The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump, Following Explosive News Reports, Denies He Worked For Russia

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

President Trump on Monday denied that he has been trying to conceal details about his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a pair of explosive press reports over the weekend. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas. 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 Lainey in Eugene, Oregon. I just got back from a walk with my dogs while listening to the NPR Politics Weekly Roundup, and now I can't stop singing Baby Shark. So thanks for that. This podcast was recorded at 324 p.m. on Monday, the 14th of January. Things probably have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. And it may well still be stuck in her head. That's probably what hasn't changed. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. After two major news reports this weekend, the president is denying that he worked for Russia. I never worked for Russia. You heard it. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. So let's get to why the president of the United States stood on the South Lawn of the White House and denied ever working for Russia,

which in and of itself is a pretty remarkable thing. I just want to read the lead on this New York Times story, which we don't normally do on the pod. But here you go. It's by Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fondos from January 11th. In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president's behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests. So, Ryan, you have been covering this story. You've been covering the Russia investigation from start to finish. What's new here? A lot of what's in here we already know,

but what it does is it kind of repackages it in a way that's important. And that is that the president himself, by firing James Comey, attracted the attention of the FBI to the point that they opened an investigation to understand why he was doing what he was doing, why he was firing James Comey, and whether it was working at Russia's behest. So whether President Trump's firing of Comey was an effort to stymie an investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether that would be helpful to Russia. Correct. And whether he was doing it because there was underlying efforts on his part to help Russia. And what's so amazing about this is he asked Comey so many times to say publicly that he wasn't the target. And he got himself into being the target. The other thing that's important to bear in mind with this report is the timing of it. So this came out on Friday.

On Tuesday, President Trump's nominee to be the next Attorney General, Like tomorrow. Bill Barr tomorrow has his confirmation hearing. Now, remember that Barr wrote a memo that was critical of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's obstruction of justice investigation. And what this report does, intentionally or unintentionally, what it does is it essentially says that the obstruction investigation that Mueller is conducting is part of national security itself. It's a national security question, not just a criminal question. So this, in a sense, kind of inoculates Mueller's investigation from the arguments that Barr was making.

It's bigger than just executive power, in other words. Exactly. It's about national security itself. Right. We know from this article that the FBI was concerned about the president and started looking at his behavior in a different way. This is all part of Mueller's investigation, is the point. And the important thing to remember here, the reason why a lot of this is going to sound like we've been talking about it for a while is because we have been talking about the possibility of the president in some way, shape or form working in cahoots with the Russians. And the reason is, one, the full

spectrum of what's happened since 2016. And also remember, the Steele dossier, that infamous document that came out, was made public in January of 2017, talked about the president being compromised by Russian intelligence and possibly working on the behalf of Russia. So this question of Donald Trump possibly being an asset of the Russians, that question has been hanging over the Russia investigation from the very beginning. And Mara, that is a question that President Trump was asked directly on Saturday night when he called into one of his favorite shows to talk to one of his favorite hosts, Judge Jeanine on Fox News. I'm going to ask you, are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President? I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked. I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written. And if you read the article, you'd see that they found absolutely nothing. But he didn't say no. Yeah. Until today. I don't understand how that happens, Mara. Like there's this big explosive article. Everybody's talking about it. He goes on The Judge Jeanine Show, presumably at least in part to shoot it down. And then he doesn't answer directly. So Russian talking points about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Montenegro being

aggressive, all of those things are not in United States political discourse. They only come from one place. So this kind of called up all those things and more. But then today, as he was leaving for his trip to New Orleans, he did talk to reporters outside the White House. And this time he gave a very specific denial. I never worked for Russia. And you know that answer better than anybody. I never worked for Russia. Not only did I never work for Russia, I think it's a disgrace that you even asked that

question, because it's a whole big fat hoax. It's just a hoax. So he never worked for Russia. He said it one, two, three times. He was not in Russia's employ, I guess is what he's trying to say. And there's a trust problem because a lot of people have heard these denials and then evidence has come out down the road that, no, he actually did have possible business interests in Russia, despite the fact that he talked about not having anything to do with Russia. His campaign talked about not having anything to do with Russia, which is why the denials now that he's making are not going to ring true with

a segment of the American public. And if you went and got that Nora O'Donnell tape during the campaign of her interviewing Manafort, it's incredible. She says. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. That is that is his position. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. That is that is his position. That's an incredible take. It's an incredible piece of tape. I've gone back and looked at that a number of times and it's stunning.

He doesn't want to lie, but he can't answer the United States or candidate and then president under investigation for possibly working for the interests of a foreign power? I think that there's a reason that people look at what's going on now and their jaw drops. And that's because of how unusual it is to consider that the president of the United States is possibly an agent of a foreign power. An agent of a foreign power or an unwitting agent of a foreign power or somebody who was so intent on doing business in Russia that he became an asset without even knowing it. You know, we won't know this, but I think that that's why the final Mueller report is so important, because they're going to have to justify why the FBI decided to investigate a sitting president of the United States. There are so many weird dots to be connected. It's up to Mueller to

connect them. But he told NBC that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. He said in the Oval Office to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister that once he fired Comey, he felt that the Russian cloud was lifted off his head. He said publicly during the campaign, Russia, please hack into Hillary Clinton's emails. All of those things. So either it is a series of coincidences. And just not to belabor this point, but he repeatedly took Vladimir Putin's word over the opinions of his intelligence community. We've had these questions. All of these questions have been hanging over the Russia investigation since it began. They've been hanging over the Russia investigation since we learned in October of 2016 that the Russians attacked into the DNC when the U.S. government first made that public. The question has always been, was there some sort of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia? And the Trump campaign does mean, of course, as well, Donald Trump. All right. There is a little more fodder on that to come. We're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, a Washington Post story about the unusual way that President Trump has handled his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. We are a sponsor, Zoom Video Communications. Video conferencing has changed the way we do business. Meet happy anytime, anywhere with Zoom. Connecting team members across the globe. Imagine seeing up to 49 people on the screen at once in digital video. Share anything, a file, a video, a photo, via desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile. Visit zoom.us to set up your free account today and meet happy with Zoom Video Communications. Zoom.us.

We take most things for granted, like our morning coffee. But there are a lot of people behind that cup of coffee. And A.J. Jacobs set out to thank all of them. It doesn't just take a village to make a cup of coffee. It takes the world. Ideas around appreciation on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. And we're back. It was a big weekend for Russia-related articles,

and this one was in The Washington Post. Ryan, can you describe what The Post is saying? The bottom line is that essentially the president has gone to great lengths to attempt to hide the content of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin to the point of, I believe, demanding the notes that the interpreter took from a conversation that Trump and Putin had in Hamburg, Germany. Stunning. I've never heard anything like it in covering national security. Normally, those sorts of conversations, notes from that, would be spread around to those who need to know as part of the government and the work that they

do. And here, from what the Post is reporting, the president almost ate the notes. It means that there's no in-depth records of any of Donald Trump's in-person meetings with Vladimir Putin, not even classified records. And just for some background, the Hamburg G20 meeting was in July of 2017, which is about the time that the New York Times was about to publish the story about the meeting in Trump Tower between Russians who were close to Vladimir Putin and members of the Trump campaign staff, including Paul Manafort and his son, Donald Trump Jr. And that all happened at the same time. And that's when Donald Trump himself dictated a response to The Times saying that the meeting was all about adoptions.

Which is code for sanctions. The other thing that is rare is normally you would have aides in a room when you are having discussions with a foreign leader. And to not have aides in the room to be there to, one, provide insight and understand what was said, and then to also not have notes from the meeting so that it can't be disseminated around government and those with equities in the process. That's not the way that things are normally done. It's not the way that previous administrations have handled such meetings. In the past, reports of President Trump's conversations on the phone with foreign leaders have leaked out, sometimes from foreign capitals, and he doesn't like it at all because the results have been pretty embarrassing. Yeah, so that might have made him, I mean, again, if we're looking for the most charitable possible explanation for this, it could be, as some of his administration have said, is like, well, he's he was burned before.

The one thing that I would say about the Washington Post report is that that factors back into the New York Times story and concerns that people in the FBI and the intelligence community had about President Trump's actions and why he's been acting the way that he's been acting, why he makes the decisions regarding Russia that he does. Well, and those two articles coming out in the same weekend was sort of a one-two punch in terms of tying things together. Ryan, before we go really quickly, we are watching tonight. We are expecting some documents to come out related to Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman.

Those are going to be the from the special counsel's office regarding what it says are lies that he told them after he had agreed to cooperate. And special counsel's office has essentially said that his plea agreement and the cooperation deal because of this has collapsed. It's blown up. And Manafort is saying, I didn't lie. I tried to tell you everything that I knew that was what I thought to be truthful. And so now we have to see what the special counsel has to say regarding those lies. And how much of it is redacted. There's always that.

And then tomorrow, there is a big hearing in the Senate for William Barr. He is the president's pick to be attorney general. Today, he released his opening remarks, and they relate to the Russia investigation as well. Everything kind of ties back into the Russia investigation these days. That's right. So Barr has his confirmation hearing tomorrow on Tuesday. There has been a lot of chatter ahead of this hearing because of a number of things that he's said and written regarding the Mueller investigation. Democrats have made clear that they are going to push him on the Mueller probe and they want to get guarantees that he won't interfere and they want to get guarantees that he will release whatever final report Mueller comes up with.

So in the written testimony that Barr provided to the Senate today, he does say that Mueller should be allowed to finish his work. He also says that he will not interfere. He won't allow any sort of partisan questions, any politics, anything to interfere in the investigation itself. And he says that transparency is very important. He wants the public. He wants Congress to be informed of the results of the investigation. He doesn't say that he will make the result public. He says that he will try to be as transparent as possible, which is an important

thing to note. But again, is this going to be enough for Democrats to set their concerns aside? Probably not. But bottom line is the math in the Senate right now is on Barr's side, and it looks as though he has full Republican support, which would give him enough votes to be confirmed. All right. We will leave it there. And we will have another podcast tomorrow where we go through some of that testimony, which no doubt will include some poking and prodding at the guarantees that Barr made in those written remarks, which is to say we will be back in your feeds very soon. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for

listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.