The NPR Politics Podcast - Conyers Resigns, Trump And RNC Back Moore

Episode Date: December 5, 2017

Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.) announced that he's stepping down today, though he says it's because of his health and not sexual harassment allegations. President Trump officially endorsed Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama, and the RNC has also reinstated its support for Moore. The federal government is set to run out of funding on Friday. And there have been several developments in the Russia investigation. This episode, host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, national political correspondent Mara Liasson and justice reporter Ryan Lucas. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Tamara Keith. And I'm Scott Detrow. Over the last few weeks, we've been asking you to take a moment to contribute to public radio, your local station, and us here at the podcast by going to donate.npr.org slash politics. And we're going to be transparent with you here. As part of this, the people at NPR who have put all this together have given us some suggested themes to talk to you about. And this week's theme is relaxation. Right. Because you listen to this podcast to relax.

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And when you do, share your reasons why with the hashtag why public radio. That's donate.npr.org slash politics and the hashtag why public radio. Thanks so much. And here's the show. Hi, this is Suzanne in Albany, New York. My dog Danny and I listen to podcasts while walking. NPR politics is his favorite. This podcast was recorded at... Oh my gosh, this is awesome. 1.11 p.m. on Tuesday, December 5th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. You can listen to NPR Politics on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Congressman John Conyers announced this morning that he is stepping down today,

two weeks after sexual harassment allegations against him became public. Meanwhile, President Trump has officially endorsed Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama, and the Republican National Committee is once again backing Moore financially. The government is set to run out of funding on Friday. And more updates on the Russia investigation. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. It's Tuesday, and there has been a lot of news already. There has. We had one extra podcast last week and I feel like we probably could have justified,

though, for the sake of our weekends, we did not, like three podcasts since then. Yes. But let's just go with this one. We have a lot to cram in. And let's start with the latest news today, which is that longtime Congressman John Conyers announced today on a local Detroit radio show that he is stepping down. I am retiring today, and I want everyone to know how much I appreciate the support, the incredible, undiminished support I've received across the years from my supporters, not only in my district, but across the country as well. to resign in light of several accusations of sexual harassment and also a report that he used taxpayer funds to pay off a sexual harassment claim. Scott, he says he's retiring today, effective immediately. He's retiring and stepping down from his seat that he will no longer serve in.

So I think we can call this resigning from his seat. Yeah, it seems like a euphemism. Yeah, I think he said the undiminished support over the years. What's really interesting is how much support for John Conyers did diminish among his Democratic colleagues over a period of several days. Remember, the first round of reports about sexual misconduct with Conyers came just before Thanksgiving, among them a report from BuzzFeed saying that his office had paid out taxpayer-funded money to someone to settle a sexual harassment charge that was at the time not disclosed.

And on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Nancy Pelosi goes on Meet the Press and has, by all accounts, a disastrous interview where she called him an icon, said that she wanted to hear more from the accusations, did not immediately say she believed the accusers, which, of course, has been a long running thread to all of these accusations coming forward. And it's remarkable how quickly the ground shifted, how many Democrats started to say, no, they do believe the accusers and they think Kanye should resign, including in the end, Nancy Pelosi. And one of the accusers, I think one of the things that really helped shift that ground is the woman who had gotten this settlement. There was a nondisclosure agreement, but she busted the nondisclosure agreement, went on The Today Show and talked in a very compelling way about the pressure she felt from Congressman Conyers.

So he's out. There are a bunch of other people. I mean, even since we last taped the podcast, another name or two have in. The Democrats want to be the party of zero tolerance for sexual harassment. They want to be the party that believes the women. They want to say the Republicans are the party that calls women liars, as the president does against his accusers, as Roy Moore in Alabama has done against his accusers. So there are really different imperatives here. But I do think there's been a move, number one, to make these kinds of settlements public since they are being paid with taxpayer money and also to move quickly to push people out who have these accusations against them if people determine the accusations are credible. Okay, let's move on to Roy Moore. He is the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama. The election is next week. It's a special election. He is accused of pursuing sexual contact with teenagers, including one who was 14 years old at the time. So that's something that has been out there for several weeks and for a long time, or at least at the beginning, the establishment Republicans leadership,

they were trying to put some distance between themselves and Roy Moore. They said they believed the women. Mitch McConnell, for instance, the Republican leader in the Senate said, I think the women are credible. Roy Moore should drop out. Well, he didn't. He didn't drop out. And what happened was the Republican Party saw this as a political problem. Roy Moore's polls were taking a hit. But over time, as the accusations were not today's news, he started coming back up. He was able to present himself, especially in a super red state like Alabama, as being the victim of a liberal campaign against him. He said the women were liars. The latest wrinkle, the only piece of recent news has been that one woman who dated Roy more openly when she was 17 years old, took umbrage at the fact that he has

been saying he doesn't know any of these women and calling them all liars. She found in her attic a little piece of memorabilia, part of a scrapbook where he had written an inscription to her upon graduating from high school, so clearly showing that, yes, he at least did know her. She didn't like it that her integrity had been impugned. So that's a new wrinkle. I don't know if it's enough to revive all these charges, but there's been a huge 180. There was the nervousness at the White House. Ivanka Trump said there's a special place in hell for people who prey on children. The president was very quiet on this. But over time, that has evolved. The president moved a little bit and said, well, it's up to the voters of Alabama. Finally, he decided to embrace more, endorse more, say that more denies these allegations and we can't have a Democrat in the seat. Now, the RNC, which had pulled the funding for more, is back supporting him. Well, and let's hear from the president. Today, he put his voice to what the White House had announced yesterday and what he had tweeted. Here he is earlier today.

I think he's going to do very well. We don't want to have a liberal Democrat in Alabama, believe me. We want strong borders. We want stopping crime. We want to have the things that we represent. And we certainly don't want to have a liberal Democrat that's controlled by Nancy Pelosi and controlled by Chuck Schumer. We don't want to have that for Alabama. shift in American culture where there is increasingly zero tolerance for sexual assault, sexual harassment, and people are having their careers destroyed. People are being fired. There has been accountability and belief for women accusers in a way that we haven't seen on such a big scale before. And there is one big exception to that, and that is the person who sits in the Oval Office, who has been accused by many women of sexual assault, has at so far paid zero repercussions and is now endorsing a Senate candidate and saying that he believes him and not the accusers.

So those are two very hard things to square in culture right now. And to be clear, both Trump and Roy Moore deny the allegations against them. I don't think we're seeing a big moment in American culture. We're seeing a big moment in parts of American culture, in the media, in journalism, in Hollywood, some parts of progressive corporations. But we're not seeing it in the Republican Party. We are seeing the Democrats struggle with this, but want to be the party of zero tolerance. And the president just said we can't have a liberal Democrat. Can we just fact check really quick? Is Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate in Alabama, actually a liberal Democrat? Yes. Compared to Roy Moore, Doug Jones is a liberal Democrat. But he's mostly just a Democrat. He's got a pretty moderate conservative record. I mean,

he's a Democrat who fits with Alabama. Yeah. Okay. Just wanted to be clear on that. Except that he's pro-choice. And that has become the big rallying cry for Republicans there. Scott, you had a second point. I had a second point. And this is more focused on the RNC than President Trump, because President Trump all along was not joining the chorus of McConnell and Ryan and many other Republicans in Washington. Yeah. Saying that that more needs to go. I mean, there was always that if true, he should step aside. And that was never out of And Ivanka. it changes its mind. So what is your message? What is your logical message to voters, to Republican office holders around the country? If you're saying we have a moral objection here, cutting ties, maybe he could win. So I have two thoughts on this. One, back when the Harvey Weinstein story broke and Harvey Weinstein was this big Democratic donor,

the RNC went after Democrats. They put up these web videos that were like, you've got to give that money back. I mean, this is a pretty bad guy who did some really awful things. It is not to be accepted by us. People that took money from him should probably give it back. So they were putting pressure on Democrats to disavow and give back the money to a Democratic donor. And and it was the same with money that Al Franken helped raise. Exactly. And now they're like, yeah, OK, we're going to give money to this guy who's accused of some pretty terrible things. But the other thing is the RNC is the Republican Party and it is led by Donald J. Trump, President Trump. So it's not a coincidence

that on the very day that President Trump calls Roy Moore and says, actually, I'm going to endorse you, the RNC suddenly starts sending money back to Roy Moore. Of all the political entities, the RNC is wholly owned subsidiary of whoever's in the White House. But I do think it sends a message. If you're a Republican, no matter what you do or what you're accused of, we're going to stick by you. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, had initially said, we believe the women, they're credible, Roy Moore should go. But then something happened, which is Roy Moore didn't go. And as a result, they're kind of stuck with him. And so over the weekend, Mitch McConnell essentially said, well, it's up to the voters of Alabama now and we'll seat him if he's elected. So now Roy Moore will probably be elected. It's just hard to do the math in Alabama to see how a Democrat could win.

So if you have Roy Moore in the Senate, my question is, does he become an albatross to the Republicans or will he be a reliable vote for them? He could be both. He could be or neither. He could be an unreliable vote. He may not be a reliable vote, yeah. And not an albatross. He could be an albatross on a reliable vote. We just don't know. They're getting a wild card here. Let me just hedge the podcast bets on what might happen next week, because I think I think Maher is probably right. The odds are more in favor of a more win than a Jones win. But it's a mid-December special election. You don't know who's going to be motivated to show up or not.

If, you know, two in 10 Republican voters say, you know what, forget it. And if you look historically at Roy Moore statewide wins, he often trails behind the other statewide Republican candidates. He underperforms. Yeah, there was a chunk of Republicans who were done with more to begin with. Roy Moore statewide wins. He often trails behind the other statewide Republican candidates. He underperforms. Yeah, there was a chunk of Republicans who were done with more to begin with. And Jones does have a lot of money. He has been massively outspending more. If somehow Democrats are able to convince their voters to show up like it's a general election and Republicans think, oh, I'm just sick of this, that creates a window where Jones could conceivably make this happen. Seems like it's probably unlikely at this point, but I don't think this race is a done deal at the moment. So as President Trump likes to say, we'll see what happens. We'll see.

OK, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, the latest in the Russia investigation. And also, are we going to have a government shutdown or not? Support for this podcast and the following message come from CLR, maker of CLR Bath and Kitchen, for the toughest cleaning jobs. Take on everything from grimy porcelain tubs to old spills on the refrigerator shelves. Spray on and wipe clean on granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and ceramic tile. CLR Bath and Kitchen has been given the EPA's Safer Choice Seal. Woman-owned, American-made, and backed by a 100% money-back guarantee. CLR Bath & Kitchen. Hey, it's Scott Detrow. And I'm Tamara Keith. And we just want

to let you know that we are doing a live show here in D.C. in January. It's at the Warner Theater and it's called President Trump One Year In. If you're in town, if you're nearby, we'd love for you to join us. You'll want to be indoors in January watching us do our live podcast. It's true. Last time we did it, we sold it out. It was a nice, warm, cozy environment. Great time. And what could possibly be a better holiday gift than hanging out with us? You can learn more and get tickets at nprpresents.org. That's nprpresents, all one word, dot org.

It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll all be there. We'd love for you to be there, too. We're back and we have another friend who has joined us, Ryan Lucas. You cover the Justice Department. I do indeed. And you were just here last Friday. It wasn't that long ago, was it? So we did a special episode last Friday all about Michael Flynn, the president's former national security advisor who pled guilty to lying to the FBI. And since then, there have been a few Russia investigation related developments. And we just want to walk through a few of them. Let's start with one involving Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. The Mueller team filed some documents yesterday.

They did really kind of remarkable filings, actually. And they dropped last night, so Monday evening. And what they say is that Paul Manafort was drafting an op's office say that this Russian associate has ties to Russia's intelligence services. Number one, that's a bit of a no-no. Number two, they said that this violated a gag order that the judge overseeing Manafort's case had imposed on the sides not to discuss this case in the press. And the reason why this is also important in this instance is because Manafort and Manafort's defense team and the special counsel had agreed to a bail package last week that would allow him to come out from home confinement. And the special counsel had agreed to it on Thursday. And then we get to Monday and the special counsel says, well, Manafort was up to no good. We're going to have to change our mind on that.

OK, that is that. Over the weekend, Ryan, something else happened. News broke out about a certain FBI agent who sent some text messages. Or maybe you should just explain what the story is, because President Trump has been tweeting about it a lot. He has indeed, yes. Over the weekend in particular, there was a barrage of tweets related to this. But so what happened was the Washington Post reported on Saturday that a senior FBI agent who worked on the Hillary Clinton email case,

as well as the Russia investigation, was removed from the special counsel's team over the summer because of politically charged text messages, anti-Trump text messages that this agent was exchanging with another individual. The name of this agent is Peter Strzok, senior counterintelligence guy at the Bureau. Now, I've spoken with some folks in the FBI, and what they say is that the texts themselves were not, they did not break any rules. They did not break the ethics guideline of the FBI.

They were private text messages. They were private text messages, which FBI agents are are allowed to express political views privately. The perception of impropriety of politicking around the investigation is the problem. And I will say that what the special counsel's office said in response to this report is that as soon as special counsel Robert Mueller learned of these text messages, Agent Strzok was removed from the special counsel's investigation. And the person he had been exchanging messages with had already rotated off of the team. Exactly. So it seems like he was removed by Mueller out of extreme caution and awareness of how that could easily be politicized, which seemed like a good idea, because, of course, once this news was reported, it was politicized. And President Trump repeatedly referred to it in his dozen weekend tweets going on about the investigation, defending himself, saying this is a witch hunt. There are a couple of important things to note here. One is the timing. The fact that this came out the day after Michael Flynn reached his plea deal, pleaded guilty in court to line to the FBI and said that he's cooperating with the special counsel in the Russia investigation. Republicans on the Hill have been very interested in the dealings around the Hillary Clinton email

case and who was working on what when, what exchanges there were among folks working on that case. The fact that this report came out the day after Flynn's plea is important to know. And you're saying possibly not a coincidence. And there may have been political motivations. Because Donald Trump, his strategy against Mueller is to try to undermine his credibility at every turn, not only saying it's a witch hunt, saying he's got people who supported Hillary on his team. He complained bitterly about why he said Flynn's life was ruined, where Hillary Clinton, quote, lied to the FBI, and there's no evidence that she did. And she was allowed to get off scot-free. So he's continuing to run pretty full tilt, not only against Hillary Clinton, but also against the FBI. He called the FBI an agency whose reputation was in tatters. I mean, this is the strategy, and it's been used before. You could even argue that the

Clintons used it during the Monica Lewinsky investigation to try to undermine the legitimacy of your accusers or investigators. I should also point out that I think Hillary Clinton would disagree that she got off scot-free from that investigation because the Clinton camp has very firm belief that it was Jim Comey's summer press conference and then October letter that cost her a very close election. There are a couple of things here. One is that going after the FBI is questionable for two reasons, if not more. One is, do you really want to anger the FBI? They're pretty powerful. Investigative powers and all within the law. Two, the corrosive impact that this can have on public trust in a very important agency, in a very important institution that is there to serve the public interest can have a long-term detrimental impact.

And there are people within the legal community and the law enforcement world that have serious concerns about that. Isn't there also an argument, though, that this agent had to know that there was a higher standard, that anybody that's involved in this investigation has to be just And you have to be particularly careful about what you're saying, what you're doing, and how you engage. One thing that I will say is that in response to how the FBI community has responded to this, when Trump's tweets disparaging the bureau and its agents came out, the head of the FBI Agents Association, Tom O'Connor, tweeted over the weekend that, you know, every day the FBI special agents put their lives on the line to protect the public. And they do it with integrity and professionalism. And he said that this is why, you know, the FBI is so important to the country and that FBI agents are dedicated to their mission. This was very important stuff for agents of the FBI

to express because they felt very disparaged over the past year with the Clinton investigation, Comey's firing. It felt like a place under siege in many ways. They were hoping that they'd turn the corner. Now we have this again. I don't think they can turn a corner as long as the president is under investigation. But he also, the inspector general of the Justice Department, is investigating how the Hillary email investigation was handled. Because you've got the Clinton campaign, as Scott said, thinking it's why she lost. You've got Republicans saying she was let off scot-free, including the president. This is something the president has asked for in tweet after tweet. Why isn't there an investigation of that investigation?

The inspector general, as you said, is conducting an investigation into exactly that. And we've talked a lot before in previous pods about how Trump has really moved the goalposts of a president urging the Justice Department to do this or that, calling for investigations. I do think that as Trump continues to say, what about Hillary Clinton? It's incredibly effective when you're running against Hillary Clinton. And I wonder if the the power of the what about Hillary Clinton erodes the further and further we get into a presidency of Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton. All right. I want to direct you to one more tweet. And this is a tweet that is the tweet that rocked the world over the weekend. Can I just say something about Twitter as you do this right now?

Twitter just sent out its most retweeted and most talked about tweets of the year. And what was funny to me is how most of them had nothing to do with what we talk about. And the top retweet of the year was some kid asking for chicken mcnuggets that became the most tweeted thing in the history of the world onward to your much more relevant tweet i'm just saying we focus on a very small corner of twitter yes and there's a lot out there all right this is the tweet that rocked a very narrow corner of the world for several hours this weekend. I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide. Exclamation point.

So the reason like I was off Twitter for a little while and then I turned it on and I was like, why is everyone suddenly talking about obstruction of justice again? Again? Yeah, I know. Trump asked Comey to lay off Flynn. This happened the day after Flynn had left his job as national security advisor, departed, resigned, fired. You can pick the word. Resigned under pressure. Under pressure. So the day after that, according to Comey's account, Trump asks Comey to lay off of Flynn.

I hope that you can see your way to letting this go. Now coming back to the tweet, if Trump knew at that time that Flynn had lied to the FBI, then he's kind of using his position as president, as Comey's superior, to leverage Comey into backing off the investigation. Then you can get to the point where he fires Comey. So all of this, if he knew about Flynn's lying to the FBI at that point in time, the presentation is that he was then obstructing justice. If he didn't know, which is how he had previously played it, then he couldn't have been instructing that because he didn't know that there was that problem. So this tweet happens. private attorney whose job it is to deal with the Mueller investigation, a man named John Dowd,

comes forward and says, that tweet that the president sent out Saturday morning, actually, I'm the one who came up with the language. And then I gave it to the social media director, Dan Scavino. And this wasn't the president. This was me. So there you go. And there are questions as to what exactly transpired. That is the story that the White House is sticking to at this point in time. And so after Dowd said, I wrote the tweet and all of these things, I got in touch with Dowd. And he insisted that no one had ever told the White House that Flynn had lied to the FBI. Big picture. We're still kind of in the same zone that we were all along when it comes

to this angle of the case, right? I mean, none of that big picture timeline has changed based on this tweet, right? No. Okay. So that's where we were to begin with, I guess. This is kind of colored in the lines a little bit more. This could conceivably be another brick in building a case of obstruction of justice. It depends on how you interpret it and it depends on what the ultimate facts are. credited as we were speaking with notes in the margins that has passed. The House has voted to go to conference. The Senate is expected to do the same. We'll get back to that later. Meanwhile,

there's a deadline at the end of this week, Scott. The funding for the government runs out. So where are we with that? So quick thing on the taxes. First, our colleague Kelsey Snell did a really great story at NPR dot org looking into some of those last minute changes in the tax bill, which had not even big picture agreement at the moment to punt this deadline a couple weeks. December 22nd is the new deadline that we're talking about. That could change, though, because there's elements of the Republican caucus on the House side who want it to go longer. They are not super thrilled about doing this all just ahead of Christmas. They feel like that would give Democrats more leverage up in the air. It seems at the moment like we are on a path for a minor can kick to a couple of weeks from now. In the meantime, keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, on your local public radio station, and on the NPR One app. If you love the show, or even just like it, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes.

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WhyPublicRadio. And thank you. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.