Preet Bharara Is Not Running for Office

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/magazine/preet-bharara-is-not-running-for-office.html

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You went from being the most famous and powerful United States attorney in the country to hosting a weekly podcast about justice. No offense, but some people might consider that a slight step down. Wow. How much of a descent is that? Look, if I had never become the United States attorney, I would have lived a full and happy and unregretful life. The happiest day of my professional life was becoming an assistant U.S. attorney, because I always wanted to have a position where the only job is to do the right thing. Becoming U.S. attorney was gravy on top of all that. But at some point, you’ve got to leave.

I’ll bet a lot of people think you were a district attorney. If you’re at a cocktail party and someone gets your job title wrong, do you correct them? If it’s a formal event, I will probably gently correct. But I’m more likely to have my last name mispronounced.

I think it’s fair to say that the longer Trump is in power, the better your podcast will do. Would you trade podcast success for an early Trump retirement? Would I happily talk about other social, political, legal issues — which might cause fewer people to listen to the podcast — in exchange for the president of the United States not embarrassing us and not undermining democratic institutions on a daily basis? Absolutely yes. But this is what’s happening in America right now. I don’t feel like I have any choice.

But the podcast has to be a pit stop for you on your way to elected office, right? I don’t think I would enjoy politics in any shape or form. The way I say it respectfully — as an Indian-American and given the tea-drinking habits of my parents — it’s not my cup of tea.

Is there something in particular that turns you off about politics? I find the play of money in politics to be not only disgusting and conducive to all sorts of corruption but also personally distasteful. The idea of calling friends and acquaintances for several hours every day to raise money for a race doesn’t float my boat.

Your convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos — the former New York State Assembly speaker and the former State Senate majority leader — were recently vacated thanks to an 8-0 Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the definition of public corruption. Did eight Supreme Court justices get it wrong? I tend to agree with the commentators who have said the decision is a little bit naïve. But if you spend all your time sort of under the covers fuming about what the people in robes do, you wouldn’t get out of bed on some days.

You once heard Dean Skelos’s son on a wiretap saying, and I quote, “It’s like [expletive] Preet Bharara is listening to every [expletive] phone call.” How hard did you laugh when you heard that? I laughed very robustly.

Do you consider yourself part of the “resistance”? No. I don’t know what that term means. I consider myself a private citizen who cares about the country.

I’m going to ask you the same question you asked one of your guests. Say you’re a member of Congress. Based solely on what we publicly know today, would you vote to impeach Donald Trump? The closest I’ve come to setting a threshold for what I think would merit impeachment is if he were to cause Bob Mueller to be fired. That would be the equivalent or worse than the Saturday Night Massacre. Given the accumulation of all sorts of other ways that Donald Trump has flouted the rule of law, that’s just a bridge too far.

Let’s say that Trump does get impeached. How are you celebrating that night? This is going to sound not credible to some people: I don’t know that I’d be celebrating. To me, the most somber thing that happens in civilian life is when a jury comes back for a verdict in a criminal case: That moment is an illustration that people do bad things, and that justice is necessary, but it’s awful that it’s necessary. It’s not the same thing, but if we got to the point where the president of the United States has to be impeached on a bipartisan basis, it will be gratifying in some ways, if it’s responsible and deserved, but it will also be very sad.