The NPR Politics Podcast - Warrant In Mar-a-Lago Search Unsealed

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

This episode is available to everyone, though on some platforms there may be a short delay in availability between the version for subscribers (which is sponsor-free) and non-subscribers (which includes sponsor interruptions). Thank you for your patience! The warrant allowing the FBI to search the Florida home of former president Donald Trump, Mar-a-Lago, was unsealed Friday, providing some detail into what items and documents were taken by law enforcement. Among the documents seized include ones with various levels of security classification, along with handwritten notes & other, miscellaneous boxes.Read the warrant.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and voting correspondent Miles Parks.Learn more about upcoming live shows of The NPR Politics Podcast at nprpresents.org.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics 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

Hey there, it's Tamara Keith from the NPR Politics Podcast, and I am so excited because we are getting ready to go back out on the road, and Houston, you're up first. Join Susan Davis, Asma Khalid, Ashley Lopez, Domenico Montanaro, and me at Zilka Hall on Thursday, September 15th. You can find more information about tickets, including for students, at nprpresents.org. Thanks to our partners at Houston Public Media. We hope to see you there. Hi, this is Steve in Waterford, Michigan, where I'm enjoying one last Choco Taco, which I happened across in a gas station freezer today. Whoa. Brilliant.

This podcast was recorded at 4.37 p.m. on August 12, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be hoping for a resurrection a la Twinkie. Okay, here's the show. It's really not fair during Friday news dumps that we can't have a Choco Taco and someone else is, but I'm glad he's enjoying it. Yeah, I want to write to heads of NPR. We all need Choco Tacos every Friday, I think.

We all scream for ice cream. Okay. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And we're learning more about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, what was taken and what the government was looking for. Attorney General Merrick Garland said yesterday he wanted to make the search warrant used for that search public, and former President Trump's legal team did not object to that request. So just a little while ago, this seven-page document was made public. Carrie, let's just start with you. What's in this document? Sure. It's the judge's permission

to give the FBI the ability to search Mar-a-Lago. You know, the areas that were OK for the search included an office described as the 45 office. Of course, Trump was the 45th president of the U.S. Storage rooms and other rooms or areas within the resort, but not the guest rooms in the hotel or areas where the Mar-a-Lago club members might be hanging out. So the judge gave the all clear for that. And then also the Justice Department laid out in some general terms the kinds of legal violations it was looking for. And in another document called the property receipt or inventory, it laid out some of

the items the FBI collected that day. OK, so let's drill down on that. What do we know about those documents and specifically, you know, how classified? We've been thinking all week about, you know, exactly how sensitive this information was that potentially was at Mar-a-Lago. What do we know about that? It seems as if the FBI gathered a whole bunch of information, several boxes, including some information labeled top secret. That's a very high level of classification. Among the items we have some specificity on are things that are described as the grant of clemency to Trump friend and

political advisor Roger Stone, and some information about the president of France, which is leaving me with lots of questions to which there are presently no answers. And the FBI also took other papers at different levels of classification and what's described as a binder of photos. We don't know too much more about those documents than that. And what about the laws, as you mentioned a second ago, that potentially that the FBI sensitive information related to the national defense. Now, that does not mean you're a spy. Don't get tripped up. It just means you took some information related to the national defense in some way that you should not have taken home or anywhere else for that matter. This is a very important time to say that the former president has not been charged with any of these crimes, but just that we know that law enforcement is at least looking into these. Domenico, put this into context for us.

You know, how big of a deal is this? Well, it's a pretty big deal. I mean, look at all of the stuff that they took from his place, too. I mean, Kerry just went through the list. I mean, all of this top secret information, you know, boxes of information. We don't know what is in those. We don't know how that's detailed. But we do know that, you know, Republicans have been trying to control this narrative for a couple of days here in trying to say that this was an overreach by the government. The government said, hey, release the information. We have nothing to hide. And here now, they seem to have turned the tables a little bit on saying, look, this was some really important stuff that they went in and got. Okay, but the president has broader legal authority than just about anybody in the

United States to declassify information. How does that play into this? Isn't it possible that, yes, these theoretically could have been classified documents when Trump took them, but he has the authority to make them unclassified, which theoretically could get him out of all this hot water. How does that play out here? A couple of thoughts. One is that process matters here. So if you want to declassify something, you have to have some paperwork to back it up. You can't just wave a magic wand. And I don't know that that paperwork that former President Trump's allies have been referencing exists in the world. And the second is that under all three of these laws that the Justice Department specified in this application, it's not a requirement that the

material be classified at the time. In fact, even under parts of this Espionage Act we've been talking about, there are some things you can't do, even if the material, you were entitled to have the material, like in your office, and then you take it home, that's still not okay under the law. So there are some nuances to the legal argument that President Trump and his allies are making. Maybe they're not aware of them at this time. Maybe they're going to play out in court, but it's not as simple as they're trying to say. Right. That process point is really important because it has felt like that argument is more of a magic wand type argument. And once you think about, oh, no, were those forms filled out? I think it becomes a more complicated question. Domenico, the former president has said this week that he wanted this search warrant to be made public. He could have done it himself.

He did not. What has he responded at all so far now that is public and now people are getting a look at it? He's put out a couple statements today on his social media network, Truth Social, where he said that, you know, he claims that the FBI could have had the information anytime they wanted, though Attorney General Garland noted yesterday in his statement that they were pretty aware that there are other less intrusive means to take first and that he was indicating that they did try and that they were rebuffed. Yeah, congressional Republicans have spent the entire week lambasting the DOJ and the FBI. I want to listen to Elise Stefanik of New York, the chair of the House Republican Conference,

who spoke this morning before, obviously, before this warrant was made public. President Donald Trump is Joe Biden's most likeliest political opponent in 2024, and this is less than 100 days from critical midterm elections. The FBI raid of President Trump is a complete abuse and overreach of its authority. Domenico, is the release of this warrant going to quiet any of these attacks on the DOJ? You know, it's certainly going to put a lot of pressure on Republicans because this kind of doubling down, you know, you're really showing that you're all in knees deep in the water with the waders on and don't care what mud you're sitting in, right? I mean, that's essentially what they're doing. Moreover, we're coming off a week in which

an armed man tried to break into the FBI office in Cincinnati and later got into a standoff with law enforcement and was killed. I mean, there's some suggestion based on social media accounts that have been linked to this man that he was motivated in part by some of this political rhetoric. And it's a very, very dangerous game to be making these kinds of statements in this kind of environment. We now know the FBI says it has recovered top secret information from Mar-a-Lago on Monday. That is not a political issue. That is a legal issue. Some people may want to make it a political one. It's not one. Okay. So what's next, I guess, as we look ahead? This feels like the entire week we were waiting for this document. We got this document. Now, what are we waiting for? the material existed at Mar-a-Lago. And that somewhat lengthy document, we think, could answer a lot more questions about this search and this investigation. Media organizations

are in court trying to get that document made public. I'm not sure what's going to happen with that and when. And then the second big issue, Miles, of course, is this is an ongoing grand jury investigation of the former president of the United States. Are the grand jury and the Justice Department going to proceed with some kind of law enforcement action here? That's probably going to be a key part of my job for the coming days and weeks till we know the answer to that question. All right. Well, Carrie Johnson, thank you so much for your reporting and thanks for helping us wade through this. My pleasure. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, I will hand things over to my colleague, Ashley Lopez, as we look into the other big news of the day, the Inflation Reduction Act. And we're back. We're joined by Kelsey Snell, who covers Congress.

Hey there, Kelsey. Hello. Congress has passed the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, and it's heading to Joe Biden's desk to sign. Kelsey, remind us, what are the big takeaways from this legislation? Well, to start with, let's go with kind of the top line number here. It's about $700 billion. And that is down from what their original goal was for this kind of partisan package full of Democrats' big ideas. Originally, they wanted to do $3.5 trillion in spending. So it is trimmed back. But this includes measures to extend the Affordable Care Act, provisions that were supposed to begin expiring, those will continue through 2025, would allow Medicare to negotiate directly on the cost of drugs, and that's something Democrats have wanted to do for a long time. It has a goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent, and they do that

primarily with $369 billion in investments in climate and energy security. There's also, you know, things like emissions-based incentives to get companies to create new, more efficient, and domestically produced electric vehicles, tax credits for wind and solar, and credits to develop and expand other sources of energy. Now, a lot of this is paid for with about $300 billion in deficit reduction, which they say is also aimed at lowering inflation. And much of that comes from a 15 percent minimum tax on big corporations. We're talking corporations making over a billion dollars. Right. Wow. That's a lot. Yeah. Kelsey, it has taken months for the Biden administration to get some kind of big package

like this through Congress. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia were major roadblocks in previous efforts. What got them to agree to the Inflation Reduction Act when previous attempts have failed? Well, this was some classic legislative work. This is what happens when Congress sits down to write a big piece of legislation and write permanent law. Now, this is really different from what they had to do to pass, say, the pandemic relief bills, where, you know, Democrats largely agreed that they needed to do things to address the economy in an unprecedented situation. So Democrats were able to come together on some proposals that had not been tested or were ideas that Democrats thought could work to alleviate problems in the near term. This is different. This is a lot of permanent policy, tax policy, energy policy, big changes

to the federal government. And, you know, they landed on proposals that they have been working on and talking about even at the committee level for not just the year plus that they've been negotiating this bill, but for years and years and years. So this is a little bit of Democrats returning to a well of negotiations and ideas that are familiar to people and have been tested by the legislative process. Was there anything left on the cutting room floor, so to speak, like goals lawmakers had that had to get removed in the final process? Well, it depends on how you look at it. So if you look at it as a bill that was cut down from three and a half trillion dollars in spending down to $700 billion, yeah, they got rid of a lot of the things that Democrats had hoped they could do as a kind of standalone Democrats only bill,

like get, you know, paying for child care, universal pre-K, paid family leave, those things are gone. But if you look at it from the perspective of when they were trying to pass a bill that was only going to be drug pricing and health care, adding on the climate change provisions was a really big add for Democrats. You know, Domenico, we spent a lot of time, you know, as many political analysts and watchers saying, you know, Joe Biden really has really been largely on the sidelines. One Democratic strategist I talked to, Joel Payne, who's a former aide to the late Senator Harry Reid, the former Democratic majority leader, had said essentially Biden has been a bystander president and that that can work when you get the politics right.

I think when there are circumstances outside of your control that aren't going as well, I think that can feel very frustrating to parts of your coalition. But the reason why the bystander approach worked in these last few weeks is because the other players stepped up. I want to ask you both about this, but Domenico, I'll start with you. How can the passage of the IRA be used by both Democrats and Republicans in their midterm strategies? I think that, again, this is a capstone on some of the momentum that Democrats have had over the last few weeks. And that's important as Democrats are trying to look to hold the Senate potentially and

keep their margins down in the House, even though Democratic and Republican strategists still expect that Republicans will take over the House because of how slim the majority is there for Democrats. Republicans are going to just say, this is Democratic big spending, big government that led to inflation in the first place. And I think that that's where the two parties have diverged. And that's where the line is going to continue to be. And, you know, for Democrats, this is a moment where they can say they got something done.

They can say that they really did work together and they were able to pursue something as a party that addresses one of the major issues that their voters say they care about. And that's climate change. That's something that voters have been asking for. Drug pricing is also something that is very important to millions of people. So they have, you know, really firm things that they can say they delivered. Now, on the other side of that is that they didn't deliver on a lot of other things that they promised, but they are trying to frame this as an opportunity, as a chance to say, look at all the things we could get done with this very, very slim majority in Congress. Imagine what we could do if you show up and vote in November and deliver more Democrats to Congress. Yeah, I mean, the dam really broke with Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia, who had been holding out for a long time on some of what he wanted. And I talked to a senior,

former senior advisor to Manchin, John Cott, about kind of compromise versus taking a stand, which a lot of progressives want to do. And Cott really sort of showed the difference in ideology and how Manchin thinks about this. There's no question that this 18 months proved that Bidenism works. And I think progressives and moderates should unite and celebrate this. We're bad at it because I think it's just in the Democratic DNA. But this has been a huge freaking win. And we need to tell voters what it does. You know, it's interesting to me to hear him phrase it that way about Democrats being bad at selling it, because that's kind of been a big problem for them all through the Biden administration. I mean, I think about the

bipartisan infrastructure bill. We've seen polls, and I'm sure you've seen much more of this than I have, Domenico, that people don't even know it passed, that they think the Congress hasn't actually even done that. So not only are they not giving Democrats credit for a really big piece of legislation that is going to fund projects all over the country, they don't know it exists. Well, that's going to be the challenge as we move from primary season into the fall with the general elections. Right. Well, all right.

We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. It's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we can't stop talking about, politics or otherwise. Ashley, you are joining us from the host chair this week. Why don't you get us started? Happy to. This is actually a pretty big week in sports, which is not something that I'm usually plugged into. But Serena Williams has begun her farewell tour. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's been a joy playing in front of you guys all these years.

So thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Serena Williams. Wow. Yeah. Like, I mean, if you were a little girl in the 90s, this is obviously like, you know, one of the most visible athletes we've ever had. I mean, I think one of the best athletes of like, you know, the GOAT of all time, at least right now. And so this is like a really photo shoot and a letter about how she wants to expand her family. And she feels like she's had to make a choice, which is not something that she feels men have to do in sports.

But this was kind of like a bittersweet farewell for her. But it was a really interesting read. I have to say, as a parent, as a mom, I really appreciate that she's talking about this in a way that I think, you know, there's this push for women to talk about how they can definitely have it all and you can do it all at once and just figure out how to do it. And I really appreciate somebody being like, that's not true. It would be nice if it was, but it isn't. And the world hasn't changed the way that we think it has. And we have to acknowledge it. I appreciate that.

Yeah. And she's one of the iconic athletes who's really broken a lot of barriers and really changed the game of tennis, the types of people who play, the types of people who pay attention to it, the reasons for doing that. And it's been a huge breath of fresh air to a sport that's been pretty stodgy over the years in some cases. Yeah. And I mean, I remember when she, like she and her sister Venus first came on the scene. It's like a very, it was not the best reception. So I'm very impressed by how she like kind of stayed in the sport and stayed pretty honest about stuff till the very end. All right, next up, Domenico, what can't you let go this week? Well, what I can't let go of is

that Domino's Pizza has finally surrendered and is closing up shop in, of all places, Italy. I didn't know they were in Italy. I don't think Italians knew they were in Italy. It might be part of the problem. You know, there was a great video done by a journalist from Reuters, and I want to play some of that sound of a reporter talking to, you know, Italians in the street saying, here in Rome, they wanted to take pizza to the place where it was invented? Oh, these Americans, they really know nothing. I'm surprised the Italian government didn't write a law outlawing something like dominoes from coming into the country, but there you go.

You know what is funny about that, though, is that Italy is one of the most highly regulated places when it comes to food and drink. You know, you have to have various, you know, if you want Chianti, for example, real Chianti always has the black rooster stamped on it. You know, each region is known for their thing. But, you know, pizza is universal in Italy. And I guess they were kind of like, well, you want to try it? Come on. And the reason Domino's didn't work is because the Italian pizza places adapted and were able to actually get deliveries out to people when they hadn't done that previously. That's so interesting. All right. Well, Kelsey, you're up. What can't

you let go of this week? Well, I am sticking with my perpetual theme, which is absolutely not politics and definitely about animals. My can't let it go this week is a drunk bear in Turkey. What? A drunk bear in Turkey. Seriously. Is that a code for a Russian or something? No. Well, there was a bear that was found slumped over in a region of Turkey after ingesting what they're calling mad honey, because apparently they have hallucinogenic honey in the woods in Turkey. The bear was just, I mean, the bear seemed maybe as if she was in a little bit of distress, but she also looks like she's pretty relaxed.

She's having a good time. She gets a nice ride to the vet in the back of a pickup truck. And they had to figure out what kind of mad honey she ingested because apparently they have multiple kinds of hallucinogenic honey available in the woods of Turkey. Man, the craziest honey I've ever had is hot honey, which is great with cheese. Well, yeah. Well, the story I read says that there are different types of hallucinogenic honey, including kinds made with chestnut or rhododendron, others with linden, and they all have different kinds of hallucinogenic effects. So the more you know.

I'd love to know the science behind this, but we'll have to table that. If I'm being honest, if I do come upon a bear, I do kind of want them to be sloshed. I want them as relaxed as possible so then I can extricate myself. Gives you better odds, right? Yeah. Bring the mad honey on the hiking trail with you next time, I guess. Exactly. All right.

Well, that's a wrap for today. Thank you so much, Kelsey and Domenico. That was very fun. Our executive producer is Mithoni Mathuri. Our editors are Eric McDaniel and Krishna Dev Kalamar. Our producers are Lexi Schapittle, Elena Moore, and Casey Murrell. Thanks to Brandon Carter and Maya Rosenberg. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.