The NPR Politics Podcast - Listener Mail

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. 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

Gregory Warner here to tell you about NPR's new international podcast. It's called Rough Translation. Each week we're going to take you to a different country to hear a story that reflects back on something that we are talking about here in the United States. Maybe get a perspective shift. Travel with us. Rough Translation is on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Loura Johnson and I'm backstage at the Baltimore Symphony's last concert of the season. This podcast was recorded at 208 Eastern on Monday, August 7. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with NPR's coverage on NPR.org and on the NPR One app. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here to answer some of your questions about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and a few other topics. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

All right. And so far, every time I say this, people yell at me and that events catch up to me. But so far, it is shaping up to be what seems like it could possibly maybe be a slow news week. I don't know. It is Monday at 2 o'clock, Scott Detrow. I'm feeling optimistic.

But anyway, at the particular moment, it seems like a great time to take a few minutes to answer some listener mail. Can we agree on that, at the particular moment, it seems like a great time to take a few minutes to answer some listener mail. Can we agree on that at least? Endorse. Okay. So last week ended with a big update from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation. We learned that Mueller is now using a grand jury here in the D.C. area to continue the investigation into Russian interference in the election last year and any possible collusion

by the Trump campaign. We have gotten a ton of questions on this. There seems to be a lot of general confusion from people who don't follow the ins and outs of grand juries on a daily basis. So, Carrie, I think you're the right person to kind of walk through some grand jury 101 with. If nominated, I will serve. Yes. So the first question is from Bill, who emails Dear NPR Politics Podcast. There's been a lot of coverage about Robert Mueller impaneling a grand jury in D.C. My question is this. What exactly is a grand jury? Good place to start. Who sits on it?

Who can impanel one and how? Thanks so much, Bill. Okay, Bill. So grand juries are concepts we imported from England. They're centuries old. Grand juries are actually mentioned in the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. And a grand jury is a group of as many as 23 regular old people who have a lot of time on their hands to sit and hear secret evidence in private. Their job is to determine whether or not there's probable cause to find that there's a crime has been committed and probable cause to believe that a defendant did. And if so, they issue what's called an indictment, a criminal charge, which somebody then defends against in court or decides to plead guilty. So we keep saying that he is using a grand jury

rather than he impaneled a grand jury. There is a reason for that, yes? Right. There are sitting grand juries in different courthouses around the country, one, at least one in the Eastern District of Virginia that the special counsel has already been using. And now the news of last week is that he's now using another grand jury in the D.C. federal courts. The reason he's doing that, we think. Robert Mueller doesn't tell us what he's doing. Unfortunately, I'd love it if he did, if he's listening. Happy birthday. It's his birthday. 73 years old today.

And he's celebrating by not talking to us. That's sad, but true. So the speculation from lawyers involved in this investigation is that he's using a grand jury based in D.C. because D.C. is the jurisdiction for some of the things he's investigating. Statements out of the White House, for instance, activity in and outside the White House here in D.C. because D.C. is the jurisdiction for some of the things he's investigating, statements out of the White House, for instance, activity in and outside the White House here in D.C. That gets to criticism that popped up on Twitter, where else, over the weekend from Newt Gingrich, who tweeted, President Trump got 68.63% of the vote in West Virginia, 4.8% in Washington, D.C. Guess where Mueller has a grand jury? Guess how biased it will be.

So could Mueller technically impanel a grand jury anywhere or does it have to be in a location related to the crime being investigated? The rules on this are that you need to bring charges in a jurisdiction where a crime may have occurred. Unless some of these people involved in this investigation spirited away to West Virginia to engage in questionable conduct. I'm not sure why, in Newt Gingrich's mind, the special counsel would seek to use a grand jury in West Virginia. So one other thing a lot of people have been asking about, Kimme included. Kimme writes, in reading articles about Mueller's grand jury, I keep seeing references to the fact that this now means he has subpoena powers. Didn't he already have that as special counsel even without a grand jury? So typically, prosecutors do issue subpoenas, but they issue them through the formality of

the grand jury. So prosecutors have on their computers, as do FBI agents, like a draft subpoena. And they type it in and they send it out under the authority of the grand jury. Here's why you use a grand jury. It speeds things up. You get all your documents in ducks in a row. You're able to compel people to come and testify to the grand jury. They're testifying under oath. And then you look and see, hmm, this person testified to the grand jury saying this, but they've said that to the press. They said that to Congress. That's when you find new investigative avenues to pursue, possibly new criminal offenses like false statements or perjury. There has been a lot of pushback from President Trump's allies that Robert Mueller is

going off into parts of the woods that he wasn't supposed to be going into. There are reports that he's investigating financial activity. That isn't what this was created for. That's the pushback. What's the reality here? The reality here is that as soon as the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed a special counsel, it was eminently foreseeable that the special counsel would start using a grand jury, that there'd be demands for documents, demands for testimony. And in fact, he gave special counsel Robert Mueller a broad mandate to investigate any what's been called contacts or collusion between the Trump campaign, other Americans and people in Russia over the election, whether any crime arose or will arise in the course of the investigation, and anything

else he may find. If you talk to lawyers, that's a really broad mandate, actually, that encompasses possible false statements, possible obstruction of justice. And in order to find out whether there's been any conspiracy, you're probably going to want to see the nature of the financial relationships among all these people over time. Is it an unusually broad mandate? Like, did he get more of a blank check than other special counsels have gotten? Or is this like once there's a special counsel, Pandora's box is open on these things? Well, the history of special counsels and independent counsels is that once they start digging, they find all sorts of other unrelated

stuff. The regulations for special counsels suggest that if they come across something that's not directly arising from the investigation, that they need to go to the Justice Department and get approval. And over the weekend on Fox News, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said that both he and Robert Mueller understood the scope of the investigation. And then it was not, as some critics have said, a fishing expedition in any way. Right. So we got another question from Trish that goes back a few weeks. We haven't heard much about it since, but it's kind of a looming presence when it comes to any conversation about

an investigation and possible crimes and the president. And that's the issue of pardons. So here's the question from Trish, high NPR politics podcast. I read recently that President Trump has asked about presidential pardons and if he's allowed to pardon his aides, family and or himself. If you heard this and you have more information, thanks, Trish. Tam, you wrote about this at the time it was in the news and it was the news partially because President Trump was tweeting about it. That's right. The reality is the presidential power of pardons is pretty incredible. I mean, the president has basically unlimited power to pardon whoever he wants for whatever he wants. It's a quirk of our system. Now, there is some question as to whether he can actually pardon

himself. And it really isn't as much a legal question as it is a political question, because if President Trump were to start pardoning people like, say, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who he feels like maybe is not getting a fair shake. The problem for the president would be, one, there would be a lot of pushback, including from Republicans in Congress. This would be seen as like, whoa, what are you doing? But then the other thing is, if someone has been pardoned, then they kind of waive their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination because there is no crimination. Here's what we know. A president can clearly pardon associates. That happened in the Iran-Contra scandal. That happened in the George W. Bush White House when he shortened the sentence of Scooter Libby. Whether a president can pardon himself remains something of an open question. Our system tends to not like the same person be

the judge and the jury, which the president would be in this situation. Hard to imagine he would actually do that, but we'll see. All right, we're going to take a real quick break. We'll be back in a moment to talk about a couple other topics. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Bombas. When you think socks, think Bombas. Made from premium cotton, Bombas stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And every pair comes with a built-in blister tab, innovative arch support, stay-up technology, and a seamless toe. With many colors, patterns, lengths, and styles, Bombas look and feel great wherever you go. And for every purchase you make, Bombas donates a pair to someone in need. Get 20% off your first purchase at bombas.com slash politics.

President Trump plans to deport millions. So this week, Latino USA dives deep into the agency that has to fulfill his promise. ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We follow someone buying his own plane ticket to get deported and hear from a city suing its own state over immigration. Find Latino USA on the NPR One app and on NPR.org slash podcast. All right, we're back. Kind of a grab bag here of a few different things. And I think a lot of these questions actually come from other parts of the world.

Tyler in Australia writes, hello, NPR. Is there a window on reconciliation? Would the Senate still be able to pass some form of an ACA repeal with 50 votes in the fall next year? Thanks, Tyler. Tam, do you want to walk us through this? So basically, reconciliation is part of the budget process. In theory, each year, Congress passes a new joint budget resolution. Now, sometimes they go years without passing one. But the current budget from this last year is being used for health care. Republicans in the Senate have said that they want to change the tax code using this same process known as reconciliation.

You can't do both at the same time. And so when and if they decide to move on to taxes, then health care would be dead. Right. Susan Davis framed it as saying there can only be one reconciliation at a time. She said in a newsroom email, it's kind of like Harry Potter and Voldemort. There can only be one.

I said, excuse me, actually, that that's not the case and got into the idea of horcruxes, which Sue just glared at me and basically told me to shut up. We moved forward.

The broader point. Are you a Hufflepuff or are you a Gryffindor? Slytherin. I think he's definitely not a Slytherin. But that's the bottom line. They're not going to get on to tax reform, which is all they're talking about now, wanting to do it through reconciliation if health care is still hanging out. All right. Final question of the day comes from Adam in New Zealand.

He says, listening to your July 21st episode, you mentioned that Iowa, especially the Iowa State Fair, would be a very important stop off for any aspiring politician. I recently read that Mark Zuckerberg set tongues a wagon. Thank you for letting me say tongues a wagon, Adam, when he visited local families in Iowa. I'm hoping you can inform a non-American listener. What is it about Iowa that's so important for politicians? Yours sincerely, Adam. Well, Adam, let me tell you. There's one thing that's really important about Iowa, and that is it hosts the Iowa

caucuses, which is the first contest of the presidential nominating process that lasts for about two years now at this point. Iowa kicks things off with the caucuses. Then it goes to New Hampshire for the primaries. So those two states, especially along with a handful of other early states, are where the politicians spend the bulk of their time. And while there are bigger states later, Iowa usually culls the field down a lot. I will just say, and Scott obviously has demonstrated this through spending a week of his life there, there are reasons to go to Iowa other than running for president.

I ate a lot of pork chops a couple of weeks ago, and I would agree with that. Corn dogs. Yeah. All right. Pie. And speaking of the next presidential election, interesting article in The New York Times made a lot of head waves over the weekend, got Mike Pence to actually issue a statement responding to it.

It was pointing out that a lot of Republicans are doing the types of things you do when you think you might be running for president in a few years, even though we're only 200 days into the first term of a Republican president, pointing out senators like Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse have dropped by Iowa and also that Mike Pence is doing a lot of interesting things like setting up his own political committee and inviting important people, influential conservatives over to the Naval Observatory where he lives. However, Mike Pence, the vice president, put out a strongly worded statement about the New York Times article, making it clear that he is, in fact, not running for president in 2020. He is preparing to run for vice president. And of course, that statement

included everybody's favorite term, fake news. Whatever fake news may come our way, my entire team will continue to focus all our efforts to advance the president's agenda and see him reelected in 2020. Any suggestion otherwise is both laughable and absurd. That being said, he's doing a lot of interesting things you don't typically see a first term vice president do. So make of that what you will. All right. We are going to end it there today. We'll be back on Thursday with a weekly roundup chock full of real news. In the meantime, you can keep up with us on our Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. We're at NPR Politics on all of those.

As always, you can support the podcast by supporting your local public radio station at the link in our episode information. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson, justice correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.