The NPR Politics Podcast - President Trump Mocks Ford; FBI Investigates Accusations Against Kavanaugh

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

President Trump is adding fresh animosity to the already tense debate over Brett Kavanaugh with new comments mocking sexual misconduct allegations against his Supreme Court nominee. The Senate remains embroiled in conflict following the hearings. And the FBI quietly continues looking into Kavanaugh's background. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, and Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell. 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

Hey, this is Yue. And this is Changxiang. I'm studying in New York. And I'm working in Beijing, China. Today, the 18th, is Yue's birthday. And since we can't meet in person, and we both love the show, I just want to say here over FaceTime, a happy birthday. And this podcast was recorded at 1042 Eastern on Wednesday, October 3rd. Things may have changed by the time you're here. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It's Wednesday and the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is still in a holding pattern, but that will likely change soon with the FBI charged with wrapping up its new background investigation within the next few days.

Meanwhile, President Trump has jumped back into the picture going on the attack against Christine Blasey Ford. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. Okay, so as we tape, we are waiting for the FBI report. We do not know when it's going to come out. We're going to talk about what will be in it as far as we can tell. We're also going to talk about the Hill dynamics. Kelsey, we're going to talk at length about this later, but just off the top, who decides at this point whether or not Brett Kavanaugh is going to sit on the Supreme Court? Well, it comes down to a couple of undecided senators. We are closely watching people like Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Senator Susan Collins of Maine,

and we're starting to watch other people who had previously come out saying that they would either support or not support him to see if this FBI investigation has swayed their votes. I'm talking about people like Jeff Flake of Arizona and potentially Democrats like Joe Donnelly of Indiana, who said he was a no, but maybe this FBI investigation helps him get to yes. Okay, so within that context, President Trump is holding a campaign rally in Mississippi last night, and he just outright mocked Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, by imitating her testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday. How did you get home? I don't remember. How'd you get there? I don't remember. Where is the place? I don't remember. How many years ago

was it? I don't know. That is a real change in tone. For the past few weeks, President Trump has been incredibly careful to say that she was credible. He said at one point she was a compelling witness. How are these swing votes reacting to Trump mocking her? Well, so far, at least two of those Republicans are not responding particularly well. Jeff Flake was on the Today Show today and called it pretty appalling. It's just not right. It's just not right. I wish he hadn't have done it. Just to say it's kind of appalling. And Susan Collins, who we already talked about, also, she came out to a big horde of reporters who have been camped out outside of her office for, gosh, near on two weeks now and said to them that this was not acceptable. President's comments were just plain wrong.

We've heard a lot from senators over the past year and a half about how comments that Trump has made have, you know, they found them appalling. They've been disappointed by them and so on. But in the case of something like a Kavanaugh vote, does this necessarily mean that they're going to change their vote based on how the president is responding to this? Yeah, I think yes and no. You're certainly right that the story of the Trump presidency is Republicans in Congress saying things make them uncomfortable, saying they disagree with things, saying they wish he wouldn't say it that way, and then backing him on policy over and over and over again. I think you can infer that that could be the case here. But I think one of the really important dynamics that a lot of senators have struggled with is that this has become about

Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, to a lesser extent, a couple other women who have come forward, but it's also being layered on top of the ongoing national conversation about sexual harassment, about sexual assault, treat a woman with respect when she comes forward? Do you believe what she has to say when she comes forward? Could be a larger thing that comes to her mind as she tries to make up her mind. I would add to what you're saying to say that there is a raw political calculus happening here, which is there are a lot of people, particularly Republicans, who have to balance whether or not it's better for them to get a win on getting a conservative to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible and fulfill the promises that they have made there versus the potential backlash of it being Kavanaugh in particular amid all these allegations. Absolutely. And I think the other thing I'd add to that is President Trump had up until last night been pretty careful how we talked about Ford. Many Senate Republicans have as well, although there's this disparity we've talked about where they say she should be listened to. Okay, she was

listened to. Let's move forward and vote right away. But they have been pretty aggressive in trying to undermine the other women, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, repeatedly passing along information that comes into the committee, letters that come into the committee, things that they dug up from their past, undermining their credibility. And I think that's a really interesting disparity. And all this stuff is up in the air right now. But one thing that we do know, and Kelsey, you and I have seen it, you and I have been part of it, and you did a story on it this morning. Capitol Hill is just incredibly tense right now. Short tempers. Everyone's sensitive. Everyone is exhausted.

And you can really see it in a lot of different ways. Yeah, it's not uncommon for us to see senators criticize each other or for there to be partisanship on the Hill. That's a given. But this has taken to completely new levels. And I talked to about a dozen senators yesterday about this. And to a person, they said that they felt that this was a particularly bad time. Maybe not the worst they've he was just one of the architects of a bipartisan spending package. He got through a big package of spending bills more than any other Congress has done in more than 20 years. But he, even after doing that on a bipartisan basis, said this.

I've been here a long time, both Republican and Democratic leadership. I've never seen anything like this. I think it diminishes the Senate. We're supposed to be the conscience of the nation. We're not acting like that. But it also diminishes the United States Supreme Court. It makes it look like it's a political arm of the White House. And that's something that a lot of people had warned about over the last few years as the number of senators required to be in support of a nominee

to move forward with a vote was lowered from 60 to 50. The argument was you're going to have more partisanship. This, of course, has had its own unique factors to make this very partisan and very tense. And one of the things that we've been seeing is just an incredible amount of security as well, because a lot of senators have seen threats come into their office and have seen themselves be hounded and dogged in airports and hallways and streets. Yeah, three senators were confronted by protesters as they flew into Washington on Monday, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And yeah, there has been a significantly increased police presence in the Capitol trying to keep control over not just protesters, but just like the overall throng and frustration in the Capitol. I was over at the Hart Senate office building

yesterday, and there was a phalanx of police that came out and they were told by their boss, I was there listening to them, they had to sweep from the ground, actually from the basement up to the top floor looking for protesters. And then when folks were coming out of the meeting that I was waiting for, there were police on each side of each senator as they came out. Not all of our listeners are probably aware of what it's like to move through the hallways of the Capitol and the office buildings that are connected to it. And I think just for some context, it's very uncommon for individual senators, unless they are the highest echelons of leadership, to have any sort of police presence around them. They walk unencumbered through the hallways, and particularly

through public hallways, where, you know, if you are a person visiting your senator, or you're just somebody who's interested in being around the Capitol, you can walk into those Senate buildings and have basically the free ability to walk through many of those halls. And often they'll stop a senator in the hallway and get a selfie taken. Yeah, take a picture, just greet them. It's not a particularly high security environment in that regard. And, you know, I'm putting myself

in the head of a lot of listeners who would say, well, isn't it their job to listen to protesters? Isn't their job to have to deal with the consequences of their votes? We all are never going to forget anytime soon that moment where Jeff Flake was confronted by women saying that they were sexually assaulted shortly after he announced he was going to vote for Kavanaugh. He said that that was a factor in him changing approaches and calling

for the delay. And we should remind people within the last two years, several lawmakers, including Jeff Flake, were shot at. That, of course, was at the GOP congressional baseball game practice that was not on the grounds of the Senate or within the buildings of the Capitol, which, of course, you have to pass through a metal detector to get to. Kelsey, the thing I also want to ask about, we mentioned before that this isn't just about Brett Kavanaugh anymore. This is a flashpoint in a national conversation that's been going on for a while. How has that overlay of the Me Too movement affected the tensions and dynamics on Capitol Hill? Well, some of the people I've talked to have worried that it's becoming partisan. The whole

idea of the Me Too movement is becoming partisan as a result of the partisan rancor about Kavanaugh and that the lines are just getting blurred. I caught up with Senator Bob Corker, who's retiring, was a Republican from Tennessee. Corker says he knows a lot about sexual assault. And then he went on. The thought that we don't care about that is ridiculous. But that's the way it's being portrayed. And, you know, it's a shame. And actually, I'm going to say just generally speaking, I think this aggressive effort that's underway is actually hurting the effort. That's something that I've heard from other Republicans,

is that they have this fear that making the sexual assault allegations and the way people are treated in light of those allegations and the Me Too movement in general, part of this Kavanaugh debate makes it partisan. This is a particularly heated time right now in the Senate, but it's not going to stay that way forever, right? This will ultimately, this kind of ebbs and flows over time, right? Some people say yes. Some people say this might be a significant change.

Lindsey Graham said that he views the process, particularly on judges, as a before Kavanaugh and after Kavanaugh situation where things have just somehow fundamentally changed. And there's Senator Orrin Hatch, who has also been around the Senate for a long time. And he says that people get into fights, but at the end of the day,

there's always enough good people in the Senate to make deals work. And that he thinks that there are plenty of those people around. And then he thinks that that will happen, like people will come back together. And they kind of have to because it's not like the political moment is getting any easier. And it's not like they don't have to keep the government funded after December. There's going to be a fight in December over keeping the government open. And it's going to be about President Trump's wall. And it's going to be toxic. It's going to be bad. And somebody is going to have to make decisions about how to end that. All right. We could keep talking about the dynamics on the Hill, but let's be real. They're going to change as soon as this FBI report comes out. So I think it's best to take a quick break and come back and talk about all we know at this moment about that FBI report. We'll be right

back. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ExxonMobil. Over the next five years, ExxonMobil plans to invest $50 billion in the U.S. economy. That kind of investment will not only create jobs in energy, but also help support millions of U.S. jobs in other industries, too. Find out more about ExxonMobil's planned investments at EnergyFactor.com. ExxonMobil. Energy lives here. On the latest Planet Money, a special report inside the business of asylum. We go inside an underground network of professional story writers, coaches, and scammers gaming the asylum system and how the FBI cracked down. That's on the latest Planet Money.

We are back. There's been a lot of speculation about this FBI investigation ever since the Senate Judiciary Committee asked for it last week. Ryan, let's start with what we actually know. What do we know in terms of the timeline? Well, they were given, the FBI was given a week to complete this. So from Friday, last Friday to this upcoming Friday, we know that so far they have spoken with Deborah Ramirez. She was the second woman who came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh. She spoke with the FBI for about two hours on Sunday, gave the Bureau a list of around 20 names of people who she said were potential witnesses to the alleged incident

at Yale when she says that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her, or people who might have heard about it contemporaneously. Her legal team says that none of the people whose names they gave to the FBI have been contacted by the Bureau so far. FBI has also spoken with Kavanaugh's boyhood friend, Mark Judge. His name came up a lot in the course of the Blasey Ford hearing. And then Patrick Smith, another friend of Kavanaugh's, has also spoken to the FBI, as has Chris Garrett. And an attorney for Leland Kaiser, who was Ford's friend, says that Kaiser has also spoken to the FBI at this point. But as of right now, Wednesday morning, we do not think the FBI has spoken to Christine Blasey Ford.

They have not spoken to Ford at this point. Also, there is no indication that they've spoken with Kavanaugh. Now, I've spoken with a couple of former assistant directors of the FBI who both say that they expect that Ford and Kavanaugh would be interviewed towards the end of this process. So it's not necessarily surprising that neither one have been interviewed at this point. But they did both say that they expected that Ford and Kavanaugh should be interviewed. They really should be as part of this process. Now, when it comes to the scope of this investigation, there's been a lot of conversation about what the White House is directing the FBI to do and the fact that Senate Republicans, especially these key holdout senators, have had input in terms of what they'd like to see the scope of the investigation being. Ryan, given that we have spent the last two years talking about the problems of the White House being overly involved in FBI matters, why is that okay in this circumstance when that's clearly something that rubs a lot of people the wrong way or gives them grave constitutional questions when it comes to,

say, the Russia investigation? Well, the important thing to know here is that this is not a criminal investigation. This is not a criminal investigation in the sense that there's no subpoena power. You cannot compel witnesses to testify. This is all voluntary. This is a background vetting process in which the FBI essentially works as a contractor for the White House. This is standard procedure where you have judicial nominees who are vetted by the FBI to check on their finances, check on their references, their employment history, make sure that basically they are honest, good people and there. Come back and let us know what you say. We will add it to Kavanaugh's file. And that allows them to make the determination of whether they want to continue with this nomination or not. Is there a meeting in the SCIF where senators hold their sensitive meetings where they all go through the report? Does every senator get a copy of the report? Do we as reporters get a copy of the report? Like, what do we know? So we only know what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling us, which is that every senator will have a chance to see it and he does not expect it to be public. But I think Ryan probably has a little bit more information on how this is expected to be handled. The final process of how this is going to go down is the FBI will provide its updated information in the background file for Kavanaugh

to the White House, because the White House is the client on this. The White House will then provide that to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee keeps a file for the judicial nominees in the committee safe. You have nine committee staff members who total have access clearance to that material. All 100 members of the Senate can come see it. But often what will happen is the committee staffers who have clearance to read this will go and brief the given members on what it is that they want to hear. Okay, so there aren't that many people who have access to this, but I've heard in talking to senators yesterday that they're worried about leaks, selective leaks, ways that

this background check could be used for more partisan means as kind of a cudgel in this continued battle. Well, I think part of the reason is because this is such a highly politicized and kind of bare knuckle brawl right now over Kavanaugh's nomination. And for the FBI, this is not a comfortable position for them because what sometimes happens is you have members of Congress or staff, or basically there will be a leak from the Hill, which people can then blame on other agencies, other people, because they know that that's not going to be commented upon. So last question, Kelsey. Okay, so Kelsey, the FBI finishes its work. In one way or another, senators are briefed on their findings. What happens next in terms of a vote? Well, that's up to Mitch McConnell, as he made very clear in his weekly press conference

this week, where somebody asked him about the details of timing. And he said he wasn't going to get into hypotheticals, but that he makes the choice about when the vote will be. And he says it will be sometime this week. The long and short of it is that there are procedural votes that have to come first. Then they have to wait a whole day. And then they can vote again. And then they have to vote again. So it's kind of a long process known as cloture.

But we expect that final passage could come sometime maybe over the weekend. Okay. We will talk about that when that happens. We will be back in your feed before then. And that includes tomorrow's weekly roundup. You can catch all our stories all the time at NPR.org. And every Saturday morning, we put together a newsletter that catches you up on all the best stories and analysis of the week. You can subscribe to that, the NPR Politics newsletter, at NPR.org slash politics. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.