Who will say no to President Trump this time?

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How did Australia go from a place where most middle-class people could own their own house to one where even a small apartment is out of reach for so many?

You walk past these houses where people clearly would have been in the same position as us a generation ago, and I just can't stop thinking about how wild that difference is between us and them.

Pick your villain.

Are the big banks, investors, Howard and Costello, immigrants, or something else to blame?

I'm Sam Hawley.

Join me for Housing Hostages, a five-part podcast series from ABC News Daily.

Find it on the ABC Listen app.

This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Awabakal, Darug, and Iora people.

Can you take a semi-automatic gun and turn it into a machine gun?

Basically, convert a gun that is meant to sound like this

into a gun that sounds like this.

Well, yes, you can using one of these devices.

Auto-seers, Glock switches, forced reset triggers.

They're basically just little pieces of plastic.

You can buy them for as little as 50 bucks or make them yourself.

This is your standard Glock backplate to where this one has been 3D printed as a machine gun conversion device.

But are they legal in America?

Well in 2018 this guy decided that they shouldn't be.

I signed a memorandum directing the Attorney General to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn illegal weapons into machine guns.

This is Donald Trump responding to a mass shooting in Las Vegas where the shooter used similar devices to turn his semi-automatic guns into machine guns.

I expect that these critical regulations will be finalized very soon.

It's famously very hard to make gun laws stronger in America, but Trump did it.

The agency responsible for enforcing laws like this one is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the ATF.

They're illegal to have them, it's illegal to give them to somebody, it's illegal to make them, it's against the law.

But this isn't all the ATF does when it comes to guns.

They also prosecute people who don't store their guns safely or who give or sell their guns privately to someone who doesn't have a permit.

The government passes laws, the justice system enforces those laws and the courts decide if it's legal.

As it happens, the Supreme Court decided last year that the laws Trump passed to restrict things like Glock switches weren't legal.

So the ATF stopped enforcing that law.

That is their job and that's how it's supposed to work or at least it was.

Because this second Trump administration is already very different from the one.

Last week, the new Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that she had sacked the ATF's top lawyer.

Yesterday, I fired the general counsel from ATF.

You know, these people were targeting gun owners.

Not going to happen under this administration.

They were targeting gun owners who had broken the law, to be clear.

Not anymore, though.

The general counsel is gone and those ATF agents have been redeployed to conduct deportation raids.

Cash Patel is the new ATF director, by the way.

We met him in our last episode.

He's also the head of the FBI.

So according to Trump, targeting gun owners isn't going to happen under this administration, even if that's the law.

And if judges have a problem with that.

And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, we don't want you to do that.

Well, so maybe we have to look at the judges because that's very serious.

But just because a U.S.

president says that something should happen doesn't mean that it will.

There are laws constraining the president's power.

The attorney general and everyone who works at the Department of Justice aren't just meant to do whatever the president tells them.

They're in charge of enforcing the law legally.

So what will they do when enforcing the law legally doesn't align with Donald Trump's policies?

In Trump's first term, the Attorneys General and Justice Department staff prioritized the law over Trump's desires because it's how democracies work.

Will they have the stomach to do that this time?

I'm Matt Bevan, and this is If You're Listening.

One of Donald Trump's more relatable character traits is that he loves watching TV.

I listened to a bunch of stuff last night on television.

In January 2019, one of the things he was watching very closely on television was the confirmation hearing for his latest pick for U.S.

Attorney General, Bill Barr.

President Trump has sought no assurances, promises, or commitments from me of any kind, either express or implied, and I have not given him any other than that I would run the department with professionalism and integrity.

Bill Barr wasn't a big fan of Donald Trump, but he was a Republican.

He'd been the Attorney General before under President George H.W.

Bush.

If confirmed,

I will serve with the same independence I did in 1991.

This was happening at the same time as former FBI Director Bob Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Barr had come on Trump's radar because he'd written a letter to the Justice Department critical of the investigation.

He thought aspects of Mueller's investigation had the potential to set problematic precedents for the office of the president in the future.

That view happened to align with the interests of the president in the present.

Donald Trump hated the Mueller investigation and wanted it shut down.

So when Trump picked Barr for the job, he wasn't expecting this.

I have known Bob Mueller for 30 years.

We worked closely together throughout my previous tenure at the Department of Justice.

We've been friends since.

In fact, Bob Mueller's wife Ann still went to Bible study with Barr's wife Christine.

When he was named special counsel, I said his selection was good news and that knowing him, I had confidence he would handle the matter properly.

Back at the White House, Trump threw his toys out of the cot.

He hated Bob Mueller.

He had already tried multiple times to get Mueller fired, but Justice Department officials kept refusing to do it.

It's a witch hunt.

That's all it is.

This is a witch hunt and it's a disgrace.

It's a rigged witch hunt.

And now it turns out that his new pick for Attorney General is Mueller's bestie?

It was only the First Lady Melania Trump who stopped him from pulling Barr's nomination, telling her furious husband Barr was doing great and to leave him alone.

Barr was confirmed with the support of several Democrats.

Six weeks later, Muller told Barr that his report was almost done.

Both Barr and Muller wanted the report to be released as quickly as possible, and for everyone to be very clear about what it all meant.

They all failed spectacularly.

The American people have a right to the truth.

It's a question of whether this closes a can of worms or opens a new one.

We have the right to see Robert Mueller's entire report, not just a summary of a few pages prepared by an attorney general with a conflict of interest.

It was one of the most shameful episodes in American history.

Attorney General Bill Borr has perjured himself in Congress twice.

Well, the bar cover-up continues.

I have read

a lot about this very brief period of chaos.

Almost everyone involved screwed up in some way.

Barr wanted to be as transparent as possible and release the whole report to the public.

But the version he'd been given included all sorts of classified and secret information that couldn't legally be released.

Barr had asked that Mueller's team redact the report before giving it to him, but they didn't.

Perhaps their printer didn't have enough toner for all the black lines.

The report I'm working on now, I would like to make available

with redactions that would enable me to make it public generally.

The report was 448 pages long and it would take weeks to redact the right bits.

Barr decided that the public should hear the key findings quickly.

So as his team worked overtime to deal with the redactions, he put out a letter.

A summary of the report has been released.

It has found there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016.

On the key issue of potential obstruction of justice, the summary says it doesn't conclude, does not conclude that the president committed a crime, but neither does it exonerate him.

It was a massive media event.

Everyone who knew anything about it was called in to comment.

For more on this, the host of ABC podcast Russia, if you're listening, Matthew Bevan joins us now from Sydney.

Looking at this footage, I look very young and well-rested, by the way.

It's remarkable what six years of making this podcast and raising four children has done to me.

But anyway, look, without the report itself, Barr's summary was misinterpreted by both sides, and I'll let this very handsome young man give you the gist.

This is undoubtedly extremely good news for Donald Trump.

There is no

other way of spinning that, really.

He will be saying, you know, this report found no collusion from now until the 2020 election.

How perceptive of that guy?

Of course, the legal reality was quite complicated.

and despite many people's best efforts, the nuances of Mueller's no crimes but not exonerated thing never really got across.

But the extraordinary thing about all of it is I really don't think anyone involved was acting to either damage or protect Donald Trump, the person.

All of them, Muller, Barr, they just wanted to follow the law as they interpreted it.

To do anything else would create a dangerous precedent that could be misused in the future.

And the system basically worked as it's supposed to.

Throughout the first Trump presidency, there were lots of instances of Trump asking the Justice Department to do stuff, like investigating former FBI Director James Comey, Hillary Clinton, and her campaign staff.

But our Justice Department and our FBI

have to start doing their job.

He even reportedly once once inquired as to whether the Justice Department could stop late-night comedy shows like Saturday Night Live from making fun of him.

But every time he did this, there were people like Bill Barr who were there to serve the law and not the president.

And that's how it ended, too.

On the 1st of December 2020, Bill Barr entered the Oval Office, fully expecting to be screamed at by the President.

And the President was as mad as I've ever seen him, and he was trying to control himself.

Earlier that day, Barr had told a reporter that despite weeks of searching, he had found no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

The president said, well, this is killing me.

You didn't have to say this.

You must have said this because you hate Trump.

You hate Trump.

No, he'd said it because it was true.

He said the Justice Department's mission is to investigate and prosecute actual fraud.

I told him that the stuff that his people were shuttling out to the public

was bullshit.

I mean, that the claims of fraud were bullshit.

Barr told Trump that the Justice Department wasn't an extension of his legal duty.

Two weeks later, he resigned.

That's how it's supposed to work.

So let's look at how the system is working so far in the era of Trump II, the Trump Ire strikes back.

The U.S.

Justice Department is in turmoil this week with seven prosecutors quitting amid allegations of a corrupt bargain to drop criminal charges against New York City's Democratic Mayor Eric Adams.

Okay, so it doesn't sound like the system is working perfectly.

This story started back in September last year with allegations that the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, was taking bribes and free luxury travel primarily from the government of Turkey.

As the indictment alleges, Mayor Adams engaged in a long-running conspiracy in which he solicited and knowingly accepted illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors and corporations.

It is a stinging reminder that no one is above the law or beyond reproach.

Well, we will see about that.

Over the last decade, the New York City police and prison departments had been operating under instructions from the local council not to cooperate with federal mass deportation programs.

Up until recently, New York City Mayor Eric Adams agreed with the non-cooperation policy.

But then two things changed.

He was indicted by the feds and Donald Trump won the election.

I'm not going to be warring with this administration.

I'm going to be working with this administration.

He indicated his willingness to cooperate with the incoming president's immigration policies.

We can reach what the American people have been saying to us.

Secure our borders.

And say what you want about Donald Trump.

The man rewards loyalty.

Three weeks after Trump took office, the acting deputy attorney general ordered the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, a Trump appointee by the name of Danielle Sassoon, to drop the case against Mayor Adams.

She resigned.

She says she was ordered to drop the case by the Justice Department after attorneys for Adams offered what amounted to a quid pro quo, essentially that Adams would help enforce the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in exchange for leniency in his case.

This is not at all how justice is supposed to work.

You aren't meant to be able to say, I'll crack down on immigrants in my city if you save me from criminal prosecution.

And yet that's what Danielle Sassoon says happened.

Danielle Sassoon said she stood by the prosecution and that her office was prepared to bring additional charges against Adams for destroying evidence and lying to the FBI.

Six more people in the office followed suit and resigned too.

The seventh resignation letter finished with, I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion.

But it was never going to be me.

And this is what sets Trump's second term apart from his first.

There are plenty of cowards and fools available.

During the 80-minute hearing, the judge pressed the acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, on the government's rationale for dropping the case, namely that it was impeding Adams from aiding in President Trump's immigration crackdown.

So the decision to drop the case isn't because they can't prove it.

It's purely because it's getting in the way of Donald Trump's policy.

If Adams resigned or was put in jail, someone else might take over who wouldn't be as keen to work with Trump.

Beauvé admitted he could not think of another example of a public official avoiding charges because of their government responsibilities.

Adams denies that there was an explicit quid pro quo agreement, but it doesn't have to be a signed contract for it to be a big ethical problem.

In the first Trump administration, stuff like this was rare, thanks to people like Bill Barr.

The Justice Department, for the most part, acted independently, charging nearly a dozen Trump allies with crimes and investigating Trump himself for all sorts of things.

It was staffed with Republicans who agreed with at least some of Trump's policies, but recognized that there are legal and ethical limits to a president's power and followed the rule of law.

The question is whether or not that can hold this time.

Thank you, President Trump.

I've known you for many, many years and I will not let you down.

I am truly honoured.

The new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has already launched investigations into the prosecution of Donald Trump by federal and state attorneys and the prosecution of the January 6th attack on the Capitol building.

Those investigations will report directly to the White House.

And I will make you proud and I will make this country proud.

Will they proceed with the law held before politics without interference, like Bob Mullers did?

And if the investigation comes back empty-handed, will that be the end of probes into Trump's opponents?

If the judge orders that the prosecution of Eric Adams must continue, will it?

The battle between Trump's will and the law looks very different this time.

And it's not at all clear which is going to win.

If you're listening, is written by me, Matt Bevan.

Supervising producer is Jess O'Callaghan.

Audio production this week is by Cinnamon Nipard.

Next, Donald Trump is upending decades of US policy on how the world should operate, abandoning some US interests like Ukraine, and turning the heat on some of their closest neighbors.

It seems nonsensical, but not once you realize that it aligns almost perfectly with the policies of Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is the philosophy of a multipolar world.

And we'll be looking into that next on If You're Listening.

Hi, I'm Jan Fran.

And if you're enjoying listening to If You're Listening, I have a feeling you're going to enjoy our podcast too.

It's called Conspiracy, War on the Waterfront, and it'll take you behind one of the biggest industrial showdowns in Australia's history.

We're talking about that day in April 1998 when security guards wearing balaclavas and wielding Alsatians kicked 1,400 workers from their jobs on the docks.

What led up to that moment?

Almost has to be heard to be believed.

So make sure you listen to Conspiracy: War on the Waterfront.

To find it, search for Rewind on the ABC Listen app.