The NPR Politics Podcast - More Trump Allies Ordered To Testify Before Congress About January 6th

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

Democrats are racing to finish their extensive investigation into the January 6th insurrection in the next year, worried that they may not hold onto their majority after the 2022 midterm elections.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.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

Hi, this is James from San Antonio, Texas. I just submitted my 200th application to try and work as a staffer on Capitol Hill. This podcast was recorded at... Wow. It is 1.19 p.m. on a Thursday, November 11th, 2021. Things might have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I will be in D.C. running into my favorite NPR politics podcast reporters. Okay, here's the show. I mean, well, best of luck to you. And I really

hope that, you know, something comes through for you. So you can run the hills and run into Claudia. Yes, and especially after 200 applications, that is dedication. Best of luck to you. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, Editor-Correspondent. So there has been some news about the fight between the House of Representatives committee that's investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol and former President Trump. Trump had tried to stop a lot of documents from being released to House investigators. A judge said this week that he could not do that, that he was not, you know, king for life, and he couldn't do it. That is a setback for the former president, although it is not the final word. Claudia, what are these documents that

Trump is trying to keep the House from getting? And, you know, what is his argument about, you know, why they shouldn't be released. This is hundreds of pages from his administration. They're kept by the National Archives. This includes White House visitor logs, call logs, handwritten memos, notes from conversations that he may have had with staff and advisors. And the first wave of these were due to be sent from the National Archives to this committee by Friday, 6 p.m. And so now both sides, Trump's lawyers facing off against the committee's legal team, as well as lawyers for the National Archives, are racing to address this as quickly as possible. Trump's team is arguing these requests are too broad and could cause harm to the office of the presidency. Just in a filing today before the appellate court, his legal team said that these are untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose.

And they claim that Trump has exercised his constitutional and statutory right to assert executive privilege. And this kind of goes to the crutch of the debate between these two sides, which is that it's the sitting president that retains executive privilege, not his predecessor. And President Biden has waived that. So that first wave is supposed to, that first tranche of documents is supposed to be sent to the committee by Friday, late Friday, unless this appellate court rules in his favor and there's an agreement between the parties. And it appears there is right now through this filing that was made today, the defendants have not made any position there clear that they're going to stop this. So it's very possible he will buy himself a few more days here. So, Ron, I mean, I know we've talked a lot about executive privilege on here, but is there a precedent for a former president, you know, saying, I don't want my, I don't want this information out there? Is this a fight that has happened before? In the past, when we've had dramatic face-offs between Congress and a president about this kind of testimony, whether it's live testimony or documents,

it's been about a president who is in office. If you go back to the Watergate scandal going on 50 years ago now, but that was a president who had been reelected, winning 49 of 50 states. And yet, there had been some criminal acts, and then there were some cover-up. And as that sort of came out, it became obvious that President Nixon had supervised a cover-up, and there was eventually tape produced to prove that, and that drove him from office. Now, it took a couple of years, you understand, before it was all played out. But that was a sitting president and a very highly successful one, electorally speaking. So it was really a dramatically different case. And where we have seen other face-offs, it's been about presidents in office. Yeah, that's one thing I've heard is that this is pretty unprecedented, pitting a sitting president against a former when it comes to

executive privilege. And you raise Nixon. This is one of the cases they keep referring to for the January 6th panel and National Archives. They refer to this 1977 case, Nixon versus GSA, about this fight over documents. That case was resolved in a matter of months, and defendants want to see that happen, if not faster in this case, or using that as a model in this lawsuit. The House is on a very tight timeline because midterm elections are next year. They may not hold the House. Republicans are not going to keep this investigation going. Like, is it likely that this could be wrapped up? Because certainly there's going to be an appeal. And it looks like, you know, Trump is more than willing to try to get this to the Supreme Court.

Right. That's what I keep hearing from legal analysts, from members. They're racing to get this done by the end of next year before possibly Republicans take control of the chamber in 2023. And so this is the clock. This is why everything is moving as quickly as possible for the panel. Ron, you know, when January 6th happened, people were really talking about it as this moment that that seemed to change everything. That that, you know that there were questions of how Republicans would respond to this. Would they cut ties with then-President Trump? That obviously did not last. People who were critical of President Trump have come back around for the most part. And now Trump is saying that it was a peaceful protest and that the, quote,

insurrection happened on election day. What do you make of the way Trump and Republican lawmakers are responding to this investigation? On the night of January 6th, you had a number of prominent Republicans on the floor. They were still quite rattled, of course, about having to be hustled out of their own chamber and hidden away, away from the protesters. They were still quite rattled, of course, about having to be hustled out of their own chamber and hidden away, away from the protesters. A number of people came back to the floor and said, all right, this is it, that we can't have this kind of thing. Even some of Trump's closest allies.

But a lot of that went away in the weeks and months thereafter because President Trump continued to say what he had said about the election itself. And there is this large body of Republicans, a majority in most polls, who say they have serious questions about last year's election or say it was just outright stolen. And they're still with Donald Trump. So for the legislators who see him still as the leader of their party. There's certainly no one else who is. They are not really willing to take him on on this. And he continues to define down what happened on January 6th. So that it's just a peaceful protest and a few people might have gotten out of hand

instead of an insurrection that was clearly intending to stop the process of the election and installation of a new president. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about some other things the committee is up to. And we're back. So, Claudia, the last time we talked about this, the Trump ally, Steve Bannon, had ignored an order from Congress telling him to appear and answer questions. So it set up a situation where the Justice Department might prosecute him. Now they have ordered several more Trump officials and allies to testify, they being the committee. Can you tell me a bit about who they're reaching out to and who they're saying you need to come in and talk?

Yeah, the list has grown pretty rapidly from the first wave of subpoenas. And again, going back to that, that started with Bannon and former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. To the past few days, just this week, they issued 16 subpoenas and a lot of familiar names, the names of, if you will, who's who of the Trump administration. So we're hearing about folks like former advisor Stephen Miller, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and John Eastman is another key name that has been a big focus here. Members of the committee have said that he was a key source of misinformation at that time leading up to January 6th, authoring this memo that laid out a game plan, if you will, for former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election's results. And so there's been a lot of interest here to get a better sense of what their roles were, aside from what we know publicly and their interactions with the former president and how much they fueled these different concerns of disinformation or the violence that we saw that that resulted on January 6th. Much of what the January 6th investigating committee seems to want to do here

is to widen the world of people who are aware of some of the reporting that has gone on in the last year. There have been a number of books and reports with a great deal of material showing that what happened on January 6th was not some impulsive move on the part of an exasperated Donald Trump.

It was the culmination of a very long effort, a very long campaign that began even before the election, where President Trump was installing various people at various points in the government who would be more tractable, who would not resist him the way some people in the government had done theretofore. So this was a systematic and months-long effort to resist any adverse effect from the election, to resist being removed from office, and possibly to set up a new administration in a second term that would be more to Donald Trump's personal direction and liking. And I talked to one of the members of the panel about this, Jamie Raskin. This is a Democrat from Maryland. He was the lead impeachment manager earlier this year. And he said the focus for the panel is three rings. There's an outside ring he

described as being the rioters. That's one investigation. There's a middle ring that was organized groups like the extremist Proud Boys group. And then the third ring, he called it the hot center, are those who fueled this attempted coup. So what Ron is talking about there, that is one area they're especially lasered in on, is who was fueling this idea that they could overturn this election. We want to know exactly how everything was organized and coordinated, who was calling the shots at different points. And all of it is with an eye towards figuring out what we need to do as a country to make sure we never face a nightmare like this again. Part of it seems like by casting this wide net is that you want to see who might

be willing to talk, right? Yes, they're trying to see if any of these folks will cooperate and more. I'm expecting more subpoenas, but in the meantime, nearly three dozen now so far. And in terms of those three dozen, only one that we know of has come in. They're in talks with many of these folks. And yes, there is a hope there that they will eventually cooperate or others that see subpoenas will. But another member of the panel, Adam Schiff, this is a Democrat from California, noted to me that when we do see these subpoenas, oftentimes it's because these individuals have been part of conversations with the panel already, requests anyways from the panel to see if they'll come in voluntarily. And more than 150 people have. Those folks the panel is not identifying. But when we hear these names, that shows the level of interest this committee has in hearing directly from these folks. And ultimately, is there anything they can do if people just refuse to testify? This kind of came up during impeachment, right? Like, is there any real recourse for not, you know, complying with a congressional subpoena? Couldn't have gone after some of these witnesses like you can now. We have the referral for a criminal contempt option now that obviously the House voted that through for Steve Bannon.

Now it's in the hands of the Justice Department to see if they will take that further and prosecute Bannon. He could face fines, jail time if it goes all the way. But it is a rare, rare case if it reaches that level. You know, these kinds of investigations do not, generally speaking, produce exactly the political ends that the people who conduct them may have in mind. Watergate ultimately did, but others that we've seen over the years, the Iran-Contra scandal, the 9-11 Commission, did not necessarily produce the political consequences that their sponsors had in mind. But they do build a record in a way that probably no other kind of investigation, journalistic or otherwise, could ever do. And that is their ultimate value. Get the truth

on the record, get it from all possible sources, and get it in the best, most public way that you possibly can. All right. Well, let's just leave it there for now. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Gattisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.