The NPR Politics Podcast - Manafort Sentenced To 3.5 More Years; Pelosi Says Impeachment Is "Just Not Worth It"

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Paul Manafort received a total sentence of about 7 and a half years in prison on Wednesday following the guilty plea in his Washington, D.C., conspiracy case. Plus, Nancy Pelosi throws cold water on impeachment talk, saying Democrats are unlikely to go down that path because the president is "just not worth it." This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. 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

Hi, this is Anne. And this is Pablo. And we're on a road trip through New Zealand celebrating our 10th anniversary. We're coming to you from the top of the Franz Josef Glacier and it looks beautiful. This show was recorded at 1.54 p.m. on Wednesday, March 13th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, on with the show. Speaking of vacation, Ms. Johnson, you just got back from a very well-deserved one. And I know I speak for the whole podcast team when I say it's really good to have you back. Oh, thank you. I'm delighted to be back here in time for some news.

And we have some for you. Hey, everybody. It is the NPR Politics Podcast. President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has been sentenced again and will now serve a total of seven and a half years. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi throws cold water on impeachment talk, saying Democrats are unlikely to go down that path because the president is, quote, just not worth it. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Carrie Johnson. I

cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. There's already a podcast in your feeds from last week on Manafort receiving a nearly four-year prison sentence for bank and tax fraud. Today, he appeared in court in Washington, D.C., where the judge added 43 months to that sentence, sending him to jail for about seven and a half years. Carrie, you were in the room. Yeah, Paul Manafort was wheeled in by court security officers. He was wearing a business suit and a tie. Remember, his lawyers have said he has severe gout, so he has trouble with his foot. And his hair has gotten very gray in this nine months where he's been locked up in the detention center in Virginia. And so he hasn't had an opportunity

to get the hair coloring that he has apparently been using for a detention center in Virginia. And so he has an opportunity to get the hair coloring that he has apparently been using for a lot of his life. So I was actively following your Twitter feed when you were in the courtroom, and the judge seemed pretty spirited in today's case. Explain sort of what her take was towards Manafort. Yeah, Judge Amy Berman Jackson is a former prosecutor and defense lawyer before she got appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama. She concluded that Paul Manafort is not public enemy number one, but nor is he a blameless victim in all of this. She was pretty hard on Manafort. She said that he's been basically spinning and dissembling throughout the course of this criminal case and maybe even throughout his long career.

And she basically said saying, I'm sorry sorry I got caught is not the same thing as being an inspiring plea for leniency in this case. And Carrie, what did Manafort have to say for himself? Manafort says he's sorry for what he did and all the activities that brought us here to court today. He says he did accept responsibility for his mistakes. And he basically said, this case has taken everything from me already. My finances, my properties, my insurance. Please let my wife and me be together. Manafort is turning 70 next month. His wife is 66.

The judge basically said, I appreciate the fact that you've supported your family and friends, but you did it using other people's money. And she said it's problematic that Manafort has been making these kinds of arguments because this court is one of the places where facts still matter. Remind us what Manafort was being charged with and sentenced for today. Sure, this was the case in Washington, D.C., where Manafort had pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges. One involved an overarching financial conspiracy related to his unregistered lobbying for Ukrainian political interests. And the second suit involved charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice for alleged witness tampering after Manafort had already been charged with earlier crimes, tampering with witnesses to try to get

them to stick to a certain story and make Paul Manafort look better. It is worth restating that in all of this, none of the crimes that Manafort has been accused of are related to his time on the Trump campaign. But the president, Mara, has been, he is engaged on the Manafort proceedings. And specifically, he has as if they were speaking to an audience of one. Even though that had nothing to do with this sentence, they went out and said exactly what the president's been saying. They said the judge said this. There was no collusion. Judge Jackson conceded that there was absolutely no evidence of any Russian collusion in this case. So that makes two courts, two courts have ruled no evidence of any collusion with any Russians. Sad. Very sad. Well, you can hear the people in the crowd saying that's not what the judge said. So, Carrie, what was going on out there?

Yeah, in fact, that was not what the judge said. Those protesters and gadflies who seemed to show up for every major Mueller court proceeding were trying to fact check on the spot. The lawyer for Paul Manafort, Kevin Downing, Judge Jackson inside the courtroom said the whole idea of the no collusion mantra is a non sequitur because the issue wasn't presented in this case. She said, we don't know what Robert Mueller has found. He's not done with his work yet. We haven't seen his report. So we can't say there was no collusion. Moreover, the judge found that Manafort lied about his contacts with a business associate the FBI has linked to Russian intelligence. Some of those contacts occurred during the 2016 campaign. So there's certainly more to learn here. But one thing that was going on outside there is that Manafort's lawyer was repeating Trump's favorite talking

points. And it sure sounded to a lot of people like he was angling for a pardon. But the White House message about the Manafort sentencing is this had nothing to do with the campaign. They haven't been able to prove collusion. And the president has even praised Manafort in the past for not flipping and turning on him. Well, that's a really good point, because wasn't that brought up in the courtroom today, that prosecutors did make the point that Manafort tried to cut a deal by cooperating, but never ultimately really cooperated or gave them anything to work with? Absolutely. The point the Justice Department has been making is that Manafort pretended to cooperate, basically, and then yanked them around for 50 hours, lying to the FBI, lying to the grand jury. And the judge said today in D.C., listen, Manafort has told so

many lies, it's impossible to tell whether his first story that got him the plea deal, he was dissembling, or now he's dissembling to protect other people. And in fact, in one reference today, this judge said, at times, Manafort's dissembling to protect other people. And in fact, in one reference today, this judge said, at times Manafort appeared to be speaking to some other audience outside the court. I wonder who that might be. What do you think about that, though, Mara? I mean, I know it's highly speculative, but the fact that Manafort didn't cooperate, the fact that we have a president that has been kind of pardoned happy, does seem like it's going to continue to fuel that kind of speculation. I think so. And the comments by Manafort's attorneys about how erroneously this shows there's no collusion.

The judge said there was no collusion. No, the judge said this isn't about collusion. This is not what we're here today to talk about. Shows you that they are trying to signal to the White House. I think they are sending the message that Manafort has been loyal and they are going for a pardon. Now, a pardon would be politically problematic for a president who's running for reelection. But it's still a live issue because the president has never completely ruled it out. Carrie, there's been a lot of talk that Manafort got off a little easy, that his sentencing wasn't as harsh as other people who have faced similar charges. What do you think about that? You know, USA Today did an analysis published today that's very good.

They looked at all of the 67,000 defendants sentenced in federal court in 2017. They found only one case in which a fraud defendant like Paul Manafort got such a big break at sentencing time without support from the Justice Department. So it's highly unusual that sentence from Judge Ellis in Virginia last week. Now with the sentence today from the judge in Washington, D.C., Manafort's supposed to serve a total of seven and a half years behind bars. That appears to be more in line with expectations. But I got to say, Sue, as somebody who's covered white collar fraud for, I don't know, 15, 20 years, I've seen people go to prison for 12 years, 25 years and longer. Seven and a half years people go to prison for 12 years, 25 years and

longer. Seven and a half years may not be enough for some people, including Democrats on Capitol Hill. Well, also, there was this sense that maybe today was the final chapter in the Paul Manafort criminal saga. And then shortly after this court proceeding ends, I get another breaking news alert. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. There's more shocking ought to come for Paul Manafort. The D.A. in Manhattan, Cyrus Vance, has announced 16 charges, state charges in New York surrounding residential mortgage fraud. Vance says that Manafort and others falsified business records and were scheming to defraud the state. And he basically says that no one's beyond the law in New York City. A lot of people are saying these are double jeopardy. In other words, these are charges that Manafort has already been tried and convicted on. Is that a strong defense for him? You know, that is going to be his defense here. And it's an open legal question. I can't figure out what the right answer is. But Paul Manafort's lawyers are certainly going to assert that New York state lawmakers had the opportunity to change state law and make it

clear that people like Manafort could be charged on both the federal level and the state level. They didn't take that opportunity. So it gives Manafort a pretty strong defense to these charges in New York. So it's not over for Paul Manafort, and it's not over for Robert Mueller either. What are you waiting for as the other sort of prosecutions are playing out. What's coming next? Yeah, tomorrow morning, we're going to be back in court in front of this same judge, Amy Jackson, who's trying to decide whether Roger Stone, Paul Manafort's former business partner,

violated a gag order and should be punished. Roger Stone is being charged with misleading authorities about his contacts with WikiLeaks and others. And we've also got sentencing coming up for Michael Flynn, the president's former national security advisor, and for Rick Gates, Paul Manafort's former right-hand man, too. And we are still all waiting on the Mueller report. And when it comes, I'm sure we will have a podcast for you in your feeds. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about Nancy Pelosi maybe taking impeachment off the table.

It came out of the blue one night when she was sleeping. A searing pain that jumped from one part of Devin's body to another. Why is this happening? Why is this happening to me? This week on Invisibilia, the surprising story of how pain spread through a culture. Our culture. Okay, we're back. Nancy Pelosi, in an interview with the Washington Post this week, made what could be seen as her strongest comments yet about how she feels about all this impeachment talk on Capitol Hill. Mara, can you recap what she told the Post? What she told the Post, here's what she actually said. She said, I'm not for impeachment. This is news. I'm going to give

you some news right now because I haven't said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I've been thinking about this, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And comment she's made, although she and other Democratic leaders in the House have said many times, just because the president has might have committed an impeachable offense does not mean we should impeach him. It's a political decision. We'd need some kind of bipartisan buy in. But when she said he's just not worth it, that seemed to be as if she was sweeping it completely off the table, which she wasn't. She was setting a high bar. It had to be something really serious and compelling, and it had to have some Republican buy-in. Not just a high bar, though, but I think her saying overwhelming and bipartisan, the bipartisan part is so interesting to me because it might not just be a high bar, it could be an impossible bar. Well, there is no such, I can't imagine that you'll ever have Republicans calling for the president's impeachment, especially in this day and age. Although it is true that when the Nixon impeachment started, there was not bipartisan buy-in. It was only after the hearings went on

that Republicans decided that it was time for Nixon to go. It's also interesting because it's not really necessarily big news. I mean, Pelosi, all of the chairmen that are running these investigations on Capitol Hill have, since they won the majority, been very methodical and slow in the way they talk about moving forward on impeachment proceedings. And I talked to one of those chairmen yesterday, House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, about what Pelosi said. And this is what he told me. So I think what Nancy Pelosi is saying, take that off the table right now. Let's continue to do our research, but let's deal with the issues that affect Americans on a day-to-day basis. And I applaud that. I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

I mean, Mara, there's obviously Democrats have their own political calculations here, right? I mean, if the party is seen as rushing towards impeachment of Donald Trump, especially before Robert Mueller even ends his investigation, there could be political blowback here. Yes. But what Democrats who think she went too far are arguing is that it's one thing to say, let's wait for Mueller. Let's continue to investigate him and see what comes up. Let's not rush to judgment. But it's another thing to take impeachment off the table completely. I don't think that's what she meant to do. But I do think that President Trump is

going to say, they said they would never impeach me. So why are they investigating me? You know, he's going to he's going to consider this an exoneration. So Sue, in any impeachment process, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is going to be essential. Where is Jerry Nadler on this from New York? Nadler has been he's talked a lot about the threshold for impeachment. And he added to that this week, which is this comments and get a lot of attention. But I think it's important and we should we should highlight them. In an interview with The New York Times, he was asked about a bunch of different scenarios.

What's a crime that's not impeachable? What's impeachable that's not a crime? And he did say that he did not believe that if the president, in the conclusion of the Mueller report, was accused of any crimes committed before he ran for office and before he was in office, that those are not impeachable offenses. And the example he gave was if he was charged with any kind of financial, real estate, or tax crimes, he just said those were off the table. So it's always interesting when politicians take things off the table, especially because they're generally so reluctant to do that until they absolutely have to. So Democrats really did this week sort of not only narrow the scope of what they consider impeachable, but also are very much trying to

tamp down on how enthusiastic they are about it. Yeah, just as the campaign process is ramping up. Yeah. And, you know, just to go back to what Congressman Cummings said, the Democrats have a really hard job. They have to balance legislation and investigation, and they don't want their message for 2020 in the form of bills that they're going to pass, even if they can't get past the Senate, to get lost. And, you know, that can happen if it looks like all they're doing is investigating the president. Okay, we'll leave it there. But before we let you go, reminder that we are doing a live show in my hometown of Philadelphia on Friday, April 26. And you can buy tickets and bring all your friends and your friends' friends

at NPRPresents.org. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.