President Donald Trump may be giving his current suite of Justice Department staffers a hard time. But he’s been a big boon for those who have left.

Cable news networks are clamoring to fill their sets with expert talking heads who can explain and opine on every whiff of movement in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, leading to five or even six-figure salaries for some former federal prosecutors who’ve signed on as exclusive pundits. Others see a personal branding opportunity and do it for free.


“As a former U.S. attorney, you think you’re supposed to quietly fade into private practice,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney from the Northern District of Alabama who recently signed an MSNBC contract. “I consider this a form of ongoing public service.”

Life after leaving DOJ’s ranks traditionally has involved settling in at a cushy academic gig, cashing in at a law firm or perhaps scoring a coveted lifetime judicial appointment. But in the Trump era, having the Justice Department on one's résumé has opened a new career path — the media. And these ex-prosecutors-turned pundits have a distinct assignment: To try to bring sanity to the whirlwind of information about Mueller’s probe while helping the television networks in their continuing coverage of the Trump campaign’s foreign dealings during the 2016 presidential election.

“They are all the rage right now! We need more!” said an MSNBC producer.

Punditry isn’t all glamour. Cable TV guests rarely have control over their schedule in a news cycle defined by torrential downpours. When they do get on air, they often struggle to be heard over the din of overly packed panels and partisan shouting matches.

Network analysts say their willingness to do TV commentary on Mueller means they get calls at all hours. Vance knew something important was happening when a TV producer texted her while she was at a knitting retreat in Grand Rapids, Michigan — she was asked if she could drop her yarn and needles to do a hit on one of the Mueller indictments. She’s also done television hits during a college daughter-parent weekend in Maine, and when her firstborn was graduating from law school. “It’s just a question of being flexible,” Vance said.

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The high-profile assignments have their rewards. TV appearances help attract law-firm or consulting clients and can lead to lucrative speaking fees. Many pundits also view it as a chance to deploy their years of experience to help the American public understand the nuances of a complex case that involves a head-spinning cast of characters from around the world and a special counsel process that’s only rarely been used in recent years.

Suddenly, it’s valuable to have someone who can explain in layman’s terms topics like the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1974 ruling in U.S. v. Nixon, which rejected President Richard Nixon’s attempts to use executive privilege to withhold private presidential recordings, or decades-old DOJ legal opinions on whether a sitting president can be indicted ( no ) or pardon themselves ( likely no ).

“This is a unique situation,” said Vance, who ended a 25-year career at DOJ at the start of the Trump administration and is now teaching law at the University of Alabama. “We’ve never had an administration that was so cavalier about following ethics rules or has this sort of focused investigation on the president and his inner circle.”

Demand for expert guests is outpacing supply at some of the networks, especially when it comes to people who can claim some degree of professional proximity to Mueller, former FBI Director James Comey or others central to the Russia probe. While Fox News relies less on guest pundit discussions, bookers at CNN and MSNBC are frequently looking for a dozen or more panelists a day to fill out their shows, especially when Mueller-related news is cooking.

CNN alone has at least 15 legal experts under contract, which helpfully locks them down so they can’t appear on other networks. Some legal ex-DOJ pundits are paid per appearance, while others earn salaries. But CNN and MSNBC also commonly turn to other law enforcement experts who appear for free and are not exclusive to any one network.

“We have to get the most amount of people possible and they’re always asking for new faces,” said a second MSNBC producer.

That means former federal prosecutors aren’t the only ones getting in on the praise from Trump, who in February tweeted a quote from Ken Starr that the president said supported his own legal arguments.

“We’ve seen NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION….I have seen nothing, the firing of James Comey and all of the aftermath, that suggests that the President has obstructed justice because he’s exercising his power as the President of the U.S. I just don’t see it.” Judge Ken Starr — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2018

John Dean, the former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon whose testimony helped expose the Watergate cover-up, even set off a “bidding war” between networks last year before signing with CNN.

On air, Dean said he tries to be more of an “explainer than a predictor,” while sharing useful historical perspective on events that can seem to become old news in just a matter of hours. The former Nixon aide, who appeared on MSNBC during Clinton’s impeachment proceedings in the late 1990s, recently re-upped his CNN deal for a second year. One important stipulation in his contract: He doesn’t have to appear on the network’s large panels.

“I said the reason I don’t want to do them is I tend to turn them off my own set, so I assume others might do the same,” Dean said. “Not much is said except lots of bloviating for your talking points.”

Lewis Friedland, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and a former TV news producer, said that he’s never seen anything quite like today’s cable TV news environment. Cable news didn’t exist during Watergate, and the amount of punditry now, he said, far exceeds what the networks aired during the Clinton years. Along the way, yapping for the camera went from being somewhat taboo for serious people, like former prosecutors, to the norm.

“For a former U.S. attorney to go on the air during the Clinton era, you were probably seen as somewhat of a media hound,” he said. “You would probably damage your reputation to some extent.”

Now, Friedland added, “Those norms have probably mostly dropped away. There is no penalty. You’re not seen as a clown at this point.”

The change has been partially that TV is just more accepted as a medium now, he said, but also the evolution of a celebrity-driven, reality-TV culture. And for the networks, Friedland said, loading up on pundits makes business sense.

“If you can fill airtime, 50 to 60 grand a year, that’s nothing compared to the anchor salaries — certainly [not when] compared to reporter plus bureau salaries,” Friedland said.

Would-be pundits sometimes wiggle their way into networks based on their own contacts. Others use agents and PR representatives. Others simply get noticed.

Sol Wisenberg, who served as a deputy to Starr on the Clinton investigation, started getting calls to do television after a quote he gave to The New York Times last September sizing up the Mueller raid on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — “It’s important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled,” he said. The remark got tagged as the newspaper’s quote of the day .

“I try to call it like I see it,” said Wisenberg, who is not under contract and has appeared on several networks, including CNN, MSNBC and Fox. “I try to say what the law is. I try to say if this position [Trump lawyer Rudy] Giuliani is taking is ridiculous or not. Is this thing that Mueller did wrong or not?”

Different opinions, he added, play differently in different venues. “If you go on Sean Hannity and say Mueller should be led off in chains, you’re going to be asked back on. And if you go on Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon saying this particular position Giuliani took is completely outrageous, you’ll get asked back,” Wisenberg said.

As the Mueller investigation stretches on, the pundits say they expect to keep being called to appear on air. There are a couple of criminal trials against Manafort scheduled for July and September that are almost certain to draw wall-to-wall television coverage, despite the arcane arguments and lack of cameras in the courtroom.

“The littlest ripple in the water,” said Michael J. Moore, a former U.S. attorney from the Middle District of Georgia, and frequent guest for Mueller coverage on multiple networks, “can get everybody’s attention.”