--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's something about Quippy there must be. That's why over 1 million people have purchased the Quip electric toothbrush. You can find it at getquip.com slash explained. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained. Where the Quip starts at $25 and your first set of refills is free.
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Sean Rameswaram: Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear. I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear. That I will faithfully execute. That I will faithfully execute. The office of President of the United States. The office of President of the United States.
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Sean Rameswaram: On January 20th, 2017, Donald Trump was inaugurated the 45th President of the United States. Preserve, protect and defend. The Constitution of the United States.
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Sean Rameswaram: The affair was a bit of a dud. The vibe was kind of underwhelming. Congratulations, Mr. President. The crowd size was rather unimpressive. Not too many people turned out. And Trump really wanted a bunch of celebrities to do events on an inauguration weekend, and very few of them agreed to do so because he was viewed as so controversial. And so, overall, it was kind of a disappointing event.
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Sean Rameswaram: Trump's speech was rather dark. And the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. Only later did we learn that the inauguration actually was stunningly impressive in one sense. It raised an incredible amount of money. The previous record for a presidential inauguration's fundraising was $53 million, and that was set by Barack Obama's first inauguration in 2009. Trump basically doubled that record. He raised over $106 million for his inauguration. An astounding, mind-boggling sum for one event.
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Andrew Prokop: Andrew Prokop, you cover investigations into the president for Vox, and the president's inaugural committee got a big fat subpoena this week. Oh, yeah. Before we get to exactly what's in the subpoena, Why do presidents even need to raise money for their own inauguration? Doesn't the government pay for everything that happens down on the mall?
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Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, the swearing-in event itself and all of the security and logistics around that are paid for by the federal government. But that's just one part of what's become traditionally a big multi-day long festival of parties and events during inauguration weekend. So, you know, there's a concert on the National Mall beforehand. There's dinners and events for elite supporters. There's the balls on inauguration night. And, you know, the incoming president has to find the money for that himself. But it was really the amount of money that he raised that really raised some eyebrows. Who specifically was giving him that money?
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Andrew Prokop: So the donor list to the inaugural committee is public. And, you know, a lot of the money came from finance industry big shots, frequent conservative givers like Robert Mercer, Paul Singer. Then a lot of money came in from corporate America, too. Companies like Bank of America, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Pfizer, Exxon, a million dollars or $500,000 each from companies like this. There's an even more mysterious company called BH Group LLC. It seems to be tied to the conservative legal movement in some way, but again, gave a million dollars and have no idea who actually was behind that money. And I think the contributions that raised the most eyebrows eventually among investigators were donations from people or companies with foreign connections. People basically soon began to wonder whether the money was in fact coming from foreign sources, which we should say would be illegal.
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Sean Rameswaram: And do we know where all of this money was going? There's a great report by Ilya Meritz of ProPublica and WNYC earlier this year. He talked to people who had worked on previous inaugurations, one guy who worked on George W. Bush's inauguration named Greg Jenkins, and he said he was baffled. He said they had a third of the staff a quarter of the events as Bush did and they raised at least twice as much as we did So there the obvious question Where did it go I don't know.
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Andrew Prokop: The inaugural committee was under no real obligation to disclose very much about where it went. One thing we do know about the inaugural committee's spending is that about a quarter of it in total, $25.8 million went to a firm called WIS Media Partners. It's an event production firm started by a now former advisor to Melania Trump. If you look at the forms that the inaugural committee filed, there was probably about over $30 million that we just knew nothing about where that money went.
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Sean Rameswaram: When exactly and how did all this start to catch the attention of investigators? By one account, the FBI started wondering about the inauguration while it was happening. The Washington Post reported that counterintelligence officials at the FBI were concerned by an unusual presence of politically connected Russians in D.C. during the event, including some of the exact people who had already surfaced in the investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. But as we learn more about the inauguration's fundraising and more accounts got out of its spending, these questions have just kept piling up.
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Andrew Prokop: What kind of questions are we talking about? So there are several different questions about specific donors, especially donors with connections to foreign nationals or foreign companies. That includes even if the foreign national gives the money to somebody else and then the other person who is American then gives it to the inaugural committee. That's called a straw donor. And so investigators have really drilled down on this topic of straw donors for foreign nationals. And this is something that definitely caught special counsel Robert Mueller's eyes as he has tried to probe Trump world's ties to Russia generally.
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Sean Rameswaram: And what does Mueller do? It was reported in early April of 2018 by CNN that Mueller actually stopped and questioned two Russian oligarchs who were traveling to the U.S. to ask about whether they had illegally funneled cash donations into the inauguration. Now, we know that investigators have recently targeted at least three oligarchs. And sources tell us that the FBI stopped one of them as he landed in his private jet at an airport in New York. There was another report by ABC that this went broader than just Russia, that Mueller was asking about donors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
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Andrew Prokop: And then there was another report by ABC that stated that Mueller's investigators wanted to know why several billionaires with deep ties to Russia got access to exclusive invitation-only receptions during the inauguration. But looking not just at who attended the inauguration itself, but many events surrounding the inauguration. And specifically, sources tell us that they are looking at Russians. This isn't just hypothetical. The Mueller investigation has already turned up one example. This Republican lobbyist, Sam Patton. He was a longtime associate of Paul Manafort. And when the Trump inauguration took place, Patton had a client who was a Ukrainian oligarch who wanted tickets to the inauguration. So the oligarch sent $50,000 to Patton's company. And then Patton gave that money to a U.S. citizen who bought the four tickets. And so Patton admitted that in court as part of a plea deal.
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Sean Rameswaram: Patton agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in D.C. as well as special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his plea. And he also admits he made an illegal donation to President Trump's inauguration committee, acting as a straw donor for a Ukrainian businessman banned from making the contribution himself. To be clear here, it isn't illegal to raise a whole bunch of money for your inauguration as the incoming president. But what we have here is a record amount of money raised huge question marks as to where the money went exactly and concrete evidence that some of this money was being funneled in through these foreign nationals in these straw donations In at least one case yes and several other potential cases that have been looked into
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Andrew Prokop: And we also know now that it's not just Mueller who's been looking into this. There is a separate investigation from the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York that seems to be heating up. And that's the big news this week. Live from New York, it's a subpoena for the Trump Inaugural Committee after the break on Today Explained.
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Sean Rameswaram: Hi, this is Tim in Brooklyn. Hey, Tim in Brooklyn, Sean from Today Explained. And just wanted to check in and see if you got a Quip yet.
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Tim in Brooklyn: It's here. It's in my house.
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Sean Rameswaram: Tim from Brooklyn, I'm going to make a confession. Over one million people have the Quip because, you know, it's been recommended by all sorts of dentists, because it's a sensitive option, because it has this timer that pulses and all this stuff. You've wanted this Quip for a long time.
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Tim in Brooklyn: I sent you a Quip earlier this week.
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Sean Rameswaram: Oh, that was very nice of you. Yeah, it wasn't one of your friends. It was me, the host of your favorite podcast. I've tried asking Ira Glass. He won't respond. I've tried asking Sarah Koenig, Scott Aukerman. None of these podcast hosts will respond to me, but you did.
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Tim in Brooklyn: Tim from Brooklyn, have you used the Quip that one can purchase at getquip.com slash explain for $25 where your first set of refills is free? Have you used it yet?
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Sean Rameswaram: I have not used it yet. Tim from Brooklyn, when did you discover this Quip? Well, last night. I went out and saw the mail in my living room and it was there.
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Tim in Brooklyn: Okay, I'll give you a pass on last night. What did you do this morning? I'm working from home again this morning, so I didn't get up to go to work right away. So I haven't actually brushed my teeth in a day.
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Sean Rameswaram: This is why people don't do nice things for each other anymore. Getquip.com slash explained, I give up.
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Andrew Prokop: So, Andrew, this week Trump's inaugural committee got a major subpoena, not from Robert Mueller, but from the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York. Federal prosecutors in New York issue subpoena seeking documents from Donald Trump's inaugural committee. What is in that subpoena?
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Andrew Prokop: The subpoena specifically names several different offenses, criminal offenses, that investigators are probing. These include conspiracy against the United States, false statements, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, disclosure violations, and violations of laws prohibiting contributions by foreign nations and contributions in the name of another person, also known as straw donors.
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Sean Rameswaram: It's a remarkably broad demand for the inaugural committee to turn over a whole set of documents, basically anything involving money prosecutors want to see. Specifically listed in the subpoena are all documents related to the committee's donors and vendors, all records related to any benefits provided to donors. It's been reported that the inaugural committee had donors pay their vendors directly rather than giving money to the committee or at least talked about doing so, and that would violate disclosure laws.
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Andrew Prokop: Why exactly is New York filing the subpoena? So though Mueller has been looking into certain aspects of the inauguration's money for a while, this appears to be a different investigation that grew out of the Southern District of New York's probe. That's the U.S. attorney's office based in Manhattan. They have been investigating Michael Cohen for a while. So back in April. The FBI has raided the office of Donald Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen. Reportedly, that is how this particular probe of the inauguration got started. They found certain documents. They found a recording Cohen had that led them to start investigating in more detail the inauguration's money.
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Sean Rameswaram: So all of this that's ongoing with Cohen and the inauguration from the Southern District of New York is completely separate from the Mueller investigation. This began as a separate investigation. It's not clear what happened to Mueller's investigation, whether he's still looking into it or whether he may have handed it off elsewhere. And to complicate things even more, there's another U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn that's reportedly looking into the straw donor matter.
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Andrew Prokop: Wow. So basically there's a lot of investigations of this going on right now. Is all of this happening because of Michael Cohen and what was found in his office? It seems like it's broader than that. What interesting is that Cohen's role in this investigation is unclear. You remember that he pleaded guilty to financial crimes and campaign finance crimes back in August and struck a plea deal with Mueller admitting lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow deal back in November. However, Cohen specifically declined to commit to a cooperation requirement. He agreed to provide some information to investigators voluntarily, but he didn't want to be compelled to commit to give the government any information he had on any potential crimes.
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Sean Rameswaram: And the Southern District of New York was very annoyed at that. They chided him. They said that he specifically did not want to do this, so he shouldn't get credit for being a full cooperator. I think perhaps more important than Cohen in this investigation is Rick Gates. He is another former Trump campaign aide, longtime right-hand man for Paul Manafort. And he was indicted alongside Manafort in October 2017. And he flipped and cut a plea deal with Mueller in February 2018. Rick Gates, under pressure from Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has pled guilty to two counts, one for conspiracy against the United States that refers to tax evasion and money laundering related crimes, and secondly to making false statements to the special counsel.
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Andrew Prokop: That occurred just three weeks ago. And Gates was heavily involved in the inauguration planning. He was probably the guy right under Tom Barrick, the chairman, who was handling fundraising, handling planning and all that. And it has been reported that Gates has been providing information on investigations into the inauguration too. So Gates could be pretty important here.
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Sean Rameswaram: Where does all of this lead? I mean, does it lead right up to the president or is he insulated from this because he had this entire committee dealing with all the money that was coming in? That's always the question. You know, how many of these decisions went to Trump? How many did he know about and how well documented is all this? And we don't really know. A lot of it might depend on what Rick Gates says and what other witnesses say to investigators. But I think the bigger takeaway is that, you know, this is just another investigation or several more investigations that Trump now has to deal with and worry about.
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Andrew Prokop: In addition to this huge swath of investigations he was already dealing with. The Mueller investigation is already huge enough in itself, touching on all sorts of different topics. Then there was the investigation into hush money payments to women who alleged affairs with Trump. There's investigations into his foundation, his business. There's all sorts of congressional subpoenas that are going to start flying from the new House Democrats. They're trying to get a hold of his tax returns. And now there's the inauguration, too. So it seems like, you know, everything that Trump is involved in is under investigation right now. And, you know, maybe all those will turn up nothing that implicates him personally or maybe not.
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Sean Rameswaram: It does feel like this ultimate irony that the very first thing he basically was involved with as president is part of this sprawling investigation with multiple offices and agencies now. Yeah, I think that the Trump inauguration is really so much like the quintessential Trump organization project. Like there's eye-popping sums of money, there's opulence, but then there's also questions of financial mismanagement, corruption, shady foreign influence. And now, investigations galore.
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Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop is a senior correspondent at Vox. I'm Sean Rameswaram from this is Today Explained. Thanks again to Quip Electric Toothbrushes for supporting the show today. No thanks to Tim from Brooklyn who hasn't even used the Quip I got him yet. You can find your own Quip electric toothbrush at getquip.com slash explained, G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash explained. The Quip starts at $25. Your first set of refills comes for free shortly thereafter in the mail. It's a subscription service. Think about it. Bye.
