Full Episode: Washington Week full episode, June 9, 2023

Laura Barron- Lopez: Trump's historic federal indictment.

Jack Smith, Special Counsel: Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump.

Donald Trump, Former U.S. President: It's election interference at the highest level. I'm an innocent man.

Laura Barron- Lopez: The Justice Department charges former President Donald Trump with 37 felony counts relating to his handling of classified information and unseals its case in a revealing and damning indictment.

Trump makes history as the first former American president to be charged with federal crimes. But he's also the current Republican presidential frontrunner, raising potential political implications, next.

Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week. I'm Laura Barron- Lopez.

It's been a historic week, and our country is in uncharted territory after former President Donald Trump became the first former American president to be charged with federal crimes. The Justice Department today unsealed its indictment against Trump, charging him with 37 felony counts related to his handling of classified information. Those counts range from violating the Espionage Act to obstructing justice.

And the allegations against him are stunning. Among them, Trump stored boxes of classified documents in a ballroom and a bathroom. He acknowledged to Mar-a-Lago guest that he had classified documents and noted his inability to declassify them. And Trump suggested that his attorney hide or destroy the documents subpoenaed by the grand jury.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has been investigating Trump for nearly seven months and he spoke about the indictment earlier today.

Jack Smith: We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.

Laura Barron- Lopez: Trump will appear in a Miami federal court Tuesday, where he plans to plead not guilty.

Joining us to discuss this and more, Devlin Barrett, a reporter for The Washington Post, Heather Caygle, managing editor of Punchbowl News, Hugo Lowell, reporter at The Guardian, and Ed O'Keefe, senior White House and political correspondent for CBS News. Thanks to you all for being here tonight on a historic night.

Devlin, the indictment is 49 pages long and a decent amount of it we knew. There are some pretty shocking elements also, too. What stood out to you the most?

Devlin Barrett, Reporter, The Washington Post: So I think one of the really important parts of this indictment is it lays out time and time again Trump, in his own words, saying that he clearly understands the rules of classification but also clearly does not want to give these documents back, these classified documents back, even though people around him are clearly telling him he has to.

So, there's a degree of repeated insistence that he should and there's also a degree, I think, of arguing in both privately and among his friends that the rules don't really apply to him, that he knows that there are these rules and he doesn't care.

Laura Barron- Lopez: So, it's about that willful retention of those documents.

Hugo when we're talking about the sheer volume of the documents he had, one thing I want to note is that he allegedly kept classified information from a host of agencies, some of those federal agencies mentioned in the indictment are the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency. And there's also the level of sensitivity of these documents. So, how damning is the information here?

Hugo Lowell, Political Investigations Reporter, The Guardian: I think the constellation of the agencies that were listed in the indictment was really stunning. But then when you actually look at the documents that they listed in the indictment, there were some documents where even the classification markings were redacted. And I think that kind of speaks to the extent and the sensitivity of some of the material that Trump had kept at Mar-a-Lago.

We knew there was top secret stuff. We knew there was special access program level stuff. But when you have documents where the Justice Department is not even comfortable writing what the specific program is, I think that speaks to a whole different category of document.

Laura Barron- Lopez: And the Justice Department has been extremely careful to show how independent they are. This is a special counsel investigation, which even adds other level of independence from the Justice Department. The Justice Department is saying, we're not talking to the White House about this. What has President Biden said so far?

Ed O'Keefe, Senior White House and Political Correspondent, CBS News: Oh, as little as he can. He was asked about it just hours before the former president announced the indictment, saying, what would you say to those who are concerned that the Justice Department is being used for political means?

And he pointed out that throughout his presidency, he has never once publicly or otherwise criticized or weighed in on a potential charge of somebody involved in Justice Department matters, and arguing sort of indirectly that that's exactly what Donald Trump used to do. He had politicized the department. He had fired various personnel for making decisions that he didn't disagree with or that he didn't agree with, and Biden has done the opposite.

We know that in this case, they learned about it through media reports that the president was not given a heads-up. Nobody at the White House was. Nobody ever is. Whenever there's some new Trump legal matter, we always go back and ask, did you guys get a heads-up? They always say, no, we learned about it from you guys.

And they have gone to great lengths over the course of this administration to keep senior Justice Department officials literally and figuratively out of the White House and to keep the communication between them above board as much as possible and focused on loftier political goals that have nothing to do with the legal work that they continue to do. And we can expect that to continue, because, remember, it's not just former President Trump, it's his own son who remains the subject of an investigation up in Delaware. And in that situation, it would be even more awkward for the president and the attorney general to be talking and spending time together in any way, which he just simply has not done.

Laura Barron- Lopez: And where President Biden has tried to show that he's not -- has made clear that he's not talking to the Justice Department at all. Over in the House, House Republicans are trying to get in on this. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan today requested that Merrick Garland send over Mar-a-Lago -- all the documents related to Mar-a-Lago, and Speaker McCarthy got behind him. What is Jim Jordan doing here, Heather?

Heather Caygle, Managing Editor, Punchbowl News: I mean, I think obviously they're trying to be bulldogs for the president, right? They control this one chamber in Congress. This is the thing, the megaphone that they can use. It's quite interesting. This is a request that he has sent for several months, since House Republicans took over in January.

Of course, the Justice Department is not going to comply. They weren't going to comply before, they're certainly not going to now. But it allows them to go to the base. It allows them to go to former President Trump, and say, look, we're doing everything we can to defend you. We are out here staking this out. And they keep using terms like double standard of justice. We're going to ensure that others are held accountable. They compare this to President Joe Biden and his classified documents, which he handed over, as we were discussing before the show came. Hillary Clinton is another one that we've seen come up several times today.

I think the interesting thing here is to zoom out just a little bit and think about the politics for McCarthy. He was facing a revolt from his right flank this week. This is a way that he can try to mollify that a little bit by saying, look, I'm with you guys. I'm standing up for Trump. I'm doing what I can. But, again, it's little more than them playing defense.

Laura Barron- Lopez: It's a bit of interference.

Heather Caygle: Yes, it is. But they're not going to get the documents that they're requesting. So, they have a megaphone, but they're in a very crowded field.

Laura Barron- Lopez: Speaking of the difference between President Biden's special counsel investigation and Trump's, President Biden, notably, was not trying to obstruct or continually retain these documents after they had been asked for by National Archives.

So, Hugo, I'm hoping that you can explain basically like the three big buckets of the charges in here, which is they have to do with the Espionage Act, they have to do with obstruction of justice. Lay those out for us.

Hugo Lowell: Yes. So, when Jim Trusty, now Trump's former lawyer who just resigned today, kind of went on CNN last night and talked about these charges, I think it was right in his characterization to say they kind of fit into three buckets, right? You had the Espionage Act charges, the 793 charges, the retention of national defense information. You had the false statements charges, whether it's with Walt Nauta or Trump or his lawyers. And then you had the obstruction charges about Trump's efforts to make sure that whether in response to the subpoena or otherwise, the Justice Department could not retrieve the classified documents.

And I think by splitting them up into those three categories, it makes it much more straightforward to present something like this to a trial jury. I think prosecutors like stories. They like things that are easily digestible. And if you present it in three very clear lanes, it's the sort of thing that I think a jury would find easier to convict on.

Laura Barron- Lopez: And that willful retention of documents, that is talking about the Espionage Act, right, because there's no really very specific mention of the Espionage Act in the indictment. Correct?

Hugo Lowell: Yes. So, I mean, what he's being charged with is Section 793 of Title 18. That is part of the Espionage Act, and specifically the part about retention of national defense information.

And I think there's a lot of discussion about classified documents and whether Trump could declassify, I mean, and also the Presidential Records Act, right? But all of this is kind of a sideshow. At issue here is did Trump violate national security laws? Did he basically retain documents that could cause damage to the national security and basically things that are military documents? And in both instances that the Justice Department laid out in this indictment, they appear to be things that could harm the national security.

Laura Barron- Lopez: And you mentioned Walt Nauta. Devlin, he's the other person charged in this indictment. He was a military valet for Trump when he was president and then became his personal aide after Trump left the White House. What's the significance of those charges?

Devlin Barrett: So, it's twofold. One is a very important legal issue, which is conspiracy. They are charged together with conspiring to obstruct this investigation. That is really the connective tissue, both factually and legally, for how this all relates to each -- all these things relate to each other. So, that's one.

Two, Walt Nauta is quite simply the guy who carries the boxes. And as you read through the indictment, you see how, according to prosecutors, as soon as they start getting these demands for these documents, Trump starts giving orders to move boxes around. And it's going taking boxes to the bedroom and then bringing a whole bunch of boxes back into a storage room when they know the FBI is going to be there the next day, would that really suggest and sort of paints a timeline of significant obstruction, of deliberative obstruction?

And in Walt Nauta's case, they also alleged that he just flat out lied to them when they asked. This was a guy who, at one point, took a picture of boxes with stuff just spilling out of them because there were so many boxes in Mar-a-Lago. And when he's asked by the FBI, did you ever move boxes? Did you ever seen any boxes? He allegedly said, boxes. I don't know anything about any boxes.

Ed O'Keefe: But they're not the only two guys involved in this conspiracy, probably, right?

Devlin Barrett: Well, they're the only two charged. The prosecutors and agents have definitely questioned others, including other Mar-a-Lago employees, and there are definite suspicions that have been raised about other Mar-a-Lago employees. But none of those people have been charged, and they may or may not be charged.

One big factor in all of this is they are trying to get through a case as quickly as they can. You saw Jack Smith say, we need to do this fast. There's a bunch of reasons for that, but I think, frankly, one of them is everyone understands he's a candidate for president. Everyone understands the primaries are next year and the nominating conventions is next summer. It is hard to push a federal trial fast, particularly one with classified evidence, but that is what Jack Smith is going to try to do.

Laura Barron- Lopez: And we've seen a majority of Republicans, Ed, rally behind the former president, including rivals of his for the 2024 nomination. I just want to list off a few. I mean, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, all three of them came to Trump's defense even before the indictment was unsealed. And then others, like Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, actually took shots at Trump. Hutchinson arguably the most harsh, saying that Trump should, quote, end his campaign.

You were just in Iowa. Do you think that this indictment is going to have any political implications for the former president in this primary?

Ed O'Keefe: Probably. But when and how and to what extent, we'll have to see. Because -- and it also depend on how big the field is going into the caucuses in the primaries early next year, because they're big right now. Are they still by then? We'll see.

Look, if he's got a ceiling of about 35, 40 percent of the Republican electorate right now with him, all the others look at that and go, there's a simple math equation here that suggests a majority of Republicans are looking around. And in our conversations with voters that are not Trump supporters, yes, they acknowledge there's baggage, there's stuff there that they're kind of tired of, whether it's the legal, the behavioral, the personal, just him and the way he conducts business, they're looking for somebody else.

DeSantis sits there comfortably in number two, in part, because of all the action he's taken in the last year as a conservative big state governor. The others are in the mix because they like the theory of Nikki Haley or they think Tim Scott is an interesting guy. We'll see if they can break through.

But notice what they were doing in their defense. They weren't outright saying, I believe Donald Trump, and he is an innocent man. No. They're raising the process questions that House Republicans are raising, two-tier justice system, he's being unfairly targeted. If he wasn't running for president again, they wouldn't care. That is popular with the Republican base. That's what they want to hear. And they believe that there has been favoritism to some extent, either in elections or in prosecutions, but they're not outright saying, I necessarily agree with him.

And I wonder, as details of this come out, as things go on next week, do any of those that are right now at least defending him perhaps start to change their tune and raise questions of whether or not he should be the guy? And, remember, DeSantis especially, has said the juvenile way he attacks his opponents, the way he has conducted business otherwise, is why he lost the swing voters he needs in the general election and why we shouldn't be nominating him again.

So he's making the broader argument that Trump shouldn't be involved. But he knows that if he's going to win this primary, he's got to make some kind of a pitch to those voters who are angry in the event that Trump isn't involved or because he can convince them otherwise.

Laura Barron- Lopez: I mean, he's pulling a card out of Trump's playbook by saying that this is a weaponization of the government, sowing distrust about America's institutions. But, Heather, Senate Republicans and House Republicans, they're often split, and they are split again, it seems, on this.

Heather Caygle: Yes, absolutely. I mean, we notably have not heard from the Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell, today. We have not heard from the number two Republican, John Thune. We have heard the number three Senate Republican, John Barrasso, who normally tries to cut a more conservative cloth than the others and sometimes try to stand out. And he did issue a statement before the indictment was unsealed that did not mention Donald Trump but made these same claims of double standards and things like that.

But, I mean, 100 percent, I think Senate Republicans have been much more open in saying that Donald Trump, they don't want him as their candidate. They don't think that he can win. And, again, they have firsthand experience with this, right. Like a lot of folks, including them, expected them to win the Senate last cycle, and Democrats were able to not only hang onto it but pick up a seat.

And so think it's a very interesting dichotomy on the Hill because you have these House Republicans who, like you said, are trying to interfere in this election and being his loudest defenders, and then you have Senate Republicans who are trying their best to edge away from him, and some of them are openly saying, he's not our guy.

Laura Barron- Lopez: Devlin, I mean, there're so many things we can pick out of this indictment, and I know that a lot has been reported by the two of you all along the way. But one thing that I wanted to note was some of the dialogue here in this July 21st, 2021 interview that Trump -- or a conversation that he had at Bedminster, New Jersey, he specifically says that the document that he's referring to, it's confidential. He says, as president, I could have declassified it. I didn't. It's still secret. What do you know about how Trump's defense team is going to come back at this?

Devlin Barrett: Well, first they have to find a lawyer to do it. They've lost the lawyers -- their main lawyers in part because he's such a hard client to defend and these are hard facts to defend. But I think what you see in that exchange, in that tape recording that's so important is the first word of this charge is willful. And what he's conveying in those comments is his will. He knows what he's doing and he wants to do it. And that can be devastating to him.

I will say, for all of the evidence in this indictment, the tape may not even be the most important evidence, as important as it is, but it shows his state of mind. And in cases involving white collar crimes, in cases involving false statements, frame of mind, state of mind is super important. And that's why that is so important.

Laura Barron- Lopez: And, Hugo, you've mentioned that, well, you just said, Devlin, that he needs to find an attorney. You've said that he can't find a national security attorney. How harmful could that be to his defense?

Hugo Lowell: Well, I think they've been asking around for a long time. I mean, when one of the lawyers recently came off the team, Tim Parlatore, citing differences with other counsel and Trump's in-house counsel on the team, around that time, from what we understand, Boris Epshteyn, Trump's union (ph) adviser, was casting around, trying to find a national security lawyer to defend Trump because these are, like national security issues.

It's fine to have someone like Todd Blanche, who is the lead counsel right now, excellent lawyer, previously on The Sun District of New York, but he is not a national security lawyer. And the espionage statutes are so specific and have really specific defenses. And the Trump lawyers had been talking about maybe we could cast doubt on the fact that maybe some of the documents at issue, maybe they're not national defense information, maybe if they've been talked about previously, but they're talking about it in general terms, and they haven't really settled on a specific defense to these documents. And I think that's proving to be very difficult going forward.

Laura Barron- Lopez: And, Heather and Ed, I mean, to both of you, essentially, Republicans followed Trump into the breach in 2020 and '22, and, yes, they gained seat in the House, but, overall, it's been a losing strategy, and yet they're following him again into the breach. Ed, do you want to --

Ed O'Keefe: I mean, that is certainly the risk. And I think that's -- I've been struck by the way Senate Republicans, who I think took it on the chin most of all last fall because of the Trump blast radius, have behaved this week, and that most of them have reserved judgment, has kept quiet, or been tepid in their defense.

They understand the real general election, not primary election, but general election potential here, and that is that they would lose yet again. And this entire indictment, if people read it, they go back and they quote his political discourse from 2016, speaking of state of mind. And it's just a reminder to people that a lot of what he has talked about, blaming others for doing bad things, he himself is now accused of doing.

Devlin Barrett: And one of the most incredible parts of the indictment to that point is, at one point, he's described as praising Hillary Clinton's lawyer for deleting 30,000 emails, which is the main line of attack he used against her through the entirety of that campaign. Not to say that it's more complicated than that, the actual facts of how those emails got deleted, but the hypocrisy.

The prosecutors are clearly trying to spell out a hypocrisy between what he has claimed to believe in and what he knows about how the classified system works and what he actually did in his own home and life.

Ed O'Keefe: And this political reporter is led to believe, based on even that trip to Iowa, that that hypocrisy, alleged or otherwise, is what's driving voters mad and why especially increasing numbers of Republicans are looking elsewhere.

Laura Barron- Lopez: Heather, very quickly, your assessment of what this means for Republicans moving forward.

Heather Caygle: I think this is a Trump problem. They don't know how to deal with it. They've never figured it out. I think as we were talking about, Senate Republicans, they actually have a much more favorable chance to win back their chamber than House Republicans do in 2024. And that's why we're seeing where they are. I don't know. It's an interesting dynamic to watch and cover.

Laura Barron- Lopez: Hugo, what happens next? Trump is headed to Miami Tuesday to appear before the court, Aileen Cannon, also, which we, unfortunately, weren't really able to talk about, is going to be the judge here. Where do you see this headed next?

Hugo Lowell: Yes. Well, Trump first has some political stops on Saturday's. He's got some conventions, so he's still very much in the political sphere. I mean, for someone who is under indictment, he is casting a very carefree image, right? But then he will have to appear in federal court on Tuesday at 3:00 P.M. He'll go in for his arraign. He'll make his initial appearance.

It's probably going to be very quick, like these things are, right? He won't say anything. Todd Blanche will deliver their remarks and then he will be out. And then who knows? It's going to be a long pretrial schedule, typically probably 12 to 14 months in these sorts of cases.

Devlin Barrett: Normally, that is true. I think what prosecutors tried to signal today is we're going to try to push that up, the declassified --

Laura Barron- Lopez: Sorry, we've got to leave it there, Devlin.

Devlin Barrett: Yes.

Laura Barron- Lopez: I know there's so many legal things everyone touched on. But thanks to our panelists for joining us and for sharing your reporting. And thanks to all of you for watching at home.

Be sure to tune into PBS News Weekend on Saturday for a look at what you need to know about ticks and the spread of Lyme disease. I'm Laura Barron-Lopez. Good night from Washington.