The NPR Politics Podcast - Robert Mueller Concludes The Russia Probe, Submits Report To The Attorney General

Episode Date: March 23, 2019

Attorney General William Barr received a report on Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller about the findings from Mueller's investigation into the Russian attack on the 2016 presidential election. Mueller is not recommending any more indictments, a senior Justice Department official told reporters. This concludes the special counsel's probe. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and Congressional correspondent Susan Davis. 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 there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It's 625 Eastern on Friday, March 22nd, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller has submitted his long-awaited report to the Attorney General. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent. And I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. All right. I am in Denver covering a different story, but Mueller Time has finally arrived. So, Carrie, what do we know at this point in time about this report? We know that after nearly two years of investigating, Special Counsel Robert Mueller

has told the Justice Department his work is done. He sent a security officer to DOJ earlier this afternoon to let the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein know. Rosenstein briefed the Attorney General Bill Barr within minutes, and now Barr has told members of Congress he's going to think about the issue, figure out what he can make public, and get back to the Hill as early as this weekend. From what Barr has said before in his confirmation hearing and since then, do we have any sense of what sort of form that report will take? We don't know. We know that the Mueller report itself is described as comprehensive by a Justice Department spokesperson. But we don't know how much of that will ever see the light of day.

The regulations call for the attorney general to do most of the talking here. Barr has talked in his confirmation hearing about wanting to be transparent, but he could run up against the limits of the law. Comprehensive. That's an interesting phrase because I remember when we talked about what sort of forms the report could take, you had said there was a possibility that it could be simply, I'm done, that's it. It seems like that is not one of the options that was taken. Yeah, it seems like it's more than that, Scott. We don't know how much more. Here's what we do know. We do know that the regulations require the Attorney General to tell members of Congress if the Justice Department ever vetoed or overrode a decision by the special counsel. Bill Barr has told Congress that did not happen. They did not

reject any measure Bob Mueller wanted to take here. And that's significant. We also know, according to a Justice Department official, that Mueller has recommended no more indictments from his team and that his office is going to be closing up shop in the days and weeks to come. Tam and Sue, I think that's pretty notable, given how much Democratic concern there was all along that Mueller would be interfered with, especially after Jeff Sessions stepped down and was fired. Well, I think we can officially say that the president did not fire Robert Mueller. Well done. Which Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham did note in his reaction to this that the president ultimately never did interfere with the investigation. And the White House now seems to be making pains to say that William Barr, the attorney general, is going to make his decision. And the White House seems to be trying to say, we're taking a hands off approach and Barr will just do the right thing. I do think it is important to remind people that just last week, the House

took a very interesting vote in which it was essentially a symbolic vote, but the vote said calling on the Justice Department to release the Robert Mueller report in full. That passed the House 420 to zero. There was no one that objected to that. So there is competing interest on Capitol Hill as to why they would like to see this full report released public. But it is notable that they really did speak with one voice to say, yes, the public does need to know as much as possible. Because while this has become so political and clearly something that the president has been obsessed with. Remember, he was ultimately investigating whether a foreign power had meddled in the safety and security of an American election.

And I do think on the whole, most lawmakers do believe that the American people do need to know how they were meddled with and everything possible to give those same Americans confidence in their elections going forward. You know, and Sue, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader in your building actually issued a statement today saying, we believe that Russia is behaving in an adversarial fashion toward the United States, even though the president has been all over the map on that issue. The Hill has spoken with one voice. And the Hill has been pretty consistent in believing that Russia did meddle. The White House has always been.

Right. They haven't been as conclusive and as determinative. And I think that whatever this report says and whatever its findings are, will be the sort of final period on that of what the extent of Russian influence. Before we shift gears and talk more about all this reaction, I had one more question for you about this news that that there are not going to be any more indictments. I guess, first of all, quick clarification. Now, that doesn't mean that that some other prosecutor could take this and go from there, right? Yeah, absolutely. Scott. We know that the Mueller team has been farming out parts of its work

to federal prosecutors in New York, in Virginia, in Washington, D.C., and at DOJ headquarters. We also know that the Manhattan district attorney, state official, is hot and heavy on parts of the Trump organization, and also Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman. So the investigations are not over by a long shot. It's just that Bob Mueller and his core team are done. And what's the final scorecard, if you will, on how many people he brought charges against? You know, they were people of great note. They were people like Michael Flynn,

the former national security advisor for President Trump, who actually served in the White House. Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman. Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign chairman, and Roger Stone, a presidential advisor who's fighting the charges against him. There were a number of high profile people, and I haven't even gotten to Michael Cohen, the president's former fixer. And very importantly, a bunch of Russians whose names we don't know mostly. But there were two really meaty indictments with a lot of Russians whose names we don't know mostly, but there were two really meaty indictments with a lot of information in them about Russian interference in the election, citing Russian

intelligence and the people that did the hacking and the trolls and the people that tried to turn Americans against each other and influence the election that way by favoring President Trump and disadvantaging Hillary Clinton. The fact that they have said that no more indictments are coming, it's also worth, and we've said it before and we'll say it again, none of the indictments that did come down had anything to do directly with the Trump campaign in terms of proving or having any evidence that the campaign had directly colluded. That's right, Sue. There was an allegation that came up in some court filings in the Paul Manafort matter that Manafort and his right-hand man, Rick Gates, had met with a man the FBI has linked

to Russian intelligence in the course of the campaign. In August 2016, they had a meeting in New York where some polling data may have been shared, but prosecutors never told us what some polling data may have been shared, but prosecutors never told us what that polling data was, what it meant, and what happened next. That's the closest we've ever come in this whole investigation to some kind of conspiracy. And it never led to an indictment? Specifically. There are no specific charges that have emerged publicly about that.

Huh. Interesting. Tam, one of the things that's been back and forth throughout most of this investigation is how much the White House would cooperate with the special counsel. And the president actually never sat down for an interview with the Mueller team. Right. So the White House did do a lot of cooperating or they would want they want everyone to know that they turned over a whole lot of documents. They they had some 30 people sit for interviews with Mueller's team. But the president himself did not sit for an interview. He did answer questions in writing.

But that is not the sort of back and forth testimony that you might expect. This investigation is being closed without President Trump sitting for an in-person interview. And the big question I have about all of that is, what sort of context or report is there about the obstruction of justice issue? And will Robert Mueller characterize those written answers and all the other White House responses that he's gotten over the last few years? Scott, I am going to head back to the Justice Department this weekend and do my best to get answers to those questions. And when we hear those answers, I'm pretty sure we will be back right here doing another podcast.

Oh, good. We're going to take a quick break. We will be right back with reaction from the White House and from Capitol Hill. There's a subculture of people fascinated by prime numbers. You know, like 7, 11, 13, 17, 19. Primes go on forever.

There is no final biggest prime number. And the hunt for the latest monster prime number can take years. You end up with a 24 million digit long number. Ideas on the power and beauty of math on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We are back. So, Tim, President Trump and a lot of his advisors have been trashing Robert Mueller for years at this point. What was their response to the fact that this report was finished? The response has been relatively muted.

The official response from Sarah Sanders is that the next steps are up to Attorney General Barr and, quote, we look forward to the process taking its course. The White House has not received or been briefed on the special counsel's report. And in talking to one White House official, I was asking about sort of what their expectations are about what will come out in the report, in the public report. And I think that the White House reaction is really going to depend on what it actually says and how much is revealed. But the White House person that I was talking to said, just look at the letter. Look at the letter that William Barr sent to Congress, and that will give you a roadmap for what is to come. And what does that mean?

Yeah, so what does that mean? And I want to talk to Kerry about what that means. But the key paragraph here is where Barr is talking about what he will reveal to Congress. And he says he intends to consult with the Deputy Attorney General and Mueller to determine what other information from the report can be released to Congress and the public consistent with the law, including special counsel regulations and the department's longstanding practices and policies. He says he remains committed to as much transparency as possible. But how much transparency is possible within the law and keeping with past practices and policies? That's my question, Carrie. Well, you know, it's hard to answer in part because the answer has been politicized like everything else about this whole investigation. I got to tell you this.

Here's the rub. Part of this investigation involves sensitive sources and methods and national security secrets. We're not going to see that stuff. Another part of this investigation involved investigating a whole bunch of people, some of whom we know by name, others of whom we don't, who are not going to be charged with wrongdoing at all. And the issue at the Justice Department is, if you've decided not to charge somebody with any crime, do you want to go out and slime their reputation? I think that's a totally valid point, right? That if you don't have enough to charge someone of a crime, how fair is that to release all this information publicly that could malign them. I mean, that seems like the opposite of justice. Well, except for the fact that some Democrats in Congress and some veterans of Democratic presidential administrations and Democratic Justice Department say the president

cannot be charged with a crime under Justice Department authority. The interpretation of the law says you cannot charge a sitting president with a crime. So if you can't charge the guy with a crime, but you think he's done something wrong, and the DOJ regs prevent you from telling anybody about that, you're in a rub. Really, the remedy for a president who's done wrong is supposed to be impeachment. And delivering that information to Congress is going to be the challenge, if it exists. So Sue, speaking of Congress, big news story like this happens, everyone and their mom puts out a statement. I'm not going to ask the challenge if it exists. So Sue, speaking of Congress, big news story like this happens, everyone and their mom puts out a statement. Not going to ask you to go through all the statements because we'll be here for six months, but which statements were notable and not

essentially, you know, predictable stock answers to you? As I said, there has been sort of an overwhelming agreement that as much of the report, if not the entire final report should be made public. But again, I think that there are competing reasons for that. And I think one of the competing reasons on the Republican side that struck out to me came from comments from senators like Chuck Grassley. And Chuck Grassley is an Iowa Republican. He's a former head of the judiciary chair. He's very familiar with these issues. And in his statement, he echoed the call to release it publicly. But his essentially was making the argument that we need to prove to the American people there was no collusion,

very much echoing the White House line. And he said it needs to be public because, quote, attempts to keep the collusion narrative alive, especially for political reasons, will only further harm our political discourse. That was really interesting to me. And I think that you have to keep that in mind as you hear Republicans call for transparency and disclosure is I believe they very much want to be able to prove or be able to say conclusively, there is nothing here to malign the president. And is that just wishful thinking on their part? Or is there any, there's no sense that they have an idea what they're talking about in terms of what's in the report? Yeah. And this is where I think this is just going to get really complicated

and gray, because as Kerry said on the legal end, you know, there's no more indictments coming. So the black and white of the law is gone. And now we're into the gray of the politics of this. And you have Congress now saying, not only do we want the full report, but we want all of the documents that Robert Mueller based this conclusion on to be turned over to the relevant committees. That's a huge ask. And I would note in the past, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has said this repeatedly, and it's important in the context of why they want to see these documents, in that not everything that is a crime is an impeachable offense, and not everything that's

an impeachable offense is a crime. And I think Democrats want to see all of this documentation because there may be reason or cause in here that they believe bolsters a case for impeachment, but might not have met the threshold of charging the president with a crime. Carrie, you have said repeatedly that Robert Mueller is not going to write a book. He's not going to do a TV tour. He's not going to take a victory lap. Do you think there's any sort of scenario that leads to Robert Mueller sitting before a House or Senate committee and testifying about his work? I think members of Congress are going to want that to happen.

I think the Justice Department will likely want to resist that happening. They want the Attorney General Bill Barr to be their spokesman on this issue. And in fact, the regulations call for the Attorney General to Barr to be their spokesman on this issue. And in fact, the regulations call for the Attorney General to do most of the talking here. By inclination and temperament, Mueller, I think, would be happier to stay in the shadows on this stuff to the extent he can. After all, reporters have been staking out his office and photographing him driving to work in the morning. So that's it. Robert Mueller's just out of our lives after all this. I will say I was talking to my best friend who works in Philly, who's completely unrelated

to politics and all these other things. And somehow Robert Mueller came up and she referred to him as old Bobby Mulls. And I regret that I did not come up with that nickname first, because I think that's pretty good. Bobby Mulls. All right. So old Bobby Mulls has given his report to Attorney General Barr. Barr says that he might be presenting this information in some form or another as soon as this weekend. As soon as we know anything about what's in this report, we will be talking to you about it in a podcast. You can check out all of our coverage online at NPR.org. And we will be all over your real radios this weekend and early next week talking about what happens next. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. And I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.