Episode 7: Mueller 101
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Sean: Okay, Zack Beauchamp, international reporter at Vox, host of the Worldly podcast. Nice to meet ya.
Zack: Nice to meet you very much, sir.
Sean: Our shows existed for about a week, and we haven't once talked about the Mueller investigations. Is that a problem?
Zack: Well, yeah. It's the biggest news in the country right now.
Sean: Great, great. Okay, let's do it, but I'm wondering the best way to approach it. Is it, maybe, by talking about Papadopoulos and Manafort and all of these gates guys?
Zack: No, no, no. So if you just keep running through the people like that, it's gonna sound a littlе bit like we didn't start the firе.
Sean: That doesn't sound so bad.
[Parody of "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel plays for one minute]
Sean: Okay, so that was fun, but how should we do it?
Zack: Alright, there are three prongs to this. First is the actual collusion.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: The big issue that people have been talking about. The second is whether the President obstructed the investigation. That is committed obstruction of justice. And the third is a whole kind of batch of unrelated crimes.
Sean: Sounds fun, let's do it.
Zack: Oh, yeah, lots of stuff.

Zack: The first one is the one that everyone is kind of familiar with, right? That's the collusion.
Sean: Collusion. No collusion.
Zack: No collusion. No collusion. You're the collusion.
Trump: It's a Democrat hoax, that was brought up as an excuse for losing an election, that frankly, the Democrats should have won, because they have such a tremendous advantage in the electoral college. So it was brought up for that reason. But it has been determined that there is no collusion, and by virtually everybody.
Zack: Look, the, the real thing going on there, is that the Trump campaign has multiple serious different connections to Russia, and it has that through the people that they hired, right. Like, so Paul Manafort, who was their campaign manager for a while.
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: He ran the campaign of Viktor Yanukovych, right, like that was his thing before this. Viktor Yanukovych was the president of Ukraine prior to being deposed in a revolution. He was backed by the Kremlin.
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: There's this guy, George Papadopoulos, who was approached by the Russians, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton once he was affiliated with Trump. And of course, there's the Trump Tower meeting in the middle of 2016, where Donald Trump Jr. says, “If it's what you say, I love it” after being offered assistance from the Russian government on finding stuff about Hillary Clinton. All of these things suggest that there's at least a limited level of connection between Trump and Russia during the campaign. What we don't know, is whether Trump himself directed this? What he knew about what his campaign operatives were doing? And that is potentially criminal in a variety of different ways, and is the core thrust of the Mueller probe. Trying to figure out the truth about the situation.
Sean: Okay, so we know there was some connection with the campaign and Russia. We don't know if the President was involved. What else do we have?
Zack: Okay, so the second thing that's really important to understanding this, is the obstruction of justice angle.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: And, so that came as a result of Trump not wanting the answers to the first thing, become public, and he's done a variety of different things that could constitute, according to legal scholars I've spoken to, the crime of obstruction of justice.
Sean: This is the President himself?
Zack: Yes, this is the President himself.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: Right, so we don't know if Trump was involved in the collusion, yet. We do know that Trump himself authorized the firing of James Comey, and that he said, on national television.
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: That this was about the Russia investigation.
Sean: The firing was a direct result of the Russia investigation?
Zack: Yeah, he said something like.
Trump: And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story. It's an excuse.
Zack: You can't, even using your lawful powers as president, you cannot have a corrupt intent to interfere with the ongoing processes of justice.
Sean: Sure, I mean, when Clinton was impeached, he was impeached for obstruction of justice, right?
Zack: That was one of the charges of impeachment leveled against Clinton. It was also one of the charges against Nixon, they never went through because he resigned.
Sean: It's the thing they get presidents on.
Zack: Yeah, because you know, the old adage, it's not the crime it's the cover-up.
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: Like, is often true, because it can very frequently be easier for prosecutors to show that a cover-up happened, even if they can't prove the underlying crime.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: And it doesn't actually matter if you've committed the underlying crime. All that matters is that you tried, unlawfully, to interfere with the investigation.

Sean: Okay, those are the two. I know about collusion, obstruction of justice. What's the third one?
Zack: The third one is a lot more confusing.
Sean: Oh, god.
Zack: The third one, is like a broad category, different stuff. Let's just call it unrelated crime.
Sean: Miscellany crimes.
Zack: Just, just random crimes.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: And so it turns out that like, these people in Trump's orbit have committed a lot of different crimes in a lot of different areas.
Sean: Oh, no.
Zack: So you know, they've lied to the FBI as part of the investigation. They, in the case of Manafort and his aide Rick Gates, they didn't register as foreign agents when they were doing lobbying in Washington on behalf of this former Ukrainian president.
Sean: What is there like an office where you go do that?
Zack: Yeah, it's, it's the like, corrupt interference on behalf of crappy autocrats' office.
Sean: Got it.
Zack: So it's not like 14th in Keg. The Mueller probe isn't supposed to investigate stuff like this. Nominally, right. That's not the job of them. But, they have a mandate to be able to pursue anything that comes up over the course of the investigation, and if they need to expand the scope of the investigation, they go to the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who is supervising the whole thing. And they asked him, “Hey, is it okay if we look into lobbying ties between Paul Manafort and this former Ukrainian president?”
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: As that's become important and germane to our investigation.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: And, you know, we've heard some reports that they're looking into the shady financial dealings on the part of Jared Kushner and his company. And we also know that the President himself has a lot of crazy, weird financial stuff in his background. There are rumors that during his time in Atlantic City, and in New York, he had ties to the mafia, and who knows how he funded those projects. So these things, these unrelated crimes, serve two functions. First, they could end up showing serious criminality on the part of someone, the President or someone close to him.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: Second, a, who would have been used by the probe go after people who they want to flip who they want to turn into state's witnesses to testify against other people. It's a little bit like going after the mafia.
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: Right, you try to figure out what your equivalent of getting Al Capone on tax evasion is.
Sean: Uh huh.
Zack: And you try to find them, and you roll up these lower level people on whatever charge you can find, and then you get them to start talking about the actual thing that you're interested in, which is collusion potentially obstruction of justice.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: And you, you keep climbing the ladder of people until you get to the biggest fish, which is to say the president.
[Background music starts playing]
Newsreader: Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, spoke volumes more than months of heated public debate about the Russia probe. Without saying a word, Mueller's message was clear, according to veteran lawyers, he isn't bluffing and witnesses are talking.
Sean: Okay, so we've got collusion, obstruction of justice and a grab bag of other crimes. Coming up, we add 13 Russian nationals, a Dutch lawyer and a conspiracy against the United States. This is Today, Explained.
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Sean: Today, Explained, I'm Sean Rameswaram, and I'm talking to Vox reporter Zack Beauchamp about the Mueller investigation. We've got this whole heap of indictments now. 13 Russian nationals, Van der Zwaan who's Dutch, Gates, and Manafort. Where do we begin with that? Let's start with these 13 Russian nationals. Is that just sort of symbolic those indictments?
Zack: Well, sort of right. Like, they're not going to get prosecuted.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: These are 13 Russians who are involved in the campaign to influence social media to pose as various different kinds of Americans.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: Some of the fun things that they did involve setting up dueling protests. So, they were organized one Facebook group that would say it's like an anti-Muslim protest and another one that's like a counter rally. The idea was to create conflict inside the American political system and make it look chaotic.
Sean: And it kind of worked?
Zack: It, I mean, yeah, it did kind of work. It did look chaotic. It is chaotic. The other ones involved, basically they all come back to Paul Manafort. He is one of the central people in this Russia investigation in part because he was campaign manager at the time of the Trump Tower meeting.
Sean: And so, some of the indictments that came down last week, or about this guy, Van der Zwaan, who was he?
Zack: Yes, so Van der Zwaan is a Dutch national who was working for a US law firm Skadden Arps.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: In 2012, he put together a report that cleared Viktor Yanukovych, then Ukrainian president of political motivations and prosecuting one of his political opponents.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: This report was a whitewash, was done at the behest of Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, who are working for Yanukovych as part of a lobbying campaign, an international lobbying campaign that they were less than honest about.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: Van der Zwaan apparently lied to the FBI about subsequent conversations he had with Gates and Manafort about this report. We don't know why Van der Zwaan lied to begin with? I do know that they nailed him online. So, he pled guilty, and at the same time, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort's deputy who had been indicted a while ago, finally pled guilty.
Sean: Okay, and this was, this was what happened like late last week?
Zack: Yes.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: And that's a big deal because Gates has been Manafort's right-hand man forever. He was involved in this Van der Zwaan thing. In fact, one theory, we don't know this for sure, but one theory is that Gates was forced to fold, because of Van der Zwaan pleading.
Sean: Okay.
Zack: Which would be very much like Mueller, to go and find someone who's not super important, but has important information on someone who is more important, then forcing them to fold. So, all of this, really, is about getting to Manafort.
Sean: Because Manafort's the closest to the president?
Zack: Because Manafort was the head of the campaign at a crucial time. So in the middle of 2016, a lot of things were going on, Russia related, that are suspicious and raise red flags. The Trump Tower meeting is the big one, we've talked about that. But there's also some stuff for instance, the Republican platform was altered to no longer support providing weapons to the Ukrainians who are fighting, essentially Russia. And nobody knows why that happened, but one of the prevailing theories is that this was part of a quid pro quo. Trump and the Trump campaign, make the Republican Party and US policy more pro-Russian, and in exchange, the Russians go after Hillary Clinton on social media, they hack her emails, they publish it at inconvenient times. So, you have to wonder if Manafort, who has all of these shady ties to Russia and pro-Russian dictators and has a history of doing some shady and apparently illegal lobbying.
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: You have to wonder, what did he do? We don't know. And that's why flipping him is such an important part of the Mueller investigation because he can tell you because he was running the campaign. What the actual ties were? Should be able to. He should be able to tell you, what actually happened at the Trump Tower meeting. And we don't know that.
Sean: A lot of these names, the Van der Zwaan, the Gates, the Manafort. They never reached this tier of American politics before the Trump campaign. Is that fair?
Zack: Yeah, that's I mean, Van der Zwaan was not a person in American politics.
Sean: Right. And that also includes the president. He was a reality TV star, a real estate magnate. Is it possible that he just had no idea that any of this shit was illegal?
Zack: Totally. Totally. I mean, nobody knows. Nobody knows what the answer to this is. Maybe Robert Muller knows at this point? But I doubt it, honestly. Trump could have masterminded this whole thing. He could have secretly coordinated a plot with the Russians to steal the election. He could have known nothing, and this could have been just all sheer managerial incompetence, letting his aides do a bunch of crazy stuff.
Sean: Yeah.
Zack: And it could have been somewhere in between. It could have been that Trump knew about some of these meetings and was okay with them, but didn't coordinate some kind of vast plot. Alright, we have no idea. Until last year, we didn't know about the Trump Tower meeting, which now seems like the most important event in the entire campaign when it comes to the Russia investigation. Maybe there was another meeting, that we haven't heard about, that could end up being even more important? And the Mueller investigation is, for obvious reasons, playing its cards close to the vest. Right now, the public just feels very in the dark.
Sean: And, if Manafort flips and pleads guilty, is that when this thing really cracks open?
Zack: It could be. If he does, I mean Manafort.
Sean: He's fighting it.
Zack: Yeah, he's fighting. He issued a statement after Gates flood being like, "I don't know I did this. This is terrible. I will continue to fight." And it could be that what he's banking on is, all right, I'll get convicted, but the President will pardon me.
Sean: Right.
Zack: Which Trump has the ability to do, but would set off a massive, massive political firestorm. And that's the underlying stakes here, right. Is that, if Mueller finds out that Trump or one of his family members committed a crime, the President will not take it well, and especially if it's him personally, but also any of his family members. He could use the powers of his office, most notably the pardon power, to immunize himself or others from crimes. But, if he does that, essentially, you have the president declaring himself to be above the law, and that is not an idea that's especially compatible with a democratic political system. In, in democracies, we hold our leaders accountable when they make mistakes, and if Trump says, "Sorry, no, I can't be held accountable." It's a crisis for American democracy. It is the most serious one that we've had, forget Watergate, probably since the Civil War.
Sean: Zack Beauchamp writes about the world for Vox. Today, Explained producers Luke Vander Ploeg and Noam Hassenfeld sang on today's show, so did Vox's Christina Animashaun. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor, and Efim Shapiro is our engineer. The invaluable Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for our show. I'm Sean Rameswaram, this is Today, Explained, were produced in association with Stitcher and are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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