The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Mueller Investigation: What We Know So Far

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Washington is abuzz with rumors that the Mueller report is coming soon, and both sides are trying to strategize their next move. The reporter Adam Davidson summarizes the broad strokes of what we know so far, and Susan B. Glasser and Jeffrey Toobin debate what impact it will have on the partisan war in Washington. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that all of America is waiting with bated breath for the Mueller report to be handed in to the Justice Department. And then, in some form, it'll go out to the world. And everybody seems to expect it soon. Now, what that will mean for the presidency in the nation, we're going to try to take it. tease out those questions in just a little bit. But before we do that, you might want to refresh your course on the basic facts of the Russia investigation, the broad strokes of what we've learned so far. Because with all the headlines of the past two years, this one brought in for questioning, that one indicted, this one cooperating, it's hard to keep track of all that's really come about.

So we gave reporter Adam Davidson this challenge. Give us a summary of what we know so far about the Mueller investigation and do it in three minutes or less. Spoiler alert, he failed. As I see it, the case can be broken up into four phases, four more or less discrete periods of time from late 2015, right on through 2017. Phase one, the hustle. Felix Sater, a longtime associate of Trump's,

heard from a friend in Moscow that some land was available and that it could maybe become a Trump tower. This was in late 2015. Trump was running for president, but was still considered a long-shot joke of a candidate. I will get along, I think, with Putin, and I will get along with others, and we will have a much more stable, stable world. It seems fairly clear that most around Trump saw a little chance that he'd win, but maybe just maybe this presidential campaign could lead to a payday. With Trump's blessing, Sater, along with his longtime friend and Trump's lawyer, Michael Korn, Cohen pursued the deal. They did a bunch of things that people wouldn't do if they thought their

colleague, Donald Trump, might soon become president. They pursued financing from a Russian bank with connections to Vladimir Putin and his cronies. They employed a known spy for Russian military intelligence to help them get the project approved. They even plotted to offer Putin a free penthouse in this hypothetical tower. Now, they were all outsiders in the high high-end world of real estate in Russia. Sater and Cohen and Trump were desperately trying to get the attention of big shots in Moscow, and they weren't succeeding. The deal during the hustle phase, like Trump's candidacy, was going nowhere.

Phase two, the scramble. New Hampshire, I want to thank you. We love you. We're going to be back a lot. We're not going to forget you. You started it. Remember, you started it. In early 2016, shortly after Trump did far better than anyone expected in Iowa and New Hampshire,

Russian government-linked hackers finalized their plan to sway the election in favor of Trump. Do we love our country? Do we love our country? Several Americans with ties to the Russian leadership joined the Trump campaign, including Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page. Within weeks, Russian hackers have broken into the email accounts of the Clinton campaign and several other democratic groups. The evidence we have so far makes it seem like this time in the spring of 2016 is fairly chaotic. There's lots of Russian-linked groups.

Some are doing hacking. Some are reaching out to various figures in Trump's orbit, including some people pretty far outside of the inner circle like George Papadopoulos. The Russian government seems to want to have access to Trump. Trump, at least from the business sense regarding Trump Tower, is trying to get access to the Kremlin, and neither side seems to know quite how to develop this relationship. Phase 3, the meeting. On June 9th, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort meet with eight people from the former Soviet Union to discuss ways in which the Russian government

might help the Trump campaign. This is the infamous Trump Tower meeting in which Dirt was promised on Hillary Clinton, and Don Jr. replied, if it's what you say, I love it. What happened at this meeting and the way Trump and others in his orbit responded to it is a key focal point of the Mueller investigation. Soon after the meeting, things seem very different and not quite so chaotic and haphazard. There are far fewer reports of Russian officials reaching out to peripheral Trump characters. And Trump himself speaks as if he knows something's coming from the Russians. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.

Over the summer of 2016, the Russian government effort to sway the election is becoming very active. During this period, Paul Manafort, who has a history of doing business in Ukraine, is promising favors to people he knows who are linked to the Kremlin. And during this time, the Trump campaign becomes increasingly pro-Putin. They change the RNC's position on Ukraine, and Trump is openly praising and defending Putin against charges of hacking. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people.

It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay? We know now that in mid-August Trump was explicitly told that the Russians are seeking to end. interfere in the election. He's asked if he has had any contacts with people close to the Kremlin. He says no. Two days later, he fires Manafort. And there's just all sorts of contacts we now know about between people quite senior in the campaign and either Russian officials or people who seem to be close to the Russians. Donald Jr. begins communicating directly with WikiLeaks. Jeff Sessions holds two meetings with the Russian ambassador. And of course, Roger Stone is communicating

continuously through an intermediary with Julian Assange. It appears that Sater and Cohen are taken off the Trump Tower Moscow project, and it's still unclear what exactly was happening with the building after this point, although Rudy Giuliani recently said and then recanted that there were negotiations right up until the election. In public statements and during the debates with Hillary Clinton, Trump continues to insist there is no evidence that Russia is behind the various forms of election interference, He denies any business dealings with Russia. Putin has no respect for this person.

Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States. And it's pretty clear. You're the puppet. It's pretty clear you won't admit that the Russians have engaged in cyber. Then, of course, Trump is elected president. And we know not all that much about what happened between election night and inauguration day. Phase 4, the denials. It is hard to talk about phase 4 without sounding partisan

because the clear truth is that Trump himself said things he knew to be untrue. We have a word in English for that. It's called lying. Several, including Trump's lawyer, campaign manager, and national security advisor have admitted they lied to the FBI at the time about their relationship with Russia. And Roger Stone was just indicted. in part because of his denials to Congress

concerning communications through an intermediary with Assange during the campaign. In May 2017, Trump fires James Comey, the head of the FBI, when he won't stop investigating Michael Flynn's connections to Russia

and possibly Trump's own connections to Russia. There was no good time to do it. And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It's an excuse. That's when Robert Mueller is appointed in May 2017.

There is still much we don't know. We know with legal certainty, though, that there was a lot of contact between the two sides, between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and a clear commonality of interests that both sides expressed to each other repeatedly. But what exactly did Trump know? When did he know it? How involved was he? We don't know yet. And his political future rests on the answers to those questions. Adam Davidson, with what we know about the Mueller investigation so far.

Adam writes our column called Swamp Chronicles, and you can find it at new yorker.com. I have with me today, Susan Glasser and Jeff Toobin, both staff writers for the New Yorker, who have been covering this story in one way or another for years now. It almost seems like decades. And Susan, when you listen to Adam, run us through the facts, where do you come down on the crucial question of the President of the United States's involvement here? What is the likely outcome where that's concerned? You know, I was struck by a couple things in Adam's excellent report. First of all, I think it's important to keep in mind what did Vladimir Putin and Russia want from Donald Trump and want from the United States throughout this period. And because I think that starts to answer in a very specific way why there was a Russian intelligence operation, according to all the U.S. intelligence agencies, to manipulate and affect the 2016 election, not simply to cause chaos, as some people have reported, but on Donald Trump.

Trump's behalf. They wanted something very specific, sanctions relief. Russia took over Crimea in 2014, invaded its neighbor Ukraine. That's a conflict that continues to today. As a result of that, there are these fairly stringent sanctions on Russia. And I believe that was what they talked about at the Trump Tower meeting. And I think the record is very likely to show that Trump was privately as well as publicly receptive to the idea. that he was receiving some support from the Russians, and in exchange, was willing to consider lifting these sanctions. Susan, there's been a lot of concern that William Barr, the president's nominee for Attorney General, will not in the end even release Mueller's findings, or it might have to go through the Attorney General, and he'll issue some kind of version or summary of it. What do you expect us to actually get when the Mueller investigation is over? What will we receive? Will it be leaked? And will we find out everything we want to? It's not at all clear is the answer because we have not had a situation that exactly mirrors this one. There's no set law or template that applies to this. But I think most people believe that there's really no way to fully cover this up at this point and that the information one way or the other is going to come out. And I think that is a reasonable expert.

Jeff, you agree? Mostly. I, you know, I've been burned so many times saying, well, Donald Trump can't possibly do X, and then he does X. So the idea that the Trump administration would use concepts like classified information, executive privilege, the existence of pending investigations, to limit the disclosure. in Mueller's report is not out of the question to me. And even though it's true that even some Republicans as well as virtually all Democrats have said they think Mueller's report should be made public, you know, more or less in its entirety, if Barr says no, what are they going to do about it? They'll leak it. They'll leak it. You've got bipartisan legislation that's put forth by Chuck Grassley, who's not exactly a man of the left, and Richard Blumenthal, who's a Democrat, obviously, that requires the final report be submitted to Congress and the public. Now, that may not pass, but it gives you some sense of the inclination to, at the very least, leak it.

Well, there could also be a Supreme Court fight over it, which would really put us in echoes of Watergate territory, and arguably it was Nixon's fight over the release of the tapes, and when it finally got to the Supreme Court and involved all three branches of government that was really, you know, the beginning of the end game for him. Now, the president's numbers, all kinds of numbers, have been eroding and eroding. They're all, his negatives are much higher than his positives, even his core base. has kind of gotten to a 30% level. That's no way to win an election. And the election campaign has begun, assuming he gets past these investigations in the House, assuming he gets past the Mueller

report, he'll be damaged in many ways. We're already seeing candidates come out on the Democratic side, and we even hear about the possibility of a Republican challenging the president in his own party. What are Donald Trump's election prospects? Well, first of all, I think you're right to spotlight the possibility of Republican challenge, even if it's not successful. Recent history suggests this is the one fairly sure-fire way in which incumbent presidents lose re-election is when they are weakened from within in their own party. Obviously, that was the story of Jimmy Carter in 1980, beaten up by Ted Kennedy, even though Kennedy didn't win and goes on to lose. to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush had the Pat Buchanan insurgency from within his party. It becomes a one-term president. Or you could have an LBJ-like scenario in 1968 where the president chose not to run again while facing increasing discord and division from within his own party. I think both of those are real scenarios. Jeff, same question. Well, I just, you know, given my credentials as someone who was disastrously and totally wrong about the 2000.

16 election. I don't think you were allowed in that. I wasn't alone, but I was, I think reports of Donald Trump's political death have been greatly exaggerated. I think his poll numbers, while somewhat weaker, I think the real story is how little they've changed, not how much they've changed. I strongly agree with that. The day he took office after a election, an election in which you'll recall he won, his, you know, popularity was, roughly 40%. It's been as high as 45. It's been down to 40, you know, 35. But I mean, it's, you know, depending on which poll, it really hasn't changed that much. And that's, you know, it was enough to win. As for the Democrats, I mean, I suppose the good news is there's no one candidate who is his target,

who he can, you know, start chanting, lock him or her up. The bad news is, there's no candidate. So the idea that Donald Trump is going to lose to some miscellaneous person whose identity we have no idea about who it is, I just think, you know, most presidents get reelected. Is the drama of the possibility of Mueller getting fired by Trump now over, do you think? Yes. I really think the odds of him being dismissed are essentially zero. Now, release of the report, that's a different story, and we've discussed the complexity there. But Mueller is going to be allowed to finish this investigation. I have no doubt about that. Jeff, Democratic leaders have been reluctant to talk about impeachment, although some rank and file

members have more than colorfully called for it. What do you believe Mueller has to find in order to trigger that impeachment? I ask that to both of you, Jeff, first. Something that is significantly beyond and different from the known facts of the investigation and significantly worse than anything that has even been hypothesized so far. And, you know, when I did that piece, when I talked to Nancy Pelosi, and when I talked to Jerry Nadler, who's now the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, they were really categorical in saying, we are not going to push impeachment unless we are reasonably certain there will be 67 votes in the Senate. In other words, a substantial number of Republican votes in the Senate to remove Trump from office.

Nothing that is currently on the table in terms of the Mueller investigation will come close to generating that sort of consensus for Trump's removal from office. I mean, so what are we talking about? we have to find there has to be canceled checks between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Effectively, yes. Obstruction of justice, which would send other people to jail, would not be good enough to trigger impeachment? Absolutely not. I mean, I, you know, look, impeachment is a political as much as it is a legal concept. And, you know, Nancy Pelosi is nothing, if not a savvy political player. she, like all Democrats, are haunted by the experience of Republicans in 1998 when they impeach Bill Clinton, knowing full well he'd never get removed from office, which turned into a political disaster for the Republican Party. They are not going to repeat that mistake. On the other hand, Susan, I direct this to you, in the Watergate period, when things were getting bad, Republican leaders, as well as Democratic leaders, began visiting Richard Nixon and,

intimated that it was going to get a lot worse, and that was enough for Richard Nixon to step down. Do you see anything parallel happening here, or is Donald Trump just such a different figure that that's inconceivable? Well, I think he's different from both. I would caution against over-interpreting the lesson of the Clinton impeachment as much as overdoing the comparisons to Watergate. And, you know, frankly, I do think people are making too much of Nancy Pelosi saying she doesn't want to do impeachment. to talk about impeachment right now. What is she going to say? If she wants to do impeachment, the last thing that anyone who supports it would want is for her to talk about it right now, because the lesson here is one of process fairness. And if you prejudge a report that hasn't been filed yet, it's going to become even more impossible to convince anyone of process fairness.

So I think it will all flow from the Mueller report. Jeff has set out extraordinarily high bar for that. It seems like an impossible bar. I think he has. And frankly, I think he is, as we all are to a certain extent, we've been marinating in this and we have become inert to the shock power and the extraordinary nature of the facts that are already presented to us. And so. Well, isn't it true, Susan, that if if a president had a single one of these investigations, like the New York State Attorney General's investigation or the Trump Foundation, if any way, one of these things, which now seems so tiny in the grand scheme of things, or the investigation, journalistic investigations, is done in the New Yorker and elsewhere into money laundering schemes

in his business career. And there are countless things. That would be death to that presidency. And the truest thing that this president has ever said, so far it seems to be holding, I could walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and get away with it. Well, that's right. I think two things I would spotlight in terms of the gravity and seriousness of the allegations, and there's still allegations at this point, is important to say that. Number one, literally the impeachment clause of the Constitution, I think, was designed by the founders with the notion of foreign interference in our political and government process. So the core allegations were they to be. documented in some persuasive way by Mueller and his investigatory team, I think would really get at the heart of what impeachment was designed for, number one. Number two, as far as the obstruction of justice, the president of the United States has already publicly admitted he fired the FBI director with the goal in mind of shutting down this investigation. He has apparently also said this

repeatedly in his private conversations with AIDS and advisors as well. This remains an extraordinary fact. And so, you know, I feel that we in a way have become too blasé and sort of moved on too quickly from the hard-to-absorbed extraordinary nature of the allegations that Trump is facing. Jeff? I mean, I think Susan and I really just disagree about the likelihood of this of impeachment proceeding in any way, regardless of whether it should. And I just add two more points to why I believe that. One is the transformation of the Republican Party. What doomed Richard Nixon was when moderate Republicans, including seven on the House Judiciary Committee, said, we can't do this anymore. We want him out of office. Those moderate Republicans do not exist anymore in the modern

Republican Party. And the second factor is Fox News and the Republican media infrastructure, which is going to stand by Donald Trump, regardless of what the evidence is. No, this is a television network. No, but Chris Wallace or Shep Smith would, without being, you know, I'm not racing to the defense of Fox News, but even that is a, is a complexity, isn't it? Not really. No. I mean, No, I mean, look at Fox Prime Time. I mean, you know, where most of the people watch, you know, Laura Ingram, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity. You know, this is a guaranteed base of support. And again, given the atomization of the news media, these people are not watching Walter Cronkite and then switching to Fox News. That's the only place they're getting their news. That's another aspect of the difference from the 70s. Can I just, those are important and well-taken points. But, but I think. think, you know, first of all, we've kind of collectively, you know, telescoped the time frame of that Watergate thing. That public opinion was a lagging, not a leading indicator of Nixon's fate.

And in fact, those Republicans in the House as well as the Senate on the Judiciary Committee, up until 48 hours before that House Judiciary Committee vote, Elizabeth Drew was interviewing Republicans for the New Yorker. and they weren't sure which way they were going to go. The Republican leaders in the Senate, who in our collective memory, get so much credit for marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to Richard Nixon and telling him to step aside, as Hugh Scott did, that came only at the very end when it was clear his support had collapsed. Almost a third of the country remained solidly behind him through much of this,

even going back farther in time. Joseph McCarthy, when he was censured by, the Senate in 1954, and that was the end of his red-baiting, you know, sort of reign of terror, there were 44 Republicans in the Senate. Twenty-two of them stuck with him till the bitter end on that vote. So, you know, again, by the way, I should be clear. I am not saying that I believe for sure that this is where we're headed on impeachment. I think it really truly does rest on the nature and substance of the Mueller report his findings and how compelling. persuasive those are judged to be. But I don't rule out the possibility depending upon what's in

that report. Susan Glasser, Jeffrey Toobin, thank you, and we'll be back with more, I'm sure, in weeks to come. Thanks so much. Thanks, David. Thanks, David. Washington correspondent, Susan Glasser and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, both staff writers for The New Yorker. I'm David Remnick, and that's our episode for today. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more. Our Our is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. Our team includes Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Calaliyah, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.