--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've been talking about January 6th for a long time on Today Explained. It's been 463 days, if you weren't counting. The House Select Committee has been investigating the insurrection on January 6th for over eight months, but now there's a finish line in sight.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So they are trying to figure out how do we bring this to an end so we can present our findings to the American people and in bringing it to an end, what are the huge decisions we have to make before we finish this up?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kyle Chaney has been writing about it for Politico. So they are trying to figure out how do we bring this to an end so we can present our findings to the American people and in bringing it to an end, what are the huge decisions we have to make before we finish this up?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kyle's going to fill us in and we're going to hear some specifics on the massive prosecutorial effort to charge all those insurrectionists among us. I'm Sean Ramos from That's What's Up on Today Explained.
--:-- [Support for the show comes from ServiceNow and Macy's]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, today explained. I've got Kyle Chaney here on the line, and he says this whole January 6th committee thing has to wrap up soon. So their whole intention was always to try to finish by the spring. Even at the beginning when they started really in August, September, they said, we want to be done by the spring.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So we have enough time to roll out our findings for the American people. Let them digest it all. It's going to be very complicated, but extremely compelling. And then let that factor into their decision making over the course of the election season and into the future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's become more complicated as they've unearthed more information. It's made it hard for them to say, oh, we want to finish an X date because they keep getting more and more stuff. We don't want to be done when the floodgates are still open.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: But I think they know that probably June or so is the real hard end for them. So how many sort of storylines or investigations or sub-investigations do they have to wrap up here?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in our view, when we looked at what they needed to do to wrap up the pro, we saw five really distinct decisions that they have to make before the committee can say, we're done, we're ready to show the public what we have.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Number one. When and whether to call Donald Trump. Two. When and whether to call Mike Pence, probably the second most important witness here. Three. When and whether to call Speaker Pelosi or Leader Mitch McConnell to talk about capital security issues. Four. What to do about Republican lawmakers who have resisted their investigation but still have key evidence. Five. And then what to do with just the massive trove that they've collected, whether they decide to dump it all in public, how they get it on DOJ's radar screen, the Justice Department, as they continue their own investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let's go through them one by one. First and foremost, the former president himself. What are they going to do there? What do we know?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Number one. So, look, the whole committee investigation is revolving around this question of did Donald Trump violate criminal law in his effort to overturn the 2020 election? And the committee is increasingly confident that the answer is yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Representative and select committee member Liz Cheney says the panel does have enough confidence to refer Donald Trump for criminal charges, but has yet to decide whether to send the referral to the Justice Department.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: To close their probe, there's no way I can envision it. But they don't at least say, hey, this is what we found. Why don't you tell us your version of events, your side of the story?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The only question is, are they going to do this in a way where they're serious about getting him to testify? Are they going to subpoena him and try to fight him in court and make him answer questions? Or are they just going to do it as a formality, knowing he's not going to cooperate?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And when will we find out? Do we know? So we don't. The committee chairman, Benny Thompson, has said hopefully we'll be talking about the likelihood of a Trump interview in the not too distant future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's hard to imagine they haven't already had some preliminary discussions on that. But they know once they start engaging Trump's legal team and talking to him about, you know, hey, we want you to come in, that's going to blow up in public. It's going to become a huge brawl.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And so I think they want to hold that out as long as possible. Whether or not the former president testifies before this committee, his daughter did just last week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, she did. The former president's daughter, an advisor, answered questions for nearly eight hours. She was with her father at the rally before the assault on the Capitol and in the Oval Office throughout the attack.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: It's pretty remarkable. And her husband, Jared Kushner, did the same a week before that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the committee is very confident that they're obtaining things from the highest levels of Trump world.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And what's most interesting to me is the committee told us they did not claim any sort of privilege, no executive privilege, no attorney-client privilege to try to stop answering questions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So to me, the question is, did the committee not ask certain things that might have triggered that? Or was she really that forthcoming to them?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Because if so, she was involved and in the room for some really key moments that could be significant evidence for their investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do we have any idea what Ivanka and Jared talked about for hours on end?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: We don't, which is another reason why I think the committee, the report that they have could be so impactful is they've been very secretive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that includes from this high-level testimony of people like Jared and Ivanka and dozens of others in that sphere.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So the kind of things that they could know is endless. And they probably did learn some interesting things from those two.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's pivot to Pence. Does the former president showing up affect whether or not his vice president will testify?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Does the former president showing up affect whether or not his vice president will testify?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in fact I think that Mike Pence has actually shown subtly that he interested in what the committee is doing and the way he's shown that is he's dispatched his top aides, the people who were with him on January 6th and in those key moments before, to testify openly and freely to the committee.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So we've learned that Mark Short, one of former vice president Mike Pence's closest advisors, his former chief of staff, is cooperating with the January 6th committee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they've given to the committee some of the most important evidence that they have of Donald Trump's pressure campaign to try to get Mike Pence to help him overturn the election.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: He was with Mike Pence at the Capitol on January 6th. He was also in the Oval Office on January 4th when former President Trump tried to convince Pence not to certify the election results.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if anything, Pence is inclined or predisposed to supporting the committee.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: But whether he wants to put himself out there directly is still kind of an open question.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What have Pence's people turned over?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So the two most significant people who testified were his chief of staff, Mark Short, and his chief legal counsel, Greg Jacob.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they have talked in detail about the people in Donald Trump's orbit who were pressuring Mike Pence to say, on January 6th, you can go into Congress and single-handedly stop the election of Joe Biden and the legal strategy they were trying to push on Pence.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Pence's people kind of resisted that. And so the testimony they gave was very detailed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, on this date, you know, John Eastman, the lawyer that Trump hired to push this idea, met with me. And here's what he said to me and tried to get me to do. And here's why I told him it was illegal.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And the committee has formed this idea that Donald Trump may have broken the law, partly based on that testimony that they were trying to push an idea that had no legal support whatsoever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then I guess lower stakes here, but important all the same, is congressional leadership, Nancy Pelosi, maybe Mitch McConnell?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Three. Yes, and they figure in a few ways. Not only did they flee from the mob that was storming the Capitol, with some calling them out by name, but they also are in charge of Capitol security.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the question is, what were these leaders briefed? Were they ever told this was a possibility, you know, that there could be a breach of the Capitol?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And if not, why were they not told how grave the situation could become?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Obviously, Nancy Pelosi is a supporter of this committee, but Mitch McConnell, not so much, right?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Right. He's not a supporter of the committee. But when he's been asked about them, he doesn't go on the attack like a lot of his colleagues.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He says it will be interesting to reveal all the participants who were involved.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And that's always stuck out to me because most Republicans are not speaking like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we do know McConnell after January 6th, you know, he did vote to acquit Trump during the impeachment trial, but he did have really harsh words for the former president, blamed everything on him and said he could be held civilly and even criminally responsible for what happened.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So he's not necessarily in the former president's camp on this one. And we assume Pelosi will cooperate. She has said as much.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She said if they want to call me and they need to call me, I'm in.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And what's more, most important about Pelosi is Republicans are teeing up this plan to counter the January 6 investigation with their own probe that essentially they've already said is going to blame Nancy Pelosi for the entirety of what went wrong on January 6th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The American people deserve to know the truth that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as Speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on January 6th.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: If she testifies to the current committee, it's a chance to sort of pre-butt that narrative that Trump himself and members of Congress are trying to push.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Four. And then penultimate on your list here is just sort of hodgepodge of members of the GOP.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Yes, Republican members of Congress who three of them have been called by the committee but basically said, screw you, we're not coming in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the committee has sort of left to grapple with what do we do with those three.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And then additional Republican lawmakers who we know played key roles strategizing with Donald Trump to overturn the election may have called him on the day of the 6th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There were some phone calls between him and, say, Congressman Jim Jordan, some senators who were on the phone with him.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And the question is, how hard will the committee go after its own colleagues, knowing they have important evidence, but also knowing that the tables may be turned on them in a Republican-controlled Congress in a year?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Last on your list is what to do with everything they found, whether to make it public, whether to keep it private.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Yes, and this, to me, it's a very process-focused question, but it's really important because the committee, as far as we know, has just this enormous mountain of evidence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've interviewed 800 plus people. They've got tens of thousands of documents, you know, many, many, many orders of magnitude greater than most congressional investigations obtain.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And the question is, will we see all of that at the end of the day? Will they decide, you know what, we're just going to throw it all out there on a website and let people do with it what they will.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They'll have their own report, which will be nice, neatly and neatly packaged. But the thousands of pages of transcripts of these interviews might have a lot more value.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So both to the public, which could then comb through them, but also to the Justice Department, which is running its own investigation and starting to creep into Trump world a bit in their investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They might find a lot of value in seeing these tens of thousands of pages that the committee can't just hand over to a prosecutor.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: They could by virtue of putting it on the website. Do we have any sense what the Justice Department might do?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, they seem to be in sort of the early phases of pursuing people in Trump's orbit.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: That's a big development that's happened in the last few days and weeks. But that's a sign that they are ramping up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so it could take months, it could take even years to sort of come to fruition.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: But the committee's information might be very valuable and actually even speed up what they're doing because they're pursuing similar tracks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if the committee makes this public, we finally get to find out what Jared and Ivanka said for hours on end in the past few weeks?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: It seems likely. I mean, I can't imagine a scenario where they don't at least use that testimony in their final report and possibly unearth the whole transcript.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars But with your rent frequently you just pay month after month You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head Not anymore says Built Rewards.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Your home isn't just where you sleep. It's your community. And Built wants you to go out and do things in the community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points. You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Built members every month.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: When you're ready to travel, they say Built points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Built.com slash Explained.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job? Like, really happy?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: But still, we stick it out, and we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse? I've already put years into this place, And maybe the most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: It's time to get unstuck. It's time for Strawberry.me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They match you with a certified career coach who helps you go from where you are to where you actually want to be.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Your coach helps you get clear on your goals, create a plan, build your confidence, and keeps you accountable along the way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So don't leave your career to chance. Take action and own your future with a professional coach in your corner.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's strawberry.me slash unstuck.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: This is so important. We're back. We've got Kyle Chaney from Politico. We just talked about all the stuff the January 6th committee has to figure out before it shuts down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But on the flip side, the Department of Justice has been prosecuting tons of people who are involved in the Capitol riot.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Yes. So this is sort of happening in parallel with the committee. The Justice Department since January 6th, since the attack on the Capitol, has been arresting hundreds of people who participated in that breach and have begun sort of expanding their investigation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's already a nationwide manhunt, but it's moved a bit from focused on the Capitol breach itself to the people who are sort of responsible for motivating it in the first place.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Do we have a number at this point? How many people have been successfully prosecuted?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there are more than 800 people who have been charged.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Wow. I'd say about 250 or so have taken plea deals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most of them should sort of the more minor crimes that occurred that day, if you can call any of them minor.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: But in terms of just they walked into the Capitol, they didn't hurt anybody, didn't break anything, and they walked out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Those kind of trespassing crimes are being resolved very quickly, whereas the more severe crimes, the felonies, the assaults, the conspiracies are still working their way through the courts.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Which of them stand out to you?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But to me, there's two cases that have emerged or large conspiracy cases surrounding the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, these two extremist groups that heard and answered Trump's call to come to Washington and what they viewed was a call to try to stop Joe Biden from being elected president.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And they orchestrated these very heavily militarized, essentially, approaches to the Capitol.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 11 members of the Oath Keepers militia group charged with seditious conspiracy, including the group's leader, Stuart Rhodes, arrested in Texas.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: The FBI breaking through encrypted apps. They say he allegedly messaged the group after the election, quote, we aren't getting through this without a civil war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in addition to like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers out there, there's just like a lot of like dentists and like off-duty cops and I don't know, like turkey farmers, stuff like that.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Yeah, it's actually kind of a interesting case study in this cross-section of Trump voters, essentially, and who was motivated to sort of come to Washington for this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you are finding a lot of these one-off sort of lone wolf type people that got in there.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Some of them are charged with assaulting police. They were people who bought into QAnon conspiracies or people who bought into the election was stolen and our liberty is at stake propaganda from Trump world and cited that when they were arrested, said that we thought we were saving our country because we'd been misled that the election was stolen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so these are the kind of individual people not connected to these groups that were involved and in some cases thought they were doing good while they were attacking cops and bludgeoning them with poles and sticks and things like that.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Someone named Riley June Williams, who's a young woman from Pennsylvania who went to the speaker's office and allegedly stole a laptop from one of the desks there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Upstairs is Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. Inside, a female voice the FBI believes to be Williams seems excited. I'm in Nancy. Where are you?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: On the desk is Pelosi's HP laptop. The same voice tells others to treat it carefully. Put on gloves.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She, you know, was in there sort of directing traffic among the other people inside the building.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And, you know, there was some thought that suggested she wanted to sell the laptop to Russians.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yikes. And it's sort of these very bizarre cases.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: I feel like every independent, as run of the mill as they might seem, has these weird twists in their stories at how they ended up there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in prosecuting, quote unquote, regular Americans who went into the Capitol and did crimes on January 6th, what's the DOJ's batting average?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: You said 800 charged, about 200 have taken plea deals? Approximately, and I think that that's going to be the vast majority here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think they're going to end up getting plea deals with 90% or more of these cases.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: In the cases that have gone to trial, which is just four right now, they've won two jury convictions on felony charges.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Neither of them have been sentenced yet, but that's two for two essentially on the jury trials.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And then in two bench trials where a judge makes the entire decision, they've actually not fared so well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's only because one judge has presided over both of those trials, Judge Trevor McFadden.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And he is not a fan of the government's theories in any of these cases and agreed to acquit one defendant entirely and gave a partial acquittal to a second one.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On what grounds?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: In the total acquittal case he said that the defendant plausibly argued that he believed the Capitol Police gave him permission to go inside the building.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That in some of the video, there was a video of a cop sort of gesturing in what the defendant thought was waving him in.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And the judge said, you know, I looked at the video, I could see that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What the judge cited is what Matthew Martin didn't do on January 6th.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: The judge says, according to the evidence shown at trial, Matthew Martin wasn't screaming or shouting, wasn't crowding people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was here. He was amid the mob, but the judge says he was not an impactful member of the mob.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: That's going to be problematic if other judges adopt that theory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he does seem to be on an island, this judge right now.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Might these prosecutions of sort of low-level insurrectionists go on past, say, Republicans winning the next midterm election?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's one of the significant things about the Justice Department investigation, which is that there is not the same time pressure that there is on Congress.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: They have at least through the end of the Biden administration, the first the first term, if not beyond.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what we do know is DOJ thinks there were about 2000 to 2500 people who went inside the Capitol that day and they've only charged about 800.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: They're really serious about getting all of them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There may be a third of the way there.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: So they've got a long way to go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How do they even do that? How did they find all of these people that just walked in and then walked out that day?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: It's actually pretty remarkable. I mean, DOJ has made no secret that they consider this the most important investigation, possibly in American history, certainly the most complicated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As the committee is well aware, the department is engaged in one of the most sweeping investigations in its history in connection with the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And because of that, they've unloaded every tool in their arsenal to find these people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're using facial recognition software. They're geolocating people's cell phones who were there.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: They say, oh, we have a reasonable probability that you were inside the Capitol from this time to this time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these are showing up in court filings, all of these things.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: They're doing physical surveillance. They're following people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of this comes from tips from neighbors, friends, family members, colleagues, say, oh, my friend posted this on social media showing that they were inside the Capitol.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And then the FBI will run with that tip, go to these people's homes, track them, see what they're up to, and then eventually make the arrest, even for people who are sort of on the lower end of the crime spectrum here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is the DOJ getting as much blowback as the January 6th committee?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: I would say not really.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's the biggest reason for that is that the sort of elected class of Republicans are still all in agreement that anyone who committed crimes of the capital that day should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Well, anybody who committed crimes on January 6th should be prosecuted. If you entered the Capitol and you committed acts of violence and you were there to hurt people, you should be prosecuted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they are being prosecuted. And so you're not hearing these voices in Congress, even from some Trump allies in Congress, saying what DOJ is doing to these, you know, these rioters is inappropriate.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: You're hearing bits of that. There's some question about political prosecutions that we hear from Republicans a lot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are they targeting these people not for their actions, but because of their political beliefs?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: But the January 6th commission is not the place to do that. That's what prosecutors are supposed to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This commission is a partisan scam. They're going after, the purpose of that commission is to try to embarrass and smear and harass as many Republicans as they can get their hands on.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: That's what you believe your two Republican colleagues are doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I believe that's what the commission is doing.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: That's a very narrow slice of the Republicans in Congress making that argument.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A bigger slice of Trump world and Trump himself who is saying that.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: But it's not uniform across the Republican spectrum at the moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so at least as long as DOJ stays focused on the rioters, I don't think we're hearing that argument quite as forcefully.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: It's really interesting. So there isn't as much opposition to prosecuting like, you know, Gary, the dental hygienist who was at the insurrection.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there is still this resistance to figuring out why exactly this happened.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Yes. And, you know, we've heard this in court come out quite a few times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Some judges who have been sentencing these rioters are saying things like, you know, it's a little bit incongruous for us to be, you know, throwing the book at, you know, someone who just strolled into the Capitol because Donald Trump told them to do it and not going after the people who told them to do it.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And so you hear that discomfort within the legal system about why are we punishing the foot soldiers when the generals are out there, you know, scot-free?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now we do see evidence that DOJ has moved up the chain a little bit in that direction.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And so that's when I think we're going to see more of that resistance and that all-out pushback from Republicans, Trump world, that kind of thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what is that?
--:-- Kyle Chaney: That's just politics, I guess, huh?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Essentially, I mean, Trump has been saying witch hunt, witch hunt, witch hunt since he took office.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: And he is trying to spin this as a narrative that's just a continuation of that entire trajectory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think we'll see that again.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Kyle Cheney, no relation. He writes for Politico. Find his work at Politico.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Miles Bryan produced our episode. Matthew Collette edited it. Paul Mounsey mixed and mastered. Laura Bullard sent the facts.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Get in touch with us anytime. We're on Twitter at today underscore explained, at least until Elon buys it or whatever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or you can email us today explained at vox.com.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.
--:-- Kyle Chaney: Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.
