The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Says He's Likely To Face Criminal Charges Over Jan. 6

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

In a post on his social media site, he indicated that he has received word from the Department of Justice that he's a target of the grand jury probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. An indictment could come quickly.And a fight over abortion care provisions is likely to delay a pay raise for military service members.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and congressional reporter Barbara Sprunt.This episode was produced by Lexie Schapitl. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello from Colorado. This is Amy from Snowmass Village. This summer I'm trying to learn all the wildflowers on the open space behind my house. In bloom today is number 34, the tiny pink flowers of narrowleaf colomia. This podcast was recorded at 1.24 p.m. on Tuesday, July 18th. Things may have changed since this recording, but I will be out looking for the next wildflower in bloom. What a delightfully peaceful way to pass the afternoon in Colorado. Yeah, I'm sorry that we're going to damper the entire thing. That's what we do. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. And former President Trump says he has received another so-called target letter from the Justice Department tied to their investigation into his role in unsuccessful efforts to fraudulently overturn the 2020 election. Carrie, we don't know a lot more than that, but we do know that this is a sign that an indictment is likely on the way. exactly what happened before he was charged with respects to alleged willful retention of defense information and obstruction at Mar-a-Lago. So it's not clear to me whether Trump's lawyers are going to ask for a meeting with top Justice Department brass to try to convince them not to pursue an indictment. That's, of course, possible. And something may happen with one or more of these grand juries in Washington, D.C. But for right now, it does seem like Donald Trump is on a glide path to be charged for a second time by the federal government he once led.

And if the recent indictments are an indication, we should have an answer to this question, it would seem, within days, not weeks. I think days. It could be weeks if his lawyers want to produce some kind of white paper or paper argument and then have a meeting with senior DOJ brass. But right now, it's a little too soon to say. The department was also given the results of an 18-month-long investigation by the House Committee that investigated the January 6th attack. And in that referral to the Justice Department, they did recommend bringing criminal charges against the former president. Carrie, can you remind us what the committee recommended? Sure. That House Select Committee recommended that Trump be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. Remember, because the certification got paused that day on January 6th as rioters ransacked the Capitol building. The second recommendation was conspiracy to defraud the United States, in part because of that scheme to replace legitimate

slates of electors with bogus slates of electors from about seven swing states, and a conspiracy to make false statements, as well as insurrection. We know the grand juries here in D.C., with help from Prosecutor Special Counsel Jack Smith, have been looking very aggressively at the fake elector scheme and at fundraising that Trump and his affiliates may have done based on these bogus claims of election fraud. Dominico, we're now looking at the third possible and likely indictment of former President Trump. He's already looking at charges in New York related to payments he made to cover up an extramarital affair. He's also looking at charges related to his handling of classified documents after he left office. But politically speaking, after each one of these past indictments,

support for him, at least among Republican voters, only seems to have grown. Do you expect anything to be different with this indictment? Well, and there's one more indictment that could come in Georgia for election interference. You know, I mean, I don't know if his candidacy has grown, but he's certainly not gotten worse. And he's maintained his strength. You know, he's really been able to insulate himself with these false conspiracies that he's sold to his base. I mean, he's undermined faith in the media. People are getting information from where they want to get information from that reinforce their pre-existing views and beliefs. And that's really hard to make a dent when, you know, the overwhelming majority of people on the Republican side of the aisle are backing him

up. You don't see many candidates running against him, pushing back against him. Aside from really, you know, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, or Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas. They have very little support. You know, it's almost like they see it on the right as crying uncle if they were to speak out. You know, like it makes them weaker as a whole to acknowledge that, yeah, you know, Trump did some stuff wrong and he should be held accountable. But they just can't bring themselves to do that.

Dominica, I try very hard when we talk about these things to not use hyperbole a lot because I think it gets it diminishes over time. But when we're talking about this, I mean, it really does add another historic, unprecedented, unusual, fascinating level of what's at stake in the 2024 election if Donald Trump not only is ultimately the nominee, but if he wins the White House again. Amazing, consequential, scary. I mean, you know, you can keep throwing them out there because we've never seen anything like this. You know, we've never been in this situation before. People in other countries have, you know, where their leaders are indicted and sometimes convicted for things like corruption. But there's this like cultural resistance in this country to going there. You know, the precedent set for that is really Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon. And we've only gotten

more polarized since then, making it really even more difficult to have people change their minds to look dispassionately at the facts. Kerry, it also seems to add another historic, unusual, unprecedented element to our justice system in that the DOJ has long said that they don't want to be seen as interfering in elections. In the past, they have not brought indictments close to elections because they don't want to look like they're interfering. I don't know how a justice system can de-conflict a nominating calendar and a prosecuting calendar, especially when you're looking at potentially multiple court appearances for Donald Trump over the course of the next year. Yeah, it's really an air traffic control problem at this point, starting with civil cases later this year in New York, and then criminal cases in March of next year in New York, and TBD on the Mar-a-Lago trial date. And we'll see what happens with these January 6th allegations as well.

But Sue, let's zoom out for just a moment, right? Under current DOJ guidance, which the Justice Department views as binding, a sitting federal president cannot be charged with crimes, right? So Donald Trump could not have been charged during his time in office. DOJ has been investigating, the special counsel's been on the case since last November. He's already indicted Trump once, and he may be on target to indict Trump for a second time over January 6th. We're now in July 2023, more than six months from the presidential election. If you can't charge somebody when they're in office, and you can't charge somebody too close to the next election, where does that leave you? In part because, according to Donald

Trump's own lawyers and advisors, one of the main reasons he's running for the White House again in 2024 is so he can make these charges go away if he wins. And so the DOJ is in a terrible position, but it's a position that Donald Trump in part put them in. All right, Kerry Johnson, as always, thank you very much. My pleasure. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about the fight over the national defense bill. And we're back and NPR's Barbara Spratt is here with us now. Hey, Barbara. Hi. So the House just approved an $886 billion annual defense bill. It's legislation that outlines the priorities for the U.S. military, and historically,

it passes with bipartisan support. You've heard this one before. But this year, a group of conservatives used this must-pass bill to add in some contentious amendments on social issues. The bill ultimately passed on a near party-line vote. Barbara, what was conservative strategy here? Well, that's right. I mean, and as you say, this was sort of a precedent shattering thing. Only four Democrats supported this defense bill. There's a, you know, 60 year ish precedent of significant bipartisan support on something like this. This came about, there's a couple things to consider. One is, you know, Speaker McCarthy has a very narrow majority. And we had a little bit of a Groundhog Day situation in that we saw a block of conservatives from the, you know,

ultra-right Freedom Caucus kind of flex their muscle in a way that they haven't in the past. On this bill. They like flexing, but not usually on the defense bill. And this time around, it was a different story. And they did flex that muscle. And they wanted a series of their own amendments to be, you know, voted on by the conference on culture war type issues. And so basically something that is normally a very bipartisan process with significant support from members on both sides of the aisle turned into this proxy war fight on culture war issues. And as you said, we've seen this film many times before. Speaker McCarthy essentially said they want to take the woke out of the military in the

parlance of the day. Can you talk through some of these issues that conservatives added into the defense bill? Yes, that's right. So one would be rolling back existing programming that's DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion for the Pentagon. Another would be to prohibit various types of specialized health care for transgender service members and their families. And the big one that a lot of Democratic lawmakers said they just couldn't stomach and ultimately was the reason that they voted against this defense budget was about abortion. And so, you know, if we cast back to what feels like many years ago, but was not that long ago, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration put forth a policy to reimburse service members who travel for reproductive and abortion services. Republicans are concerned that this violates the Hyde Amendment, which is a

longstanding law that dictates how taxpayer money can be used when it comes to abortion. Which means it can't be used. Which means it cannot be used. And so essentially, where we are with the amendment that passed in this defense budget is that that policy of getting reimbursed for travel associated with abortion services would be eliminated. You know, it's really fascinating because the military has often boasted that they are one of the more diverse wings of the federal government overall. I saw an interview with the person who's in charge of some of these initiatives right now, Bishop Garrison, who had said that 41% of the military identify as members of minority groups, but that there are real issues with

non-white candidates who move up the chain, who don't wind up staying in the military long term for whatever reason. And he wants to take a real data-driven approach while the House Republicans seem to want to go the opposite direction and be completely colorblind about this when there's a real split and divide on, you know, the value of having diversity, which had always been a thing that the military had touted that it does well. It's really interesting because you listen to like the floor debate as this was happening last week, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are saying essentially the same argument, which is we need lethality. We need military readiness. And Republican lawmakers argue these DEI initiatives, that's a way of stripping away

our readiness. It's not helping us fulfill our mission. And as you say, Domenico, on the other side of the fence, you've got people saying, no, no, this is actually something that will, you know, allow us to have a bigger pool of talent, which ultimately does support military readiness. So it is interesting. It's all about perspective. Well, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's perspective is that the House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Democrats have a narrow majority. And there doesn't seem to be as much interest in among Senate Republicans in these

culture war issues. That's right. Republican Senator Mike Rounds spoke to NPR earlier this week and he said, look, like even if a lot of Republicans believe in the policy of it, this might not be the place to have the debate. And he ultimately said he thought common sense would prevail in the Senate. What does the outlook look like in the Senate for this bill? And I will say just to that point, a Democratic lawmaker in the House, Chrissy Houlihan, had alluded to this with an analogy that's sort of used a lot on the Hill about how the Senate is the saucer to sort of take the very piping hot cup of tea that the House has given them and let it cool down. So there is like this sense that

yes, I mean, these provisions would not pass in the Senate. What ultimately is likely to happen is, you know, Senate Majority Leader Schumer says they want to pass their own version of the bill before the August recess. And then the chambers have to reconcile two competing versions of this. And if it's going to pass the House, it likely has to be watered down for the next time to pass the House. If you're going to get more Democrats, it by default means you're going to get fewer Republicans in the House. The very Republicans that Speaker McCarthy had to kind of cave to some of the more extreme wings of his party. And this is it playing out in full focus and focusing on these culture war issues, making them bigger than maybe they would have been. And it just translates into the campaign trail too, with the type of politics

we're seeing that really dominate on the campaign, things that are moving the party even more and more to the right, but then you move to a general election. And again, it makes them more and more vulnerable. It really could come back to bite the party later on. All right. Well, we'll find out. And we'll leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Barbara Sprint. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.