The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As we near the presidential election, a new book answers a lot of questions about the Mueller investigation. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed by Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate any links or coordination between the Russian government and people associated with the 2016 Trump campaign, as well as other related matters including possible obstruction of justice, witness tampering, or destruction of evidence.

The book takes us behind the scenes of the investigation. It answers questions such as why the special counsel's office didn't subpoena President Trump, why no criminal charges against Trump were recommended, and the reaction inside the special counsel's office when then Attorney General William Barr released his own inaccurate summary of the investigation.

That summary misled Americans about what the report's conclusions really were and enabled Trump and the White House to incorrectly claim the report found no obstruction and no collusion.

The new book, Interference, The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation, is written by three lead members of Mueller's team, including my guest, Aaron Zebley. He was Mueller's deputy during the investigation and was Mueller's chief of staff when Mueller was the FBI director. Zebley oversaw the editing of the Mueller report. Aaron Zebley, welcome to Fresh Air. Can you describe your role in the investigation as Mueller's deputy?

I would say I was more or less the chief operating officer. I oversaw all the investigations and all the prosecutions. We had team leaders for each of our investigative teams, but I was overseeing all of it, as I said, as the chief operating officer, more or less. There were a lot of criticisms for not having subpoenaed Trump. You say the story of the back and forth with the Justice Department over the subpoena has never been told until this book.

Why did the Mueller team insist that it was essential to question President Trump? One of the central questions of our obstruction of justice investigation was the president's intent. Obstruction of justice has an intent element that is whether or not the person behaved with corrupt intent. And the best evidence of that we thought at the time, or at least very good evidence of that at the time, would be talking to the president himself about

One of the things you wanted was Trump's explanation for firing James Comey, who was then the director of the FBI. What were some of the specific things you wanted to ask about? Well, with respect to his termination of Jim Comey, in that week around Comey's termination, the president said a number of things about its possible connection with Russia and the days after that.

Firing Comey, for instance, he was interviewed by Lester Holt, and he seemed to draw a connection between his decision to fire Comey and the fact that he was running an investigation of potential connections between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign.

The first draft of a letter that Trump never sent because his aides convinced him not to said, and this was a letter to Comey, while I greatly appreciate you informing me that I am not under investigation concerning what I have stated is a fabricated story on a Trump-Russia relationship pertaining to the 2016 presidential election, please be informed that I and I believe the American public have lost faith in you as the director of the FBI.

Why was this a troublesome draft of a letter? What did you want to ask Trump about it?

Well, his letter does a couple of things, starting with the end. He's pointing back to statements by Comey from almost a year earlier in July 2016. And then in October 2016, about decisions he made in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. So he's reaching back in time and talking about a loss of faith in his leadership. And yet a year has passed since.

And at the same time, we knew from other information we had gathered that actually what the president was most concerned with was the fact that there was this investigation of potential links and coordination between Russian election interference and their efforts to interfere in the election and the Trump campaign.

Another thing you cite is that Trump told his White House counsel, Don McGahn, that he should call Rod Rosenstein, who was then the acting attorney general, and tell him that Mueller had conflicts and Mueller had to go. Call me when you do it. So after directing McGahn to fire Mueller, Trump told McGahn to say that Trump never ordered him to do it. What did you want to ask him, ask Trump, that would help you decide if that was an act of obstruction?

Obstruction of justice requires three things, an obstructive act, a nexus to an official proceeding and corrupt intent. And in the what you just described with McGahn, the president went to McGahn and asked him to have Mueller removed right after it first came to light that we had an investigation of the president personally for obstruction of justice. So we wanted to understand that.

The connection between his decision to tell Don McGahn to remove Mueller and the revelation that we were investigating the president personally. And then the latter part of that, where the president asked McGahn later to deny that that had happened. We were very interested in understanding exactly why he would take the steps to deny that he had ever done that. What kind of answers were you expecting?

Well, when you get in a room and you interview someone, you're never quite sure what might come out. We hoped we would get an explanation.

And I don't know. I hoped we would we would hear his account of those events. I'll mention just one more thing. The day after Trump fired Comey, Trump met with senior Russian officials in the Oval Office and said, I face great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off. I'm not under investigation.

Yeah, that's right. That was Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, and I think Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador there as well. And that was another instance where Trump seemed to be connecting his decision to remove Comey and the fact that there was an investigation of Russian election interference and its potential connection to the Trump campaign. So what were Trump's legal team's arguments against interviewing Trump?

Well, one was they felt as though we had all we needed in terms of understanding the president's conduct. We had received some number of documents from the White House and we've been able to interview a number of people inside the White House about the president's conduct. And so their view was, hey, you've got enough information.

And then they also made legal arguments about essentially the president's immunity from examination when he's exercising constitutional powers, such as firing a director of the FBI.

And that statement is very similar to what the Supreme Court recently ruled, that a president is immune from prosecution if what they're doing is part of an official act of the president. So if somebody is doing something for corrupt reasons, like if he was firing Comey just to kind of cover up any evidence that Comey was finding or any investigation Comey was pursuing involving the president—

Is firing somebody to cover up something for your own good considered an official act of the presidency? This is something that's really perplexing about these decisions.

This is one of the central issues and one of the troubling things about the potential collateral consequences of the Supreme Court's recent decision about the president being immune from prosecution for official acts. There are two possible official acts in what you just described. One is firing an executive officer. The director of the FBI is an executive officer. That's at least an official act, hiring and firing executive officers.

And then the second piece is ending a criminal investigation. Ultimately, the power to prosecute and investigate is a presidential power. And so each of those actions, firing Comey, trying to end a criminal investigation, in theory, one consequence of this recent Supreme Court decision is that those things would not be subject to criminal investigation. Democracy really depends on honesty, doesn't it? Yes. Yes. If you have a dishonest...

executive, then what happens to these rules? It's exactly, this is one of the, this is sort of more of what I was just saying. This is one of the things that is, I think, most troubling about the potential consequence of this recent Supreme Court decision. It's not just that the president might be immune from prosecution.

A president might be immune from being investigated even. A criminal prosecutor can use criminal tools to investigate if there's a possible crime. If the Supreme Court decision means that the president is immune now and forever, which it says for official actions, there's a real question as to whether or not those actions can actually be investigated and that the conduct would ever see the light of day.

So the way it worked out was you finally agreed to submit written questions and accept written answers from Trump. So you submitted a list of what's like 76 questions. It took two months for you to get answers to those questions. What was your reaction to the responses that you did get? They were uninformative. There were a lot of I don't recalls.

A lot of lawyered responses. I mean, I think every lawyer understands when you write answers to questions, you're really not going to reveal much information. And so that's exactly what happened. And you don't get to ask a follow-up question. Exactly. That's the value of an interview. You get to see the person. You get to follow up. You get to press them when there are opportunities. So did you get anything out of the written testimony?

I don't think there was anything that contributed to our understanding of what had happened with the Russians or what had happened in the president's conduct towards our investigation. No. What do you think you might have gotten if you actually got to talk with him in person in real time as opposed to written responses, you know, written questions with responses given to you two months later?

Could he still have said, oh, I don't remember, or just giving you vague answers, even when you ask follow-ups? I suppose he would have started there, but we would be in a position to remind him of certain things. So just to take one example, there was an instance where he, the president, or he was a candidate at the time, was in a car with Rick Gates and Roger Stone.

And Rick Gates overheard Roger Stone call. And then immediately after that, candidate Trump said to Rick Gates, more or less, that it had something to do with WikiLeaks releases. And at the time, WikiLeaks had possession of information stolen by the Russians and they were systematically releasing it. So he might say, look, I don't recall any of this, but we would be in a position to remind him of the precise circumstances when a call happened and press him on whether or not he actually doesn't recall anything.

I want to ask you another thing about this period in the Mueller investigation. Giuliani had recently joined the legal team. And at a meeting, he asked if Trump was being examined by Mueller as a witness in the investigation or a subject or a target. Just briefly explain the difference between a target and a subject.

A subject is somebody who's within the scope of the investigation, somebody whose conduct is being looked at. The target of an investigation or a target is somebody who's essentially a defendant, somebody about whom you have evidence of possible criminal wrongdoing. So this was supposed to be a very confidential meeting. And you in confidence or like your team in confidence told Giuliani that Trump was a subject, not a target.

Again, this meeting was supposed to be confidential, and Giuliani agreed to those terms. And then he talked about it to the press and even got the details wrong. So how do you deal with a lawyer who isn't being honest and isn't keeping his own agreement and also gets the facts wrong? Well, in that situation, what Bob decided, and we say this in the book, was he would no longer meet with him. He just wouldn't do it.

That's one thing you can do. I think what prosecutors often do under those circumstances is they might only communicate with a lawyer in writing. I mean, if there's any question about what is said in a particular meeting and then the lawyer talks about it publicly, better after that point to just stick to communicating in writing.

In terms of obstruction of justice, that was one of the things you were investigating. And Trump's legal team questioned whether you could investigate obstruction of justice without there being an underlying crime that he was obstructing. You know, that is obstructing the investigation about. And then you pointed out that obstruction is a crime and it doesn't require an underlying crime that's being covered up.

Did it surprise you that the Trump legal team was making that argument when an underlying crime isn't a requirement of obstruction?

Yes and no. Yes, because as you point out, obstruction is its own crime. And in fact, ironically, the most effective obstruction would prevent you from ever finding evidence of the underlying crime. So you end up in this cycle of never being able to proceed if that were not the case, if obstruction were not its own crime. So yes, I was surprised.

And at the same time, I suppose I wasn't particularly surprised because they were making all manner of arguments. And this one was just one more in the arsenal of arguments they made against talking to us or having the president talk to us. So the Mueller report says that the team declined to reach a judgment about whether there was evidence to charge Trump with the crime of obstruction. But you also were saying that you were not exonerating him either. Right.

You weren't saying there was and you weren't saying there wasn't obstruction. What is the legal bar for the criminal charge of obstruction? And why didn't the findings that you came up with reach that legal bar? Well, we ultimately decided not to make the calculation even. What we said was the Department of Justice prohibits prosecutors from charging a sitting president for

There's an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that says that. And it also says allegations of misconduct by the president are to be made by the Congress through the impeachment process. That's a role for them. That's not the role for an individual prosecutor. And so we declined even to make the judgment. But to your technical legal question, yes.

There are three elements to obstruction of justice, an obstructive act, a nexus to an official proceeding. In our case, it would be a grand jury proceeding and corrupt intent. And prosecutors charge cases when they believe the subject has committed a crime and they think they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. So now five years later, now having written this book, now having told stories that you wouldn't have told earlier,

Are you willing to say that you actually did find evidence of obstruction or that you actually didn't find enough to meet the legal bar?

I think the Mueller report says it in the best possible way. We did an analysis of 10 incidents where the president was taking actions towards our investigation. And in four of them, we said there was substantial evidence of all three elements of obstruction of justice, but we didn't reach the ultimate judgment.

And I think I'll leave it there. I'm willing to say the conduct needed to be described in a sober and clear fashion and for people to be aware of it. And I think it was important that we did that.

And I'm going to ask you the same questions about colluding or cooperating with Russia. Your report also doesn't reach a conclusion about whether Trump did or did not collude or cooperate with Russia. I suppose that was for the same reasons. Well, in that instance, we said we did not find sufficient evidence of a conspiracy to charge a conspiracy.

Collusion is not really a criminal violation. So we applied that term to mean conspiracy. And we ultimately said, look, we didn't find sufficient evidence to say there was a conspiracy. But we did say that the Russians interfered in the election with the intention of favoring Donald Trump because they perceived there'd be a benefit from a Trump presidency. And they interfered in a way to harm the other candidate, Hillary Clinton.

And we also found evidence that the Trump campaign perceived it would benefit from some of the Russian conduct. For instance, they perceived they would benefit from the releases by WikiLeaks. And at the time, WikiLeaks was releasing information that the Russians had stolen from the Clinton campaign. There was also the infamous Trump Tower meeting where a Russian...

proposed to Don Jr. that this Russian had damaging information about Hillary Clinton that the Trump campaign could use and offered to have a meeting to hear about it. And Don Jr. agreed to do it. And so Don Jr., Eric Trump, and Paul Manafort, who was the campaign manager at the time, met with a couple of Russians and

And as it turns out, the Russians had their own agenda. But the fact that the Trump sons and campaign manager were willing to have that meeting, what in terms of information, what did that tell you?

So Eric Trump wasn't there. It was Jared Kushner was there. Oh, yes. Thank you for the correction. Yes. But you're right. Don Jr. attended and Manafort, Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, attended. So those three folks were there. And so the offer that came in to John Jr. was there's information that we want to provide to you that is

that is part of Russia government's support for the Trump campaign. And so the fact that Don Jr. was willing to take that meeting and then that Manafort and Kushner were also willing to participate, that was relevant.

We were interested in – we were trying to investigate links and coordination between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. And this seemed to us like at least a clear starting point for the possibility of there being some coordination between Russian activities and the Trump campaign activities.

Well, let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Aaron Zebley, one of the lead members of Robert Mueller's team who wrote the new book, Interference, the inside story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller investigation. Zebley was Mueller's deputy during the investigation. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

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At a press conference with Putin after Trump's first summit with Putin, Trump was asked about Putin and Russia and asked if Trump believes that Putin's denial of Russia's role in hacking Democratic leaders' emails was true. And Trump said, Putin said it's not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be. What was your interpretation of that?

I can tell you my reaction was complete surprise. At that precise moment in time, when the president was standing at the podium with Putin to his side and he was taking Putin's word, we had already returned our indictment to

which is a charging document against the Russian military intelligence organization known as the GRU. And it's spelled out in detail using email records and courtroom ready evidence that showed Russian military intelligence had broken into email accounts of Clinton campaign folks and released information at times designed to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

And so his own Department of Justice had found this evidence, concluded there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to show those things, charged the case. And yet here he was taking the word of Vladimir Putin over his own Department of Justice. I was surprised. Trump also said something referring to the 30,000 emails that were deleted from Hillary Clinton's private server when the Justice Department was investigating Trump.

Hillary's emails on her personal server and whether there were government emails, including top secret emails that shouldn't have been on a personal server. So Trump said, Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by the press. Let's see if that happens.

Is that something you could have used as evidence of some kind of collusion or cooperation or just like inappropriate, like legally inappropriate behavior? Or could Trump have easily said, I was kidding, which is what he has said in the past about some things that he really shouldn't have said. He's also famous for not having a sense of humor.

So we thought a lot about that, actually. So the other piece of what you just described, so that's July 2016. President Trump is giving a wide-ranging press conference, and he uses words along the lines that you just described. Russia, if you're listening, you'd be mightily rewarded if you find these 30,000 emails. And what happened and what we found happened about five hours later was,

Russian military intelligence for the first time ever launched a hacking scheme against Hillary Clinton's private office. And so to your point, is that collusion? We thought about that because it looked like call Donald Trump making statements and response. Russian military intelligence trying to break into Hillary Clinton's personal or private offices email and

What we ultimately concluded is, look, we're going to use legal standards. We're going to use the legal standard of conspiracy, which requires an actual agreement. And in this instance, while that's terrible conduct, we ultimately decided that as a legal matter, it didn't constitute an actual criminal conspiracy. There wasn't a knowing agreement between Donald Trump and the Russians, even while it looked very much like call and response.

Well, you know, I'm wondering, like, say you actually found obstruction. Say you actually found conspiracy. If you felt like you couldn't indict Trump because of the rules surrounding what the special counsel could do and the rules surrounding, you know, what presidents can be held accountable for. In some ways, like, what was the point of the investigation? Though you did recommend criminal charges against other players.

So I'd say two things. One is, under our circumstances where we couldn't charge a sitting president, we thought it was still important to show that an investigation like this could be conducted in a principled manner and with integrity, and you can lay out the facts in very sober fashion.

And the public can see what the conduct actually was. We thought it was important to do that and to do it independently. That's one. And the second thing I would say, and we talk about this in the book a bit, it is true that the Department of Justice policy at the time was you can't charge a sitting president. But if we had found something that we thought went so far as an actual conspiracy, a knowing conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russians, if we saw that,

We could have, in theory, gone to the Department of Justice and challenged that policy. You oversaw the drafting of the Mueller report, and you were worried about how careful the wording was. You wanted to get every fact exactly right, to not be ambiguous. Everything was fact-checked. What were the problems you were trying to avoid?

One thing that was extremely important to us is that we conduct the investigation, every aspect of the investigation and report on the investigation with complete integrity.

And part of that is not drawing inferences that are not completely tethered to the underlying facts. And so we wanted to be able to state the results of our investigation with complete precision, where there would be no question that we were being forthright and clear in what we had found. And I actually think to this day, I don't think there's really been a serious question about any particular fact we said about the Russians' conduct.

or the president's conduct towards the investigation. I think it has withstood the test of time. What was the main takeaway that you wanted Americans to get from the report? Two or three big things. One is Russia interfered in the 2016 election. It was no hoax. It happened then, and actually I think it's happening now.

The second thing is there has to be a way to investigate a president. I hope the book shows that that can be done with integrity, as we've discussed already. I think it's very important that the president's conduct be visible. It's important with Trump and it will be important with future presidents as well.

And I think more broadly, we need to uphold our institutions, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and we need prosecutors who are principled and humble and have respect for the rule of law. And I think that was Bob Mueller, and I hope that was our team. And then...

You were very surprised when then Attorney General William Barr issued his own summary of your report, which mischaracterized your findings. Remind us of the main contradictions between what you wrote and what he said the Mueller report found. I'd say there are two key pieces to that. On Russian election interference, it's

Bill Barr completely omitted from his summary of the report that the Russians had weighed in in a way to favor Trump and harm Hillary Clinton. And then on the obstruction side, he didn't actually describe any of the president's conduct. And he said that we had not reached any legal conclusions about obstruction of justice and Donald Trump, whereas we actually had reached some legal judgments. And the legal judgments were?

Well, one is that the obstruction of justice statute can apply to a president's use of his or her official power. If the president is exercising their power corruptly, we think the obstruction of justice statutes should have applied. The Supreme Court has since said that's not correct.

But that's what we thought at the time. And then we had also done a very close analysis of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion that said you can't charge a sitting president. It was important for people to see that, to understand why we were opting not to reach judgments about whether or not the president had committed a crime. It's hard to understand our decision not to reach a judgment without those explanations. So Barr said you found no evidence of collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice.

Did Barr give you any clue in advance that he was going to release his summary and not yours? And if you didn't have a clue, how did you find out? Did you find out like when I found out? Well, I would say there were clues, and we described this episode in the book. We turned in our report to Bill Barr on Friday. It was March 22, 2019. And on the Sunday, he

So two days later, which was March 24th, I heard from someone on Bill Barr's team and he described a letter that the attorney general had written about our report. So that is just a few hours before the Bill Barr letter came out. So at that point, I would say that was that was a clue. And my reaction was to press for the attorney general to use our executive summaries and not something new that he had written.

What response did you get? Well, a few hours later, the attorney general's letter came out. Let's take a short break here. For just joining us, my guest is Aaron Zebley, one of the three members of Robert Mueller's team who wrote the new book, Interference, the inside story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller investigation. He was Mueller's deputy during the investigation. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.

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of the Mueller investigation and misrepresented your findings? Similar to what you and I are talking about right now. The Bill Barr's letter came out on that Sunday evening, March 24th. The very next morning, I called the Department of Justice and said, the letter's not correct. And I went through some of the points that you and I just discussed, focusing on the legal issues in particular.

And the need to make a correction and release our executive summaries. And in fact, what we did later that day is we prepared versions that would be releasable, and we sent them to the Department of Justice that same day. What was your response from the DOJ?

Well, they didn't release the executive summaries. And then we continued to press them over a few more days. And we continued to watch the media. We continued to watch statements from Congress. And it was clear they did not understand our work.

And so that Wednesday, so now Monday, we talked to the Department of Justice. Come Wednesday, Bob wrote a letter to the attorney general saying, there's confusion. You need to release our executive summaries. And you couldn't release it yourself. Could you have leaked it? Did you consider leaking it? We didn't. As I said, we thought it was important to conduct ourselves in the most principled manner possible and

And so we thought it was important to keep pressing and to operate according to the rules. And so we didn't seriously consider that. There was a moment where it sort of flitted through our minds, but we dismissed it quickly.

What is it like when you're trying so hard to be principled, but you feel the Justice Department, which you're reporting to, is being unprincipled and is misrepresenting your findings and that their version is becoming the official version of your report? So you're being principled, but you're being totally mischaracterized by the attorney general. You know, this is one of the most...

troubling parts of the whole experience, there was a real cost to what you're describing. I don't think the public, when it was paying closest attention, really understood or had the opportunity to understand what we had actually found because our report had been withheld. So it was supremely frustrating. But as to your broader question,

We thought the right course of action was to remain principled and to continue following the rules. And that's the path we took. So let's talk a little bit more about the Supreme Court decision at the end of the last term saying that presidents have immunity from criminal charges if it's attached to official business. How do you interpret that in terms of what it means for the future?

I'm glad you asked the question that way, because I think there's work to be done by the courts to figure out the exact boundaries of this decision. But what the court said was the president is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for exercises of core constitutional authorities and is presumptively immune for any actions that are otherwise illegal.

And then outside of that, they're not immune. So figuring out exactly what the boundaries of each of those categories is, is going to be a task for the courts.

And then the other piece of this that I think is quite important is whether or what does this mean in terms of what can actually be investigated? As we were discussing earlier, if the president is completely immune for a particular set of actions, can the president still be investigated in and around those particular actions? Something might not be illegal because it can't be charged, but it might still be terrible conduct. It might even be corrupt conduct.

And it's important, I think, for that kind of conduct to come to light. And so I think that remains an open question for the future. Will there be no more special counsels investigating presidential conduct in the way that we did? One of your criticisms of Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller report is that Barr's report underplayed the Russian threat to election integrity.

And you outlined the Russian threat to the 2016 election. What are your fears about Russia interfering with the 2024 election? Well, one is that they're doing it. I just have that basic fear. But the second part, and this is critical, is

There's been declarations that Russian election interference was a hoax, that it didn't happen. And there are many people in America who deny that it happened or don't understand that it happened. And so when the Russians are interfering and there's evidence of this in reporting and Americans might be hearing information that was influenced by the Russians...

And yet, if you don't even know that it's possible or that it is happening, actually, that the Russians are steering some of this coverage and trying to influence you, how do you defend against it? It's very important that the public understand that there is Russian election interference. Other countries are doing it as well, by the way. Iran? Right. China? I presume so. I mean, on Iran and China, I'm not in government anymore, so I'm relying on public reports. But yes, Russia.

If you had the Mueller investigation to do over again, is there anything you would have done differently?

Well, one thing we didn't anticipate is the way Bill Barr would handle the report once we turned it in. So I might think a little more deeply about how to deliver that report to potentially prevent that from happening. He said in his confirmation hearing when he was becoming attorney general that he was going to be as transparent as possible. And as we lay out in the book, we had other reasons to expect that he would use our words and not his own, but he didn't.

So I would think through that in particular. How do we deliver this report? Well, Aaron Zebley, thank you so much for talking with us. I appreciate the time. Thanks for having me. And thanks for making public some of the behind-the-scenes story of the Mueller investigation. My pleasure.

Aaron Zebley was special counsel Robert Mueller's deputy and oversaw the editing of the Mueller report. Zebley is one of three leaders of the Mueller team who wrote the new book, Interference, the inside story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller investigation. This is Fresh Air.

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Three years later, the creator of WandaVision, Jack Schafer, has concocted a spinoff of that series, which just launched on Disney+. It's called Agatha All Along, and our TV critic David Bianculli calls it just as creative and magical as its predecessor. Here's his review. Just when I feel like I've reached the burnout phase when it comes to comic book dramas, along comes something that pulls me back in.

HBO's The Penguin, the best treatment of a DC Comics character in years, just did that. And now, along comes Agatha All Along. Agatha All Along is a spinoff from WandaVision, centered on the unexpected villain of that earlier series. Most of the characters in WandaVision were under a magic spell, trapped in an isolated simulation of perennially happy suburban TV sitcoms of various decades.

One of the residents who seemed to be under the spell was Agnes, the nosy neighbor, played by Catherine Hahn. But in a surprise reveal near the end of the series, it turned out that Agnes was a witch named Agatha Harkness, who actually was the very aware villain hiding in plain sight in the supernaturally altered town of Westview.

This plot twist was revealed in the next-to-last episode by temporarily turning WandaVision into a different pretend TV show, complete with its own TV theme song. The music and lyrics, which won an Emmy that year, were by Broadway musical veterans Kristen Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez. And their song not only detailed the plot twist, it provided the inspiration, and even the title, for the new Agatha All Along series.

Who's been messing up everything? It's been Agatha all along. Who's been pulling every evil string? It's been Agatha all along. WandaVision ended with Agatha imprisoned by a memory-wiping magic spell, sentenced to living in Westview thinking she really was a town resident named Agnes.

Jack Schaefer, creator of WandaVision and its spinoff, starts Agatha All Along with Agatha, now Agnes, stuck in another TV-inspired alternate reality. Except this time, instead of family sitcoms, the vibe comes from crime dramas. Specifically, Mare of Easttown. The show within a show we start watching, a gloomy detective series, is called Agnes of Westview.

And early on, while working on a murder case, Agnes is visited by an FBI agent, played by Aubrey Plaza, who seems to know a lot more than just about the case at hand. Sure. Let's talk about the case. What are your theories? How'd she end up in the ravine? No drag marks, thinking the perp carried her. Uh, seems logical, but, um, you don't really believe that because... Oops. Oops.

No tracks for the perp. Not a leaf disturbed before forensics showed up. It's almost like she just magically appeared. Let's stick to reality here, yeah? Sure. If there's one thing we can agree on, it's that these cases are always about the place. The specific small town. The history of it. The people in it. The secrets buried beneath it. That's where the answers lie. Well, who better to solve the mystery than one of Westview's very own?

You've lived here your whole life. Isn't that true, Agnes? Thanks to a young suspect identified only as the teen, Agnes soon gets her memory back and her identity as Agatha, but not her powers. To regain them, she has to assemble a witch's coven and lead them on a journey down a magical, threatening witch's road. It's very Wizard of Oz, intentionally so.

And Agatha even meets up with her eventual traveling companions one at a time, like Dorothy did. Agatha and the teen, who sticks along for the ride, visit a psychic played by Patti LuPone, who impresses Agatha with her very accurate reading of her. Afterward, Agatha confronts the psychic and tries to recruit her. You showed some real skill out there.

I didn't read your fortune. I read your reputation. Oh. Witches like you are the reason people think we poison apples and steal children and eat babies. Babies are delicious. Oh! How old are you? 410? 415? How dare you! Oh, I apologize. You don't look a day under 450. Years old? You get what? Maybe two suckers a day in here and 20 bucks later you're sitting on a bed that's also your wall.

Don't you miss the glory days? Other recruits include former Saturday Night Live player Sasheer Zameda, who's really good here. So is Aubrey Plaza and Patti LuPone and the rest of the cast, especially Catherine Han. Each task the coven must complete on the witch's road presents new dangers and challenges, but also magical new settings and costumes. That calls back to the audaciously inspired different eras framework of WandaVision.

And so does the incantation chanted to summon up the entrance to the magical road. Once again, the Lopezes provide the music and lyrics. But this time, with Catherine Hahn and Patti LuPone leading the chanting, it's indeed Spellbind. Seekest thou the road to all that's foul and fair? Gather, sisters, fire, water, earth, and air.

Darkest hour, wake thy power, earthly and divine. Burn and brew with coven true, and glory shall be thine. Disney Plus provided only the first four episodes for preview, so I don't know how Agatha All Along ends. But I adore the way it starts.

David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed Agatha All Along, which is now streaming on Disney+.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be actor Uzo Aduba. She's best known for her role as Crazy Eyes on Orange is the New Black and for HBO's In Treatment. She'll talk about growing up the daughter of Nigerian immigrants in an almost all-white Massachusetts suburb and pay tribute to her mother, who died while Aduba was writing her new memoir. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPRFreshAir.com.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Joel Wolfram, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seward. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. ♪

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