The NPR Politics Podcast - Jan. 6 "Ringleader": Lawmakers Advise Criminal Charges For Trump

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack advised four criminal charges be filed against former President Donald Trump over his role in the riot. One member noted that the U.S. does not have "a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass." The Department of Justice, entirely independent from Congress, may or may not choose to follow through on the group's referrals.This episode: politics correspondent Ashley Lopez, congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales, and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Katherine Swartz.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It's 4.30 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, December 19th, 2022. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. A quorum being present, the select committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol will be in order. And with that, this afternoon saw the conclusion of one of the most consequential congressional investigations in recent history. The January 6th committee ended its work with a final presentation to the American people about what it discovered. The committee laid out a case against former President Trump

and others for their roles in the attack. Congresswoman Elaine Luria of Virginia. In summary, President Trump lit the flame. He poured gasoline on the fire and sat by in the White House dining room for hours watching the fire burn. And today, he still continues to fan those flames. That was his extreme dereliction of duty. The committee's vice chair, Liz Chaining of Wyoming. No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office. Committee chair, Benny Thompson of Mississippi. I believe nearly two years later, this is still a time of reflection and reckoning. If we are to survive as a nation of laws and democracy,

this can never happen again. And Jamie Raskin of Maryland. We proposed to the committee advancing referrals where the gravity of the specific offense, the severity of its actual harm, and the centrality of the offender to the overall design of the unlawful scheme to overthrow the election compel us to speak. Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass. To that end, the committee referred criminal charges to the Department of Justice.

And Claudia, let's start with you. Walk us through what those referrals were. What are they and who are they for? Right. Specifically, former President Trump was really the central figure that the panel has focused on throughout their probe. And today, when they shared the four criminal referrals that they saw that President Trump's actions fell under in terms of criminal statutes, they were obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and finally inciting an insurrection. And so those are the four that we're expecting the panel to issue formal letters, if you will, to the Justice Department, hoping to trigger a broader look into these criminal charges and their connection to former President Trump's actions leading up to the January 6th attack and the day of. And Carrie, can you help translate for me what those charges mean?

The actual crime called insurrection is not something that I think we've seen formally levied against anyone so far, right? We haven't. We haven't. You know, of the nearly 1,000 federal cases the Justice Department has brought against rioters and other people who may have broken the law at the Capitol on January 6th. Insurrection is not one of those crimes. In fact, I looked it up this morning. I couldn't find any prosecutions since the Civil War era on that charge. So it's quite a weighty offense.

We have seen of these nearly 1,000 cases charges that include a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. And of course, this conspiracy to make a false statements charge is interesting because it relates to that scheme involving fake slates of electors. We know the Justice Department has been really hot and heavy on that with lots of subpoenas to people in many states. But overall, this issue of insurrection has got to be the headline here. It's not at all clear the Justice Department is going to pursue any of these specific charges. They're not legally binding on the DOJ or the special counsel, Jack Smith. But the idea that the former president has been referred in this manner is certainly historic. Yeah. And I want to put a finer point on that. It's not like Congress can compel the DOJ to do anything here. This is just referred to them and it's completely up to that agency to figure out what happens next. Right. Remember, prosecutors, they will tell you that the Justice Department has not been that excited about getting this letter from the January 6th Committee on the Hill with these referrals.

What the Justice Department has wanted lead prosecutors and FBI agents to clues and possible inconsistencies in testimony that they'll need to know about either to make a case or to decide not to make a case. And Chairman Benny Thompson said at the hearing today he expected the public, including the Justice Department, to get those materials before the end of the year. Yeah, Congress cannot prosecute crime. So this is the next closest thing they can do is they can issue these formal letters recommending these criminal prosecutions, if you will, against these individuals, including former President Trump. At the same time, as Kerry's noting, it doesn't have legal weight and it doesn't force the Justice Department to

do anything. I talked to one legal expert, however, who said that the details that this panel has gathered could feed into an indictment one day if the Justice Department does decide to prosecute on the grounds of any of these criminal charges. I wonder if we've heard yet from the DOJ. I mean, is it too early or have we already gotten a comment from them? Oh, my goodness. I have been knocking and knocking on the door, and the Justice Department does not want to say anything about these referrals. What we have heard is a statement from the new special counsel, Jack Smith, from his appointment in November, where he pledged to do this work thoroughly and independently, and that he said that his appointment would not cause any delays in any ongoing investigations. No official response,

though, from the Justice Department or the special counsel to the committee's work today. And you know, in a preview to the report that was dropped at the end of today's hearing of the committee's report, they admit that this is a unique circumstance. Criminal referrals often come down when there is no criminal investigation ongoing, but there is one in this case, so it's extra sensitive. At the same time, there's been this ongoing conversation. Carrie's very familiar in terms of when is this panel going to turn over their documents to DOJ? And so this is that week. This is when we're hearing from members saying, we're going to have a document dump this week, including those transcripts tied to those hundreds of witnesses we interviewed.

All of that's going to be fair game for DOJ to finally take a look at their evidence in a much larger scale. All right. Well, time for a quick break. More in a second. And we're back. Now that this is the last hearing that we'll get from the committee, although there are more documents to come, of course, I was hoping you two would be able to reflect on what this committee has managed to accomplish or in your thoughts like fell short on what are sort of the big things you think got done here or didn't. I'll start with you, Keri. I have to tell you that this committee managed to both uncover new information. I'm speaking here about former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and her kind of bird's eye view on things that were going on inside the Oval Office, inside the office of her boss, then Chief of Staff Mark

Meadows. Her testimony really surprised me with lots of new blockbuster revelations. And also in terms of the way this committee managed to present its work, it was uniquely compelling in a way I hadn't seen in many years of covering congressional hearings. And it managed to break through to people who are not that interested in politics, unlike many of our listeners. But it managed to break through our audience and into the regular world in a way that's really hard to do in this media environment and in this political environment. Yeah. In terms of the accomplishments, it's like Carrie touched on. It's just pretty stunning in terms of the scale and the scope that this panel was able to take on in

such a short period of time and under two years to tell this story largely in Republican voices. I think through the public hearings and other testimonies shared, we heard from about 70 witnesses, the panel said, through their presentations. And again, a vast majority were Republicans. And that just gave such credibility to this new historical record that this committee has created as a result of this investigation. At the same time today, I felt like we heard about the limitations they also faced. While it was a Democratic-led panel, and they did have two Republican members on this panel, and they were able to tell one full narrative, at the same time, they were stymied. We heard that from Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat, when he talked about the limitations

in terms of going very far beyond Trump when it comes to additional referrals for more of Trump's allies. He said, we were stymied by witnesses who took the Fifth, who would not cooperate, and we've run out of time. In terms of roadblocks, I want to say I covered the trial this year of Steve Bannon, a former White House advisor to former President Donald Trump, for stiffing the January 6th committee. You know, he was convicted of contempt of Congress. And next year, in January, we have a trial of Peter Navarro on the same charge. So this committee really did try to get as many voices as it could. And it was just stonewalled in some ways by Trump's closest allies. In fact, in a written summary that the committee put out today, it had bones to pick with people like Tony Ornato, who was a top secret service official,

who then moved into a White House job, who the committee seemed to suggest was not entirely forthcoming about what he knew about what Donald Trump did on January 6, and didn't do. And he just didn't want to talk. The committee also had some kind of harsh words for Ivanka Trump about the limits of her cooperation. And so even people who did talk to the panel and who were very close to Trump maybe didn't share everything that they could or should have. That's an area where the Justice Department can haul people in front of grand juries and potentially get more information than members of Congress can. We know this committee is going to sunset at the end of this year, but I wonder what's going to happen for the members of Congress who served on this committee is going to sunset at the end of this year, but I wonder what's going to happen for the members of Congress who served on this committee.

Right. Some of these members of this panel, five in all, will move forward into the new Congress and they're going to face a whole new fight in a House chamber that is controlled by House Republicans. They've already said they want to turn the tables on the January 6th committee and investigate the investigators. So perhaps this could involve subpoenas. Perhaps this could involve new questions about their roles during the investigation. They've said repeatedly they want every shred of evidence that this committee has uncovered. And that's part of this beginning of this process this week to release all of these documents. Not only are they releasing documents to the American public for the Justice Department to look, but they want House Republicans to have everything they need if they have any questions over the approach to the investigation. But it just kind of continues this very partisan political conversation in the House. And it's unclear where it will end now. I will note there were some legislative recommendations, one of which has perhaps a very good shot of getting through Congress if a major budget bill moves in the coming days. And that's the reforms to the Electoral Count Act. That was the older arcane law that was exploited by former President Trump to see if he could pressure his vice president to overturn the

2020 election results. And that would bring about a lot of reforms to strengthen that law. And the hope is to never allow for a January 6th to happen again. Yeah. Do you have closing thoughts on this, Carrie? I think any congressional committee moving forward that wants its work to be understood by members of the public is going to have to take a lesson from this panel. In other words, it's not enough anymore to get

written statements from witnesses and call them up on the Hill and ask them a couple of questions and then call it a day. If you want to do a serious deep dive investigation that's going to get public notice and attention, you're going to have to use video, you're going to have to use audio, and you're going to have to tell a story the way that we tell a story on the radio every day. That's one of the most important, lasting legacies of this committee, I think. All right, let's leave it there for today. You can read more at npr.org. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Claudia Arizales. I cover Congress. And I'm

Keri Johnson, national justice correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.