SUMMARY: Last week’s court filings by federal prosecutors and the special counsel have shifted attention to the hush money payments made on President Trump's behalf during his 2016 presidential campaign to two women with whom he had allegedly had affairs. William Brangham speaks with Rick Hasen, an election and campaign finance law scholar about the President's apparent proximity to a felony.
SUMMARY: Another member of President Trump's team has been working with special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the New York Times. White House Counsel Don McGahn has reportedly shared detailed accounts about events at the heart of the investigation. Amna Nawaz reports, and Judy Woodruff talks with former deputy independent counsel Solomon Wisenberg, and former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler.
SUMMARY: President Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges including campaign finance violations for paying off women at Trump's direction, bank fraud and more than $4 million in tax evasion. The deal could result in prison time. Judy Woodruff learns more from Jessica Roth of Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law, [and] Andrea Bernstein of WNYC.
SUMMARY: A jury found President Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud, and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. A mistrial was declared on 10 other counts. Judy Woodruff learns more from William Brangham and Jessica Roth of Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law.
SUMMARY: Fallout continued today after a guilty plea and a guilty verdict for two men with close ties to President Trump in federal court on a combined 16 counts, ranging from tax fraud to campaign finance violations. Yamiche Alcindor, Lisa Desjardins, and Larry Noble a campaign finance expert and former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission, join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest developments.
SUMMARY: Lanny Davis is one of two attorneys representing Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer. Davis joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the legal implications of Cohen’s guilty plea, whether he plans to share information with the Mueller investigation and his desire to go forward with truth in his new life.
SUMMARY: For another perspective on Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, Judy Woodruff is joined by a former attorney general under President George W. Bush, Michael Mukasey. According to Mukasey, the payment in question would have violated campaign finance law only if its sole purpose was to influence the outcome of an election, which Mukasey says was not the case.
SUMMARY: President Trump today reiterated his belief that he is not implicated by the guilty pleas of his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. The President expressed frustration that he should be associated with Cohen’s crimes, saying they were “totally unrelated to the campaign.” Also, another longtime Trump friend is reportedly preparing to share additional information about the hush money payments Cohen made.
SUMMARY: In exchange for immunity, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, will reportedly talk to investigators about the reimbursements he helped arrange to Michael Cohen. Judy Woodruff gets analysis from Renato Mariotti a former federal prosecutor experienced in trying white-collar crime, and Caleb Melby who covers business and the Trump Organization for Bloomberg News.
It takes a special counsel to actually catch white-collar criminals.
This article was co-published with The New York Times.
Oh, the audacity of dopes. The crimes of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are notable not just for how blatant they were but also for their lack of sophistication. The two men did little to hide their lying to banks and the Internal Revenue Service. One can almost sympathize with them: If it wasn’t for their decision to attach themselves to the most unlikely President in modern history, there’s every reason to think they might be still working their frauds today.
But how anomalous are Mssrs. Manafort and Cohen? Are there legions of K Street big shots working for foreign despots and parking their riches in Cypriot bank accounts to avoid the IRS? Are many political campaigns walking felonies waiting to be exposed? What about the world of luxury residential building in which Cohen plied his trade with the Trump Organization?
The answer is more disturbing than the questions: We don’t know. We don’t know because the cops aren’t on the beat. Resources have been stripped from white-collar enforcement. The FBI shifted agents to work on international terror in the wake of 9/11. White-collar cases made up about one-tenth of the Justice Department’s cases in recent years, compared with one-fifth in the early 1990s. The IRS’ criminal enforcement capabilities have been decimated by years of budget cuts and attrition. The Federal Election Commission is a toothless organization that is widely flouted.
No wonder Cohen and Manafort were so brazen. They must have felt they had impunity.
How could they not? Any person in any bar in America can tell you who was held accountable for the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, which peaked 10 years ago next month: No one. No top officer from any major bank went to prison.
But the problem goes beyond big banks. The Department of Justice — in both Democratic and Republican administrations — has lost the will and ability to prosecute top executives across corporate America, at large industrial firms, tech giants, retailers, drug makers and so on. Instead the Department of Justice reaches settlements with corporations, which pay in dollars instead of the liberty of their top officers and directors.
Beginning with a charge to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, special counsel Robert Mueller has fallen upon a rash of other crimes. In doing so, he has exposed how widespread and serious our white-collar fraud problem really is, and how lax enforcement has been for years.
At least he is also showing a way out of the problem. He and his team are demonstrating that the proper attention, resources, technique and experience can go a long way to rectify the white-collar prosecution crisis.
What’s Mueller’s secret? For one thing, he has a focus. He and his team have sufficient resources to go after a discrete set of investigations. In the early 2000s, the Justice Department had similar success setting up the Enron Task Force, a special SWAT team of government lawyers that prosecuted top executives of the failed Texas energy trader. That contrasts with the financial crisis, when the Justice Department never created a similar task force. No single department official was responsible for the prosecutions of bankers after the global meltdown.
The investigation’s techniques are also instructive. The Southern District of New York, which was referred the Cohen case by Mueller, raided President Trump’s former attorney’s offices and fought for access to the materials, even as Cohen asserted attorney-client privilege. When federal prosecutors investigate large companies, out of custom and deference they rarely use such aggressive tactics. They place few wiretaps, conduct almost no undercover operations and do almost no raids. Instead government attorneys reach carefully negotiated agreements about which documents they can review, the product of many hours of discussion with high-powered law firms on behalf of their clients. All the battles over privileged materials happen behind closed doors and without the benefit of a disinterested special master, as the Cohen case had.
Indeed it’s worse than that. The government has essentially privatized corporate law enforcement. The government effectively outsources the investigations to the companies themselves. The companies, typically trying to appear cooperative or to forestall government action, hire law firms to do internal investigations. Imagine if Mueller relied on Trump to investigate whether he colluded with the Russians or violated any other laws, and Trump hired Rudy Giuliani’s firm to do the probe.
The aggressive Mueller techniques have yielded the most crucial element for white-collar cases: flippers; i.e., wrongdoers who agree to testify against their co-conspirators. Rick Gates, the Manafort protégé, helped tighten his mentor’s noose. We are going to see in the next few months how many people flip and what they will say. No wonder President Trump mused that flipping “almost ought to be illegal.”
Mueller’s experience has given him the courage to take cases to trial, where juries are mercurial and the federal bench has turned hostile. Mueller’s prosecutors tried a “thin case” against Manafort, as the expression goes, boiling their evidence down to a few elements that the jury could absorb easily. They even managed to overcome the open hostility of U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis. Good prosecutors are used to that in white-collar cases. Judges and justices have not looked favorably upon white-collar prosecutions for more than a decade now, overturning verdicts and narrowing statutes. But with well-marshaled evidence and clear presentation, prosecutors can surmount the difficulties.
Moreover, Mueller isn’t looking to go soft in order to preserve his professional viability. I’m assuming that at age 74, he’s not going to go through the revolving door after this. That hasn’t been true for most top Justice Department officials in recent years. Many of them come from the defense bar and when they leave government they go back to defending large corporations. The same goes with the younger prosecutors who negotiate those corporate settlements. Almost all go on to become corporate defense attorneys. In those negotiations, they are auditioning for their next jobs, wanting to display their dazzling smarts but also eventually needing to appear like reasonable people and avoid being depicted by the white-collar bar as cowboys unworthy of a prestigious partnership.
Of course, we don’t know whether Mueller can go all the way to the top. The big issue in white-collar crime is whether the Justice Department can prosecute CEOs. Sure, it occasionally brings charges against lower-level executives of major corporations, but hasn’t held the chief of a Fortune 500 company accountable in more than a decade. While most observers believe Mueller will adhere to policy and not indict the President, will his report to Congress implicate the chief executive of the United States, if the evidence warrants it?
One man cannot fix the large problem on his own, however. “For these individual episodic financial crimes, the government can muster the capacity and courage to investigate and prosecute,” says Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor who recently ran for Congress in a Democratic primary. “The real question is whether, in the context of a national economic crisis, the Department of Justice has sufficient experience, resources and leadership to effectively tackle it. I’d argue that it’s pretty obvious it does not.”
For that, the Justice Department requires more resources and bodies than the government devotes to white-collar crime today, and probably some changes in the law.
Nevertheless, this should be a moment of reflection for white-collar prosecutors. It should not take a special counsel to uncover millions in bank fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. Using proper techniques, prioritizing crimes that can harm millions of people and stiffening their obsequious posture toward corporate executives will go a ways to remedying the situation.
Here’s the bad news, which will be the least surprising thing you’ll read today: the Trump administration is moving in the opposite direction. Its law enforcement agencies are engaged in something of a regulatory strike, especially when it comes to white-collar enforcement. Regulators are not policing companies or industries and are not referring cases to the Justice Department. The number of white-collar cases filed against individuals is lower than at any time in more than 20 years, according to research done by Syracuse University. The Justice Department’s fines against companies fell 90 percent during Trump’s first year in office, compared with in Obama’s last year in office, according to Public Citizen.
That must be sweet music to not just to other Manaforts and Cohens but also any corporate malefactors out there.
SUMMARY: Paul Manafort, the first defendant charged by special counsel Robert Mueller to go to trial, is accused of working as an unregistered lobbyist for several pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. William Brangham joins John Yang from the courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, to explain the contours of the case so far.
Paul Manafort orchestrated a multimillion-dollar conspiracy to evade U.S. tax and banking laws, leaving behind a trail of lies as he lived a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said Tuesday as they laid out their case against the former Trump campaign chairman.
During his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye told the jury that Manafort considered himself above the law as he funneled tens of millions of dollars through offshore accounts. That “secret income” was used to pay for personal expenses such as a $21,000 watch, a $15,000 jacket made of ostrich, and more than $6 million worth of real estate paid for in cash, Asonye said.
“A man in this courtroom believed the law did not apply to him — not tax law, not banking law,” Asonye said as he sketched out the evidence gathered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in Manafort’s bank fraud and tax evasion trial.
It’s the first trial arising from Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign and Russia. Mueller was not present in the courtroom.
Defense attorney Thomas Zehnle said in his opening statement that Manafort trusted others to keep track of the millions of dollars he was earning from his Ukrainian political work.
He made clear that undermining the credibility of Rick Gates, his former business associate and the government’s star witness, is central to the defense strategy. Zehnle said Manafort, earning millions as a political consultant helping officials in other parts of the world, relied on Gates and others — including a professional accounting firm — to keep watch over the money.
It’s the first trial arising from Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. Mueller was not present in the courtroom.
“Money’s coming in fast. It’s a lot, and Paul Manafort trusted that Rick Gates was keeping track of it,” Zehnle said. “That’s what Rick Gates was being paid to do.”
He warned jurors that Gates could not be trusted and was the type of witness who would say anything he could to save himself from a lengthy prison sentence and a crippling financial penalty.
Gates, who spent years working for Manafort in Ukraine and is also accused of helping him falsify paperwork used to obtain the bank loans, cut a plea deal with Mueller earlier this year. Gates also worked as an aide on Trump’s campaign.
Manafort, who has been jailed for nearly two months, wore a black suit and appeared fully engaged in his defense, whispering with his attorneys during jury selection and scribbling notes as the prosecution began its opening statement.
Before the start of jury selection Tuesday, prosecutors filed an expanded list of its evidence exhibits, including several email chains between Manafort and Stephen Calk, a Chicago bank chairman. The added evidence also appears to include documents related to bank accounts in Cyprus.
The government intends to show that Manafort funneled more than $60 million in proceeds from his Ukrainian political consulting through offshore accounts and hid a “significant” portion of it from the IRS.
Asonye said Manafort created “bogus” loans, falsified documents and lied to his tax preparer and bookkeeper to conceal the money, which he obtained from Ukrainian oligarchs through a series of shell company transfers and later from fraudulently obtained bank loans in the U.S.
But Zehnle disputed prosecutors’ account that Manafort was trying to conceal his earnings by storing money in bank accounts in Cyprus. He said that arrangement was not Manafort’s doing but was instead the preferred method of payment of the supporters of the pro-Russia Ukrainian political party who were paying his consulting fees.
Defense lawyers also sought to address head-on Manafort’s wealth and the images of a gaudy lifestyle that jurors are expected to see during the trial.
“Paul Manafort traveled in circles that most people will never know and he’s gotten handsomely rewarded for it,” Zehnle said. “We do not dispute that.”
The judge even interrupted the prosecutor during his opening statements to caution him against suggesting there was something criminal about being a multimillionaire.
“It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said.
Prosecutors made no reference to Trump in their opening statement nor discussed in any way Manafort’s leadership of the Trump campaign, or the ongoing investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the president’s associates. Despite that, Manafort’s case is widely viewed as a test to the legitimacy of Mueller’s ongoing probe, which Trump has dismissed as a “witch hunt.”
“There was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!” Trump tweeted early Tuesday.
The trial is expected to last several weeks.
“It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said.
At jury selection earlier Tuesday, the pool faced questions from both sides and the judge as they tried to weed out potential prejudice in what has become a highly publicized and politically divisive investigation. A jury of six men and six women was ultimately selected, along with four alternate jurors.
Manafort has a second trial scheduled for September in the District of Columbia. It involves allegations that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukrainian interests and made false statements to the U.S. government.
The other 31 people charged by Mueller so far have either pleaded guilty or are Russians seen as unlikely to enter an American courtroom. Three Russian companies have also been charged. One of those companies has pleaded not guilty and is fighting the allegations in federal court in Washington.
SUMMARY: Special counsel Robert Mueller has prepared a list of almost 50 questions to ask President Trump as part of the federal investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Moscow, and obstruction of justice. What do Mueller's questions, reported by the New York Times, suggest about the state of the probe? Judy Woodruff talks to former federal prosecutor Matthew Olsen.
SUMMARY: Former FBI Director James Comey led off his new memoir media blitz by criticizing President Trump in an interview with ABC News, focusing much of his attack on the President's character, and addressing the Hillary Clinton email investigation as a “no-win situation.” Trump on Monday questioned Comey's credibility, while his legal team fought a different battle. Yamiche Alcindor reports.
SUMMARY: New revelations by former FBI director James Comey have stirred the President's ire on Twitter. But do they say anything new about the potential legal trouble President Trump could face? Judy Woodruff talks with Chuck Rosenberg a former U.S. attorney and senior FBI official, about Comey’s book, as well as efforts by Trump’s legal team to stop prosecutors to examine files of his personal lawyer.
SUMMARY: The Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat said Thursday that President Donald Trump would spark a “constitutional crisis” if he fired special counsel Robert Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
“I believe that firing Mueller or Rosenstein would create a constitutional crisis,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va) told the PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff. Warner added that “history would then judge all of us” if Congress did not prevent Trump from firing the officials in charge of overseeing the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
The White House has in the past denied that Trump is considering firing Mueller. Rosenstein appointed the former FBI director last May to head the Russia probe.
But Warner said the President is unpredictable. Last week, as FBI agents raided Michael Cohen, the President’s personal lawyer, Trump said “we’ll see what happens” when asked if he’d fire Mueller. And White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the President had the power to fire Mueller, if he wanted to.
“Saying one thing on one day doesn’t mean that’ll be his position the next day,” Warner said of Trump.
Warner, who along with Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is leading the Senate Intelligence panel’s probe into Russia — also expressed support for a bipartisan Senate bill aimed at protecting Mueller from getting fired. The bill would fast track a judicial review of a President’s decision to fire Mueller and future special counsels.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is planning to hold a committee vote on the bill. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has said he won’t bring the bill to the full Senate floor, so its chances of passage, at least now, appear to be zero.
Warner said he was disappointed in McConnell’s opposition to the proposal. Warner added that he hoped the majority leader “would reconsider” if the Judiciary Committee passes the measure with overwhelming bipartisan support.
SUMMARY: FBI agents raided and seized records from President Trump's long-time personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Multiple news outlets report that agents took records related to payments Cohen made to the adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006. William Brangham talks to Eric Tucker of the Associated Press.
SUMMARY: According to the White House, President Trump believes he has the power to fire Robert Mueller after the FBI raided Trump's personal lawyer based on information from the special counsel's team. It's widely reported that the FBI seized thousands of Michael Cohen's records dealing with two women who say they had sexual affairs with Trump. John Yang reports and Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff.
SUMMARY: The FBI raid on the office and residence of President Trump's personal lawyer is an extraordinary and unusual step that would require high-level authorization at the Justice Department and the burden of evidence showing probable cause. Judy Woodruff gets analysis from attorney Mark Zaid, and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, on what it means for the Russia investigation.
SUMMARY: President Trump made new accusations on social media Monday that the probe into ties between his campaign and Russia is a "witch hunt," directly criticizing the special counsel. Lawmakers in both parties have warned Trump not to fire Robert Mueller, warning of a dire crisis for his Presidency. Lisa Desjardins reports.
SUMMARY: FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired on Friday, two days before he was set to retire; Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he was dismissed on the recommendation of FBI disciplinary officials. McCabe also reportedly kept notes on his conversations with the President, and has turned them over to the Special Counsel. Judy Woodruff talks to Adam Goldman from The New York Times.
SUMMARY: Lisa Monaco, a former Assistant Attorney General and Homeland Security Adviser, says we can't judge the merits of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to fire Andrew McCabe because the Justice Department’s Inspector General report has not been made public, which she called “highly unusual." Monaco joins Judy Woodruff to give her impressions of McCabe and the President’s tweets.
SUMMARY: President Trump reportedly ordered the dismissal of special counsel Robert Mueller last June, but backed down after White House counsel Don McGahn said he would quit rather than carry out the order, according to The New York Times and others. In Davos, the President dismissed the report as "fake news." John Yang reports and Judy Woodruff talks to Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School.
SUMMARY: The Deputy Attorney General defended Robert Mueller's Russia investigation on Wednesday against GOP charges that the probe is a partisan "witch hunt" against President Trump. [U.S.] House members pointed to text messages by a top FBI official about Trump as a candidate. Hari Sreenivasan talks with former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including Michael Flynn’s guilty plea in connection with the Russia probe, the Senate GOP’s push for its tax reform bill, and what’s next for lawmakers including Rep. John Conyers who have been accused of sexual misconduct.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): From courthouses to Congress, it has been a week crammed full of news, the Michael Flynn guilty plea today, momentum for the Republican tax plan, and increased calls for Congressman John Conyers to resign amid charges of sexual misconduct.
All that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Gerson. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson. David Brooks is away.
Welcome to both of you.
So, Mark Shields, what a day here in Washington. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, made news early today with this guilty plea from retired General Michael Flynn, the President’s former national security adviser. What do you make of it?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: Well, Judy, one former federal prosecutor said that Michael Flynn was looking at several score years, potentially, behind bars for the offenses that were listed against him.
And for Robert Mueller to accept his plea of guilty for this one charge of lying to the FBI, which is a very serious charge, led him and all of his colleagues to conclude that this is big, that what he is delivering (he, Michael Flynn) to Robert Mueller and his office is significant, so significant that they would let his son off and apparently not proceed on the charges that Carrie mentioned in the earlier segment about his not registering work with Turkey and the other charges against him.
Judy Woodruff: And, again, Michael Gerson, the White House is saying, that’s all well and good, but that’s just what Michael Flynn did and it had nothing to do with anybody in this White House.
Michael Gerson, Washington Post: It’s not a particularly credible response at this point, I think.
I mean, it did feel like an historic day. This — when the history of the Trump administration is written, I think Russia will be in the first paragraph. And the reason is exactly what Mark was talking about, is that Mueller got something in order to give a considerable amount here.
We don’t really know what it is that he got. It’s still, you know, undetermined. But he got something that he felt that he could bring to a grand jury and that would forward a case towards people who are higher.
And there aren’t too many other people who are higher. The group is small. And many of them have the Trump family connection. And so I think you can’t argue that this is just restricted to him. He was turned in order to turn against others. And I think that Mueller has a good idea of what that testimony will look like.
Judy Woodruff: And, Mark, there is, though, this drumbeat out there from people who say, wait a minute, there is just too much focus on this Russia investigation, we don’t know where it’s heading, it’s taking up a lot of time and energy, and what does it add up to?
Mark Shields: Well, I think what it adds up to, Judy, is that when — it’s been compared, Michael Flynn today, to John Dean at time of Watergate who — and Richard Nixon — he had been White House counsel.
And when John Dean came clean, it wasn’t Bob Haldeman, the Chief of Staff in the White House, or John Ehrlichman, who was Domestic Policy Adviser, the two people closest to President Nixon, they had in sight.
And I think — I don’t think there’s any question that unspoken is that the President’s in sight. And the speculation all day today in Washington is, what will President Trump do? Will he in fact, as the walls start to close in, or apparently seem to close in on him, will he fire Robert Mueller?
Lindsey Graham, in anticipation of that, the senator from South Carolina, urged him not to do it, warned him not to do it. What will the Republicans do?
Paul Ryan has praised him, the speaker of the House, recently as stronger than any President since Ronald Reagan, and realizing that flattery gets you everywhere with this President.
I don’t know. But that is, quite frankly, where it is. It’s serious, it is real, it’s genuine. And Bob Mueller is not playing games. He’s not a partisan. He was appointed by President George W. Bush at the FBI. And, you know, he’s a guy who’s way above any kind of cheap party politics.
Judy Woodruff: Michael, does it inexorably lead to the President?
Michael Gerson: Well, it leads to a very basic question, is, why has everyone that touched this issue lied, lied to the FBI, lied to the American public?
You know, if they were just having normal contacts with a normal power — with another power, that’s what transitions do. But when it came down to it — and this is advice for our viewers at home — you don’t lie to the FBI. And that is a dangerous thing, because every lie is leverage for them.
They use it in order to get more information to make progress in their investigation. And so they are attracting attention to the mystery at the center of this matter by their deceptions. And that — it seems like we’re dealing with something very major.
Mark Shields: Judy, if I could just pick up on Michael’s point, actually, which I think is a good one; what we do know is this, that after the election, during the interregnum, the transition, when Michael Flynn was out of government, but working in the transition, about to be named national security adviser, he, to really frustrate and overcome, veto American foreign policy legitimately and legally made by the sitting President of the United States, Barack Obama, to impose sanctions upon Russia for Russia’s meddling and sabotaging the American election, got in touch with Ambassador Kislyak, the former — then Ambassador to — from Russia, and urged him not to retaliate and not to overreact or whatever to these sanctions.
And we know that, the next day, Russia didn’t, and the day following that, Donald Trump praised Russia for its restraint in not retaliating.
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Judy Woodruff: The other big story today, Michael Gerson, is what we talked to Lisa Desjardins about, is the — speaking of inexorable, this tax plan is — it moved through the House. It was passed. It’s now about to be passed by every good reporter’s reporting, it’s going to pass the Senate tonight.
Michael Gerson: Right.
Judy Woodruff: What does this say about the Republican Party and how it wants to change this economy?
Michael Gerson: Well, there is some drama to this.
Last night, when the Joint Tax Committee report came out saying that this would add a trillion dollars to the debt, and Corker essentially said, I can’t support this thing, it looked like it might be a near-run thing.
But McConnell gave a lot of people what they wanted, like Senator Collins and others, in this process. Ultimately, there weren’t even three true deficit hawks in the entire Republican Caucus. There was one, which was Corker.
(LAUGHTER)
Michael Gerson: All this talk about deficits really was undermined.
But the ultimate calculation here that Republicans have made broadly on the Hill is that if they do end up the year with nothing, that they will be politically punished. And their argument is that something is better than nothing, even a flawed product like this one.
And I don’t know if that’s a correct argument, but that is generally believed on Capitol Hill among Republicans.
Judy Woodruff: Are they taking a risk by doing this?
Mark Shields: They’re taking a risk, Judy, that they’re losing any sense of integrity.
This is a tax bill that is written solely for the deserving rich. And it also, at the same time, manages to soak the poor. Just the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office indicates that, by 2027, by 2027, Americans earning the princely sum of between $40,000 and $50,000 will, collectively combined, pay $5.3 trillion — trillion — more in taxes. Americans earning over $1 million, by the same study, will receive $5.7 trillion in tax cuts.
I mean, the Republican Party, for the longest time — and Michael is a card — was a card-carrying member of it — believed in small government, limited government, in balanced budgets.
And then they drank the Kool-Aid of supply side. And no Republican on Capitol Hill since 1991 has voted, since George W. Bush — H.W. Bush was President, has voted to increase taxes. That is the Holy Grail. That’s the one unifying, galvanizing principle of Republicans.
It’s not civil rights, as it once in the time of Abraham Lincoln. It’s not even small government. And it’s not certainly balanced budgets. It’s tax cuts. And it’s tax cuts for those best off among us.
Judy Woodruff: But to get back to your point, and to build on what Mark just said, Michael, this says that Republicans are not — either they don’t believe the deficits are going to grow or they don’t think it’s going to be the political liability or the liability to the economy.
Michael Gerson: Yes.
And they don’t think that it’s a risk to be seen as the plutocratic party going into these elections. That may well be a risk here.
I mean, one of the examples is that Senator Rubio and Senator Lee had a very good proposal here to allow the child tax credit to be deductible against withholding, not just income taxes, which would really help blue-collar, working-class families in America.
It was deeply controversial. It’s still up in the air, what’s going to happen. But that’s not where Republicans were. They’re supposed to be now the populist party, the party of blue-collar workers.
And they were not, at least as of the moment, willing to do something like this. And that, I think, is a test that Republicans are failing. If they want to be seen as populists, in the mode that Trump wants the party to be seen, they need to act like it.
Judy Woodruff: And it looks, Mark, as if there is no question that the House is going to go along with something. There will be changes, but, in the end, there will be a tax bill.
Mark Shields: I think there will.
And I don’t think Democrats ought to skate on this, Judy, because the Democrats have let the debate become about the deficit, which means this. If the Republicans do lose the House in 2018, and if the calculations and calibrations are accurate, then, when the Democrats get back in, they are going to be beset with enormous deficits, and their responsibility is going to cut — do the cuts or raise — and raise taxes.
And let’s be very honest about this. There is — part of this is the Grover Norquist ideal, the Republican strategist, conservative strategist, and that is, you have to shrink the government. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has already said that the next move is on welfare, we have to cut welfare.
Welfare means one thing. It means three things. It means Medicaid, it means Medicare and it means disabilities, and Social Security. And the Democrats — like the Republicans on health care never had a plan, the Democrats do not have a single organizing principle that they advanced instead of. And I think that was the failure of Democratic leadership.
Judy Woodruff: But it sounds, Michael, as if Republicans are prepared to make that argument.
Michael Gerson: Yes. No, I agree with that.
They could even — there’s a possibility that the House might vote on the Senate bill and avoid conference here, which I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not, because some members of the House might not want it to happen.
Judy Woodruff: Right.
Michael Gerson: But I think that they want to move in this direction as fast as they can. And they’re going to tag the Democrats with that type of argument.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the Virginia governor's race, suggestions by Donna Brazile that the Democratic primary race was rigged for Hillary Clinton, the GOP tax overhaul plan, and the Russia probe indictments.
Judy Woodruff: (NewsHour): A different kind of economics, David, and that is taxes.
The Republicans did come out this week, yesterday, with their tax reform, tax cut proposal. What does it say to you about what the Republicans in Congress and the president want right now?
David Brooks, New York Times: Well, they have a vision for what business taxes should be, which is to lower the rates. And I think there’s a — our corporate rates are super high. And to attract capital to this country, it would help to lower the rates.
They have no vision of what individual tax rates should be or how we should tax individuals. Their bill is sort of a hodgepodge of moving rates the rates around randomly. They have no vision of how to protect families. There could have been a much bigger child tax credit.
And then, finally — and this is what everyone — the point everyone is making, but it happens to be true — they have no vision about the fiscal health of this country in the long term.
I personally think there are some pieces of this legislation that I like, capping the mortgage interest deduction. There are some things I don’t like. I don’t think cutting the rates the way that they do is super important. But it’s all dwarfed by the $1.5 trillion hole they’re going to blow in the deficit.
And until they can solve that problem, you’re not really dealing seriously for this country.
(CROSSTALK)
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: I agree completely about the $1.5 trillion deficit, Judy.
And it is going to be financed, as we know, from the Republican votes in the House and the Senate, by cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the very constituency that Donald Trump pledged to be the champion of.
And, no, it’s — I would say it had its biggest day yesterday. I really do. I mean, I think it’s not something that stands the daylight very well or scrutiny. It starts with 25 percent approval support in the country. That’s the lowest that any presidential initiative since George W. Bush’s ill-fated attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005, which died after 10 months.
Judy, what these people forget is the 1986 Tax Reform Act began in 1982 with Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt and Bradley-Gephardt. And it includes people of the talent of Jim Baker and Dick Darman at the White House.
Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn are not Dick Darman and Jim Baker. And it had 430 witnesses before the House Ways and Means Committee and 26 days of markups.
These people think they’re going to do it on the fly, on the run? They’re absolutely delusional.
Judy Woodruff: So, both of you are saying…
(CROSSTALK)
David Brooks: Dan Rostenkowski. There was a lot of serious talent.
Mark Shields: Dan Rostenkowski, Bob Packwood.
David Brooks: But what’s — it’s not going to pass.
Like, they punish people in the blue states. You’re going to get rid of state and local deduction, and that that is going to create massive opposition. The realtors, philanthropies, student debt, there’s all sorts of things that are politically mine fields.
The question to me is, does it completely die or do they fall back to some limited tax cut, just so they can say they passed something?
Judy Woodruff: They passed something.
David Brooks: And I would bet — I don’t know if I would bet, but I suspect they will try to fall back to something plausible, maybe just the corporate rates. I don’t know what else. But they will try to fall back to just simple, smaller tax cut.
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