didnt know him so they started meeting. Its very important for the fbi that the president rely on the fbi, trust the fbi, so comey reached out to him and started having meetings with him even before trump was innew england rate. Comey saw in donald trump saw someone who is was trying to manipulate him entirely for personal gain, but using words and language that were not explicit in his demands, and he said, as others have said, that the language that trump used in those interactions were reminiscent of the times he was prosecuting organized crime in new york. He demand loyalty. He wanted help for his friend, for michael flynn, and comey, who is nothing if not a i mean, theres a lot to criticize jim comby. Heels no criminal and knows the difference between right and wrong and knows when he is being leaned on for so he started taking notes of the conversations and doing almost contemporaneous summaries of trump and sharing itself with a small godmother of people at the buehrle rove but wouldnt give trump the loyalty, the decisions he wanted and us maltly was fired on may 9, 2017, he was fired for the right reasons, not the wrong reasons help was fired right from comeys perspective because he wouldnt bend to trumps political will. Right. And going back to the hillary alert which Everybody Knows about and jim comey having to make a decision about announce organize not announcing if was struck in your book at the start, you have the Mueller Jim Comey and make his decisions, donald trump elected. At the end guess through the impeachment trials and the impeachment and the middle we have mueller, the Mueller Report. So we good from the beginning to the middle and the Mueller Report. How would you compare jim comeys decision on making announcement about Hillary Clinton help he has facts and he thinks things should be shared, and bob muellers decision on what to share with the public on russia and obstruction. Well, i think youre right to point out the contrast between the two men because it really is extraordinary. They are very, very different people. And comey wrote a very successful book, certainly after the left shortly after he was fired as dick director and called its higher loyalty, which i think was a revealing title because comey feels like he owes a higher loyalty to his conception of the truth, what is right and wrong. Robert mueller has very different approach to life and work. Robert mueller is an institutionalist. He is someone who has never particularly cared about how he is portrayed personally. Never written a book. He hasnt given a lot of speeches help is someone who hey devoted his life to institutions whether its the marine corps or the department of justice or the fbi. This is the these are the didding principles of muellers life. And one of the thing that is important to remember about mueller and his investigation is he was a special counsel. He wasnt an independent coup help was in the department of justice am subordinate of the Senior Leadership of the depth of justice. He was not like ken is in starr or Lawrence Walsh who were independent coups counsels and n independent legal basis for their investigations. Mueller was always aware that he was working for rod rossen stereotype, the Deputy Attorney general who appointed him, and particularly at the end of the investigation and heres where the story gets, i think, actually tragic, is that he trusts that william barr, the attorney general, someone mueller has nope for decades and was once a close colleague of, would treat him fairly and treat his investigation honorably and accurately, and barr bow trays mueller, betrays the trust that he puts in him, and issues a completely distorted summary of what trump of what mueller actually concluded, and not only that, doesnt release the report itself for a month, letting barr s summary stand as the Public Perception of what mueller actually found. Mueller never protests because he is a loyal institutionalist in a way that i cant imagine comey would have done the same. Right. One is very out there and one is by the book. So, when we look at these characters, a lot of us have heard put mueller and comey and at the rest and other names. I was making notes on some of the things that names just pop up and theyre not names that pop up. You get into these characters. Mueller, comey, trump, peter strzok and lisa page, stormy daniels, the mooch, roger stone, and among the cast of character like the bar scene in star wars. Exactly. I found an atlantic connection i didnt realize and that was jay sekulow. I rafe written two book about the Supreme Court, one book called the nine in and lamb whole chapter but jay czech sekulow. He is an important figure in american law and its a he has personally a wild fascinating story. You may want to remind the audience what his role in this im answering it in new York Magazine style. Turn a few pages. Jay grew up in long island and was nice jewish boy from long island. He came to his family moved to atlanta when he was teenager and jay was not a particularly grate great student and he wound up going a school that i dont think goes by this name anymore but Atlanta Baptist college. Didnt ring a bell. Doesnt go by that name anymore. He goes because its local and at that time he has a religious awakening. He becomes a member of a group called Jew Ford Jesus which people may know they do a lot of in airports and other plays and it is not really jewish, it is an evangelical christian group, and jay guess to law at mercer, and then he jay goes to law school at americaer and when he started repping jews for jesus as their lawyer and starts doing First Amendment cases about ju jews for jesus being allowed to pros la ties. He becomes a very effective First Amendment advocate for the evangelical community. Hooks one path Pat Robertson and starts a group called the american for american justice the counterpoint to the aclu and becomes a major figure in the evangelical legal movement. Drives a lot of cases. A lot of media interests, and he ultimate by gets hire as a second in command to john dowd when john dowd is trumps defense lawyer. Hired initially to deal just with the constitutional issues that arise in the Mueller Investigation, but he winds up being the only lawyer who represents trump really from the beginning to the end because dowd gets fired, Rudy Giuliani comes in, but sekulow is the he is a very effective lawyer, and he is particularly effective on the issue that i spend a lot of time on in the book, the issue of whether mueller was going to issue a grand jury subpoena for trumps testimony and would whether that would led to a effect in the Supreme Court. Speak the First Amendment you bring us behind so many doors, the fbi, the Mueller Investigation, the white house, its even the Senate Bathroom with equipped by the chief justice. I depth now how you come up with stuff. One door im especially interested in is the journalism door. As we look at this presidency and the need of journalism, outside of editorial boards, at some point with a lot of publicses, networks, journalists made a turn. Before you wouldnt sigh the president is lying youch would report things, what other people said, but a lot of people and in fact most journalist outside of fox and i watch fox and friends a more than as my milk shake of news but outside of fox, most journalists have made the turn and it seems like from reading the book, you were very evenhanded and factual with everything, and colorful. But at some point you had to have made the turn, too. What was that like at a journalist . It was was a process, and i have work at cnn since 2002. I was hired in the days when cnn was very much an atlantabased company, and i spent a bunch of time at cnn center in atlanta, across the street from the site of the bombing, and the subject of your become and there was a real culture at cnn for many years of super scrupulous evenhandness, that one side says x, the other side says not x and that is our job to report it. Donald trump changed that. Frankly started telling such obvious untruths and this began during the campaign that we he spends attention to the chyrons, the words across the bottom of the screen, and it was during the campaign that when we started using the word false in those chyron because they were false. We didnt we decided and this was made at a higher level than i am at but that there are certain facts, issues, statements, that are not he said she said, simply true or falls and he started laning do labeling them that way. That was a culture change but the first culture change. As the trump president si evolved we started using the word lie because we thought it was an appropriate use, and then our job is to be is to tell the truth and it is not it is the truth, i believe, that trump has lied extravagantly and frequently as president , and ive said as much. So, that was a cultural shift, particularly at cnn, but i think it was reflected in the broaderpedia as well. Uhhuh. We should spent more time on trump and well get questions from the audience, but with trump, aside from the mafia connection you mentioned roy cohen quite a bit which was maybe shouldnt be surprising but was a little surprising. How does roy cohen factor into the donald trump sensibility and ethos. Well, you know, just i think it is fair to say that roy cohen is so far in the past now that most americans need an introduction to who roy cohen his. He is a young lawyer in the 1950s, Joseph Mccarthys top aide, someone who assisted in a particular i disgraceful way the red scare, the red baiting that mccarthy did. Later, in the 60s and 70s he went into private practice in new york city and he became not only a lawyer for donald trump and for his father, fred trump, first, but he became a mentor donald trump, and just to jump ahead, one of the things you often hear from trumps current lawyers is the cry and frustration from the president , where is my roy cohen. Why dont i have a roy cohen, and to what it mens to have a roy cohen. Roy cohen was a deeply corrupt and dishonest lawyer who was ultimately shortly before he died, disbarred by the state of new york and if you know how bad a lot of new new york lawyers at takes a lot to get disbarred in new york state, but cohen managed to do that. And i think the fact that even today trump views roy cohen as the platonic ideal of a lawyer, tells you a lot about his own ethical complex and its shocking to me, but as the four word is think define the Trump Presidency, are, shocking but not surprising, and that is and his affection for roy co i think fits that way because this was a really bad dude. In the book with talking about approaches life, you speak of fair amount about the election and donald trump made the pitch to ill take all copper, help from russia and so forth. And im curious, based on the to last week by sally yatess, peterstroke strzok and others, another election comes up and the topic of russian interference comes and now chinese in