Trump Administration hired a staffer working with Stephen Miller to wage war with Harvard

#trump #harvard #stephenmiller
Michael Bender, New York Times Correspondent and Amanda Carpenter, Writer and Editor for Protect Democracy joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House to discuss how the Trump Administration has escalated its feud with Harvard going so far to hire someone who was at one point a DOJ “cooperating witness” working for the Harvard Law Review.
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00:00of the Trump administration's retribution campaign against Harvard University,

00:04and now the independent student-run law journal on campus, stunning revelations about how the

00:09Trump administration is wielding power to punish its perceived enemies and impose its political

00:15agenda. New York Times is reporting this, quote, the Justice Department quietly approached Harvard

00:21University last month with startling claims and signaled that it was reviewing claims of

00:26discrimination against white men at the Harvard Law Review and accused the renowned publication of

00:31destroying evidence in an open investigation. Quote, in a series of letters that have not been

00:36previously reported, the government also disclosed that it had a, quote, cooperating witness inside the

00:42student-run journal. That witness now works in the White House under Stephen Miller, the architect of

00:48the administration's domestic policy agenda, Trump officials confirmed. Quote, the witness, Daniel

00:54Wasserman was identified as a government cooperator in two of the letters to Harvard University from

01:00the Justice Department last month when he was still an editor at the Harvard Law Review. Joining our

01:06conversation is New York Times correspondent Michael Bender. He's bylined on that reporting we just read

01:10from. Amanda, Barb, and Miles are still with us. This seems wild, Michael Bender. Take us through what

01:18you're reporting. Yeah, this has been one of the more remarkable stories, I think, in this entire saga

01:25from Trump, his assault on academia, mostly, most recently on Harvard. I think this is, you know,

01:34whether it's sort of the, his deportation policy or his terror policy or these attacks on higher

01:43education, the Trump administration has prioritized speed and shock value first and foremost. And what

01:50this story does, I think, is sort of shows the risks and the rewards of that kind of shoot first

01:56mentality. You mentioned there is a cooperating witness for the Department of Justice who works

02:05in the White House. It is not clear to me that the White House knew he was a cooperating witness when

02:12the Justice Department hired him. It's not clear to me that the Justice Department knew he was

02:17working in the White House or interviewing with the White House when they started working with him

02:21on his case. And that has led to, as you can imagine, a lot of complications, a lot of complications

02:28in this investigation. On the other hand, the administration did extract some concessions out

02:35of the Harvard Law Review. Now, this is a student-run publication that doesn't have any, is independent

02:41of Harvard and doesn't receive any federal funding. And it was fairly extraordinary that they got involved

02:48at the Law Review on behalf of this student in the first place. But the Law Review did decide to revoke some

02:56disciplinary action against this student for downloading documents in violation of their privacy policy. And

03:04they have largely moved away from their requests of him to stop disseminating those documents. Maybe not a big deal

03:14in and of itself, but, you know, where the Trump administration is concerned, even though small things are viewed as

03:21big victories inside the administration.

03:23Michael Bender, just explain to me why Harvard is engaged or how layered it is for the Law Review

03:36person who viewed himself as, I guess, wrongfully reprimanded based on the reporting. At what point in the

03:44timeline does he become a West Wing staffer in the Trump war against Harvard?

03:49Yeah, so he is, there is some overlap in those timelines. He, his first day in the White House

04:01was at the end of May, at basically the same time the Department of Justice is sending Harvard letters

04:07informing them that they have a, that they have a cooperating witness from inside the Law Review.

04:13It's, it's, it's our reporting that, that this, this employee, this, this former Harvard Law student

04:22started interviewing with the White House about roughly at the end of April. That's also about the

04:30same time this issue first bubbled up within the Law Review of potential discrimination against white men,

04:38white authors at, inside their review, was from a conservative publication, a story in the, in the

04:43Washington Free Beacon, that, that, that, that sort of spun up this, this story and launched

04:48investigations now from the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services,

04:53and the Department of Justice into, into the Harvard Law Review.

04:58Amanda Carpenter, I don't know where to begin. We are now, I guess with a straight face,

05:08to swallow the discrimination cases being pursued by the almighty United States Department of Justice

05:15civil division. The reporting suggests it may eventually become a criminal investigation

05:19by a young man who is now a West Wing staffer. Tell me all the things that is wrong here.

05:28Yeah, I mean, it's worth taking a step back because it's hard to like keep track of all the ways,

05:33right, that Donald Trump is seeking to punish Harvard. And so like, what, what is this about?

05:38I mean, this originally started with claims of the university not protecting Jewish students,

05:44and that was a reason to question all these practices. And now it's just kind of spiraled out

05:49of control to the way that they want to police the editorial practices of a student-run paper,

05:55right? I mean, this is, I mean, I think we should see this for what it is. This is an all-out attempt

06:01for a hostile takeover of one of America's premier places of higher education, right? Like these people

06:09want to use these threats and withholding federal funding essentially to make every college in America

06:16Hillsdale. They are questioning their ability to set their own hiring practices, admission, curriculum,

06:22and now what students write and say among themselves for their own papers. I mean, this is

06:29an incredible, incredible overreach. And, you know, I think they're so focused on Harvard precisely

06:35because it is a crown jewel of education. Essentially, if you can break Harvard, you can break all the

06:40colleges because they have more resources. And so this, this is a roadmap. I don't think it's working,

06:46but it is working with some, with some success, right? Even at Harvard, because they have to engage

06:51in all these harassing investigations. The students now have to be afraid of what they're doing on

06:58their own. And so this is, this is going to be tough, but I do think everybody should be looking

07:03closely, not, not just on the nitty gritty and day by day of what they're doing to Harvard, but the big

07:09picture, all the things they're doing. And, you know, I just got to praise Michael and everyone else who's

07:13really been following the story at the New York Times, because it is hard to track. It does take a

07:17lot of resources. I think they're up to something like eight separate investigations into Harvard

07:21right now. But if they can do it to Harvard, they'll do it to everyone else.

07:43So, I'm excited.

07:44Okay.

07:45Thank you very much.

07:49Thank you very much.

07:55Okay.

Trump Administration hired a staffer working with Stephen Miller to wage war with Harvard

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