Preet Bharara says run for elected office "unlikely" in exclusive interview

In part two of a three-part interview with City & State’s President and CEO Tom Allon, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara discusses his legal heroes, the threat of cybercrime in New York and what his political future holds.

City & State: You’ve often cited Clarence Darrow as one of your biggest heroes. What about him inspired you? How has it shaped your philosophy of justice?

Preet Bharara: I don’t necessarily share his political philosophy and I’ve chosen to spend most of my adult life as a prosecutor, not as a defense lawyer. But I think what one has to respect and admire and respect about Clarence Darrow is the level of confidence he had in the law and the level of expertise he brought to bear in the courtroom. And how he was a man of significant conviction, and a man of great love, and I think he was one of the finest advocates you’ve ever seen in the courtroom.

When I was in high school, I used to engage in speech competitions and one of the categories was to deliver a speech that had been delivered by someone else and I chose a portion of the summation he gave in the case of the People v. Henry Sweet. He was fighting for a young African American man who was helping to defend his home against an angry white mob because he had the temerity to move into a neighborhood in Detroit where black people weren’t welcome. Some of the things he says about the nature of justice and the nature of the law and the human role in enforcing the law and in causing justice to be done in that summation are the finest I’ve ever heard and I quote from it often.

C&S: Were you ever inspired by Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird?”

PB: Of course! So much so that I haven’t read the sequel.

C&S: (Laughs) You won’t read the sequel?

PB: I just, you know, I’m busy.

C&S: It would ruin your feelings about him? You’ve said it multiple interviews that you believe in the goodness of people.

PB: I do.

C&S: How do you remain optimistic given the work that you do?

PB: So, that’s a great question. I take inspiration from the people around this office, who I think are among the best people that I know anywhere. They are public servants who have given up a lot of money – virtually all of them – to do something that requires long hours, most of it not done in front of cameras, to make the world a little bit better, to make their communities a little bit better. I look at them and see how they conduct themselves with such joy in their work, and satisfaction in their work, which is interesting because the people in my office basically see human beings at their worst. They see people who kill children, who maim witnesses, who steal from old people, who leave people penniless, who cheat the voters. Really, really bad conduct and bad human behavior. When you see all those things happen and you see the energy with which people still approach their jobs – like the prosecutors in the office, and the NYPD, and the FBI and other agencies that we work with – there’s nothing more inspiring to me than that. They see that good people come together in the face of tragedy. Not so different – we’re coming up on the anniversary of 9/11 – and you realize in the moments are very deep and dark tragedies, you see the best of people come out and I think that happens here on a daily basis on a smaller scale.

C&S: Interesting. Another area you’ve focused on is cybersecurity. Given what happened with the DNC recently, do you think that’s become a more urgent issue to focus on?

PB: I don’t think there’s any issue more urgent than the cyberthreat. We have brought case after case after case. People think I speak a lot about public corruption. I think I spend more time at more events and at more forums talking about the cyber threat, and in interviews with people like you. There’s no bigger threat that we are less prepared for than, I think, the threat from nation-states with respect to our infrastructure. Not just our public infrastructure but also our economic markets. In a lot of different places. Also from the so-called hacktivists who are just trying to make a point and they’re ideological, and people who are literally stealing tens and hundreds of millions of dollars out of people’s accounts with the click of a mouse from a distance of thousands of miles behind the veil of anonymity that the internet provides. It’s a very scary thing. I there’s a reason why you’re seeing everybody from the president on down talking about it on a more frequent basis.

C&S: Do you think it’s going to have a big impact on the campaign for the presidential election?

PB: I’m not going to speculate about that.

C&S: So one of the great parlor games in the political world is guessing about your political future. How do you respond to people who ask what you’re going to do next?

PB: Depending on what time of day it is I talk about the next meal is that I’m going to have. I think right now the next meal I’m going to have is dinner.

C&S: But usually when a new president comes into office, U.S. attorneys resign and then they may be reappointed. Is that something that you plan to do with a new president coming in?

PB: Look, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on, we’re really busy for the next few months and you’ll be seeing the kind of things the men and women in this office have been working on. My view has always been that this is seven years and counting now, which is a fairly long tenure in this job, I think it’s one of the longest in the last hundred or so years. I love the job more than anything else I’ve done, I’m not tired of it, I’m enjoying it. We’ll see if people let me do the job.

C&S: There’s an old joke that God decided one day that he wasn’t powerful enough so he made himself U.S. attorney.

PB: I have not heard of that one! I’m going to use that one.

C&S: How do you respond to that?

PB: I think that’s an interesting sentiment.

C&S: Could you imagine another job being as enjoyable and as fulfilling as this one?

PB: No. Look, there are other people who have gone on to do other things, and maybe they say this to make me feel better, including people you know, and somebody that you’ve mentioned, and other people who have gone on to jobs that I guess are technically bigger, and they speak with greater love and affection for this job than they do for the jobs they later got, and I would expect that to be true.

C&S: Would you rule out ever running for elected office?

PB: It seems really, really, really unlikely.

C&S: What would it take?

PB: I don’t know.