Up First from NPR - Turmoil in Russia, Trump Attorney on Trial, SCOTUS Immigration Ruling

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin accuses a former ally of treason. The California State Bar seeks to revoke the law license of a pro-Trump attorney. The Supreme Court upholds the Biden administration's priorities for which kind of migrants to detain.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Russian President Vladimir Putin is accusing the leader of a mercenary group that helped invade Ukraine of treason. That's after the head of the Wagner group said he's marching on Moscow. We'll have the latest. I'm Miles Parks. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. Lawyer John Eastman helped Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election. Now Eastman is trying to keep his law license. The California State Bar called him fundamentally dishonest.

And the U.S. Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a big win yesterday. It upheld the administration's new guidelines for which migrants should be detained. So what does that mean for other migrant cases? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service

to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Extraordinary scenes from Russia this morning. The head of the Wagner Group accused the defense minister of attacking his troops and said he intended to replace the Russian military's top leadership. In a speech, Putin denounced the actions and vowed to hold its organizers to account. NPR's Charles Maines in Moscow is following all of this, and he's on the line. Hi, Charles.

Morning. So just bring us up to speed. What is behind this feud between the head of the Wagner Group and the Defense Ministry? Yeah, you know, for months, Yevgeny Prigozhin has publicly criticized Russia's Defense Ministry over perceived failures amid the war in Ukraine, all while promoting the successes of his own mercenary group, the Wagner Group, on the battlefield. Now, to observers, the back-and-forth sniping seemed part of a larger fight for favor in the Kremlin and the financial and political capital that would come with it. Yet Prigozhin appeared to cross a red line in a video posted to his Telegram account Friday. Let's listen.

So here Prigozhin accuses the defense ministry's top brass of hyping the threat from Ukraine last year and duping President Vladimir Putin and the country into a flawed invasion. In other words, he's calling into question the rationale for the war itself. Prigozhin also insisted that deception continues, and he insulted the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, in personal and vulgar terms. And in a video posted a few hours later, Prigozhin went on to accuse Shoigu and his generals of ordering a strike that killed a large number of Wagner fighters. Although that claim hasn't been independently verified, Prigozhin nonetheless is calling on his forces to remove the defense

minister in response. So as you note, this seems to be part of a battle for Putin's favor. What has the Russian president said about all this? Yeah, you know, for months, the debate here has been, you know, is Putin intentionally letting this rivalry fester, or is he simply unable to stop it? Many lean towards the former, if only because it seemed to be producing better results on the battlefield. You'll remember that Wagner, with some help from Russian troops, took the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after months of fighting. That was earlier this summer. Yet in a televised address to the nation this morning,

Putin made it clear that this time Prigozhin had finally gone too far. So here Putin says those who had organized the military uprising and taken up arms against Russian soldiers had betrayed the country and would pay the price. Meanwhile, authorities have launched an anti-terrorist operation to restore order, and Russia's FSB, the Federal Security Services, have formally charged Prokhorin with inciting an armed revolt. And that carries a possible 12 to 20 years in prison if convicted. So where does this all go from here? I mean, this is all happening against the backdrop of a Ukrainian counteroffensive. Yeah, this is really the other point in Putin's speech. He drew parallels with other times in

Russian history when internal fighting had thrown the country into deep political turmoil. And Putin said that at a moment when Russia is fighting in Ukraine against what he calls the collective West, in other words, against NATO, that this was not the time. And yet here we are in what looks like a full-blown crisis. Despite Putin's attempts to stamp out this rebellion, Prokhorin and his Wagner mercenaries control several military installations in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. That's a key military hub for the war effort in Ukraine. Russia's defense ministry says Wagner forces are marching on Moscow. And Prokhorin says neither he nor his

fighters are about to surrender on the orders of the president, the FSB, or anybody else. NPR's Charles Maines in Moscow. Thank you so much. Thank you. Proceedings to revoke the California law license of Trump attorney John Eastman began this week. And they're putting the former president's fraudulent claims about the 2020 election under scrutiny as well. NPR's Tom Dreisbach has been covering this trial all week. Good morning. Hey, good morning. So there were a lot of lawyers working with Trump to challenge the 2020 election.

Can you remind us what Eastman's role was in all of that? Yeah. So if people remember the pro-Trump rally on January 6th, just before the Capitol riot, Eastman was this guy on stage with a kind of Indiana Jones type hat standing alongside Rudy Giuliani firing up the crowd. And at the rally, he made this just baseless claim that the voting machines had a, quote, secret folder of votes that was used to steal the election from Trump. Eastman was also behind the scenes, the architect of this plan for Vice President Pence to stop

the count of electoral college votes and block Biden's victory. So he was both filing lawsuits that included some of these claims of fraud and voting irregularities. And also at the same time, he was advancing this legal theory that Pence could overturn the election and working on sending alternate pro-Trump slates of electors to the Electoral College. After the insurrection on January 6th, Eastman wrote an email to Rudy Giuliani asking Trump to add him to the list of pardons he heard was going around, but ultimately he did not receive that pardon. So how is the state bar making the case that Eastman should lose his license? For one thing, the state bar argues that Eastman was either

knowingly making false claims of election fraud, or he was willfully blind to the fact that the information he was providing was false. And that just goes against professional responsibilities for lawyers, they argue. We also heard testimony this week from Greg Jacob. He was a counsel to Vice President Pence. Behind the scenes, he was pushing back on Eastman's plan. And Jacob testified that Eastman admitted to him that if they actually tried Eastman's plan for Pence to stop the electoral college count, that the Supreme Court would probably

overrule them nine to nothing. So in other words, the state bar is trying to show Eastman knew this plan was unconstitutional, and he tried it anyway. Jacob testified he thought Eastman's plan probably helped contribute to the riot too. So the state bar is still making its case. Do we have any sense of what Eastman's defense will be? Right. So while we have the state bar calling several election officials who are testifying the election was safe and secure and there was no widespread fraud, Eastman's list of witnesses includes some pretty well-known election deniers, you know, suggesting he wants to put the election itself on trial in some way. You know, he wants to show that he had a good faith reason to believe there was election fraud in 2020. For example, Eastman wants to call Mark Fincham, this is a far right Arizona politician, member of the Oath Keepers, prominent election denier. He wants to call a CPA, not an election expert, who wrote an e-book about the 2020 election. And this guy, Douglas Frank, who's a former high school teacher who now travels around the country doing presentations on why he thinks the election was stolen. No, Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy? Not Mike Lindell, but Doug Frank is quite close to Mike Lindell, though. OK, so I mean, so this is really kind of the greatest hits of the election denial movement.

Any sense of whether that will work? I mean, in the past, judges really haven't had much patience for these sorts of theories. They have not succeeded. Yeah, I talked to one legal expert who said Eastman really does face an uphill battle here. The scheme where alternate or fake pro-Trump electors were sent to the electoral college, that's already now under federal criminal investigation. The FBI seized Eastman's phone last year. And the fraud claims have also been debunked again and again. One of the claims Eastman relied on came from a guy with a criminal record and a side gig as an amateur ghost hunter.

Eastman testified in court this week that he was not aware of the ghost hunting. In any case, I'm eager to see what happens next. We're going to expect to see Eastman present his defense case and then his witnesses face questioning under oath. I get the sense that these proceedings are being pretty widely watched, which seems rare for what is essentially an administrative issue in a single state. Why is that, do you think? You know, for the last two and a half years since the riot, we've seen a lot of legal consequences for people who actually breached the U.S. Capitol and entered the building and committed violence. We have not seen really legal consequences in a large part for the politicians and lawyers who

led the so-called Stop the Steal movement. So I think there's a lot of interest in whether the system will impose some legal consequences on a person like John Eastman, or as John Eastman would like it, you know, if the judge will find that he was simply fulfilling his duty as a zealous advocate for his client, Donald Trump. NPR's Tom Dreisbach, thank you. Thanks. The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the Biden administration's strategy for immigration enforcement. The strategy puts less emphasis on detaining immigrants who are already in the U.S. without authorization. NPR's Joel Rose covers immigration, and he joins us now.

Hi, Joel. Hey, Miles. So tell us a little bit more about this case. What was at stake? Yeah, this is a closely watched case because what's at stake is really how much authority the Biden administration or any administration has to set immigration policy. It's widely agreed that there are not enough resources for immigration and customs enforcement to simply arrest everyone who is in the country without authorization.

So the Biden administration said, we want to use our prosecutorial discretion to set priorities, to focus on suspected terrorists, on threats to public safety, and on recent border crossers. And crucially, under this guidance, simply being present in the U.S. without authorization is generally not a reason to detain someone. These priorities were quickly challenged in court by the states of Texas and Louisiana, and they argued that the guidelines go far beyond the priorities of past administrations and are basically preventing immigration authorities from doing their jobs. The lower court agreed and blocked this guidance last year.

Okay, so what did the Supreme Court decide? The court ruled that Texas and Louisiana lacked the standing to challenge these guidelines in the first place because the states had not shown a direct injury from these enforcement priorities, at least not one that could be redressed by the courts. The vote was eight to one. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's liberals. There were several concurring opinions from the other conservatives that reach roughly the same conclusion, but by slightly different legal rationales. Only Justice Samuel Alito dissented, finding that Texas and Louisiana should have been able to sue

in this case. This feels like a pretty big win for the Biden administration. Is that right? It's definitely a win in the short run, because the Biden administration. Is that right? It's definitely a win in the short run because the Biden administration can officially begin enforcing these priorities again. In the long run, I think it's harder to say. In the majority opinion, Justice Kavanaugh writes several times about how narrow this decision is, that the court decided the standing questions on the facts that were before it in this case, but that there might be another case where the states would have standing to sue. So some legal analysts are saying, do not read too much into this case, but that there might be another case where the states would have standing to sue. So some legal analysts are saying, do not read too much into this ruling, including Stephen Yell Lair, who teaches law at Cornell University. The court's decision was pretty narrow. From a larger legal perspective, it doesn't really

resolve the issue of when states can and cannot sue to challenge federal policies, whether they're immigration or otherwise. And so the battle will continue on those fronts. Well, and the Biden administration has been sued a number of times by Texas and other states over its immigration policies. What does this ruling mean for in those other instances? That's really the big question. I mean, we're talking about cases with a lot at stake. There's a case about the future, for example, of deferred action for childhood arrivals or DACA, you know, that is likely heading for the Supreme Court. DACA, by the way, protects immigrants who are brought to the U.S. as children. So this decision on standing

could be a big deal. Certainly, it's going to give the Biden administration and immigrant advocates fresh ammunition to argue that states that are challenging these policies should not get standing in those cases either. What we really don't know is how well that argument is going to work, right? I mean, how much weight lower court judges will decide to give this Supreme Court ruling. I think the bottom line is that there's going to be more litigation. You know, this is the second time in two years that the Supreme Court has sided with the Biden administration against states in these big immigration cases. But that ruling last year did not stop states from challenging immigration policies in court. I don't think this one is

likely to do that either. That's NPR's Joel Rose. Thank you so much for monitoring this, Joel. You're welcome. And that's Up First for Saturday, June 24th, 2023. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Myles Parks. Today's episode of Up First was edited, June 24th, 2023. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Myles Parks. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Robert Little, Denise Rios, Ishan Tahaya, Hadil Alshalji, and Matthew Sherman. It was produced by Andrew Craig and Michael Radcliffe and directed by Danny Hensel with engineering support from Hannah Glovna.

Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Our executive producer is Sarah Oliver. And our deputy managing editor is Catherine Laidlaw. Engineering support from Hannah Glovna. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Our executive producer is Sarah Oliver. And our deputy managing editor is Catherine Laidlaw. This podcast is back tomorrow. Aisha, what's on Sunday up first? So tomorrow we have an investigation into sexual misconduct in the addiction treatment industry. It comes after the founder of New Hampshire's largest addiction treatment network was accused of sexually harassing women. For more great reports like that one, as well as all the

latest news and more, find us on the radio every Saturday and Sunday morning on Weekend Edition from NPR News. Find your NPR station at stations.npr.org.