The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Eric Adams; More Trump Nominees Confirmed

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

The Department of Justice instructed prosecutors to dismiss federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Rather than abiding by the order, many prosecutors have resigned in protest.Then, two of President Trump's more controversial cabinet picks, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were confirmed to their posts. How did they overcome initial skepticism?This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello, this is Tony recording from Jakarta, Indonesia, where I moved a couple months ago to be with my future wife and her family. This podcast was recorded at 1209 PM Eastern Time on Friday, February 14, Valentine's Day of 2025. Some things may have changed by the time you listen to this podcast, but hopefully by then I will be a married man and I will still be keeping up with American politics by listening to NPR. Well, congratulations. Congratulations.

And thank you for listening. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

And since it is the NPR, I'm going to be covering the White House. I'm going to be covering the White House. I'm going to be covering the White House. I'm going to be covering the White House. I'm going to be covering the White House. I'm going to be covering the White House. I'm going to I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House And I'm Carrie Johnson I cover the Justice Department and since it is Friday and since we have a lot of news to cover We are bringing you our classic Friday political roundup when we're gonna start with news out of New York The city's embattled Democratic mayor Eric Adams got a lifeline from the Trump administration

battled Democratic Mayor Eric Adams got a lifeline from the Trump administration. Adams was facing these federal corruption charges, but this week the Justice Department told federal prosecutors to drop the charges. The lead prosecutor on the case resigned rather than obey that order, and last night a number of other officials at the Justice Department also resigned out of protest. Carrieari, there is so much to talk about there in those resignations, but before we dive into the legal ramifications here, can we rewind and have you just remind us what Eric Adams was accused of doing? Yeah, Adams faces a number of very serious federal criminal charges like conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery, allegedly soliciting campaign money

from foreign nationals. He's of course, pleaded not guilty to all those charges and remained on the job where he is to this day. And, and given the severity of these charges, why did the Justice Department want the charges to go away? Well, we know about this comes out as a result of letters back and forth between the number two in charge at the Justice Department right now, a guy named Emil Bovi. You may remember him because he was one of Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers not all that long ago and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, those prosecutors in Manhattan

had been leading the case against Adams. Bovi basically said the case against Adams was problematic because the charges were brought too close to the election. The idea that Adams had been charged with these very serious offenses meant that he lost a security clearance, so he could not really be in charge in the same way in New York City that he used to be. He couldn't have the kind of sensitive conversations about public safety with people in his own city, and that kept New Yorkers less safe. And he raised some questions about the outgoing U.S. attorney from the Biden administration in some public statements that man had made about Adams and public corruption in the city generally. However, the new U.S. attorney in Manhattan,

the woman who has been in charge for three weeks since Donald Trump has been in office is an exceptionally conservative person. She was a member of the Federalist Society. She clerked for a conservative icon and late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And she suggested in her own blistering letter back to the Justice Department headquarters that there was no good reason to drop this case, that Eric Adams was guilty. In fact, they were considering adding new charges against Eric Adams at the time they got the directive to drop this case. And she basically refused to do it. She also dropped in a footnote, one of the most extraordinary bombshells I have ever read in court papers. She said that on January 31st, she had a meeting with Eric Adams' lawyers and Amy Boevi, the person who's number two in charge of the Justice Department. And

Eric Adams' lawyers suggested that Adams would cooperate with the Trump administration on get tough immigration enforcement strategies if these charges were dropped. She said that sounded an awful lot like an illegal quid pro quo. And she also said she had one of her staff members take notes at this meeting, which lawyers like to do. And Bovi, the number two at justice, did not want those notes to be taken and then wanted to confiscate those notes at the end of the meeting. Oh, wow. Tam, I want to bring you into this conversation. What are you hearing from the White House about these allegations? President Trump was asked about it yesterday. The U.S. attorney has resigned over the DOJ's request to drop the case into Eric Adams.

Did you personally request the Justice Department to drop that case? No, I didn't. I know nothing about it. I did not. And I will note that there was simultaneous translation happening there because he was sitting next to the Prime Minister of India. Later, he comes back and says that US attorney didn't resign. He or she was fired. I guess we should always be cautious in trying to fully understand what the President of the United States is saying, but he certainly

seems to be saying, you know, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Kari, can you tell us more about the specific people who resigned and why they resigned? Because it wasn't just that one U.S. attorney. No. In fact, there are seven resignations now, including one this morning. So Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, has resigned. As of today, a gentleman named Hagen Scotton, a line prosecutor on the Eric Adams case, has resigned. He's notable because he earned two bronze stars in his military service. He also clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme

Court. And his resignation letter is something like I have never seen before. He said basically, I'm a conservative. I don't have a lot of complaints about this administration. And he can even understand how a president whose background is in business would want to engage in deal-making. But he said any assistant U.S US attorney would know that our laws and traditions

don't allow using prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials. He said, if no lawyer with an earshot of the president is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion, but it was never going to be me. Oh wow. Wow. That is a throwdown. Moreover, this mess has now migrated from New York, where it started, here in Washington.

And yesterday, a bunch of lawyers in the public integrity unit in Washington resigned after they were asked to file a motion to dismiss this case. Every single person yesterday who was asked to dismiss this case refused and quit. That's the loudest signal you can find in the law. This is many, many of my sources, including Republicans and Democrats alike, have been telling me the most serious crisis at the Justice Department since Watergate, and it's not over yet. The way in which Bove wants this dropped is without prejudice, and that's sort of a technical term, but it means that those charges could be brought back later. And on Fox and Friends,

you have Mayor Eric Adams sitting next to White House immigration czar, Tom Homan. And Steve Ducey asks- One of the hosts. One of the hosts asks Adams, well, and you kind of have to cooperate because they could always bring the charges back. What we need to be clear on, if the mayor of the city of New York is unable to collaborate, deal with intelligence information, sit down with my state and federal agencies to sit down to coordinate for public safety. We're still under the terrorist threat. We still have an illegal gangs in our community that's bringing about destruction that ICE

is attempting to weed out. If I can't coordinate that, that's a public safety issue and we should put public safety first. This was a very long interview in which they talked about ways in which Eric Adams was cooperating with ICE, setting it up so that they could let ICE into Rikers Island and talking openly about, well, we've got some other ways we want to cooperate, but we've got to keep it quiet because we have to go around the city council because the city council wouldn't allow it. All these prosecutors are quitting because they say it looks like an illegal deal between

the Trump administration and the mayor of New York City who's under indictment. If the mayor does something the administration wants, they'll back away from this case. And today on the program Fox and Friends, Tom Homan, the immigration czar, basically said the agreement that we came to was this, and if you don't live up to it, Eric Adams, you're going to have a legal problem on your hands. That is not done in the law. That is a very bad look. And it comes after seven people have already resigned over this matter. Carrie, I hear what you're saying about this potentially not being legal, but is there anyone or anything that can stop this? I mean, it seems like there are really at least at

this point we've seen no consequences for any of these actions. So here's the state of affairs at this moment. Eric Adams is still under indictment. They have not found a human being to move to dismiss this case. And so if Trump administration officials at the Justice Department want this case dismissed, they're either gonna have to find somebody to do it or they're going to have to move themselves. And to dismiss the case would require the approval of a judge, Judge Dale Ho, a noted voting rights and civil rights expert on the bench in New York. And Judge Ho may have a lot of questions for the Justice Department about how they are entering into this deal

and the reasons why. All right. Well, a lot to digest there. Carrie, thank you so much for bringing your reporting on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right. Take care. We'll talk to you again soon and let's take a break. We'll have more in a moment. There's been a lot of attention on loneliness lately. 16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most of the time.

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And we're back and we're joined now by NPR congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh. Hi there, Deirdre. Hi guys. And thanks for joining us because this week, two of President Trump's, I would say, more controversial nominees for his cabinet got confirmed. Tulsi Gabbard is now the director of national intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is

now the secretary of health and human services. Dears, both of these nominees received, I would say, a fair bit of skepticism from certain Republicans, but ultimately, most Republicans fell in line and voted for them. And I want to understand how that happened. And the cynical part of me wonders, like, was the skepticism ever real? So let's start with Gabbard. I mean, I think the skepticism was real for both nominees. But I also want to make a note that both of these nominees were extremely popular with the MAGA base, both very well known, both campaigned with Trump, and there was an enormous

public pressure campaign to get them through. They had folks at these hearings that were vocal supporters that were there, you know, walking around the halls of Congress. So there was a real sort of lobbying effort directed at 53 Senate Republicans. Obviously nominees just need a simple majority. But I think part of the campaign was directed at Republicans because they knew they weren't going to get Democratic votes. But also in both cases, walking away from some of their former public statements and public positions on issues that caused the skepticism among a few Senate

Republicans in both cases. Okay. So as it relates to Gabbard, was there some sort of affirmation she gave that made some of these, let's say, more lukewarm Republicans come on board with her? So there were more than a couple, probably, Senate Republicans on the panel that oversaw her nomination, the Intelligence Committee. People like Susan Collins of Maine, Todd Young from Indiana, Senator Moran from Kansas. And some of them centered around Gabbard's previous criticism of a government surveillance program that

she as a former member of Congress, a Democrat, opposed as a presidential candidate and in like conservative podcasts had criticized and said she wanted it rolled back. This is a program that people on the Intelligence Committee feel is a valuable tool of intelligence agencies. So she changed her position and she came to the hearing and basically said now I do support this 702 authority that's part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program. So that was a way that helped her sort of turn the corner on that issue. And I think that one thing that you mentioned is a theme that we have been coming back to

with almost all of the president's more controversial nominees, which is they have changed their positions to get the votes they need to be confirmed. They have said controversial things in the public in the past, and they have assured senators either in hearings or in private that that won't be a problem. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing just stepping back in terms of the overall debate over the president's nominees for these cabinet positions, a lot of Senate Republicans sort of have said publicly in hallway interviews, look, I start out as a yes, the president

won, The president deserves to install his nominees to run these agencies. That's the bottom line for a lot of Senate Republicans is, you know, he won. We're gonna back his people. It does not happen very often that a president's nominee for a cabinet position gets voted down on the Senate floor. It's been decades. Last time that happened was with Texas Republican Senator John Tower, who was nominated by George H. W. Bush to be his defense secretary in 1989. So I think that's what a lot of Senate Republicans go back to.

LESLIE KENDRICK I also want to drill down more on the other somewhat controversial pick, I would say, who did get confirmed this week and that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is now the Health and Human Services head and there was again some skepticism about him. How did he ultimately get through with broad I would say Republican support? I think the big issue that caused skepticism across both Democratic and Republican senators was his previous comments about vaccines. A lot of Republicans straight up said, I don't agree with him. The person who's heading the Health and Human Services Agency who's not a physician should

be following the science. So when RFK started his rounds in the Senate, he was shouted questions like, do you support the polio vaccine? Sort of an unusual thing to ask a nominee about who's heading the HHS department. But he made news because he said, yes, I support the polio vaccine. Which is important, we should say. Right. And that was very, very early on. So like, as Tam was talking about, he changed his public position.

On a potential liability, you're saying. Right. But it was in two different forms, right? In public hearings, he wasn't as cut and dry. In private meetings, senators said, he assured me he would. So I think that we'll have to see what kinds of actions RFK Jr. takes as he's now started this role. But I do think he was wildly popular with the MAGA base. There was a lot of pressure on senators and a lot of the ones who put out statements right before the vote said, I still have reservations, but I believe he will follow his word. I want to ask you both about a key Republican who did not vote for RFK, nor did he vote for Tulsi Gabbard, and that is the former leader Mitch McConnell.

Explain that to us. Why did he break with his party? I feel like Mitch McConnell is in kind of a YOLO moment in his career. He's no longer the top Senate Republican leader. It is not news that he and President Trump do not get along and have had many famous disagreements over the years. McConnell has made it clear that his legacy going forward is that he is going to continue to push for national security issues that he feels really strongly about. He did not think Tulsi Gabbard was qualified to be the director of national intelligence.

On RFK, the reason that McConnell voted no was he noted that he's a polio survivor, and he thought that RFK Jr. trafficked in conspiracy theories. His statement said something along the lines is he has this record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding the public's trust. So he couldn't back RFK Jr. to lead. But it's also worth noting that McConnell, he is up for reelection in two years, but he is probably not expected to run for reelection. So he doesn't really have the same political pressure on him because he's kind of free to vote his conscience. And you know what? He doesn't have the clout he had a year ago or two years ago when he

was the leader. This is not the same Mitch McConnell who ultimately voted not to convict President Trump after January 6th, despite his extreme concerns about what had happened that day. And so now he's free, but it's a very different time and he is a much smaller figure in the party because Trump won again, because the Senate is populated with a lot more Republican senators who are in lockstep with President Trump. Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, was asked about McConnell voting against Gabbard. And I just want to read you a quote. She says, I think we're greatly disappointed in any Republican who chooses willfully to vote against the president's

exceptionally qualified cabinet nominees and picks to lead his America First administration. The White House has been demanding that Republicans stay tough and strong and in lockstep with the president. Republicans have a bit of a cushion, right? They have a 53 seat majority. They can lose three votes and have the vice president, JD VD. Vance, break the tie, which is what happened with Pete Hegseth. So it wasn't a big surprise that McConnell was a no on some of these people. He's been pretty clearly outspoken.

He has voted for the rest of the president's nominees, right? Like Treasury secretary, agriculture secretary, and he puts out statements praising these nominees. So he's clearly targeting his dissent for the national security sphere and clearly on public health. All right let's take a quick break and when we get back it is time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back and it is time now for our favorite part of the show, Can't Let It Go. That is the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

And Tam, why don't you kick it off for us? So what I cannot let go of is Elon Musk's children, primarily his son, X, who I think is probably about four years old. And he was there in the Oval Office when President Trump and Elon Musk were holding court for more than a half an hour talking about the work of DOGE, that is Musk's project, the Department of Government Efficiency. President Trump welcomed the young man. And gosh, like, as a grown adult sitting still while people talk for 32 minutes would be tough for me.

It's tough. But so this kid, he yawns, he looks at the ceiling, he sits on the floor. Eventually, Musk lifts the kid up on his shoulders. Then someone asks about a comment President Trump had made about treasuries. And this is a very serious topic. But at this very point, the small child is putting his fingers in Elon Musk's ears. I will say, Tam, if anyone is going to normalize the idea of having children in public space in this country, it's going to be men. I mean, look, you know this, Tam knows this.

I have, because I perpetually feel guilty about leaving my kids for work, travel. I do bring them along on different things. They have been in green rooms for different television programs. I think that the idea of having kids in public space, to me, maybe this is not the common opinion, but I think it is lovely. I just

think it is not normal and therefore every time it happens people are shocked and it will only become normal once men start doing is what I think. I think you're dead on. I mean I think that had this been you know in the female speaker of the House's office in you in the female vice president's office, would people have asked questions about like, where's your babysitter? Or why weren't they at childcare? Maybe this is the new thing.

There aren't that many members on Capitol Hill that I see that bring their kids to meetings, but I see a lot of them bring them to votes. During spring break, their kids are there or on a long weekend when their parents have to work. So, you know, maybe this is opening the door to making it more acceptable. Asma, what can't you let go of? So I'm going to make a total left turn away from politics.

And I bring to you all this story I saw this week which is wild a man who was apparently swallowed by a humpback whale and spit out like he survived this process and his dad actually filmed this I was also like whoa why is the dad filming this. But he got swallowed. And in my research of this, I guess it sort of makes sense, right? Because whales, apparently humpback whales, they swallow in a lot of water, a lot of food.

I vaguely remember this from science class. And then they spit out a lot of the stuff they don't want. And so in an interview that he gave later with CNN and Espanol, he said that he felt on his face this like slimy texture. He saw colors like dark blue and white, something approaching him from behind and sank me. And he thought he was gonna die. Well yeah. But then he got out. It all happened around the Strait of Magellan. So apparently be very careful if you take a kayak to the Strait of Magellan. Oh my God.

I also feel like this is a scene from Finding Nemo, wasn't he supposed to be? I am not going to recover from this, can't let it go. I'm having trouble over here. All right, Deirdre, what about you? So the thing I can't let go of is a party that's happening tomorrow. I kind of wish I got invited, but there's this story in the Washington Post about this 87-year-old man who lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and he went viral because he was hand-delivering invitations to his annual winter party to his neighbors.

And he went up and there was a Ring Doorbell video of this new neighbor, and he rings the doorbell and he says, hi, I'm Doug Turner. I live in that house across the street and I'm having a party. So this new neighbor thought this was so cool. Like how many neighbors like hand deliver invitations? I mean, we live in the age of Tex and Evite. So she put the video on TikTok and people went crazy. They're like, this guy is so cool.

This is so cute. I wanna come to the party. The best part is so cool. This is so cute. I want to come to the party The best part is the invitation it says a celebration of winter Four o'clock until the cops arrive. Oh my god, and it just says bring only a smile Oh, and it was such an adorable handwritten invitation and this woman's tick-tock went viral and all these people wanted to come to Doug's party And they wanted to send things for the party. And so this woman went back to talk to her neighbor Doug to let him know he went viral and he was like, wow, that's really cool.

So now people are sending letters to this PO box to talk to Doug and he said he is a widower. He started having this annual winter party after his wife died in 2022. Oh my God, he's got so many dates. And so now he's hoping, he's actually hoping that this starts a trend, that people start to have neighborhood parties to get to know their neighbors better and handwritten invitations are kind of a cool thing to bring back. Well, that is a wrap from us for today.

Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. Casey Morell edits this podcast. Our producers are Bria Suggs and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Roberta Ramdon. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.