The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Walks Back Comments At Putin Summit & DOJ Charges Russian Operative

Episode Date: July 17, 2018

One day after his controversial news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump tried to walk back his comments where he appeared to side with Russia over his intelligence agencies. Plus the Department of Justice accused a Russian student studying in the United States of conspiracy. This episode: political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, editor and correspondent Ron Elving, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson 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

Hi, this is Bethany calling from outside the courthouse in Lower Manhattan. No, I am not on a walking tour of Law & Order. I'm about to report for jury duty. This podcast was recorded at 3.05 p.m. on Tuesday, July 17th. Things may have changed since this was recorded. Okay, here's the show. Hey everyone, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. A lot has happened since President Trump met with President Vladimir Putin yesterday. Trump shocked the world by siding with Putin over his own intelligence officers. As a result of that, he faced some heavy backlash, including from his own party, and so today he tried to walk some of it back.

I have the strongest respect for our intelligence agencies headed by my people. We're going to talk about the fallout from that summit, the fallout from Trump's response, and in addition, a Russian operative arrested for conspiracy. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Carrie Johnson, justice correspondent. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. So big stuff today. We had Trump responding to the backlash to the summit he had with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. And it all hinged on one word. It should have been obvious. I thought it would be obvious, but I would like to clarify, just in case it wasn't. In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word

would instead of wouldn't. The sentence should have been, I don't see any reason why I wouldn't or why it wouldn't be Russian. So, just to repeat it, I said the word would instead of wouldn't. And the sentence should have been, and I thought it would be maybe a little bit unclear on the transcript or unclear on the actual video. The sentence should have been, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia. Sort of a double negative.

So you can put that in. And I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself. So before we break down what he was saying there today, let's just listen to what he said yesterday. My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others. They said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be. So, guys, what do we think of this? Big sigh. Big sigh. I just I just find this rather incredible that the day after with the entire nation, including his Republican defenders, even including Fox and friends, his best friends in the media world, all scolding him, all telling him he was wrong, all telling him he had to walk this back.

The best he could say was, I meant to have a word not in there, which does not address at all the general attack of what he had to say or the general tenor of everything he had to say in his meeting with Putin. You know, the president today in his do-over talked about having full faith in our intelligence agencies and that he accepts our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia was, in his word, meddling. That is not at all what he said yesterday. He said Putin offered a strong, strong denial, and he was inclined to believe Vladimir Putin's denial yesterday. And what happened between yesterday and today? Blowback. And the president even acknowledged blowback. He said he started to hear this criticism on the plane back and he said, what's the big deal? What's the big deal? You were standing next to the guy your own Justice Department and intelligence community has said

was responsible for an adversarial attack in the course of the 2016 election. That's kind of a big deal. Right. So this would versus would not thing doesn't walk back everything he said in that conference yesterday. Yeah. And the attitude is one of the big things that I up here in the Capitol, I'm hearing people talking a lot about, about the attitude, about the fact that he was standing on a stage with Putin in a posture of friendship and that it didn't seem to be in any way skeptical of the very real assessment that the Russian government interfered in the U.S. election and other elections across the globe. There are a lot of elected members of Congress,

Republicans and Democrats alike, who feel like that was an absolute mistake. And yet even in his remarks today, Trump didn't even fully put blame squarely on Russia. He still found some wiggle room. Here's what he said. And I've said this many times. I accept our intelligent community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also.

There's a lot of people out there. And remember, this harkens back to something he said on the campaign trail. He talked about maybe it was a 400-pound guy on his bed hacking into stuff. He seems to have moved away from this poor, sad figure on the bed. But he, in other contexts, has said repeatedly maybe it was China, maybe it was some other country. We've got all these folks trying to get into our systems. Well, his Justice Department, his FBI, his Director of National Intelligence disagrees. Dan Coats yesterday had to put out a statement saying,

our role in the intelligence community is to provide the best information, the most objective information, the most unvarnished information we can. We've been clear in our assessments that Russia did it, and they're doing it still. It's ongoing, pervasive, and it's a problem. It feels to me that it was something altogether different to have the president disagreeing with somebody like Coats, who he has, you know, has had a very good relationship with in the past. It's not like when he complains about the FBI, which is kind of something that we hear from him a lot. This felt different. Can I just point out that

last year, when the Washington Post began to report that Donald Trump had tried to lean on the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, and senior leaders of the National Security Agency to try to get them to talk to Jim Comey and ax this Mueller investigation. Dan Coats refused entreaties by reporters and by members of Congress to beat up on the president at that point. Dan Coats protected the president last year. I mean, Dan Coats is somebody that I know pretty well from knowing him up here on the Hill in his days before he was in the job that he has now. And that's just kind of the guy he is. He is a very measured person. He is a very, except for towards the end where he was willing to be a little bit more outspoken, largely he was a party guy. He was a conservative.

He was reliable. He is not the kind of hotheaded firebrand that you would expect to be coming out so aggressively like this. If you're a Republican and you want to support the intelligence community, you don't like what Donald Trump said with President Vladimir Putin the other day, but also you don't want to politically distance yourself from the president too much or criticize him too much. How much of a fig leaf, if any, does this backtracking give you today? It's a hard question to ask because there are some people who were already looking for a way to get on the president's side here, and it was just too far a step for them to get there. I think we'll see over the next couple of days that there will be people who will find this to be satisfying. But there are plenty of Republicans in Congress

who just feel like the president has gotten completely out of step with the party. You know, I think that the discomfort that was engendered by this event yesterday, this enormous event that was really an earthquake for members of Congress on the Republican side, this might not be enough. They may need something a little more public, a little higher profile, a little more fulsome from the president, something that really does feel like he regrets what he said and how it was perceived. This little bit of a pool spray, as we call it, when he really wants to get on to talking about taxes, that's probably not going to be enough. And I'm afraid the discomfort is going to persist, even though many people will take this opportunity, as Kelsey says, to clamber back over to the safe side with the president. I don't know about that, Ron. I think that already Congress has announced that Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, the former head of the CIA during some of this period early in the Trump administration, is going to testify on Capitol Hill next week. Perhaps the president's going to rely on his cabinet members to do the cleanup for him, since, as you pointed out,

he seems so disinclined to fully engage with the mea culpa today. Well, because Trump is not an apologizer. He's kind of an anti-apologizer. Maybe it would just be way too out of character for him and in his perception, at the very least, make him appear weak to backtrack too much on this. And let's mention the other elephant in the room, if you will, which is that the support or non-support of Donald Trump is an absolute deal breaker for Republicans in primaries. Today in Alabama, we have a very close contest there between an incumbent Republican who at one time distanced herself briefly from Donald Trump, then re-embraced him, being challenged by someone else who bills himself as a populist and says he's more

Donald Trump than she is. Well, that kind of explains the broader trend that we were seeing him being challenged by someone else who bills himself as a populist and says he's more Donald Trump than she is. Well, that kind of explains the broader trend that we were seeing over the past day or so with Republicans who are up for reelection, taking a much more measured approach of pushing back on the president. People like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who just used the opportunity to reaffirm his support for the intelligence community, and then people who were leaving Congress, like Senator Bob Corker, who were much more able to get out there and basically say that the president was wrong. Everyone who's dealt with Putin understands fully that the best way to deal with him is through strength. And I just felt like the president's comments made us look as a nation more like a pushover.

It's just really different than what some of the other people are saying, except for McConnell, who is, as I was talking to some people who work with him, they were like, he's not the kind of guy who's going to get up there and bang a drum and yell and be upset. But what he said today at his press conference was about as angry as I've seen McConnell in some time. So, yeah, there's a possibility that we may well take up legislation related to this. In the meantime, I think the Russians need to know that there are a lot of us who fully understand what happened in 2016. And it really better not happen again. So when McConnell says they better not do it and get in 2018, Kelsey, what else could be done here? What are some things that congressional

Republicans, for example, might be talking about in terms of anything beyond just finger wagging and saying, please don't don't try any more funny stuff? Well, the number one option that keeps coming up, particularly because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer keeps bringing it up, is the idea of Congress passing additional sanctions on Russia. Now, that's something that's kind of getting a lukewarm at best reception from Republican leaders who are kind of addressing the fact that sanctions are an option, but not really discussing it as a likely or possible solution. There is some legislation out there from Senator Marco Rubio and a Republican from Florida and Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, that involves a couple of changes to the way the voting systems work

that could get passed. Maybe that's kind of what McConnell was floating is that they would vote on that. But honestly, their options are limited. Well, and also the legislation sponsored by Rubio and Van Hollen, right, it would allow Dan Coats or whoever is the director of national intelligence to impose sanctions themselves, right? Wouldn't that create kind of a path around the president? It would. And that's part of one of the reasons why it's really controversial and why there are some changes still being discussed to the bill. It's not clear to me that McConnell was necessarily committing to that, definitely getting a vote. He was floating that as one of the options that exists out there. And, you know, he kind of had to name it because it is basically the only option.

And Congress has been waiting for the president to kind of take the lead on election interference. And that hasn't happened in the way that a lot of people I talk to would like to see. Gotcha. has been waiting for the president to kind of take the lead on election interference, and that hasn't happened in the way that a lot of people I talk to would like to see. Gotcha. So looking ahead, you guys, we have a good range of people. We have a justice reporter, a big picture political reporter, and a Hill reporter here. What are you guys looking for going ahead? What kind of developments are you looking for next in this ongoing story? I would say there needs to be a negotiation between the leaders on the Hill, Ryan and McConnell, and whomever else they want to bring along to talk to the president and come up with something they can pass quickly and get to the president and have him

signed. And that's obviously necessary. And he needs to do it with a signing ceremony that gives everybody a feel-good moment. We're all on the same page. Here's Dan Coats. Here's John Kelly. Here are all these military guys. And we're all happy with this compromise. And it's going to put all this to rest. Carrie, how about you? Here's the thing. There have been reports that the special counsel is moving toward finishing at least part of his work potentially by the end of the summer. No one can say for sure. I'm waiting to find out whether former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is actually going on trial this month, as was expected. And Mueller is going to roll out new charges and maybe some more guilty pleas and maybe a report in the weeks or months to come. But I don't think we can say with

any certainty that anyone other than Bob Mueller, the people who work for him and the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein know that. So any kind of comfort the president or his legal team or the people who are subjects of this investigation may be getting now, I don't know that they should feel so comfortable just quite yet. Kelsey, how about you? I am watching how this fits into the pattern that we've watched happen up here on the Hill, where the president does something that either embarrasses Republicans or makes Republicans upset, and then they try to move on very quickly. And I want to see how quickly they do move on from this, whether or not this simmers and whether or not this is something that they

continue to talk about and even consider legislation for, or if it becomes like a lot of other things that have happened in this administration, where there is a flash in the pan frustration, and then the Republican leadership here in Congress tries to move on to some sort of policy and policy victory that they think they can win in order to quickly tell voters that, see, we're doing the jobs you sent us here to do. Just ignore the distractions, the distraction in their mind being the things that happen with the White House, and focus on what Republicans in Congress are doing for you. Right now, they want that thing to be approving Judge Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice. And it's something that

they're in the process of attempting to do right now. My wonder is whether or not that still works. Did what happened over this past week on this trip change the dynamic between elected congressional Republicans and this White House or did it not? I'll tell you guys, looking ahead for me, I mean, one thing that we still don't know and that perhaps we'll never know is what happened in that room between President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. But we did get this statement from the NSC today that says, in part, we are reviewing the discussion between President Trump and President Putin, considering possible next steps and have nothing further to announce at this time. I am just curious what exactly that means. Should anything come of that? It feels awfully cryptic to me. How are they reviewing it? Is there a transcript? Is there a transcript that would be discoverable beyond the NSC? Was there an interpreter who was willing to sit down with the NSC and

chat about what he may have heard? That's the thing that I've been wondering. How airtight are the interpreters in these situations? I honestly don't know. Earlier today, New Hampshire Democrat Gene Shaheen was calling for the interpreter to come up to Capitol Hill and testify. Oh, my gosh. What are we doing? This is crazy. Is that just grandstanding? Take a pause for a moment and think about the fact that people on Capitol Hill have so little faith in the president of the United States that they want to call up the interpreter to see what he may have agreed to in private with Russia's leader. That's an incredible moment. It says something very frightening, actually, about where we are right now. That about puts a cap on that. We do have to let Kelsey go right now because she is a busy woman and has to go file for one of our shows. Kelsey, thank you.

Thanks for having me. So up next, we're going to talk about a Russian national who was arrested for conspiracy. We're going to talk about that arrest right after the break. Support for NPR politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes to buying a home or refinancing your existing home loan. Rocket Mortgage is simple, allowing you to fully understand all the details and be confident you're getting the right mortgage.

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And we're back. And we're going to focus now on an arrest made on Sunday afternoon of a 29-year-old Russian national named Maria Batina. Let's start with just the basic facts. And Kerry Johnson is going to fill us in on this. The FBI says that she came into the country in 2016 to study international relations at American University. But it says, in fact, for many years, she'd been an unregistered agent of the Russian government. She came here to the U.S. in part to forge connections with influential organizations, including the National Rifle Association, to try to influence American policy

more favorably toward the Russian government. It says that she was communicating with a handler overseas, a person we believe is Alexander Torshin, a member of the Russian parliament who was directing her to meet with certain people and do certain things. She turned up at events like the National Prayer Breakfast, showed up at NRA conventions, got her photo taken with many Republican luminaries. And authorities say all the while she should have registered as a Russian agent with the Justice Department, but she failed to do so. They, in fact, it turns out, searched her home in April of this year, but we only found out about all of this when she was arrested on Sunday and authorities made public a charge against her hours after that Trump-Putin summit yesterday. So getting a little bit broader on this, what exactly, do we know more specifically what she

was trying to do here, like by connecting to the NRA? Was she trying to forge connections, foment divisions? What are we... No, she was actually trying to influence American policy in a direction favorable to Russia. The criminal complaint, the sworn statement by the FBI agent, talks about correspondence she had with people back in Russia with respect to who the next Secretary of State would be under President Trump, and how people in Russia seem to think that a Republican president, a Trump White House, would be more favorable to Russia than any other alternative. The document doesn't go into great detail about what else she was trying to influence, but it does suggest that one of her associates, somebody named as person number one in the indictment, an American, was actually trying before the election to set up a back

channel communication between the Russians and senior GOP leaders using the NRA. I've reported that person's Paul Erickson, who has a longtime relationship with Maria Butina, and he has not been charged with wrongdoing. But the fact that he was mentioned so explicitly in this complaint means he possibly has some problems on his way. That's what I was wondering when reading this. How much trouble is this Paul Erickson guy getting into? I mean, maybe a bigger question here is the people, whether at the NRA or at the National Prayer Breakfast or whoever, who were associating with Maria Bettina, could those people, should those people have known they were dealing with someone who had potentially nefarious aims? Well, she was a Russian citizen. And I don't know how... Not necessarily a bad thing.

No. I don't know how open she was, to be honest, about what she was trying to do. And listen, in her previous life in Siberia, I'm not making that up. She did live in Siberia. She was very, very pro-gun rights. And so she has been on the record for many, many years long before she came to the United States purportedly to study that she believes strongly in the right to bear arms everywhere around the world. Gotcha. So give us a little bit more context here, Carrie. How does this connect to the special counsel's probe? Okay, so this case is not being pursued by special counsel Robert Mueller. Okay. It's not being pursued by him at all. He's not touching this thing. It's being handled by senior national security prosecutors at the Justice Department in D.C. and the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. I asked why that was.

This investigation seems to predate May 2017 when Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, and it seems to be moving kind of on a parallel track for now. But obviously, when you're talking about the big picture of Russians trying to interfere in U.S. politics, Maria Butina in this case certainly fits in. I should say, too, her lawyer, Robert Driscoll, says this whole charge is overblown. She's going to defend herself in court and come out, he thinks, a winner. We'll see. She's currently incarcerated in the D.C. jail as a flight risk. Gotcha. OK, well, one more question here. I'm just curious. This news came right around the time that Trump sided with Putin over his own intelligence officials at that

joint press conference. And the charges did come from his administration. So can we read anything into the timing here? Not really. So you want this to be like a cheeky Rod Rosenstein Justice Department response. I got to tell you, I got gotta tell you, the timeline does not quite compute. Remember, on Friday, Rosenstein announced charges against 12 Russian military officers. And Maria Butina was actually taken into custody on Sunday in Washington, and the charges against her were unsealed on Monday. I'm told some of the reason for that activity was that they had been watching Maria Butina for some time, but it seemed like she was maybe preparing to move, to move to South Dakota to be with Paul Erickson, her partner. And so authorities in D.C. wanted to put an end to that and that move and take her into custody sooner rather than later. All right, that is a wrap for today, but we will be back in your feeds

Thursday with our weekly roundup, unless there is news you need to know sooner. I am Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. I'm Carrie Johnson, justice correspondent. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.