MOLLY: Hi. This is Molly (ph) at American University, where I just turned in my last final exam for Professor Ron Elving’s class on Congress and legislative behavior.
SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
Aw.
DEIRDRE WALSH, BYLINE: Aw.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: (Laughter).
WALSH: Nice.
MOLLY: This podcast was recorded at…
DAVIS: 12:10 p.m. on Friday, December 13.
MOLLY: Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will be looking forward to a relaxing winter break. OK, here’s the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIG TOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
WALSH: Ron, you got to give her an A.
DAVIS: That’s so great.
LUCAS: (Laughter).
DAVIS: Professor Elving. I would love to take one of Ron’s classes. Maybe I’ll sign back up and go back to AU, my alma mater. Hey, there. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
WALSH: I’m Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress.
LUCAS: And I’m Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department.
DAVIS: And that Justice Department released a long-awaited report on the FBI’s role around the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Ryan, what are the big takeaways?
LUCAS: Hoo (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
LUCAS: Well, this is a report that we’ve been waiting almost four years for, to be – to look at the calendar here, it’s almost been four years. So it’s important to lay out here that the FBI was not in charge of security or intelligence gathering for the events of January 6, 2021. That responsibility fell to the U.S. Capitol Police, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and then the Park Police.
DAVIS: And we should note that the shortcomings of those agencies have been widely documented in congressional investigations.
LUCAS: Right. And this Justice Department inspector general report looks at specifically – it’s pretty narrow – it’s the FBI’s intelligence gathering and use of confidential human sources – we would refer to them colloquially as informants – in the lead-up to January 6. What the inspector general found is that the FBI, ahead of January 6, recognized that there was a potential for violence, that it took appropriate steps to prepare – for example, trying to identify known domestic extremists who planned to be in D.C. for January 6.
But the inspector general found that there was a basic step that the FBI did not take, and that is that it did not canvass all of its field offices about potential threats specifically to the certification on January 6. Doing so is common practice ahead of big events. Kind of gives the FBI a fuller understanding, as much as possible, of a threat picture, and it can then share that information and make necessary operational decisions with law enforcement. In this instance, it didn’t do that. From the report, it looks like it just kind of fell through the cracks. There were other canvassing things that they did related to the inauguration, but specifically to January 6, it did not. I will also say that the report doesn’t suggest that doing so would have drastically changed what happened on January 6. It’s just that this is one of those basic steps that it could have taken that might have helped.
DAVIS: And, Ryan, what predicated this report?
LUCAS: Well, look. After the January 6 attack, there were a ton of questions about how this was able to happen because there had been public reporting about potential threats, a threat of violence on January 6. And so nine days after the events of January 6, on January 15, the Justice Department’s inspector general announced that it was going to look at the role of the Justice Department, the FBI, and how they prepared for and then responded to the events on January 6. So that’s what this review comes out of.
DAVIS: This also comes at a time when the FBI is under immense scrutiny, and particularly from the incoming president. So any report that sort of puts a black mark on the agency, it’s not great timing for them.
WALSH: There have been, for years, questions raised by lawmakers about the FBI’s role that day. Who was there that day? All these conspiracy theories about people in the crowd…
DAVIS: Yeah.
WALSH: …And their relationship to the FBI.
LUCAS: Right. There were these theories that the FBI somehow instigated the January 6 Capitol attack. This report does look at that. And the inspector general found that there were no undercover FBI employees in the protest crowd on January 6. The report found that there were 26 FBI informants who were in D.C. on that day. Three of them had been tasked specifically by the FBI with reporting on domestic terrorists who might attend. So this is the sort of work that you would want the FBI to be doing. None of the informants were authorized to enter the Capitol. None of the informants were authorized to break the law or encourage others to do so. And this is really pushing back on this idea that…
WALSH: Right.
LUCAS: …As you noted, that there are these conspiracy theories that the FBI was very much behind this, instigating the violence. And the inspector general says, not the case.
WALSH: Right. And Ryan, you know better than I do, but in terms of law enforcement working with informants and what they’re able to communicate and control what they do – sometimes kind of limited. Especially in this kind of environment where there just were, like, thousands of people.
LUCAS: There were thousands of people. And in this instance, there – you know, they weren’t supposed to go into the Capitol. They were not authorized to go into the Capitol. There were 26 there that day, as I said. Four of the informants entered the Capitol itself on January 6. Another 13 of them entered a restricted area around the Capitol, and then nine of them didn’t do either. None of them have been prosecuted for this. They weren’t, according to the report, involved in any violence or anything. But, yeah, you can’t control what happens in the flow of, you know, something chaotic like January 6.
One other thing that the report notes is that the FBI was getting information from these informants about various groups who were potentially going to be in D.C. that day, including the Oath Keepers, members of the Proud Boys – two extremist groups, whose – members of some of them have been charged and convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with January 6. But one of the big questions hanging over all of this until this report now was did information, intelligence that would have headed this off beforehand, did any of that slip through the cracks? And according to this report, the answer to that question as well is no.
DAVIS: It’s interesting to me because this report seems to completely close the chapter on this idea that FBI informants were somehow involved in instigating the attack on the Capitol. But Deirdre, yes, it’s a conspiracy theory, but I think it’s worth noting that this is a theory that’s also taken hold within the halls of Congress. There have been certain lawmakers – I’m thinking of Clay Higgins – who’s a Republican from Louisiana – who has very publicly raised doubts about that. He even publicly questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray about it at one point in a hearing. I’m not sure that even an official government report is going to end that debate.
WALSH: I agree. The FBI is still housed at the Justice Department, which a lot of House Republicans, including the one you mentioned, criticize as weaponizing the department broadly against its political enemies. So I don’t think – even though it’s a independent report and an investigation that’s on an issue that members of Congress have been pushing back on for years. And this issue came up over and over again during the January 6 investigation, and we talked about the problems with the law enforcement sharing information at the Capitol, and the leadership in the Capitol police, etc, responding to things – I still think that Republicans will largely ignore this report, and for the part that is critical of the FBI, glom onto that as furthering their own argument that the agency has to be overhauled.
LUCAS: Do you think Republicans writ large, or just the Republicans such as Clay Higgins, who are disinclined to believe anything coming out of the current Justice Department or FBI?
WALSH: I think the shift in the Republican Party is really remarkable on the issue of their attitude towards the Justice Department and the FBI. These are agencies that Republicans, pre-Donald Trump, you know, largely supported and praised and supported funding in their investigations. I think the skepticism in the party and the attitude towards these agencies is something that is become more widespread than just sort of the election denial crowd that talks more about the 2020 election. I think that there are, you know, a lot of sort of mainstream Republicans who are critical of the Justice Department and the FBI.
LUCAS: Still, despite the fact that you may not convince people who are inclined to believe conspiracy theories about the FBI’s role, I think that it’s worthwhile to have on the record from an independent watchdog within the Justice Department, who conducted a four-year investigation to say, this is what we found. And so the rest of the country can look at it and decide whether they want to believe it or not, but these are the facts as discovered by the department’s inspector general, an independent internal watchdog. And that in and of itself, I think, holds value.
DAVIS: All right. Ryan, thank you so much.
LUCAS: Thank you.
DAVIS: Deirdre, you stick around. We’re going to take a break. More in a moment.
And we’re back. And NPR’s Deepa Shivaram is with us. Hey, Deepa.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Hey.
DAVIS: So, earlier this week, President Biden issued the biggest set of one-day pardons and commutations ever. What kind of people were the target of this?
SHIVARAM: Yeah. So this was a big, sweeping use of the clemency power that President Biden used. And it was kind of broken up into two categories. So it was, like, about 1,500 people had their sentences commuted and then an additional 39 people were pardoned. And, you know, these are all pretty much regular folks. The group of about 1,500 people are people who, during the COVID pandemic, were in prisons. And you guys remember, like, that was one of the places that COVID was spreading the most, right? You can’t really quarantine in an area that’s super-confined and closed. And so because there were people in prison who were at risk of dying or contracting the disease, spreading the disease, they moved them into home confinements. And that happened under the Trump administration in an emergency kind of order.
So these folks – about 1,500 of them – whose sentences were commuted have been on home confinement, out of prison for at least a year. And those were the people who Biden commuted their sentences for. And so that means that they were previously at risk for maybe getting sent back to prison to finish their sentence. Now their sentences have ended. And these are people who, you know, have been living in society, obviously on home confinement, but have been out of prison for a while now.
The other group of people were 39 individuals who were pardoned. These are not, like, famous names. These are people who the president says have contributed to their communities. Many of them were women and veterans. A lot of them were folks who were doing work to give back to their communities in ways of, you know, working with folks who had also been formally incarcerated, working with people who had substance abuse issues. And they were all people who had been convicted of nonviolent crimes, many of them drug-related crimes.
DAVIS: Deirdre, it’s hard not to see this through a bit of a political lens because not too long ago, President Biden pardoned his son Hunter. And there was a bit of an angry reaction from within the party, and a lot of top Democrats saying, hey – like, that’s cool, but maybe you should focus on regular people that deserve clemency. And he just did exactly that. Even if it wasn’t intentionally reactive, it kind of looks reactive to that opposition.
WALSH: I mean, it sort of begs the question in terms of the Biden administration’s strategy, like, why didn’t they do this all at once?
DAVIS: Yeah.
WALSH: Then it wouldn’t have been just all about Hunter. I think that Democrats were awkwardly trying to avoid talking about the Hunter Biden pardon because a lot of congressional Democrats at the end of a president’s term – or Republicans – approach the White House. Because this is a traditional end-of-term process that if there is a constituent who is in a situation where you believe their case warrants it, that you approach the president to ask for clemency or a pardon. And there were groups of Democrats who were sending these letters to the Biden White House, laying out, here’s this group of people. You have the power. Please take action. And the action he took was instead to first focus on his son, Hunter.
And so I think Democrats in the last day, since this action has been taken, have been pretty complimentary of the White House, saying, like, these are exactly the right kinds of people. You know, we praise the president for doing what they think was right, But it did sort of, I think, leave a bad taste in people’s mouth that – the order of how this happened.
SHIVARAM: Yeah, the order of how it happened and also, like, the – you know, the clemency power is very vast, right? Like, as you can see, the president pardoning his own son all the way to these people who are on home confinement. But there are a lot of, like, advocates I was talking to just in the last day or two who were saying, in terms of this action that Biden took yesterday, this was, like, the low-hanging fruit, is kind of the way that folks have been describing it. Like, it is a small potatoes sort of thing, especially because these are folks who, you know, have been out of prison already. And so this is something that they kind of see the president could have done a year ago, two years ago. Like, he did not have to wait until the end his term to take this kind of action.
And so at the same time that people – you know, there are people on the Hill and others who are saying, you know, this is great, this is a small good step forward, they definitely are still looking for way more from the president in the next couple of weeks of his term. You know, looking at folks who are on death row and pardons for them, but also, you know, Biden has tried to do a lot or said he wanted to do a lot when it comes to marijuana and the racial inequity that comes with marijuana charges. And so they’re looking for him to do more with people who have, you know, been charged with distribution of marijuana, and maybe taking some actions on that in the coming weeks.
DAVIS: It certainly doesn’t feel like this is the last we will hear from the president on pardons before he leaves office. But Deirdre, there’s also a really interesting debate happening right now among Democrats over whether Biden should issue what I think they’re calling blanket pardons or preemptive pardons for some of Donald Trump’s political enemies.
WALSH: Right. And I think that there’s actually a divide inside the Democratic Party in terms of whether or not he should do that. There’s some sense that people who are involved in the January 6 committee, who – President-elect Trump did an interview recently with “Meet The Press,” with Kristen Welker. He suggested that members of the January 6 committee should go to jail. That raised a lot of eyebrows with people on Capitol Hill. Some of the people on that committee have spoken out about this idea that there could be a blanket pardon.
Newly sworn-in Senator Adam Schiff, who was a House member and served on the January 6 committee, has publicly been saying he doesn’t want one. He doesn’t think it’s a good precedent. The president shouldn’t issue them. The chairman of the January 6 committee, Bennie Thompson, had a different take. He said, it’s really the president’s prerogative. If he issued a blanket pardon, I would accept it. There is some concern that Thompson has raised about staff of the January 6 committee.
DAVIS: Oh, interesting.
WALSH: The lawyers on the committee, the people who wrote the report, the staffers for the committee. If the new Trump administration decides to go after them for, you know, retribution, as the president-elect says, you know, these are people who would have to hire lawyers and pay a lot of money, and they’re not elected members of Congress. Schiff argues, like, we were doing our job. We did nothing wrong. There’s nothing to pardon us for.
SHIVARAM: And look, I think it’s likely that President Biden makes more news on the pardon front. And frankly, President-elect Donald Trump is already promising to make pardon news, I think as early as Day 1 of his administration, where all indication points to the likelihood that he does pardon some number of people who have been charged in association with the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
WALSH: Right. In his interview with Time magazine he says within minutes – maybe minutes of being sworn in on January 20.
DAVIS: One last question for both of you. I think a lot of times in this phase of a presidency when pardons often occur, there’s oftentimes, like, public relations campaigns for certain individuals. Is there anybody to watch this time around that has any sort of lobbying campaign or public mobilizing campaign to seek a pardon for them?
WALSH: Yeah. I’ve seen a letter circulating among some congressional Democrats appealing to the Biden White House to pardon Leonard Peltier. He’s been in prison for decades, and a lot of the people around his case argue that he was wrongly imprisoned and that Biden should be the one to pardon him. A lot of the other letters I’ve seen are sort of, like, categories of people – you know, that Deepa was mentioning in terms of marijuana infractions or other sort of categories of crimes that they argued that the president should pardon.
SHIVARAM: Yeah. I will say I think specifically, like, you know, pardoning people who are on death row and facing the death penalty is, like, a little bit of a trickier political thing to navigate – right? – compared to something like simple possession of marijuana and stuff like that. But it is kind of interesting that there are a lot of advocates who are saying, you know, this is something that Biden should do for a number of reasons. But they also really feel like, you know, Trump in his first term had a really, really high rate of federal executions, and they kind of see that as potentially what’s coming again in another Trump term. So they’re kind of using that argument as, like, added pressure on Biden for the death row pardons specifically.
DAVIS: All right. We need to take another break, but when we get back, time for Can’t Let It Go.
And we’re back. And it’s time for Can’t Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. I’m going to go first because the thing I can’t let go is, when I woke up this morning and was scrolling the news headlines, it was the thing that made me audibly gasp. I was like, oh. And it was…
WALSH: Uh-oh.
DAVIS: …The recall of certain Stanley mugs, you know, the very omnipresent Stanley mugs.
WALSH: Oh, wow.
DAVIS: Recalling 2.6 million of these mugs – but the reason why I, like, so reacted to it is I just feel like they’ve become so omnipresent in our lives and among all generations. And when I thought about Stanley mugs being recalled, I was like, that’s got to be so many mugs. But when I looked into it, it’s only the 12- and 16-ounce Stanley mugs. So your ginormous…
SHIVARAM: Those aren’t cool to carry. You got to have the big one.
DAVIS: Twelve ounces – what am I, a toddler?
WALSH: (Laughter).
DAVIS: But so your 40-ounce, your 60-ounce, your 80-ounce Stanley mugs, America, they’re safe.
SHIVARAM: Safe.
DAVIS: But if you’ve got a little teeny, tiny one, you better – it’s been recalled. Go get a safe one.
SHIVARAM: I feel like Stanley just, like, flew too close to the sun kind of situation.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: It had to be humbled a little bit.
SHIVARAM: Yeah.
DAVIS: Stanley’s wearing down a notch (ph).
WALSH: I was worried if someone bought them for Christmas as, like, a stocking stuffer, and then they’re like, oh, no.
DAVIS: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these on social media, but now there’s all these – like, I would almost call them deranged Stanley accessories, where you can get, like, jackets for your Stanley and, like, holders for all your other – like, your phone…
SHIVARAM: OK, yeah, definitely…
DAVIS: …Your wallet, your…
SHIVARAM: …Too close to the sun.
DAVIS: Yeah.
SHIVARAM: Yes.
DAVIS: Too much.
SHIVARAM: (Laughter).
DAVIS: Deirdre, what about you? What can’t you let go of?
WALSH: Speaking of Christmas, it’s holiday work party season. And when I think of, like, out-of-control holiday parties, I don’t really think of Buckingham Palace.
DAVIS: No.
WALSH: But evidently, an afterparty involving…
DAVIS: Ooh.
WALSH: …The household staff of Buckingham Palace got a little crazy, in fact, out of control, and a 24-year-old housemaid, part of the household staff of Buckingham Palace, was arrested for smashing glasses.
SHIVARAM: (Laughter).
WALSH: And things kind of went off the rails. And it was like, you don’t want to be that person at the work holiday party, right?
DAVIS: Deirdre, I got to be honest. The Irish in me is quite amazed at this story.
(LAUGHTER)
WALSH: I was going to leave that out, Sue, but…
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: I can’t – I can never resist.
WALSH: (Laughter) But yeah.
DAVIS: Yeah. You don’t want to be that person at the holiday party, but you want to be the person that witnesses it to get…
SHIVARAM: Oh, for sure.
DAVIS: …To tell everybody else about the goss (ph) that happened at the holiday party. Deepa, what about you? What can’t you let go of?
SHIVARAM: OK, so, I know this is, like, the one thing that everyone is probably sick of hearing at this point, but I saw “Wicked,” and here’s the thing. “Wicked” was great, OK? It was…
DAVIS: I want to see it.
SHIVARAM: It was amazing. If you haven’t seen the movie, totally, totally worth seeing. But it really just, like, brought out the inner band kid in me.
WALSH: Oh.
DAVIS: Oh, yeah.
SHIVARAM: I don’t know if you guys were, like, band or orchestra people, choir people, like, whatever you did in school. But I was in band for, like, a really long time, and we, on one of our band trips, saw “Wicked” on Broadway…
WALSH: Oh, nice.
SHIVARAM: …When I was, like, a sophomore in high school and so have been such a big fan ever since. And the movie just was amazing, and it really kind of reminded me that, like, you know, being around other people and playing music together is, like, such a critical part of so many people’s childhoods if you were a music kid. And so I just – you know, shoutout to the band kids, to the theater kids. Like, if “Wicked” is making you sob in the theater, like… You’re not alone. …We’re doing something right, you know?
WALSH: I’m glad it lived up to the hype, though, ’cause I haven’t seen it, and now I am glad it’s going to…
SHIVARAM: It really did. And, like, I – this is going to sound really weird when I say it, but, like, Ariana Grande, like, genuinely melted into the role. Like, I forgot I was watching Ariana Grande, which I feel like when you’re that famous…
DAVIS: She’s really talented.
SHIVARAM: …And that – yes. She really…
DAVIS: I’m a low-key Ariana Grande fan.
SHIVARAM: …Like, committed to the bit.
DAVIS: Yeah.
SHIVARAM: Yeah.
DAVIS: I also – I really want to see it. I have no doubt I would love it. Everyone I know loved it. I have just reached the point in my life when you tell me a movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes…
SHIVARAM: It was so long.
WALSH: Oh.
DAVIS: Who’s got that kind of time? That is a rap for us today. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Casey Morell edits the podcast. Our producers are Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and it’s the last day here for Jeongyoon. She’s staying in the NPR family to cover the New York State House based out of your next favorite member station, WXXI. We’re going to miss her a whole lot, and we thank you, Jeongyoon, for all the hard work you did for us this past year.
WALSH: Yay.
SHIVARAM: Yay, Jeongyoon.
DAVIS: I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
SHIVARAM: I’m Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.
WALSH: I’m Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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