The NPR Politics Podcast - Whistle-blower: Trump Officials Pushed Intel Staff To Downplay Russian Interference

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

The Department of Homeland Security official says in his complaint that he was ordered to halt reports that made the president "look bad." DHS and the White House deny the allegation. This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, election security editor Phil Ewing, and congressional correspondent Susan Davis.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Sean Smith, former National Park Ranger, calling from the shadow of Washington's snow-capped Mount Rainier. I'm using this time in quarantine to write my fourth National Park Thriller. I just blew through 30,000 words in my latest manuscript. This NPR Politics podcast was recorded at... It's at 206 Eastern on Thursday, September 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but my love for a good National Park thriller will remain the same. Enjoy the show. Admit National Park thriller is not a genre I was aware of prior to this timestamp. Oh, I am going to the library right after this. I like

National Parks and I like thrillers. I'm very curious. Yeah, what's not to love? Is it like bears going into your food? Because that to me is a national park thriller. Like a lot of questions. A lot of questions. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. So yesterday we got to the big revelations out of Bob Woodward's new book, Rage. I did mistakenly call it Fear. I apologize. When he writes his third Trump book called Blurg, I will get the title correctly.

The main headline was, of course, the president saying in February and March that he knew how bad the virus was, but that he deliberately downplayed it. And we should just say at this point that there is a massive thunderstorm in DC, so you might get some rainy white noise behind all of us here with a massive thunderclap that I just got. But to the podcast, this was one of those classic days where one enormous story blocked out a lot of other important things that happened. So what we're going to do today is talk about several of those other important things. Franco, let's start with you. You were at the White House all day yesterday, and you heard a lot about specifically what the president wanted to talk about, and that was a last-minute announcement about federal judges. Yeah, you know, he was saying for some time that he was going to release this list

of people who he could draw from if there was a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and he, you know, issued this list. It was a larger list than the one he had before. And it included some intriguing names, such as Senator Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, which, of course, would generate some attention. But, you know, the timing was very interesting. The announcement was not on his original schedule. It was only announced after all this news broke about

the Woodward book, all this stuff about the coronavirus. So it was a chance, you know, for the president to kind of change the subject or at least to talk about something else that was important to his base. Sue, it's really hard to overstate how important this list was, the similar list that he put out in 2016 when it came to getting wary conservatives on board. Like those were a big deal, right? Totally. And I think, you know, what he did yesterday was sort of reliving some of his greatest hits. Trump has done this before, where he's teased lists of names of people he would name as judges specifically to the Supreme Court. I think Trump has said and Republicans have said many times over the past four years

that the president's promise to put conservatives on the Supreme Court is one of the main issues why evangelicals and conservatives stuck with him in 2016, even though so many of them didn't like him personally or didn't like his style or his views. And it seems pretty clear that the president is doing this to try to keep that up, right? He needs conservatives not to abandon him in 2020. He needs evangelicals to stick with him and show up and vote. And the likelihood of a Supreme Court vacancy for the next president is, you know, likely to very likely. And I think this is one of those issues that does tend to keep conservatives much more engaged historically than it has liberals. What did you make of listing several Republican senators who have made a lot of signs that they would like to run for president themselves and appoint their own Supreme Court justices? Thank

you very much. Exactly. I mean, I don't think there's any secret that Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz look in the mirror and see a president, right? Like these are people that have made moves. Ted Cruz has already run. Tom Cotton is seen as one of these rising stars, as is Josh Hawley. All names that people talk about as potential candidates for president in 2024, no matter what happens in the 2020 election. I did think it was a bit funny that both Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton put out statements saying flattered to be on the list. But Josh Hawley put out a statement saying very clearly that he has told the president he would not accept the nomination.

He doesn't want it. And while flattered, he'd take a pass. Franco, would you accept a Supreme Court nomination? You know, Scott, I would have to, you know, put a lot of thought on that, you know, that type of opportunity. But, you know, I'm really focused on on my work here. Heck of a confirmation fight. Okay, now in this kind of catch-all conversation here, we're going to cruise down Pennsylvania Avenue back to Congress. Sue, all summer there has been deadlock on the next round of coronavirus relief. Is there any sign that deadlock is ending anytime soon? No. And what's even more fascinating to me about this is it seems more likely than not

that Congress is going to adjourn ahead of the elections and not vote on something. It seems likely that the Senate bill that Republicans tried to bring up and failed today could be the last congressional action on coronavirus before the election. And this bill was everyone's calling it a skinny bill. Can you remind me what that actually means? Only in Washington is a $650 billion bill skinny. It's skinny compared to what Democrats have wanted to do. House Democrats back in May passed more than $3 trillion in additional pandemic relief. Remember, this is on top of the $3 trillion already signed into law earlier this year. Republicans in the White House just didn't want to go that big or that far. They say it's overreach, that it had a lot of unnecessary priorities in it. So Republicans

had really been struggling with what their counter message was here. And negotiations with Speaker Pelosi have gone nowhere. So Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans put up a bill today. It's cost it spends about 650 billion, but it really only costs about 300 billion after you do some offsets. So it's about a 300 billion measure, but it really only costs about $300 billion after you do some offsets. So it's about a $300 billion measure, far, far smaller than what Democrats want to do and much more targeted. It just had things in it like more money for the popular small business lending program, a little bit more money for unemployment benefits, some liability protections for businesses, stuff that Republicans feel comfortable supporting. It didn't pass because it didn't get a super majority, but it got most Republicans on board. It showed a majority of support for Republicans. So it really was just more of a symbolic vote to give Republicans,

especially those in tough swing state competitive races, an ability to point to something and say, hey, I did vote for something. I do support doing something. No member of Congress really right now wants to go home and say they did nothing. Franco, how does the White House feel about maybe not having any more relief bills to sign? I mean, I think this is something that the White House is interested in. I mean, I think like members of Congress, they don't want to leave this kind of open and open-handed. You know, the White House is interested in reaching a deal that would work. But at the end of the day, the White House doesn't want to be blamed for not, you know, succeeding on this. I think Democrats think they have the upper hand here because one, generally speaking,

government assistance is popular. The stuff that Congress passed earlier this year has been hugely popular with the public. So saying we want more of that isn't a bad place to be. I think Republicans look at the economy and think it's turning around. Unemployment is closer to 8% now. The comparisons to the Great Depression have seemed sort of overblown. And while there is clearly a lot of economic and personal struggling and suffering still going on, I don't think that they feel as fearful that not agreeing to another multi-trillion dollar package is going to be the political end of them. I think this is a big, big risk. I mean, we know, as we've talked about, the pandemic is probably the driving factor in so many Americans' lives and votes, especially the ones that will

decide this election. So doing nothing is kind of a jump ball of who do voters blame on this. Right, especially since something you, more than anybody in the podcast, has kept reminding us all year, these relief bills, unemployment compensation, some of the medical aspects as well, are things that voters are paying much more attention to than the typical congressional bill that just kind of goes in one ear and out the other for most people if they pay attention at all. Totally. There's not a single household or person in this country that hasn't been affected by the pandemic and thinking about it. So when Congress does nothing, they're aware of it.

All right, we're going to take a quick break. Franco, you've had a long day. You're on Up First. We will say goodbye to you. Thanks for talking. Thank you, guys. And when we get back, we'll talk about one more important story that's been a little bit under the radar. A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower says he was told to downplay threats about Russian electoral interference because he says they made the president look bad. I'm Lisa Hagan. And I'm Chris Haxel. We're the hosts of No Compromise, NPR's new podcast

exploring one family's mission to reconstruct America using two powerful tools, guns and Facebook. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Join us for the No Compromise podcast from NPR. And we're back. And Phil Ewing is now on the line. Hey, Phil. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. So we have another whistleblower complaint making headlines. This time it's out of the Department of Homeland Security. What's the gist of this complaint? This complaint is by a man named Brian Murphy. He's the principal deputy undersecretary for DHS, for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, or at least he was until he was reassigned. He says that reassignment was the result of some clashes with the Trump administration. He claims

that it is imposing political filters and political requirements on the intelligence work that he and his colleagues were doing. There were a couple of examples of this in his complaint, but the bottom line is it's another insider in the world of intelligence and national security complaining that his work has become politicized and that the expectations from the White House is that he'll say what they want him to say, as opposed to what the reality is that his sources and detectors and sensors are telling him. How specific are the allegations in the report? Were things in writing? Were they verbal directives? What is he saying Trump administration officials did? In addition to alluding to what the whistleblower calls inappropriate directions from the White House,

he also drops the names of a lot of people we know who are leaders at DHS, current or former leaders. They include Kirstjen Nielsen, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, the current acting secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, who's another top official at the agency. And according to this whistleblower complaint, they were all involved with efforts to shape and color and influence reporting being done by the intelligence shop at DHS about the things that it was seeing or learning, what this whistleblower says is those officials were telling the intelligence people what they should be seeing or learning because of the political aims of the Trump administration. And most famously,

his allegation in this report is that DHS basically told him, first of all, don't tell us anything about Russian interference in the election. The White House, the National Security Council, they don't want to know that. And second of all, when you do talk about election interference, according to his allegation, make sure that you phrase it as though it's one of a number of nations. So the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians, as part of a talking point that has been a favorite one for the president and the White House for several years, that kind of everybody does this and a lot of nations are involved, but just don't make it be about Russia and instead make it be about a very complicated environment. And this guy says that doesn't track with what he knows to be the case.

And so he's decided to blow the whistle. And Phil, this is just an initial complaint. We'll get into where it could lead in a moment, but feels very fair to say that what he's alleging fits into a much broader pattern that we've seen over and over again in different departments and areas of a crash between the political and the career professional experts in the Trump administration. For years and years and across the federal government, the president and the White House have had a lot of what they would consider political problems with their top aides across the family. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, when he was around, said that Iran remained in compliance with the Obama-era nuclear deal, even though the president wanted to abrogate America's involvement in it, which he then did.

But as Mattis told Congress, there was no justification to do so because the Iranians were following it. The intelligence community assessed that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, was never going to surrender his nuclear weapons even though that was the main plank of Trump's diplomatic overtures to North Korea. And as we know, that hasn't happened either. Now we have another example of somebody from inside the intelligence and national security world saying,

the things that we know to be so don't track with what the White House is saying for its own political purposes. And that creates a lot of tension. How has DHS responded to the complaint? The Trump administration is saying that they don't know who this guy is, that he's someone so far down in the bureaucracy that they'd never heard of him before. That was one specific point made by Robert O'Brien, the National Security Advisor. He said, I've never heard of this guy. I don't know what this is about.

And he and the National Security Council officials who've talked about this have rejected this idea that they pushed down conclusions before the fact to analysts and people inside the intelligence world about their work. So, Sue, this complaint comes, it's September 10th of an election year. What, if anything, can Congress do about it? The overwhelming reaction on Capitol Hill, to no surprise, has come from Democrats who see this as a pattern of behavior from this administration, and they want to draw attention to it. To the question of what can Congress do about it, aside from investigations and hearings, not much.

And Congress is also preparing to get out of town by the end of the month and go home and campaign for the stretch into the election day. All right. That is it for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow with our weekly roundup. In the meantime, you can check out all the other places we're reporting by checking out the links in your episode description. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Phil Ewing, election security editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.