Loading summary
Transcript44 lines
- [00:00]
A
Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza. With conflict unfolding in so many places, firsthand reporting has never mattered more NPR supporters power that work. They make it possible for our journalists to go where news is happening. And supporters get perks for NPR podcasts, things like bonus episodes, archive access and more. You can sign up at plus.npr.org.
- [00:29]
B
Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics politics.
- [00:32]
C
I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department.
- [00:34]
D
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [00:38]
B
Today on the podcast, we dig into actions by the Trump administration that experts say are undermining the fight against public corruption. Ryan, you've been reporting on this. Can you tell us what you found?
- [00:49]
C
Well, there are two things in particular that I looked at when looking at the question of public corruption. One of them is pardons that President Trump has issued for former elected officials and their co conspirators. And I found that there are at least 15 former elected officials and co conspirators of theirs convicted of or charged with corruption that the president has pardoned this term. So since January of last year, that's an average of almost one a month. And the examples run from a former Arkansas state lawmaker, former Tennessee state house speaker, antizaid. They were convicted in a kickback scheme with taxpayer funded mailer services. The one that really sticks out to me is a former Las Vegas councilwoman named Michelle Fiore. She was convicted of pocketing $70,000 in donations meant to build memorials to slain police officers and instead spending money on cosmetic surgery rent her daughter's wedding. Of the 15 pardons, more than half are for Republicans or Trump supporters. So there does appear to be a partisan angle on this. I asked the White House if they have any comment on my findings. And what they said in a statement was that President Trump has exercised his constitutional authority to issue pardons and commutations, including those who have been victims of Biden's weaponized justice system. And they went on to say that the only pardons anyone should be critical of are from President Auto Pen, which is a reference to President Biden. And I will also say that the president has made clear that he thinks that he was the victim of a weaponized justice system during the Biden administration against him, that he was targeted, targeted as a political opponent of President Biden, and that's why he faced the prosecutions that he did during his time out of office.
- [02:43]
B
You mentioned there are two parts, though you just mentioned presidential pardons. What's the other part of this?
- [02:48]
C
So the Other thing that I looked at is what's going on at the Justice Department and in particular it's the dismantling of the Public Integrity Section. This was a unit that was created after Watergate. It investigates and prosecutes public corruption crimes, election crimes across the country. And I found that at the start of the Trump administration there were 35 to 40 attorneys, people who worked in that specialized unit. That number has now dropped to just two full time attorneys. At the start of the Trump administration, I found that the unit had 150 to 200 open matters. So investigations charged cases. That number has dropped to around 2:20. There are a few reasons for that huge drop in the number of cases that they're investigating. One is they, you know, they decline some investigations. Some cases have been handed off to U.S. attorneys offices. Now from what I've been told, these are very resource intensive cases. They take a lot of time, effort. So cases that are handed off to U.S. attorney's offices often end up just getting dropped. They basically disappear. So those don't move forward. So these are two very critical parts of kind of looking at overall how this administration is approaching the question of public corruption. And I reached out to the Justice Department for comment on this story. They did not get back to me with a response.
- [04:14]
D
Ryan, to the extent that some of these pardons are for Democrats, you said more than half of them are Republicans. That means there's a bunch that aren't Republicans. Is there some theme to the kind of Democrats that are getting these pardons?
- [04:27]
C
There are a couple names of people who have received pardons and I'll run them past you and see if they what you make of them. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is one of them. Trump commuted his sentence in his first term. He gave him a full pardon this term. There's Henry Cuellar, Democratic congressman from Texas and his wife.
- [04:47]
D
Yes, and Henry Cuellar. Trump wanted him to switch parties and thought he would switch parties, but he didn't. So the point is the Democrats that he's pardoning are people that he thought would become his allies or supporters.
- [04:59]
C
Or in the case of Blagojevich, I think it's someone who he saw as having gone through similar tribulations with the Justice Department to what he went through.
- [05:08]
D
Yeah, this is very much a Trump centric thing.
- [05:10]
B
I wanna go back to what was happening at the Justice Department when all these folks were leaving. You had mentioned some cases got passed off. Was something else going on. Cuz that is a huge drop in just personnel.
- [05:22]
C
Well, the dismantling of the section began with the Eric Adams case, the case against the then mayor of New York, Eric Adams, who had been brought up on corruption charges. The Trump Justice Department wanted those cases dismissed. They tried to force the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan to do so. The acting U.S. attorney and several folks there resigned. The leadership of the Trump Justice Department then tried to pass the case over to the Public Integrity Section and told them to dismiss the case. And you had leadership of the publican Integrity Section resign in protest. And ultimately that was what was really the start of the dismantling of the section. And you have had people leave by choice, resigning because they didn't want to do certain things. You've had people be moved out. But the bottom line is they have gone from almost 40, around 40 attorneys down to just.
- [06:20]
B
Yeah. I do wonder, Ryan, like, what this means for ordinary people who live in the places where, like, folks like this were pardoned. Like, what does this mean for their everyday lives?
- [06:31]
C
So from the conversations that I, that I have had, it's my understanding that the big city U.S. attorney's offices, think LA, Chicago, New York, they have the resources to do these sorts of cases. The hardest hit areas are going to be smaller states, rural areas, because that's where the Public Integrity Section brought resources, the independence to step in and hold state and local officials to account. And some of the most meaningful cases that they have done have been in places like that. And so if they're not there to bring those cases anymore, those cases aren't going to be brought. So one example of that would be there was a prosecution of a former small town Pennsylvania police officer who was convicted of bribery and other crimes, including using his position to obtain sex from two women in exchange for favors in prosecutions. That's the sort of case that the Public Integrity Section could bring that had direct impact on the community. And again, if the Public Integrity Section is gutted, these sorts of cases are not being.
- [07:37]
B
Yeah.
- [07:37]
D
And politically, I mean, to the extent that ordinary Americans in these places know about this, know that these cases were dropped, we already have a historically low trust in government. And this will make it even worse. It's just, I think Americans are very cynical about government and this feeds right into that.
- [07:56]
C
Corruption has such a corrosive effect, and if it's allowed to go unchecked, it just leads to more disillusionment with the system, with government, with public officials who are serving themselves first and not the public.
- [08:11]
B
Right. Like, there will be a chilling effect on potentially on people coming forward because they presume there's no cops on the beat to monitor this stuff. I do wonder, though, Mara, like, what you make of how this fits into the sort of larger picture of how the Trump administration has operated and how they view a lot of these public functions that we had that are supposed to be checks on, like the rule of law.
- [08:35]
D
I think this is the bigger picture of what we've seen from the Trump administration cynical view of politics. It's the rule of law is not important. It's the rule of one guy. And this is the flip side of Donald Trump's retaliation and revenge agenda. He has made it very explicit. He has gone to the Justice Department and asked them to go after his political opponents. And if you're on his side, he gives you a pardon. If you're James Comey or somebody who investigated him, you're going to be prosecuted. And that's the opposite of what a democratic republic is supposed to be. The rule of law is supposed to be the law applies to everyone equally. It's not about one unchecked, all powerful executive. So I think this really fits in. I also think that Donald Trump has a very, very cynical view of power, which is everything's corrupt, everything is rigged. Just stick with your tribe or your team, because the whole system is corrupt. So I think it does fit into this bigger picture. We saw him give pardons to over a thousand January 6th defendants. They weren't accused of public corruption, but many of them had been convicted of violent crimes. And he pardoned them because if you commit a crime on his behalf, that's okay with him.
- [09:52]
C
And this is where there's an oft cited tweet from the official at the Justice Department who was leading the pardon effort, Ed Martin, who tweeted at one point, no MAGA left behind. And that kind of.
- [10:05]
D
I think, I think that sums it up. I mean, no MAGA left behind. If you are a member of our team, we're going to take care of you. And if you're not, you're going to be punished. It's part and parcel with what we just saw this week in the primaries in places like Indiana, where he waded into Republican primaries to defeat people who refused to do the partisan gerrymandering exercise that he wanted them to do. So this is how he governs. And he has a view of the presidency that is unchecked and all powerful.
- [10:36]
B
All right, we're going to take a quick break. More in a moment. And we're back. And Ryan, we've seen actually like a couple of Very high profile prosecutions from the Trump Justice Department against current or former public officials, people like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. Are those at all related to the dismantling of the Public Integrity Section at the doj?
- [10:59]
C
So that's an interesting question, and I think to answer it, the best thing to do is to kind of explain how the Public Integrity Section works. The section has two roles. One is, as I said, prosecuting public corruption cases, election crime cases across the country. But it had a second role as kind of a gatekeeper, an advisory role, approving very sensitive political investigations, public corruption cases, election cases, because it has a level of expertise. It's an apolitical section, and that would ensure a level of consistency. That consulting role has been suspended by this Justice Department. It provided a bulwark against the politicization, one could say, of cases. So people that I spoke with think that the section was dismantled in part to eliminate a check on the political leadership, on efforts to politicize prosecutions, politicize investigations, to prevent department leaders from driving individual cases, especially against adversaries like Letitia James and James Comey. There's one other aspect that I think is important to raise, which is there could also be a retribution angle to dismantling the Public Integrity Section, which is it weighed in on prosecutions of now President Trump on legal matters in those. So people that I spoke with think that the, the gutting of the Public Integrity Section, the goal of it may not be to eliminate, reduce efforts to check public corruption. That may be a side effect of trying to eliminate a political check on the leadership.
- [12:46]
D
You know, the other thing that's interesting about these prosecutions of Trump's opponents, which to me is the flip side of the pardons, the flip side of the deciding that public corruption is not a priority, is that Ed Martin said something else in addition to no MAGA Left behind, which I think is almost like the motto of this administration, because loyalty to Trump is the coin of the realm. He said, we don't care if we get a conviction. We just want to name and shame them and cost them a lot of money. And that's the idea that maybe you're not going to get convicted. As a matter of fact, Brian can give us the scorecard. I don't think very many of these retribution cases have succeeded, but they've succeeded in costing these people a tremendous amount of money.
- [13:32]
C
The initial cases against Letitia James and James Comey that were brought in the Eastern District of Virginia, those were both tossed By a judge. Other cases have not found success. But again, as you said, the naming and shaming, the cost of the prosecution themselves adds up.
- [13:49]
D
Yeah. Not everyone is James Comey, who has enough money to hire a really great lawyer.
- [13:55]
B
I mean, what does this all mean, Mara, for the next president, like the next administration? Do you think anyone who comes in now can basically use the Justice Department like this as a personal law firm? Score setter.
- [14:09]
D
I think that that is one of the biggest questions about the post Trump era in American politics. Does somebody else come in and just kind of pocket all of the changes he made in the balance of powers between the three branches, meaning that the executive is all powerful and Congress is kind of withered and the judiciary just stands aside? Or do they try to reform this? Do they try to go back to a system where we did have the rule of law and where we. We did have three co. Equal branches of government? I don't think the next president, whoever he or she may be, Democrat or Republican, is gonna wanna give up some of these new powers. Now. Maybe some of these people, prospective new presidents, will feel that what Trump did had a very corrosive effect and it's not a good idea for the president of a democratic republic to act like this. But I think we just don't know.
- [15:02]
B
Yeah. So, Ryan, you had mentioned that a lot of this system that we're talking about, which is aimed at fighting public corruption, came about 50 years ago in the wake of Watergate. I am curious, though, how long would it take to rebuild that if the next administration would want to?
- [15:21]
C
That is a big question, and it's one that I often ask people who have left the Justice Department. And it's not a question with an easy answer, because you're talking about rebuilding norms, rebuilding staff. I mean, there's been a mass exodus from the Justice Department. And that's not just the Public Integrity section that's been hollowed out. The Civil Rights Division has been hollowed out. You can go across the board. So there's staff, there's morale. There's also the question of the credibility of the Justice Department before the American people and before the courts. Because we have seen time after time rulings from judges basically saying that we don't trust what the Justice Department has said to us. We've had people threaten to be held in contempt. The standing and credibility of the Justice Department attorneys before federal courts has been greatly, greatly diminished.
- [16:14]
D
Well, you know, the interesting thing about Watergate, which was a huge public corruption scandal, there were a lot of norms that Richard Nixon burst through and dismantled, just like Trump is throwing norms overboard every day. And after Watergate, there were a lot of reform, mostly Democrats elected to Congress. And they decided that they had to codify some of these norms into law. They couldn't just assume that the president would act in a certain way. You asked the question about could the United States rebuild what the Trump administration has dismantled? It's possible that a future Congress could want to enact some laws about the president not being able to enrich himself and his family or somehow putting up guardrails. So the Department of Justice is truly independent, even though it's part of the executive branch. I mean, there are things that could be done, but it would take an activist Congress who really wants to do these things. And we haven't seen that for a long time.
- [17:10]
C
I was about to say I don't cover Congress, but I haven't seen a lot of activists.
- [17:14]
D
I mean, don't hold your breath, but if you're asking the question is what could be rebuilt? It would have to take a kind of anti corruption reform movement and a bunch of people in Congress who want to do that.
- [17:26]
C
And likely bipartisan.
- [17:27]
D
Yeah, absolutely.
- [17:28]
B
And political will usually driven by voters, right?
- [17:30]
D
Yeah.
- [17:30]
B
Like this would have to be in the public. All right. Well, thank you for your reporting, Ryan. Let's leave it there for today. Tomorrow on the podcast, we'll have our weekly news roundup where we talk about some of the political news we haven't gotten to yet. Don't miss it. Hit the follow button wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
- [17:49]
C
I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department.
- [17:51]
D
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
- [17:54]
B
And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.