The NPR Politics Podcast - First Charges Come Out Of Mueller's Russia Investigation

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

Two former Trump campaign officials — including one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort — have been indicted on 12 counts, including conspiracy to launder money. And a former foreign policy advisor to the campaign, George Papadopolous, pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Russians during the campaign. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson 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

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. And remember, you can start your day with Up First, the morning news podcast from NPR News. When news moves fast, Up First is there, your quick morning update on what's happening and what it means, your guide to each day's news. You can wake up with Up First tomorrow morning on the NPR One app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, it's Kristen Price, and I just touched down in my hometown of Minnetonka, Minnesota. or wherever you listen to podcasts. latest NPR coverage at NPR.org, on the NPR One app, or on your local NPR radio station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Last Thursday, we promised you a Russia roundup for today. Well, holy buckets, things have gotten more interesting since then. This morning,

we saw the first charges stemming from the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the election. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and one of his longtime business partners, Rick Gates, both turned themselves in to the FBI this morning. They're charged with 12 counts, including conspiracy to launder money. And a third person, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about extensive contacts he had with Russian individuals. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Carrie Johnson, the justice correspondent. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I also cover the Justice Department. Tam, before we get into very important breaking news stories, can I just say something equally as important?

I think Holy Buckets has now surpassed the Sheetz-Wawa summer debate as the most responded to, tweeted about, emailed thing we've ever said on the podcast. We've covered a lot of news, but Holy Buckets in at number one. Well, and this morning was a holy buckets kind of morning. The first indictments to come out of the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. We have former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. That's the biggest name. But it might be the name that we've never heard of that is at the core of the bigger story of today. So, Carrie, who is George Papadopoulos? He's a 30-year-old man. He was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign last year.

And according to court papers, he secretly pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI on October 5th. We didn't know anything about that until today, when those court filings were unsealed by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. And those court filings contain some very interesting things. Ryan? They do indeed. And they go to the very heart of the Russian investigation and the question of possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russians. So Papadopoulos in March 2016, was named a foreign policy advisor. And according to

the court papers, he ended up establishing a relationship with what is called the professor in the court filings, who had longstanding ties to senior officials within the Russian government. And Papadopoulos established a relationship with this professor, who introduced him to another great line from the court filing, the female Russian national. Well, in fact, she was described to Papadopoulos as a relative of Vladimir Putin, perhaps even Putin's niece, although the court papers go on to say in a very dry tone she was not in fact Putin's niece or any relative of Vladimir Putin. So a lot of lines getting a lot of attention in the court document. This on page two, the professor told defendant Papadopoulos about the thousands of emails on or about April 26, 2016, when defendant Papadopoulos had been a foreign policy advisor to the campaign for over a month. These emails being emails possessing, quote, dirt on Hillary Clinton. That right there is a conversation that gets to the heart of the question of whether or not there was contact between Russian agents, Russian officials and campaign advisers.

And then the question becomes, who is this Papadopoulos dude? We've really never heard of him. Is he freelancing or is he truly involved with the Trump campaign? Based on my reading of these documents, he was in communication with some people. He was involved in the Trump campaign. In fact, in an interview with the Washington Post, candidate Donald Trump mentioned Papadopoulos as a member of his foreign policy advisory team last year. And then Papadopoulos, according to these charging documents, was in contact with numerous unnamed supervisors in the Trump campaign, including senior campaign officials. So all of those things, all of those conversations and communications are things that the special counsel already knows.

They've only given us a little hint today in the court papers of what they know, but they know a lot more. And based on the court filings with respect to Papadopoulos and statements from his lawyers, it appears as if he's cooperating with the special counsel, may even be called to testify at some future court proceeding. Now, what specifically gives you that impression? What in the documents, what in the statements indicates, hey, this could be a cooperating witness? A couple of things. One is he's charged with a document called an information. That's not an indictment. An indictment is brought by a grand jury. An information is something the government files when it's working out a deal with a defendant. And so Papadopoulos is charged under this information. He's admitted to a series of

things in court filings today, and he's going to be sentenced at a later date. We don't know when, according to the special counsel's office. And it may be a long, long time, especially if there is some court proceeding or trial at which his cooperation is needed, his testimony is needed. He may not be sentenced for years to come. So another line along those lines that jumped out to me here was, early on, these facts do not constitute all of the facts known to the parties concerning the charged offense. They're being submitted to demonstrate that sufficient facts exist. Ryan, is that a typical statement or a qualifier in a case like this where the person being charged might be cooperating with the investigators?

That's a very good question for Kerry Johnson. So yes, that is typical. And the second thing that I'd point out is that George Papadopoulos' lawyers have put out a statement. His Chicago-based legal team has put out a written statement saying, we are not going to be speaking at this time, but at some point in the future, after George appears in court, we are looking forward to telling his side of the story. Yeah, his entire story or something to that effect. It was sort of like, oh, this man has something to tell. Indeed. And he's already told the special counsel. Well, there's another line in this long document.

It comes late, like in August 2016, where... Later in the summer? Yeah, later in the summer, August 2016, where... Later in the summer? Yeah, later in the summer, August 2016, when a senior Trump campaign person tells Papadopoulos, who has been trying to arrange a meeting with Russian officials, and then had at some point suggested, well, maybe I could make an off-the-record trip to Russia, this senior campaign official says, well, why don't you give it a try? Now, it didn't actually happen, according to the documents. But Ryan... It doesn't look good. It certainly doesn't look good. I mean, there's nothing illegal about going

to Russia. There are certainly times when candidates or folks within a campaign have contacts with foreign governments. Sometimes candidates will go and meet with foreign leaders. The thing is that they don't do that with leaders of countries that are perceived as adversaries. And that's where the Russia question becomes very different because Russia in 2016 was at odds with the U.S. on Syria, in Ukraine. The U.S. had sanctioned Russia. This was not a country that was perceived as a friend of the United States. So big picture, we now have two instances that we know about where someone with direct, indirect, second or third degree ties to the Russian government approached someone on the Trump campaign saying, hey, we have damaging information about Hillary

Clinton. Would you like to meet? And in both cases, in one case, you have that infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner in Trump Tower to discuss that. This is the meeting that they said was initially about adoptions, but very quickly emails came forward from Donald Trump Jr. indicating he knew full well what the meeting was about. Now you have this. This is clearly on a much lower level, and we don't know what came of this, whether any information was exchanged, but we're seeing multiple overtures now. At the same time, the White House and President Trump continue to tweet that this whole investigation is a witch hunt and there was

no collusion. One thing that I will say is that in terms of how Russian intelligence services tend to operate, they will send out feelers in all different directions. It is not about establishing one connection to a campaign or a source of interest. You would put out five, six, seven, eight, a dozen lines to try to get as many fish as you can. And if you can get Papadopoulos and a meeting doesn't happen, but he ends up in the administration and you have an established relationship with him, that is useful for Russia. Now, he didn't end up in the administration, but there were, so there were some, there were some nipples out there. This is consistent with how the Russian intelligence

services work. Now, in terms of, I guess, can I say spycraft? I always like to, work that phrase, spycraft. In terms of the spycraft, if you will, is the goal there to try to make several different endpoints? Or is the goal there to kind of smudge the target and say, hey, look, you were talking to us back and forth, so you're not so innocent? Or is it to make that inroad? It can be both. Or to also feel out receptiveness to aid. It gives you a bunch of different levers to play. You know, and interesting, according to these court documents, Papadopoulos had at least one meeting with the FBI in which he denied serious contacts with people in Russia or people close to the Russians.

And after his last session with the FBI, he appeared to have an uh-oh moment and deleted his Facebook account or deactivated his Facebook account. He got rid of his cell phone or stopped using his cell phone and tried to take some steps to distance himself, shall we say, from this investigation, all of which came under the investigator's radar, thus complicating his legal problem. Distancing himself from himself and his own activities. But he has since pled out to misleading the FBI. Now, over at the White House on the other side of town, Sarah Sanders has been holding a briefing with reporters, and she is saying that any initiative that George Papadopoulos took was on his own, that any actions he took would have been on his own initiative, not working for the campaign or for Mr. Trump. Sarah, can you just explain what

George Papadopoulos' role with the campaign was? It was extremely limited. It was a volunteer position. And again, no activity was ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign in that regard. What about the outreach that he was making to campaign officials to try to put together this meeting? You mean that outreach that was repeatedly denied and pushed away and said we're not going to take any action on that? Can you explain what happened with his outreach? He reached out and nothing happened beyond that, which I think shows, one, his level of importance in the campaign and two, shows what little role he had within coordinating anything officially for the campaign, of his efforts, of his outreach, of his ongoing conversation with folks that he knew to be connected to the Russian government and was keeping the campaign informed.

Including a line, not a throwaway line in these documents, that suggests Donald Trump was in the room in one of these meetings. Now, it's not clear what exactly then-candidate Donald Trump knew. He has denied any involvement with this. But Trump was in the room at least once with Papadopoulos where he's talking about some of this stuff. Now, Ryan Carey, what's the best context to think about the facts that we're reading here in both the statement of the offense with Papadopoulos and the indictment of Paul Manafort? There are facts being presented. There is a narrative being laid out. But obviously, this is the beginning of the legal process. So how much skepticism, how much weight do you typically put into a document like this that comes from federal prosecutors?

It's not just the notion that the Justice Department has filed these charges or that an individual has pleaded guilty and two others we think are going to plead not guilty, Manafort and Gates. It's that these documents cite corroborating information. They cite specific meetings. They cite emails. They cite Skype sessions and Facebook and other written material that was created at the time of these events. Those are very, very difficult to defend against when you put the mosaic together, as Robert Mueller appears to be doing. And all of this information has gone in front of a grand jury, or is that not necessarily the case? A grand jury in Washington, D.C. has handed up indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. A grand jury does not need to be involved with the information process,

which is what George Papadopoulos has admitted today. Okay, so that is George Papadopoulos has admitted today. OK, so that is George Papadopoulos. We also have the big name, Paul Manafort. He was chairman of President Trump's campaign starting in June. He actually started working on the campaign back in March. A man who has been a longtime business partner of his, Rick Gates, joined the campaign along with Manafort, actually outlasted him a little bit. Manafort left in August. Gates left a short time after that, but then went to the RNC and even worked on President Trump's inauguration. So Gates was something of a survivor of all of this. So Gates and Manafort have been charged in this 12-count indictment. What is that about? It seems to be unrelated to the campaign itself, more like money laundering.

Well, the money laundering conspiracy to launder money was one of the charges. But this ties back into Manafort's work for a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine by the name of Viktor Yanukovych, who was elected president with Manafort's help, with Manafort's advice in 2010. He was overthrown several years later in a wave of popular protests. He then fled to Russia. But Yanukovych is somebody that relied on Manafort for his counsel, and he paid him quite handsomely, according to the indictment. So we're talking about a lot of money here, according to the indictment. The indictment cites $75 million, $18 million of which Manafort illegally laundered, and $3 million that Rick Gates misused, according to the Justice Department. Allegedly.

And this money, according to the indictment, allowed them to lead a rather lavish lifestyle. The indictment has a lot of information about suits. Well, this is what I like to call the piggy bank portion of an indictment in a white collar case, which often seems to be designed to infuriate ordinary jurors who may eventually hear this case in court. So about a million dollars in antique rugs, many, many tens of thousands of dollars at a Beverly Hills boutique, Mercedes-Benz. This is all Manafort. And just to put this in the context of the Trump campaign, let's remember Paul Manafort ran the campaign from about March to August. He was the second campaign manager or effective campaign manager. Trump gave different titles to different people throughout the campaign. Corey Lewandowski was first. He got

Trump from the early days of his campaign, the escalator days, to being the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Paul Manafort comes in at a time where Donald Trump is in pretty good shape. It looks like he's locked up the nomination, not quite yet at the point that Manafort came in, though. And Manafort's main job was to be in charge of the convention. Because remember, there was all this talk that there was going to be a contested convention that Ted Cruz could keep Trump right under the amount he needed to clinch the nomination. Paul Manafort got the convention wrapped up for Trump. And then about a month afterwards, the disastrous month of August, where Trump looked like there was no way in chance he was going to be the next president of the United States. He fired Manafort because he had come under fire for a lot of these Ukraine

allegations. And in came Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. You know, the Trump White House, including today, has sought to distance itself from Paul Manafort, has said, listen, these charges date to times long before he was ever in Donald Trump's orbit. But if you read the court papers carefully, the Justice Department is charging Manafort with conduct that began in 2006, allegedly, and goes right up into 2017, when he was allegedly misleading the FBI, his own accountants, bookkeepers, and lawyers about both offshore accounts that he had containing muns he received from foreign people, as well as his failure to register as a foreign agent. So some of the communication he was having with the Justice Department was in September and

October of 2016, and then new, according to the DOJ, lies in January of this year. There are also questions about Manafort's communications with Russians from 2016 itself. And the Post reported several weeks ago that Manafort had offered during the campaign to provide private briefings to a Russian oligarch by the name of Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska is somebody who has a, as one source has described it, a kind of shady background. And he has connections, as we understand it, to Vladimir Putin. He's somebody who has kind of an inroad to the Kremlin. Now, was any of that in this indictment?

That is not in the indictment. The indictment is about his work for Yanukovych and the money that he received from it and money laundering, evading taxes, so on and so forth. this professor with ties to the Russian government who was talking about the dirt in the emails. Well, in June, we know there was this meeting that Manafort and a whole bunch of other people attended, people like Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., who are also under investigation by the special counsel. No mention of them today in the court filings, nor would we expect them to be there to be at this stage, but certainly lots of avenues for investigation moving forward. And Trump said on Twitter, and I think it's being repeated at briefing right now, that all these Manafort charges came from before the campaign. But I think what's interesting, given the documentation of these long established financial ties between Manafort and pro-Russia wings in the Ukrainian government. One thing jumped out to me from a Washington Post profile about a month or so ago of Tom Barrack, who's a very close friend and advisor to President Trump. And he's the one

who set up Manafort with Trump. And this is from, Barrack was telling the Washington Post about how Manafort got in touch. He says, Manafort approached him and said, I really need to get to Trump. I think that's interesting. It could be nothing. It could be something interesting. But it's interesting that Manafort was the one trying to aggressively make some inroads for the Trump campaign. Of course, the more benign argument is that this guy is looking to become the nominee for the Republican Party and doesn't have many established people around him. And Manafort happens to be one of the experts on delegates.

Right. So, OK, I want to step way back. Where are we? This was the first day that we have seen sort of signals of what the Mueller investigation looks like. Do we know if this is the beginning, middle or end? I think we think this is the beginning. It was also a day of legal shock and awe. We had all expected to hear charges against somebody like Paul Manafort, in part because, remember, the FBI about them is a huge development and one that raises lots of questions about other people in the campaign with whom he may have been communicating what they said and did. So, Carrie, Robert Mueller obviously has not said much other than I believe his only public statement is that one or two sentence statement right when he was appointed. Generally speaking, how much politics, how much PR, how much tactical message sending both to the public or to

the people you're investigating goes into deciding who those first charges are and when paperwork like this gets made public? Robert Mueller doesn't do PR, period. End of story. He's among the most longest serving FBI directors in history. He's been a career public official in the Justice Department. He doesn't much like the press. In fact, when he was finally leaving his job at the FBI after 12 years, a source of mine told me he had to be talked into doing exit interviews by his staff. He did not even want to discuss his 12-year tenure. This is not a factor in his decision-making. What is a factor in his decision-making, according to people who have followed him and worked with him for some time, is advancing the ball on his mandate, which is, did Russians interfere in last year's election? If so, were there any Americans involved in that? And are any associated crimes like obstruction of justice or false statements being committed along the way? All of those boxes were checked today by Robert Mueller only five months into his investigation. And just want to add, while we have been sitting here, both Manafort and Gates appeared in federal

court in Washington, D.C. and pled not guilty, which is what we expected. It is what we expected. Remember, Paul Manafort has been under extraordinary pressure for some months now. He's under a financial squeeze. And if the U.S. Justice Department and the special counsel get their way, they are going to force him or ask a court to force Manafort to forfeit a number of properties he owns in New York and Virginia and elsewhere, contributing to the financial squeeze on him, contributing to the pressure on him, and perhaps changing his mind about whether he has anything to say about anybody else in this investigation. And you've followed some of the folks who are on Mueller's team for years.

Does this seem very consistent with how they operate? Absolutely. Several of these individuals, including some of the longtime gang and mob prosecutors, as well as the folks on this Mueller team who have investigated and prosecuted major corporate CEOs over the years, have held no hesitation in charging relatives of defendants in order to squeeze them into cooperating. That happened in Enron. That's happened in Enron. That's happened in a lot of the mob cases that they've handled. And it may yet happen here, given the

family ties involved with so many subjects in this investigation. We've hit on it here and there, but just to have it all in one place, big picture, what do you know about this investigation today that you didn't know yesterday? I would say the fact that Mueller has a guilty plea from Papadopoulos and someone who he can possibly work with in trying to move up the chain, to me, is very interesting. And as Kerry said, it's consistent with how a team like Mueller's would do a case like this. I learned that Robert Mueller can keep a secret. Okay? Like, he really can keep a secret. Okay, like he really can keep a secret. This guy pleaded guilty secretly earlier this month. Nobody knew a word of it. And for all

the accusations on cable TV networks about the Justice Department leaking left, right and center, that didn't leak, my friends. So let's think about how serious and possibly nervous making that may be for other people involved in this probe. The president, the White House, have made it very clear that they don't want this to be their problem. They don't think this is their problem. Are we at a point yet where this is a problem for the president? I mean, aside from just like visible politics, but is there something in this that contradicts the story that they want to tell? Yeah. The president has said this investigation is a witch hunt. There's no evidence of collusion. And George Papadopoulos, who was in meetings with various Trump campaign officials,

has said that he had the goal of improving relations between the U.S. and Russia, and he persistently tried to set up meetings between the campaign and people in Russia throughout 2016 to make that happen. That doesn't sound like a witch hunt to me. I'm just reading what the Justice Department is putting out. At the same point in time, I will say that Trump did run his campaign on the platform of, we need to improve ties with Russia. So Papadopoulos' legal problems stem from lying to the FBI, not from reaching out to the Russians per se. Though some of those conversations did include dirt about Hillary Clinton emails, and those conversations didn't just go out to the professor and whatnot and back.

Where's the candlestick? But out, back, and up the chain to various higher-ranking people within the campaign. There's talk about a supervisor and a coordinator. Yeah. Let me also say that the Justice Department has not often prosecuted people for failing to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA. It happens almost never. Both Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were charged under that statute today. There are other people under investigation now we know who failed to

file, including Mike Flynn, retired General Mike Flynn, who belatedly filed. And the notion that the Justice Department has that weapon in their arsenal and they've demonstrated they want to use it is also serious and a signal for where we may be going next. Okay, we are going to take a quick break. But before we do, we have to say goodbye to Carrie because, you know, news is breaking all around. I got phone calls to make. Thanks, guys. See you later. Thank you, Carrie, for joining us.

Bye-bye. Ryan, we're keeping you so that when we come back, we can talk all about other Russia-related developments of the last week or so that President Trump and Republicans would much rather everyone focus on. Keywords, steel dossier and uranium one. We'll be right back. Support for politics comes from Sun Basket. Sun Basket sends organic and sustainable ingredients to your door, pre-measured and ready to go, so you can prepare delicious meals in around 30 minutes.

Sun Basket takes the guesswork out of preparation, makes cleanup easier, and you get to skip the grocery store. With meals designed to fit every busy lifestyle, choose from paleo, lean and clean, gluten-free, vegetarian, and family options. Get $35 off your first order at sunbasket.com slash politics. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of the TED Radio Hour. And if you're looking for a new podcast, check out the TED Radio Hour. Every week, we explore what it means to be human.

We go on a journey through the big ideas, emotions, insights, and discoveries that fill all of us with wonder. You can find it on the NPR One app or however you get your podcasts. We're back. And last week, before the news of these indictments broke, we promised you we'd dig into several other Russia related developments, including the revelation last week that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund the so-called Steele dossier. We have now learned that before the Democrats, and we sort of knew this, but we know who now, there were Republicans that helped fund research by this firm Fusion GPS. That's right. So what we got was actual names and dates. We know who now. Yes. Now, yes, the Democratic National Committee in Hillary Clinton's campaign took on the firm GPS, retained them in April of 2016.

Before that, it was the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, which had hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Republicans in the primaries, including Trump. It's worth pointing out that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC repeatedly denied having anything to do with this over and over and over again. And it was only when they were basically forced legally to reveal this information that we learned this. But what I don't get is why is President Trump and why are conservative media obsessed with this dossier? And like I think that they see it as exculpatory that, oh, if Democrats pay for it, then somehow this means everything's a witch hunt. The Republican argument is essentially if the dossier is funded by Democrats and the dossier is kind of the basis of the FBI's investigation, then the basis of the investigation is a political document. It's essentially a political hit job by Democrats.

And if it is the basis of the FBI's investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, then the whole foundation of the special counsel's investigation is a political document. One thing we know, and again, we don't know what we don't know with this investigation. I think that's pretty clear based on the previous portion of this podcast. But one thing that former FBI director Jim Comey has said publicly is that he did present this dossier to President-elect Trump in one of their first meetings. I think their very first meeting at Trump Tower. And he said he presented to him to say, I just want you to know what is out there. I want you to have an idea what information is being circulated, not in a way

saying, and this is factual. And this is one of those moments where that conversation happened, where Comey said, we're not investigating you at the moment. Okay, but timeline here, that's January of 2017. We, the public, learn about the dossier or see the dossier also in January of 2017. There was one report that referenced the existence of such a document back in October of 2016 in Mother Jones. But didn't the FBI investigation start in July of 2016? July of 2016. That's right. Yes. And the U.S. intelligence community, because former CIA director John Brennan mentioned this before Congress, he had seen reports that were a source of concern regarding contacts, outreach between Russians and folks within the Trump orbit. Okay. Unrelated to the dossier.

Moving right along, Uranium One. This is the other thing that was really dominant last week. And President Trump tweeted about it again over the weekend saying, why not look at this? This is the real story. Ryan, can you catch us up on what Uranium One is in the most rapid way you possibly can? So this is a super complicated story. So let me try to break it down in a simplified version if I can. There's a Russian company that bought a stake in 2010 in a Canadian-based company called Uranium One.

Now, Uranium One had mining licenses to about 20% of U.S. uranium rights and a stake in Kazakhstan, which is really what the Russian company was most interested in. Now, the Obama administration approved the deal. Hillary Clinton, of course, was Secretary of State at the time. But it's important to note that this is not a deal that was just signed off on by the State Department. It was approved by something called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. And it's this committee that has to give a green light to big deals like this. Now, Trump has tried to pin the blame for the decision on Clinton. This is where things get even a little

trickier. Now, around the time of the deal, Bill Clinton received half a million dollars from a Russian bank for a speech in Moscow. On top of that, folks tied to Uranium One donated tons of money to the Clinton Foundation. Now, the allegation or suggestion from Republicans is that Hillary somehow influenced the decision on the Uranium One deal in return for money to her husband's foundation. Those allegations haven't been proven. There's no evidence that Clinton was involved in the decision itself, but that at least is the version that Republicans are suggesting. A couple of big picture things here. This particular Uranium deal gets back into a big picture attack that Republicans made against Hillary Clinton last year very effectively that while she was working at the State Department, there were all sorts of donations to the Clinton Foundation, bookings of Bill Clinton to give private speeches that equated to an indirect pay for play.

I give money to your foundation. You meet with me. It was a big picture political attack on Clinton. There were lots of parallel donations to the foundation and also people dealing with the State Department. Big picture, it did get kind of oversimplified in many of these cases. But I think as to why we are still talking about it in 2017- Yes, why are we talking about it right now? Because President Trump and Republicans in general repeatedly deflect back to what about Hillary Clinton?

It's a very effective political argument for them. What about Hillary Clinton? Over and over again. And here's the case saying, you shouldn't be investigating me. You shouldn't be investigating this witch hunt of collusion. What about Hillary Clinton? And the House Intelligence Committee

and the House Oversight Committee have both launched an investigation into this deal. And those are two pretty potent levers to try to focus attention on things that are not the Russia investigation and kind of say, well, forget about this. Hillary Clinton, Uranium One, emails, focus on that. And when Devin Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee made that announcement that he was opening this investigation, there were no Democrats standing with him. Now, when any sort of update has been made about the Russia investigation from the House Intelligence Committee, it's Democrats and Republicans standing together making that announcement. This is clearly being viewed as a partisan effort. And the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff of California, has said as much.

He's made that clear that this is not something that we signed off on. This was done over our heads and we don't agree with it. That's been Schiff's line. And these congressional inquiries were sort of prompted by an article in the publication The Hill. Did it add something new to what was known about Uranium One? Not in particular, but what has happened since then is the Department of Justice has freed from a nondisclosure agreement an informant in the Uranium One case who can now talk to members of Congress, meaning the House Intelligence Committee,

the House Oversight Committee, and can now provide whatever information he or she wants to about the Uranium One deal. And this is unusual. I've spoken to a couple of legal experts on this, and they say that it's very unusual for a nondisclosure agreement to be lifted by the Justice Department. Generally, you have two concerns. You want to protect the confidential informant, and two, you want to protect any sort of ongoing investigation. In this case, somebody has already been convicted in 2014. So in terms of ruining an ongoing investigation, that doesn't seem to be a concern. And it appears as though the confidential informant would like to speak to Congress. And so the gag order, so to speak, has been lifted. But I believe that the White House said last week that Donald Trump

pressed for this to happen and that Chief White House Counsel Don McGahn actually weighed in with the DOJ to get there, which is unusual. Normally, there is a wall between the DOJ and the White House. And there are certainly concerns in some parts of the legal community that that wall is being lowered. And one more thing that we will be covering later this week, there are a series of hearings involving the sort of the tech titans, Facebook, Twitter, Google, appearing before House and Senate committees about Russia in 2016. Right. This is this whole other aspect of possible Russian interference in the election. We have increasing evidence that Russian operatives were very active buying targeted Twitter ads, buying targeted Facebook ads. And this is going to be the first time that executives from these big companies are speaking publicly in front of Congress about it. So I think we'll learn a lot of new information about just how many ads were purchased, where they were directed, and what the ads were about.

Because we know big picture about them. We have yet to see that many specific details. And I guess we'll also learn whether the tech titans are in the good graces of Congress anymore, but I think we might already know the answer to that question. Yeah, that is an interesting political story of a whole different stripe that continues to develop where these companies have all gone from happy, perfect, you know, sainted. Right, right. American success stories to coming under increased scrutiny from members of both parties who want to see more regulation of them. All right, well, that is a wrap for today. We will be back on Thursday with our regular weekly roundup. In the meantime, keep up with our coverage on NPR.org,

on your local public radio station, and on the NPR One app. Also, One of Us is always on up first every weekday morning, so you can listen for us there. And we have a live show coming up in D.C. on January 18th at the Warner Theater in partnership with member station WAMU. You can find more information and buy tickets on NPR presents dot org. That's NPR presents all one word dot org. 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 Carrie Johnson was with us earlier. She also covers the Justice Department. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.