The NPR Politics Podcast - House Judiciary Launches Probe Of Allegations Of Obstruction By President Trump

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

The House Judiciary Committee launched a broad investigation into President Trump's inner circle Monday, targeting figures who have worked in his administration and for the Trump Organization businesses. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Tim Mak, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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

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on the NPR One app, and on your local radio station, which for me is WKSU. All right, here's the show. Jed, no, you can't eat that. Did she say Jed Bartlett or Jed Barklet? Hey there, it's the NPR politics just moving forward. It's the NPR politics podcast. Kim just got it.

No Mueller report yet, but now House Democrats are launching a new investigation of their own. The House Judiciary Committee demanded documents this week from 81 individuals in the White House, Trump administration, and the Trump Organization, among other groups. We will talk about it. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor.

Okay, so many investigations. I can't see straight. That doesn't make sense, but I'm sticking with it. We've got the Mueller report. We've got the hearing last week with Michael Cohen in front of the Oversight Committee. But now, Tim, the House Judiciary Committee getting in the game in a big way, huh? Right. Well, they've got 81 different requests to 81 entities and individuals related to the Trump universe in some way. And they've got a three-prong investigation. They're investigating whether the president obstructed justice in some way, whether the president abused his power, for example, the possible abuse of the

pardon power, and whether or not the president or folks in the administration have engaged in any sort of public corruption, that is, to personally benefit from public office? Okay, I have a lot of questions. But first, just this way that's being phrased, individuals and organizations, that means like Donald Trump Jr., but also the FBI is getting requests? Right. The FBI, the Trump Organization as an entity, the Justice Department as an entity, the Trump Foundation, that charity as an entity. So there are as an entity, the Trump Foundation, that charity

as an entity. So there are people who are getting these requests, but also organizations. Even Sean Spicer got a request. It's an 81 person list. Is this like a status thing? Like if you are in Trump's orbit and you didn't get a request, is part of you like, man. Yeah, like Ivanka Trump should be upset right now. She didn't get one.

Oh, really? She's not on the list? John Kelly, the former chief of staff to the president, is also not on the list. There are some interesting omissions here. If the Judiciary Committee is trying to get at what they say they're trying to get at, they're going to have to get around to asking questions of people like Ivanka and John Kelly. The thing is, Republicans would argue that there's already an investigation. There's the Mueller investigation, which is supposed to be looking at Russian collusion.

What does this one do differently than the Mueller investigation could do? Well, the investigation isn't about Russia per se. It might touch on issues related to Russia, but they're about the public corruption issue. They're about whether or not the president or those who represent the president obstructed criminal investigations or the Mueller investigation in some way. It's a different kind of question that they're asking. The Judiciary Committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, is arguing that this is the Judiciary Committee. It is our job to look at things like the rule of law. And so and that President Trump's criticism is that Democrats are flailing around investigating everything they can to try and find something that sticks? Well, I think the House Judiciary Committee would say that there are so many issues of

concern that they need to look into. They need to look into this Trump Tower Moscow business deal. They need to look into whether or not foreign governments have tried to pay off the president in some way by, for example, booking rooms at the Trump Hotel in D.C. They want to look into the whole WikiLeaks scandal. They want to look into the Cambridge Analytica scandal. There are so many different issues that they feel is under the purview of those three prongs we talked about earlier that they need to do them all at once. from these relevant committees have sent a lot of letters to the White House and to other people. And those letters have landed just like letters from the public. They had no weight behind them and there was no pressure to respond and they didn't get a response. And now they have the potential at least to subpoena these documents if they don't get them. They have the gavel

and they are using it. On Morning Edition today, a very junior member of the Judiciary Committee was on talking to host Rachel Martin. That member is Madeline Dean from Pennsylvania. What the idea is, is ask for these documents, get them within the next two weeks, because the American people have waited for two years for any kind of oversight into this administration. So we're ready to gather the facts and the data and see where those facts and data take us. But I mean, it is so sprawling. How do you combat the criticism that it is a phishing expedition? I don't buy that at all. What we're looking at is possibilities of obstruction of justice, public corruption, abuse of power by

this administration. In these documents, most of which have already been requested by other entities, whether it was the Mueller Commission or others, these documents will either reveal that there are things wrong, or they might reveal there's nothing to see here. So what's the timeline on finding those answers? And is this something that leads to more blockbuster hearings or just a lot of paper shuffling back and forth? Well, the committee is saying that they want documents within two weeks, within 14 days, which is a pretty tight timeline. And they're saying within weeks, not months, if people who are listed on this list of 81 people do not provide documents,

they're going to start subpoenaing. They're going to start to compel the production of documents. And usually the way these things works is, you know, documents are not delivered the next day with a bow on top and said, here you go, committee, here's everything you wanted. There is frequently a negotiation. And we can certainly expect people in the administration to come back and say, hey, this is executive privilege. Like this is privileged material. This is not something that we have to turn over to Congress. That's a pretty standard process in the oversight process is that Congress asks for stuff and particularly people that are part of the executive branch push back and say, well, we don't really want to give you that. How about this? You know, Republicans took back the House in 2010 and had control of the House then with a Democratic president in office. And there were investigation

after investigation after investigation based on things that they saw that they thought were problematic or that they believed needed oversight. Now the shoe is on the other foot. A lot more to talk about, including what the Trump administration and President Trump have to say about all of this. We will get to that after a quick break. I'm Maria Hinojosa, and this week on Latino USA, we zoom in to one all-female immigrant detention facility in Texas and a specific case to ask how and why this system allows for sexual abuse of detainees to continue year after year. That's this week on Latino USA. Okay, we are back.

Tam, I imagine the White House is not loving this new development. What are we hearing from the president and from the White House itself? Because as we know, those can often be very different tones and statements. Yeah, so the president yesterday was asked, are you going to cooperate? And he's like, oh yeah, I cooperate with everything. However, two days earlier at the CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, he expressed his displeasure with the fact that the House is now investigating everything. dying so they don't have anything with Russia. There's no collusion. So now they go and morph into let's inspect every deal he's ever done. We're going to go into his finances. We're going to check his deals. We're going to check. These people are sick. They're sick.

OK, so that was Saturday. Then this Judiciary Committee letter drops with 81 different people being asked for stuff. And the White House all day long seems to be working on a response. And then finally, late last night, they come out with what is a very long statement from Sarah Sanders. I will not read the whole thing. I will just read the parts that I have highlighted, which includes calling it a disgraceful and abusive investigation, saying that Democrats have embarked on a fishing expedition because they are terrified that their two year false narrative of Russia collusion is crumbling, says the president. It says Democrats are harassing the president, which is something that the president has started talking about, presidential harassment. And then it ends with this. The Democrats are not after the truth. They are after the president. So, Domenico and Tim, kind of the same basic thing I was asking before, but in a political

context, given that that is the attack line from the White House, why not just launch one thing at a time? Say we're going to look into obstruction of justice and then move on from there. Why start with 81 different requests all over the place? I think they could argue they could walk and chew gum at the same time and that there are a lot of things that they want to look into. You saw I think they argue using that exact phrase frequently. There you go. It's probably a cliche. That's probably why. But, you know, like Jerry Nadler announcing these 81 people or things that he wants to look into is not the first thing that Democrats have done to signal that they have multiple dozens of things that they want to look

into. Elijah Cummings, for example, Democrat from Maryland, launched what he said were 51 areas that he wanted to look into. The fact is, there's a lot to look into. So Democrats want to be able to do those all at the same time in a timely way. And they've hired up staff and professionals and lawyers to be able to investigate and go through those things. One thing that was fascinating to me about the last 24 hours or so is David Axelrod, the former Obama political guru guy, tweeted out, you know, hey, if Democrats want to avoid being called a fishing expedition, maybe they should just dribble this out and not do it all at once. Not exact words. And the backlash he got from people on Twitter, from people on the left saying, hey, we've been waiting for this.

We've been waiting years for this. We need this investigation. There was a lot of pushback on him for saying that from the left. All right. So one last thing to talk about here. You have all mentioned the the pent up Democratic like anxiousness to get this going. Tim, you had a pretty interesting story about that type of feeling and how it can go to extremes. I don't even want to set it up for you and ruin the surprise. Can you just tell us what you reported today? I wanted to find a way to put a human face behind just how high expectations are among Democrats regarding the Mueller investigation and what he'll eventually report. And one of those ways is to look at how some elderly ill critics of the president are saying that they just kind of want to hang on and stay alive to see how the story all turns out. And one of the ways I told that is through a World War II veteran whose name is Mitchell Tendler. He was 93 years old in December when he had to go to the ER.

And so what you're hearing next is a clip from his son talking about his father's last words. It just was quiet for a little while and then just sits up in bed halfway and looks at me and he goes, I'm not going to see the Mueller report, am I? And that was really the last coherent thing that he said. I tried to report this out more. I talked to a guy named Richard Armstrong. He's 94 years old.

He's got terminal pancreatic cancer. He's under hospice care right now in Plainsboro, New Jersey. So I was hoping to live to see the outcome of what I think it should be. Justice, I'll be surprised and disappointed if it isn't. He hopes that the Mueller report will bring justice and that he hopes to see the conclusion of that report. I mean, all of this is just to say how incredibly disappointed a lot of Democrats who have pent up expectations about this investigative process, how disappointed they'll be if it doesn't turn out to implicate the president in some way. So that's Democrats. Domenico, any sense how Republicans feel about this impending report? Well, they don't feel like that.

You know, they're not sitting there probably on their deathbeds waiting for the Mueller report. If they are, they're waiting for it to exonerate President Trump. Because when we did our polling back in December and we asked people if they thought that the Mueller report or investigation should be released in full, 76 percent of people said that they thought that it should be released in full. 76% of people said that they thought that it should be released in full. That included 68% of Republicans, but really because they think that it's going to exonerate the president. Because when we asked if they thought that the investigation was fair, 82% of Democrats said it was fair. 71% of Republicans said it's not fair. 55% of independents, on the other hand, said that it was fair. Republicans, even in the latest NBC News Wall Street Journal poll that came out this week, said that the president has been honest and trustworthy. Three quarters of them said that the president's been honest and truthful when it comes to the Russia investigation. Just 37% of people overall said that he's honest and truthful when it comes to Russia. So they're

living in two very different worlds, especially when it comes to Russia. So they're living in two very different worlds, especially when it comes to the Mueller investigation. We are going to end on that note today. We will be back in your feed soon. A reminder, two things to remind you about, actually. This upcoming Friday, we will be in Atlanta. There are a small handful of tickets left. You can go to nprpresents.org to grab a ticket. Then we are

doing another live show. I am super excited about this. We will be in Philadelphia on April 26. Same website, nprpresents.org. You can get tickets for that. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.