Tamara Keith and Leigh Ann Caldwell on reaction and backlash to Biden’s pardon of son

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Well, while many of us were taking a break this holiday weekend, Washington was still busy at work with everything from pardons to Cabinet picks.

  Here to get us caught up is Tamara Keith of NPR and Leigh Ann Caldwell from The Washington Post. Amy Walter is away.

  It's great to have you both here.

  So, Tamara, I want to start with you, because we have now seen in the aftermath of President Biden pardoning his son Hunter some backlash from his fellow Democrats. We heard from Colorado Governor Jared Polis earlier. Senator Bennet has weighed in saying he believes Biden put personal interest ahead of duty.

  Senator Welch has said, while it's understandable, as a father, he said, as the nation's chief executive, it is unwise.

  Does your reporting, Tam, showed that President Biden weighed these consequences, this potential backlash, and the precedent that it sets before making this decision?

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  Certainly, several members of his own party have come out to say that they feel like President Biden, by doing this, is ceding the political high ground on an issue that Democrats have hit incoming President Trump on.

  What I will say is that President Biden spent this last weekend with his family in Nantucket. This is a family retreat. They get together there everything Thanksgiving. And President Biden has always had a political blind spot when it comes to his family, in particular his son Hunter, and the challenges that Hunter has presented to Biden over the years, the challenges that Hunter Biden's various issues have presented to Biden.

  This has always been an area that has been a political blind spot, has been almost off-limits for Biden. I think another issue that this raised was simply that the White House, President Biden himself and his spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeatedly said that this wasn't going to happen.

  A lot of people didn't believe that Biden really wouldn't ultimately pardon his son, but by then reversing course, that affects the credibility of this White House.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Leigh Ann, what about on Capitol Hill? What are your Democratic sources telling you about their reaction and how this complicates their path forward?

• Leigh Ann Caldwell, The Washington Post:

  Yes.

  Well, the Democrats who have come out in opposition to this, Senator Elizabeth Warren told reporters just a few moments before I got here that what's wrong is wrong and this is wrong. And so there are some senators who think that the President Biden should not have stooped to Donald Trump's level and done what — something that Donald Trump might have done in his presidency.

  But then there are some Democrats who — privately who aren't speaking out saying one thing or another say, you know what, this is what — this is something that was important to President Biden and this might be something that hasn't been done in the scope in years, but it's his prerogative to do.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Meanwhile, we know the Cabinet picks continue from president-elect Trump.

  Over the weekend, he nominated Kash Patel to run the FBI. Patel is a staunch loyalist, of course. He's repeated the lie of the stolen 2020 election. He called January 6 rioters patriots. He's also spread a number of conspiracy theories.

  Here, in fact, is Mr. Patel in his own words from earlier this year and last year about his plans.

  Kash Patel, Former Deputy Assistant to President Trump: I shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state, and I take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.

  We're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tam, he's a former federal prosecutor and public defender with little management or law enforcement experience. What does this pick say about how Mr. Trump views the FBI?

• Tamara Keith:

  So this pick is very much in line with president-elect Trump's many other Cabinet nominees, in that this is someone who is, first and foremost, loyal to Trump, who he did work in the first Trump administration in several acting roles toward the end.

  And in those positions he was there essentially as Trump's eyes and ears in other agencies. When it comes to the FBI, as you asked about, President Trump lost faith in the FBI within days of entering the White House, essentially.

  As you remember, he fired the FBI director, put in place Christopher Wray, and now he's saying that the person that he appointed needs to be replaced with a loyalist, Kash Patel. And Patel is someone who has echoed Trump's own words about the January 6 rioters and others being patriots, being politically persecuted.

  Trump just fundamentally disagrees with the way the FBI has conducted law enforcement and approached the rule of law, which, incidentally, also affected him, because he was indicted after multiple investigations and including a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And, Leigh Ann, I know you have been tracking this.

  A number of Republican senators have been asked about the selection of Kash Patel this weekend. Here's what some of them had to say in response.

• Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX):

  One of the most tragic consequences of four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is both DOJ and the FBI have been politicized and weaponized. And I think Kash Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption in the FBI.

• Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN):

  I think Kash does have relevant experience, particularly when it comes to the mandate the American public have signed of turning these agencies around that have completely corrupted. Kash has pointed it out. He's probably the best at uncovering what's happened at the FBI, and I look forward to see him taking it apart.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Senator Chuck Grassley, who is in line to chair the Judiciary Committee, also said this, that he believes the current director, Christopher Wray, failed in his role. And he said that Kash Patel must prove to Congress he will reform and restore public trust in the FBI.

  It's not exactly criticism there, some caution from Senator Grassley. Are you hearing any concerns from Republican senators privately about Patel?

• Leigh Ann Caldwell:

  Yes, and Chuck Grassley is likely to oversee these confirmation hearings of Kash Patel.

  This is another tough choice for these Republican senators to have to move through. This is very new for them. They just got back into town tonight. And so senators are still trying to digest. And, to be clear, a lot of these senators actually didn't know who he was very much before this.

  But this is going to be a nominee that Republicans are going to have to grapple with, and along the same lines of Matt Gaetz, where I heard a lot of, maybe he's just not going to make it through the process and he withdraws on his own, so it doesn't put them in a position to have to take a vote.

  But it's still very early in this process. And so a lot of senators are wanting to keep their powder dry and not put their — put the cart before the horse.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Well, Tam, this brings us to the point where there are concerns looming over a number of nominees. We won't know for a few weeks now if they do move into confirmation hearings.

  But we mentioned earlier, of course, the new reporting around Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense. There's concerns around Tulsi Gabbard as well. How are senators looking at this right now in terms of this matrix of decisions that they're going to have to make?

• Tamara Keith:

  We do expect that there will be confirmation hearings that begin in early January, as is traditional, once the new Congress is sworn in.

  And a month is a very long time. If you think about all of the reports and other issues that have come out with some of these nominees in a matter of a couple of weeks, it's possible that more of the sort of public vetting will occur before they ever get to a confirmation hearing.

  But you're right, that senators have a lot to figure out. They have to decide exactly what they're willing to tolerate. And Republican senators are willing to tolerate a lot. They're willing to give Trump a lot of leeway, in part because they — some of them are in office because of Trump, because the Senate is now much more — Senate Republicans are largely much more in line with Trump than they were when he came into office back in 2017.

  And I will say one question that is looming for me is, there still has not been a memorandum of understanding signed between the Department of Justice and the Trump transition to begin the FBI background checks and vetting that are a traditional part of the confirmation process. We also don't know whether the Trump administration, the incoming administration, is going to participate with the Office of Government Ethics and that sort of conflict of interest vetting that is normally a part of the process, and whether senators, Republican senators, will demand that.

  Those are still really open questions about this process.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Leigh Ann, about 30 seconds left. What's your take on this?

• Leigh Ann Caldwell:

  Yes, so senators are — as Tam said, there's a lot of deference to the president to fill his Cabinet positions. There's a lot of pressure from senators, voters, Republican base voters, to do what the president wants.

  Everyone is going to have to take in their own political calculations and political capital, including if they are up for reelection in 2026. And so it is going to be — it could be a tough vote for Republicans.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And a month is a long time, as Tam said.

• Leigh Ann Caldwell:

  Yes. Anything can happen.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Leigh Ann Caldwell, Tamara Keith, always great to see you both. Thank you so much.

• Leigh Ann Caldwell:

  Thank you.