--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hey everyone, I'm Sean Rameswaram, and this is Today Explained. I'm talking to Vox reporter Zach Beauchamp about the Mueller investigation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Nice to meet you, nice to meet you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show's existed for about a week and we haven't once talked about the Mueller investigation. Is that a problem?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yeah, it's the biggest news in the country right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Great, great. Okay, let's do it. But I'm wondering the best way to approach it.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Is it maybe by talking about Papadopoulos and Manafort and all of these Gates guys?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, no, no. So if you just keep running through the people like that, it's going to sound a little bit like we didn't start the fire.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: That doesn't sound so bad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll see you next time.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: We need to start the Russia, Donald says illusion of the same collusion
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We need to start the Russia, they were always trolling since the world was voting
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: We need to start the Russia, it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so that was fun, but how should we do it?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: All right. There are three prongs to this. First is the actual collusion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. The big issue that people have been talking about. The second is whether the president obstructed the investigation, that is committed obstruction of justice.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And the third is a whole kind of batch of unrelated crimes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sounds fun. Let's do it.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Oh, yeah. Lots of stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The first one is the one that everyone is kind of familiar with, right? That's the collusion.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Collusion. No collusion. No collusion. No collusion. You're the collusion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a Democrat hoax that was brought up as an excuse for losing an election that, frankly, the Democrats should have won because they have such a tremendous advantage in the Electoral College.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: So it was brought up for that reason. But it has been determined that there is no collusion, and by virtually everybody.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Look, the real thing going on there is that the Trump campaign has multiple serious different connections to Russia.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And it has that through the people that they hired. Right. Like so Paul Manafort, who was their campaign manager for a while.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. He ran the campaign of Viktor Yanukovych.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Right. Like that was his thing before this. Viktor Yanukovych was the president of Ukraine prior to being deposed in a revolution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was backed by the Kremlin.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yeah. There's this guy, George Papadopoulos, who was approached by the Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton once he was affiliated with Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And of course, there's the Trump Tower meeting in the middle of 2016 where Donald Trump Jr. says, if it's what you say, I love it after being offered assistance from the Russian government on finding stuff about Hillary Clinton.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And all of these things suggest that there was at least a limited level of connection between Trump and Russia during the campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What we don't know is whether Trump himself directed this, what he knew about what his campaign operatives were doing.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And that is potentially criminal in a variety of different ways.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it is the core thrust of the Mueller probe, trying to figure out the truth about the situation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: OK, so we know there was some connection with the campaign and Russia. We don't know if the president was involved.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What else do we have?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: So the second thing that's really important to understanding this is the obstruction of justice angle.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so that came as a result of Trump not wanting the answers to the first thing to become public.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And he said a variety of different things that could constitute, according to legal scholars I spoken to, the crime of obstruction of justice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is the president himself, yes, this is the president himself.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: OK, right. So we don't know if Trump was involved in the collusion yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We do know that Trump himself authorized the firing of James Comey.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And that he said on national television that this was about the Russia investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The firing was a direct result of the Russia investigation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yeah. He said something like, and in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's an excuse. You can't even using your lawful powers as president. You cannot have a corrupt intent to interfere with the ongoing processes of justice.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Sure. I mean, when Clinton was impeached, he was impeached for obstruction of justice, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was one of the charges of impeachment leveled against Clinton.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: It was also one of the charges against Nixon that never went through because he resigned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's the thing they get presidents on.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yeah, because, you know, the old adage, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. Like, is often true because it can very frequently be easier for prosecutors to show that a cover-up happened, even if they can't prove the underlying crime.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Okay. And it doesn't actually matter if you've committed the underlying crime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All that matters is that you tried unlawfully to interfere with the investigation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: OK, those are the two I know about, collusion, obstruction of justice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's the third one?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: The third one is a lot more confusing. The third one is like a broad category of different stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's just call it unrelated crimes, miscellany crimes, just just random crimes.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: OK. And so it turns out that like these people in Trump's orbit have committed a lot of different crimes in a lot of different areas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, no. So, you know, they've lied to the FBI as part of the investigation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: They, in the case of Manafort and his aide, Rick Gates, they didn't register as foreign agents when they were doing lobbying in Washington on behalf of this former Ukrainian president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there like an office where you go do that?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yeah. Yeah. It's the like corrupt interference on behalf of crappy autocrats office.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Got it. It's at like 14th and Keg.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Okay. The Mueller probe isn't supposed to investigate stuff like this nominally, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's not the job of them.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: But they have a mandate to be able to pursue anything that comes up over the course of the investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if they need to expand the scope of the investigation, they go to the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who is supervising the whole thing.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And they ask him, hey, is it OK if we look into lobbying ties between Paul Manafort and this former Ukrainian president?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. As that's become important and germane to our investigation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And we've heard some reports that they're looking into shady financial dealings on the part of Jared Kushner and his company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we also know that the president himself has a lot of crazy, weird financial stuff in his background.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: There are rumors that during his time in Atlantic City and in New York, he had ties to the mafia and who knows how he funded those projects.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So these things, these unrelated crimes serve two functions.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: First, they could end up showing serious criminality on the part of someone, the president or someone close to him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Second, they could and have been used by the probe to go after people who they want to flip, who they want to turn into state's witnesses to testify against other people.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: It's a little bit like going after the mafia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. You try to figure out what your equivalent of getting Al Capone on tax evasion is, and you try to find them, and you roll up these lower-level people on whatever charge you can find, and then you get them to start talking about the actual thing that you're interested in, which is collusion, potentially obstruction of justice.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Okay. And you keep climbing the ladder of people until you get to the biggest fish, which is to say the president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Special counsel Robert Mueller spoke volumes more than months of heated public debate about the Russia probe.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Without saying a word, Mueller's message was clear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to veteran lawyers, he isn't bluffing, and witnesses are talking.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Okay, so we've got collusion, obstruction of justice, and a grab bag of other crimes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Coming up, we add 13 Russian nationals, a Dutch lawyer, and a conspiracy against the United States.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are you feeling like it's time to upgrade your mattress?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Check out Mattress Firm.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Some people call them America's Neighborhood Mattress Store because you can find them online but you can also find them out there all across these United States.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Mattress Firm can help you stretch your budget a little further when you're looking for ways to improve your sleep.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These are mattress experts, but mattresses aren't their only expertise.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Mattress Firm can help you build your bed from headboards to adjustable bases to sheets, and they've got bedroom decor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mattress Firm has you covered.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Literally. Figuratively. Exceptionally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to see their latest deals.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Mattress Firm offers a 120-night sleep trial to ensure perfection and a 120-night low-price guarantee so you know you paid the perfect price.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Again, go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to learn how your sleeping could be improved.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, I'm Sean Rameswaram, and I'm talking to Vox reporter Zach Beauchamp about the Mueller investigation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: We've got this whole heap of indictments now, 13 Russian nationals, um, van der Zwan who's Dutch, Gates, and Manafort.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Uh, where do we begin with that?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Let's start with these 13 Russian nationals. Is that just sort of symbolic those indictments?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, sort of right. Like, they're not going to get prosecuted.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Okay. These are 13 Russians who were involved in the campaign to influence social media, to pose as various different kinds of Americans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. Some of the fun things that they did involved setting up dueling protests.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: So they would organize one Facebook group that would say it's like an anti-Muslim protest and another one that's like a counter rally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The idea was to create conflict inside the American political system and make it look chaotic.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And it kind of worked? I mean, yeah, it did kind of work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It did look chaotic. It is chaotic.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: The other ones all involve, basically, they all come back to Paul Manafort.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He is one of the central people in this Russia investigation, in part because he was campaign manager at the time of the Trump Tower meeting.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And so some of the indictments that came down last week were about this guy, Van Der Zwan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who is he?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yes. So Van Der Zwan is a Dutch national who's working for a US law firm, Skadden Arts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. In 2012, he put together a report that cleared Viktor Yanikovych, then Ukrainian president, of political motivations in prosecuting one of his political opponents.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Okay. This report was a whitewash. It was done at the behest of Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, who were working for Yanikovych as part of a lobbying campaign, an international lobbying campaign that they were less than honest about.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. Van der Svon apparently lied to the FBI about subsequent conversations he had with Gates and Manafort about this report.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: We don't know why Van der Svon lied to begin with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We do know that they nailed him on lying.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: So he pled guilty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And at the same time, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort's deputy, who had been indicted a while ago, finally pled guilty.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Okay. And this was what happened late last week?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. Okay. And that's a big deal.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Because Gates has been Manafort's right-hand man forever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was involved in this Van der Swan thing.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: In fact, one theory, we don't know this for sure, but one theory is that Gates was forced to fold because of Van der Swan pleading.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which would be very much like Mueller to go and find someone who's not super important but has important information on someone who is more important and forcing them to fold.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: So all of this really is about getting to Manafort.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because Manafort's the closest to the president?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Because Manafort was the head of the campaign at a crucial time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in the middle of 2016, a lot of things were going on, Russia-related, that are suspicious and raise red flags.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: The Trump Tower meeting is the big one.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've talked about that.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: But there's also some stuff, for instance, the Republican platform was altered to no longer support providing weapons to the Ukrainians who are fighting essentially Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And nobody knows why that happened.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: But one of the prevailing theories is that this was part of a quid pro quo.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump and the Trump campaign make the Republican Party and U.S. policy more pro-Russian.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And in exchange, the Russians go after Hillary Clinton on social media, they hack her emails, they publish it in inconvenient times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you have to wonder if Manafort, who has all of these shady ties to Russia and pro-Russian dictators and has a history of doing some shady and apparently illegal lobbying.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yeah. You have to wonder what did he do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't know.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And that's why flipping him is such an important part of the Mueller investigation because he can tell you because he was running the campaign what the actual ties were should be able to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He should be able to tell you what actually happened at the Trump Tower meeting.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And we don't know that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of these names, the Van Der Zwans, the Gates, the Manafort, they never reached this tier of American politics before the Trump campaign.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Is that fair?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. I mean, Van Der Zwans was not a person in American politics.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Right. And that also includes the president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was a reality TV star, a real estate magnate.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Is it possible that he just had no idea that any of this stuff was illegal?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Totally.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Totally. I mean, nobody knows.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nobody knows what the answer to this is.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Maybe Robert Mueller knows at this point, but I doubt it, honestly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump could have masterminded this whole thing.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: He could have secretly coordinated a plot with the Russians to steal the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He could have known nothing, and this could have been just all sheer managerial incompetence, letting his aides do a bunch of crazy stuff.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And it could have been somewhere in between.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It could have been that Trump knew about some of these meetings and was okay with them, but didn't coordinate some kind of vast plot.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: We have no idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Until last year, we didn't know about the Trump Tower meeting, which now seems like the most important event in the entire campaign when it comes to the Russia investigation.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Maybe there was another meeting that we haven't heard about that could end up being even more important.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the Mueller investigation is, for obvious reasons, playing its cards close to the vest.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Right now, the public just feels very in the dark.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if Manafort flips and pleads guilty, is that when this thing really cracks open?
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: It could be, if he does.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, Manafort... He's fighting it.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Yeah, he's fighting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He issued a statement after Gates' plea deal like, I don't know why I did this. This is terrible. I will continue to fight.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And it could be that what he's banking on is, all right, I'll get convicted, but the president will pardon me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which Trump has the ability to do, but would set off a massive, massive political firestorm.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And that's the underlying stakes here, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is that if Mueller finds out that Trump or one of his family members committed a crime, the president will not take it well.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And especially if it's him personally, but also any of his family members, he could use the powers of his office, most notably the pardon power, to immunize himself or others from crimes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if he does that, essentially you have the president declaring himself to be above the law.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And that is not an idea that's especially compatible with the democratic political system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In democracies, we hold our leaders accountable when they make mistakes.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: And if Trump says, sorry, no, I can't be held accountable, it's a crisis for American democracy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is the most serious one that we've had, forget Watergate, probably since the Civil War.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: The End
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bridget McCarthy is our editor, and Afim Shapiro is our engineer.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: The invaluable Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for our show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: We're produced in association with Stitcher and are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you all of our listeners of our podcast today and what it means.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Follow us on Twitter. Today underscore explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Quick last thing before we go.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: There's a company out there that would like to do you a solid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mattress Firm wants to help you get better sleep and they'd like to save you money.
--:-- Zach Beauchamp: Your budget stretches further when you shop in America's Neighborhood Mattress Store.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Head to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to learn how you can improve your sleep.
