The NPR Politics Podcast - January 6th Committee Says It Has Evidence Trump's Election Efforts Broke The Law

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Lawmakers said in a court filing this week that the evidence they have gathered through their investigation into last year's attack on the U.S. Capitol suggests that former President Donald J. Trump conspired to commit fraud by misleading the public about the outcome of the presidential election.Also: The Supreme Court's conservative majority could curtail the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. And American oil and natural gas proponents are leveraging Russia's invasion of Ukraine to promote expanded domestic oil production, even though it would take months or years for a production boost to impact gasoline prices.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, and environment correspondent Nathan Rott.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Hi, this is CJ, and I've just completed my first marathon of Parks and Recreation. I've been on my couch all week watching Parks and Rec. I love this show. Anyways, time to tune into the politics podcast to get my dose of reality.

This podcast was recorded at... It's 108 Eastern on Friday, March 4th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be watching Parks and Rec round two. Enjoy the show. Well done. He really had me. I was believing him. That was good. Wow. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. Okay, so that House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol has been plugging away.

Claudia, you have been covering it all along for us. This week in a legal filing, it made a pretty key claim that former President Trump tried to illegally obstruct Congress's counting of electoral votes. So that seems like a real development and And also the context of it is really interesting. Tell us what we need to know. Right. It's a massive document, more than 200 pages of arguments and exhibits detailing some of the panel's findings. It's part of a lawsuit tied to an attorney, John Eastman. He's fighting a committee subpoena, and he was a key player in the effort to stop the counting of electoral votes last year on the day the Capitol was attacked. Eastman issued memos detailing how then-Vice President Mike Pence could reject the 2020 presidential election results, and the panel

says it gathered evidence that provides at minimum a good faith basis for concluding that then-President Donald Trump broke the law with his efforts to obstruct the counting of Electoral College votes. The panel also said that it had a good faith basis for concluding that Trump and members of his campaign engaged in a, quote, criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. And while the committee is not conducting a criminal investigation, it doesn't have that power. This is the first time it's detailed these claims in such a way. And before we get into more of the context of what those claims really said in detail,

just clarifying this was not like, and here is our final finding, and this is the big headline. This was part of an ongoing legal challenge with somebody else. And it was just written into that filing in almost a kind of like, sometimes the footnotes are very important kind of way. Is that the fair way to frame it? Yeah, I think so. This is like a sneak peek into what the committee has uncovered so far when it comes to questions of crimes that may have been committed. And we could hear more about this as the committee hopes to hold public hearings this spring and issue an interim and final report later this year. I saw one House impeachment lawyer say that this was perhaps a backdoor way of issuing a criminal referral

for Donald Trump. Of course, no formal referral has been issued, but it's a signal to the Department of Justice. And it's a continuation of arguments that the committee has had since they brought this issue up last year. Let's just try and deal with like a really tricky question, right? Because I think obviously very legitimate questions were raised by this attack on the United States Capitol aimed at stopping the certification of a presidential election. There is no question about that. And at the same time, he was tried. He was impeached in the House. He was tried in the Senate, even though that is not a court of law. And he was, even though a majority of senators voted to convict him, he was found not guilty. The Justice Department seems historically very hesitant to charge former or current presidents with crimes.

And it isn't a door open to the kinds of questions of things that happen in more unstable democracies than the United States if there is a continued push to press charges against someone who is still currently the political leader of the opposition party. Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up. I was with a group of reporters at the Capitol yesterday talking to a member of the committee. This is California Democrat Adam Schiff. He's also chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. And he talked about this dilemma that they are facing, this question of whether a president is above the law. You know, I feel very strongly that if the Justice Department takes the position as they did,

which I think was a flawed position, but if they take the position, you can't indict a sitting president, and then takes the position through action or inaction that as a practical matter, you can't investigate a former president, then the president becomes above the law. And Schiff went on to say that this is an idea that the founders would have never upheld, that it's a dangerous idea. And so he said, if the rule of law applies equally to everyone, then this is one of those test cases. Does it apply to former presidents as well? So that's kind of the dilemma. The tricky thing about going after a former president, even though generally, I think the public would say that no president is above the law, is that for one political party to go after the leader, the former president of another political party raises implications.

Even if they are saying this person broke the law, they're going to be charged when the next party comes into office, their base, the base of that party may have a desire for what they feel like is retribution or what they feel like is, you know, just desserts. It could lead to a tit for tat that could have, that could really spiral. And Aisha will quickly point out that there are active investigations of Trump underway in Georgia and in New York. And given all that, is there anything to say about how he and his orbit have responded to all of these developments this week? Well, I mean, the way they respond to everything is to absolutely say that, you know, claim complete and total innocence,

to say that they are under a, you know, that they are being, you know, that he is being unfairly persecuted, and that also, you know, that everyone else is actually guilty of crimes, not him. And also to never cooperate cooperate to never admit anything um not that you know you can question whether they have something to to admit um but to to never cooperate to make everything as difficult as possible and you know that that to just say no i i didn't do anything and you gotta prove it or you know, and I ain't going along with it. That's basically it.

Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. Claudia, we are going to let you go for a few minutes, but stick around because you'll be back for Can't Let It Go. Yes. When we come back, we are going to talk about a big week in energy policy and climate change. We are back. Aisha, you, like me, are a former energy reporter,

loves to talk about energy policy. So I thought, and also the fact that there's a lot of news that's really important to talk about. I thought we would focus on that for the final newsy segment. Both things. Yes, yes, that sounds good. So we're going to talk about that. We will bring in Nate Rott on NPR's climate team. Hey, Nate. Yo, what's going on, Scott? So let me set this up with a few different things. A lot of climate news happened this week. There was a big new UN climate change report noting billions of people on every single continent are suffering because of climate change. Heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires, and disease outbreaks are accelerating more rapidly than scientists

expected in many parts of the world that includes the United States. So there's that. There is the fact that President Biden tried to give his big climate policy a boost during the State of the Union. It died along with the broader Build Back Better bill last year. But a lot of climate people were dismayed that Biden didn't really even talk about this crisis. And instead, he tried to frame things as an inflation policy. And if that weren't enough, Nate, here's what we're going to talk about. It is against this backdrop that we want to get to a case that was before the Supreme Court this week concerning the Environmental Protection Agency. What was going on here? Yeah, so the case West Virginia versus EPA is a huge case before the Supreme Court, and it centers on an old regulation, the Clean Power Plan.

Shout out to the CPP. Yeah. So the Clean Power Plan was arguably the Obama administration's largest climate policy. It aimed to cut the country's contribution to global warming by shifting the nation's power sector away from fossil fuels, right, mainly coal. And it did that by using the Clean Air Act. Republican states and the coal industry basically argue that Obama went too far, that his EPA stretched the meaning of the Clean Air Act to do something it wasn't intended to do. The irony here is that the Clean Power Plan, as you both know, never went into effect. So the nation's highest course here is debating

essentially a debt regulation. And so why are they doing that? Because wouldn't it be moot? I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't the issue no longer be relevant? Basically, a lot of the arguments that we heard from the Supreme Court earlier this week were around something called the major questions doctrine, which sounds funky, but basically it says that federal agencies, in this case, the EPA, shouldn't be able to stretch their authority using existing regulations to deal with questions of vast economic or political significance. So basically what that's saying is that the way government works, especially when it comes to environmental law, is agencies are given deference when it comes to interpreting something like the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act.

Conservative justices have been poking at this for a while because their central argument is that an agency should only be able to take on a major question if it's been given explicit authority to do so by Congress. And Aisha, this matters a lot because even before Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court and shifted it to a much more conservative 6-3 breakdown, this was a Supreme Court where the conservative justices were pretty eager to dismantle executive authority, were pretty skeptical of agencies interpreting laws that didn't explicitly tell them they could do something. So this seems like even if this is a moot law, could be a really big deal in terms of a ruling. Yeah, I mean, well, at least very skeptical of, you know, executive authority when it comes to the environment. You know, there are probably other areas where they would give executives more latitude, like immigration, etc.

But when it comes to the environment, the ability to regulate and to adjust to changing circumstances has been very pivotal to environmentalism, the environmental movement um and and lots of things like the environmental movement has been very successful at stopping projects at slowing things down um by using executive or by using regulatory um law and so and and in this case because at this point and for the foreseeable future, you cannot get a climate bill through Congress. The idea was if if that is not possible, then something must be done. The Environmental Protection Agency should be the one to do it and use the Clean Air Act to do it. And if that is struck down, that could greatly limit what they could do in the future. We will be talking about this in June, I'm sure, because if this court issues a ruling really

scaling back executive authority on environmental policy, that would be yet another massive blow to efforts to rein in climate change. But there is something else happening on energy, and we got to shift to that too. And that is, of course, as Russia invades Ukraine, as the rest of the world really systematically isolates Russia on a lot of economic fronts, there is a push to include oil and gas production there as well and say, you know what, nobody should buy Russian oil, nobody should buy Russian gas. We're already seeing this to a degree when the way that Germany, you know, shut down the big gas pipeline that was going to bring gas from Russia into Germany. This could be a big deal. It already is an enormous deal in global energy markets. But Ayesha, what is the argument here that the U.S. should totally

take Russian oil and gas off the table and make up for it by boosting domestic production? Well, the idea is essentially, and there are Republicans and Democrats, Democrats as prominent as Nancy Pelosi, who have got onto this idea that the U.S. should stop importing Russian oil. And it's the idea that if the U.S. continues to buy Russian oil, that they are, you know, helping to line Putin's pockets and they want that to change. Nate, how do these arguments intersect with reality? Yeah, I mean, so the U.S. currently, I think it's about 8% of U.S. oil imports last year came from Russia. So it's, you know, it's a chunk. It's not hugely significant. But, you know, we've heard a lot, especially from Republican lawmakers and, you know, noteworthy Democrats like Joe Manchin, basically saying that to make up for any deficit, if we were to ban Russian oil imports, we ought to do is fast track domestic oil production. Right. And I think it's important to kind of

remember that like a lot of the rhetoric around U.S. energy policy is pretty misleading. Even if Biden was to say, hey, yes, right, let's let's let's block Russian imports. It's not like he can just wave a magic wand and vastly expand the amount of oil and gas that we produce overnight. It takes years to go from leasing to permitting to production. When people are saying, hey, look, like energy prices are really high, we need to do something about it right now. It's misleading to say that the Biden administration can do something in the immediate term that would alleviate the feelings that people are having or the prices that people are seeing because it's a global market. You have Republicans and Democrats and really all politicians want to try to reassure consumers who will feel pain at the pump.

Scott doesn't like that. Scott doesn't like that. But the fact is, when you have Biden talking about tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, yeah, that may have some impact, but not a lot. And it's not going to be long term. There really isn't anything that he can do. The honest thing that politicians could say is that consumers are going to have to pay more for the for, you know, for at least a few months that and they could pay much more because the price of oil is set on a global market. If you take a whole bunch of supply off someplace in the world, it's going to affect the U.S. That's just the bottom line. And to address what Scott was saying at the beginning, it's important to remember here that if we were to significantly ramp up oil and gas production, let's say that Biden did move forward with green lighting,

a bunch of infrastructure projects around oil and gas, that is going to have a very large impact on CO2 emissions down the road. And as we know, as the IPCC report said earlier this week, billions of people are already suffering from the effects of climate change. It's costing the world's economies billions of dollars a year. So I think that needs to be weighed in the decision making here as basically we look at how to address the high energy prices in the short term. Yeah. All right, Nate Rott, thanks for joining us as always. Hey, it's my pleasure. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

We are back. It is time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things we cannot stop talking about or thinking about, politics or otherwise. Aisha, I have good news and bad news for you. So no one asked me my Can't Let It Go this week. I had an idea. I hadn't gotten a chance to send it. I had an idea about Wheel of Fortune, and I was going to talk about that, but no one pressed me on it. And so I had an idea, like, why is no one asking me about what I can't let go of this week? Well, that Wheel of Fortune situation was what truly all of us could all not let go of.

And Google it if you haven't seen it. A feather in a the cap but that's not what we're talking about today i hate to tell you aisha you're leaving us you are off to host weekend edition we are happy and sad in the same time yes and we just want to talk about you for a few minutes oh my gosh buckle up oh we have a lot to say uh but we start off claud Claudia and I were talking and thinking about the can't let it goes that you have been a part of that just kind of stay in our minds. And Claudia, over to you. Okay. So, Aisha, I cannot let you go. Can we turn this into Hotel California and we keep her here?

Oh, no. Can we turn this into Hotel California and we keep her here? So it is so hard for me. It is just so hard for me to imagine that we are going to do these segments, Can't Let It Go segments, without Aisha and without the birds. How are we not going to be talking about the birds? What's going on with the birds? If there's an evil force with the birds or how are the birds doing? Aisha, how am I going to check in with you on that? So that's going to be so hard to just not be able to hear about your bird cligs and the latest there. But I'm so grateful that we had the chance to have so much fun here. And I'm looking forward to you sharing your amazing energy

with everyone on weekends. Our listeners are going to be so lucky. You put people at ease. We have so much fun when we're around you. I'm going to miss you on this pod, but I cannot wait to listen in on what you do on weekends next. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much, Claudia. That's really, that is very kind. And it has been great working with you and so much fun. I feel like we've had so much fun in these can't let it goes. Yes. Love it. So Aisha, I have very sincere things to say and play. But first, I feel like many listeners would not want to see you go without a very quick return to the Can't Let It Go segment that I think I feel like I hear more about than anything else.

And that is... I got to talk about that WAP. Oh, really? Listen, listen, listen, listen. And then there's a longer clip here. I don't even know what we want to say to set this up for people who don't know. The WAP. Oh, yeah.

Oh, my goodness. I actually forgot about that. Yes. So we talked about the song WAP. It was me, you, and Domenico, right? Yes. And you hadn't heard the song, right? So as you're talking about why it stuck with you, I googled it in real time

and this is what happened. I grew up, you know, listening to a lot of rap and you would hear male rappers talking like this all the time. So that's why I love Meg Thee Stallion, City Girls, Cardi B. Talk that talk. I think that it's time for

women to talk that talk. I'm reading the lyrics now and I'm now up to speed. Okay. Goodbye. Oh, my God. Scott, what can't you let go of? Scott is like, oh, my gosh. But, I mean, Aisha, you have brought such sharp reporting to the White House.

You have brought such a presence to this podcast and our airwaves. You bring like joy and spirituality and just like a sense of a full person to the airwaves in a way that's so hard to do. And I'm going to miss you. But I'm not the only one who's going to miss you. Montage time. It is Aisha Roscoe's last day in the briefing room. Seat before, yes. Thank you for all of your work. And she's going on, you've already announced this. I feel like I'm announcing news, but it's been announced to host weekend edition for NPR as an NPR listener. I look forward to being in my sweatpants and

coffee and listening to you this weekend. So congratulations and thank you for all of your work on behalf of the American people. Aisha, I am so excited for you. This is Franco. You know, on the one hand, I can't believe that you're leaving us. On the other, I mean, of course, you're so great. It has been wonderful to work with you. It has been wonderful to learn from you. I just can't wait on Sundays, like Jen Psaki said, to be listening to you in my pajamas.

Hey, Ayesha, it's Asma. I'm going to miss sitting next to you one day when we eventually return to the office and work again in person. And I'm going to miss you as a White House colleague as well. But I just wanted to say thanks. It has's not really goodbye because of everyone on the Washington desk and the White House team. I'm the one who's going to get to spend a lot of time with you in your new job on Sunday mornings. And I'm really thrilled about that. I'm super excited. This is Tam. Ayesha, I give you credit for the chopper talk selfie. That is when we go out to wait for the president to arrive or to depart and we're standing on the South Lawn and it is either freezing cold or extremely hot. It is now a tradition among the NPR White House team to take a selfie of the miserableness. And I think we could all thank

you for starting that tradition. You're going to do wonderful. Have a great time and break a leg. You know, I think there's one memory of our time and our conversations together that has stuck in my mind. You know, you are a mother of three. And when I had my second born, I remember lamenting to you about the fact that post baby, I could no longer fit into any of my work clothes and was going to just resort to wearing elastic pants. And you very confidently assured me that there was no shame in wearing elastic pants. So I just want to say I am sending this message to you right now wearing some elastic waist sweatpants. I cannot wait to hear you on Weekend Edition. Take care.

And I'm sure we will see each other around. This is great for everyone. You, me and NPR. I'll miss you at the White House, but I won't miss you too much because I'll be talking to you on Sundays. See you soon. I am going to so miss you on this team. And I think that the public will miss your incredibly smart, really cutting at times questions that you ask in the briefings and in press conferences. You are the master. You are so good at asking questions in just the right way. Oh my gosh.

Y'all trying to get me to cry and get emotional. Oh my goodness. Wow. That's really kind. And I'm so grateful to have been a part of this team. And I learned so much. And I thank you guys for always embracing all of me and sometimes my silliness and, you know, and being patient with me as I learned about radio and to the audience that really embraced me, like, you know, loving Cardi B and being scared of birds and stuff. For embracing that and allowing me to show up.

And so I will absolutely miss it. I'm so glad that I get to stick around and work on another show and still do some of those things and do some more things. But I'm definitely going to miss everybody. And I just appreciate everybody so much. Because what you hear, there really is a camaraderie there. It's real. And I really appreciate that.

And so thank you. And I teared right on up. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Well, we'll, I'm sure, find a way to bring you back to visit the podcast every once in a while yes let's do it yes i you know if you have something that you really need me to talk about you know i can always try to make a guest appearance you love it and in the meantime soon um you can hear every sunday morning at on Weekend Edition. Yes, Weekend Edition Sundays.

All right. That is it for this week. Our executive producer is Mithani Mathuri. Our editors are Eric McDaniel and Krishna Def Kalamore. Our producers are Lexi Schapittle and Alaina Moore. And thank you, as always, to Brandon Carter. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House.

I'm Aisha Roscoe. I still cover the White House for I'm Aisha Roscoe. I still cover the White House for today. You got six more hours. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And Aisha, thank you for being on it. Thank you. Thank you.