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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. You've heard the bombshell from the January 6th committee. They voted to subpoena former President Trump to testify. We'll talk about that with NPR's Claudia Grisales in just a minute. Another new thing in their presentation that I think is worth drawing attention to was video from during the siege of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence.

Now, the audio is not great here, but you can make it out more or less, as Pence tells Pelosi the Capitol should be cleared of the rioters and Congress can come back and certify the election in about an hour. What's remarkable here is that Pence and Pelosi, from their different parties, are working together to end the threat that President Trump seemed to approve on.

Mike Pence: I'm at the Capitol Building. I'm literally standing with the Chief of Police of the US Capitol Police. He just informed me what you will hear through official channels. Paul Irving, your Sergeant at Arms, will inform you that their best information is that they believe that the House and the Senate will be able to reconvene in roughly an hour.

Chuck Schumer: Good news.

Mike Pence: The Sergeant at Arms will be in touch about the process for getting members back into the building.

Nancy Pelosi: Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. Good news.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer chiming in there too, and Mike Pence from during the siege at the Capitol on January 6th last year. The video was shot, by the way, have you heard this? By Pelosi's daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, who happened to be with her mom that day, and who is a documentary filmmaker. She's been on the show. She wound up with a different movie than she could have possibly expected. With us now, NPR congressional reporter Claudia Grisales. Hi, Claudia. I know you've been going full tail covering the hearing and doing The NPR Politics Podcast and the spots for the news shows. Thanks for giving us some time too on WNYC. Good morning.

Claudia Grisales: Oh, good morning. So good to be with you. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Can I start with the Pelosi tape? The committee showed several scenes of footage that were each dramatic in their own way, but that one struck me because there's the Speaker of the House, and the majority leader of the Senate, and the Vice President of the United States, trying to figure this out on their own. When the President, who could actually call out the National Guard or call off the riot with a tweet, wasn't doing it. Did they usually get along that well?

Claudia Grisales: Maybe you could say not very often. This was one of those extraordinary moments when you saw these congressional leaders huddling in this secured location. Pelosi, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and others, just trying to-- You could see the tone there. Just frantically trying to get all the information they could. Trying to find a way out in terms of how they could secure the Capitol. Then finally, get back to the work at hand, which was to finalize these results for the 2020 election. Very, very unusual and very striking to see them together in those frantic moments.

Brian Lehrer: Do you happen to know where Pence was during that phone call? Because famously, he refused to be driven away from the Capitol by the Secret Service.

Claudia Grisales: Exactly. He was also taken to a secure location nearby. We've seen images of him that he was not too far from the Capitol itself. He was pretty close. It's striking in terms of he made this decision to remain as close as possible to where this siege took place. Largely, you can hear him in that phone call, in that audio, explaining how can we get back to work here despite this tremendous threat that we're facing at this very moment.

Brian Lehrer: I didn't see in any of the footage that they played from the Alexandra Pelosi video, Nancy Pelosi and Pence commiserating about Trump being AWOL from helping to end the siege. Do you know if Pence said anything like that to Pelosi in real time?

Claudia Grisales: No, that's one piece I'm less familiar with. I think we're all starting to learn more and more after yesterday, seeing and hearing from these moments behind closed doors that we didn't know how grave a threat this was. When you really listen to the tone and the planning of these leaders, from then-Vice President Mike Pence to the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just the efforts they were making to try and move additional law enforcement support in there to stop this attack.

Brian Lehrer: About Pence refusing to get in the Secret Service car. January 6 committee member, Congressman Jamie Raskin, as you probably know, has said repeatedly, including on TV last night, that the six most chilling words that he learned of in this whole investigation were Pence saying, "I'm not getting in the car." Now they have new evidence indicating that some members of the Secret Service knew there might be plans to attack the Capitol more than a week in advance, but Secret Service members who have testified before the committee said they did not have advance words.

How much can you tell what actually happened there? Did members of the Secret Service commit perjury to cover up complicity with the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys or something like that?

Claudia Grisales: That I don't know. There's a lot of serious allegations surrounding all of this, in part because we have so many gaps in information. For example, as we learned this summer, the Secret Service did delete, erase text messages on their phones, key agents did, related to that time period surrounding the attack. This goes to all of the questions we have now, which is what exactly was the Secret Service's role when it comes to those weeks leading up to the attack? What were they aware of?

This goes to overall, these broader security failures in terms of intelligence failures, warning sufficiently that everyone was looking at a serious threat approaching the Capitol on January 6 led by these extremist Trump supporters. It also goes to another issue I've been reporting on recently, looking into, for example, the Department of Homeland Security watchdog. DHS is a massive agency, the third largest for the government, and it includes the Secret Service, for example, so many agencies.

Their watchdog, for example had internal battles with his own staff, fighting them on requests to try and get, for example, these text messages. At one point, it was on the table a year earlier to try and get these Secret Service text messages. Then it was taken off the table, and this watchdog did not tell Congress about it until a year later. That, once again, goes to these intelligence failures. What would've happened differently if people were working more cooperatively before the attack, collecting this intelligence and sharing it in a broader sense?

These are all these extra questions that remain. It could outlive even the committee and be continued to looked into after this committee disbands this year.

Brian Lehrer: The thing about Secret Service text messages related to January 6 that have gone missing, do you know what that's about?

Claudia Grisales: What happened was Secret Service says they went through a phone migration. This is what they told, for example, when the DHS Watchdog Agency, this is the Inspector General, it's led by Joseph Cuffari. Earlier last year, these watchdog staffers asked Secret Service to turn over these text messages. They were probably at the forefront of this ask in terms of committees that came weeks, months later, then of course, the Jan 6 committee started working on it starting last summer.

They were probably the front liners in trying to get these text messages. Secret Service had said we had a phone migration, but there was some confusion. What does that mean? Oh, it's maybe a device upgrade. It's a device replacement program. How do you lose text messages? Does that affect text messages? You don't assume you're going to lose them. Months later they learned those text messages were indeed erased. There was a lot of negotiation, for example, between the DHS watchdog office and Secret Service to try and recover what they could, even trying to do a forensic analysis.

Fast forward to this past summer, Cuffari, who is the Inspector General overseeing DHS, finally tells Congress, "Oops, we don't have the text messages." Lo and behold, we learn later that that the request was stopped at some point. It was taken off the table, then it was put on, and it wasn't just text messages. We're talking about emails and other Secret Service materials. This is a back and forth.

As of now, what we know is that many of those text messages that were of interest, that would've shed more light in terms of what Secret Service agents were seeing, what they knew of ahead of the attack, during the day of- that we may never see some of those messages because they may be lost for good. There may be no way to recover them forensically for the public to see.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden's first Press Secretary Jen Psaki was on MSNBC last night, and they asked her if when Biden and she came into office, were they suspicious of the Secret Service at all? Do they feel that Biden is sufficiently protected by the Secret Service, or could there be some element that maybe is not entirely interested in his safety if they're MAGA people on the side? Do you think that's a theory too far?

She said she didn't know, they didn't know, they didn't really think to ask that question. They assumed the Secret Service is there to protect the President. The President's been safe so far. If there are elements that actually supported the riot within the Secret Service and supported overthrowing the government, that could be a threat to the current Democratic President, but I don't know if that's the reality.

Claudia Grisales: I have to agree with Psaki that I don't know either. This is a question that gets asked after everything we saw happen, especially with the culmination of January 6th and so much information that we do not know where this agency was exactly in terms of their role when we look at the attack. I understand that those questions come up, but also I agree I'm unclear that there would be any forces within the Secret Service that would not be interested in protecting President Biden. It seems like a difficult scenario to imagine that that is happening in any case. I understand in terms of asking those questions. It's a tough situation in terms of public trust of this agency and everything that has come out about transparency and questions about where they were exactly in terms of this attack.

Brian Lehrer: We're breaking down yesterday's January 6th meeting and presentation with NPR's Claudia Grisales. Couple of tweets coming in, Claudia. Somebody writes, "I loved in that footage when Nancy Pelosi said," this is in real time during the siege, "If Trump came to the Capitol, I'd punch him out." I didn't see that. Was that in the footage?

Claudia Grisales: No, that was not played yesterday. I believe CNN played that additional footage last night. We're starting to see video of these closed-door moments, very private moments that we did not hear about before. This is one additional scene that did come out later last night on CNN. It's just one of those videos that has gone viral. There's a lot of interest because there's a long history there between Pelosi and Trump. Who can forget that moment she tore up the speech at his State of the Union address as he was standing in front of her and she was behind him.

Pelosi herself, we haven't seen her express those kind of thoughts in public much. Maybe it's not too far-fetched, too surprising to hear her say those words when it involves the former President, as they had such a contentious relationship.

Brian Lehrer: Then somebody else tweets reacting to my reaction to Pelosi and Pence working together to reopen the Capitol and get that vote certification going again. Listener asks, why call out that members of different parties work together to resolve the issue? Sure they work together trying to save their lives, which is a fair observation. I would say that it still struck me as remarkable because we know now that there were a lot of Republicans there who may not have been so interested in restoring normal order and going on with certifying the election.

Maybe this is a hypothetical, but for you as a congressional reporter, do you think there were a lot of Republican members who did then return to the Capitol and voted not to certify the election, who were with delaying the procedure and would not have worked with Pelosi to restore order the way Pence did?

Claudia Grisales: Yes, I think there was that contingency of House Republicans who were not interested in completing this finalization of President Biden's win, this certifying of the elections result. I go back to one of the first hearings this past summer for the Jan 6 panel, when we heard Bill Stepien talk about there was team normal and team crazy, and people have taken their places since to say what team they were on.

This would be the group of House Republicans that likely would've been pegged as part of team crazy, that they didn't want to see President Biden's win finalized. They wanted to find any way possible to keep pushing this effort to undo the elections results. It is really remarkable how close folks like them and others who wanted to see this happen came close to making that happen, to stopping the proceedings. There were so many decisions along the way, as we saw in this additional footage from yesterday and heard from these members. There was a lot of decisions that in the end allowed Congress to return and finish the work at hand that day.

Brian Lehrer: George in Bay Ridge, you're on WNYC. Hi, George. Thanks for calling up.

George: Thank you for taking my call. I'd just like to say the former President always said the deep state was out to get him. That was like a refrain. Obviously, we see that the deep state was on his side. The Secret Service, the Department of Justice, Bill Barr shaping the Mueller investigation, doing election investigation, that I'm sure didn't go through proper channels. The deep state served him pretty well and he used it to his advantage every opportunity he got, and almost was able to pull up a coup.

Brian Lehrer: That's a pretty interesting observation, George, considering some of the recent revelations. I would put Barr in a different category because he was a Trump appointee. Trump uses the term deep state to refer to career FBI agents and people in different departments who may have been out to undermine him. Even among the rank and file, Claudia, some of the most interesting revelations recently are what we were just discussing about, possibly, some Secret Service members being sympathizers and acting on that.

There was also a reporting this week, I think it was from NBC News, maybe you're familiar with this, about fairly substantial numbers of FBI rank and file being for the January 6th riot. Are you familiar with that?

Claudia Grisales: No, I missed that reporting. Interesting.

Brian Lehrer: I think if you put it together with other reporting, you get that there's really a diversity of opinion in the rank and file in the FBI. A lot of people who are horrified by what happened there, and if this reporting is accurate, some significant number of people who were for it. Jack in Rockland County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jack.

Jack: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call. A quick observation here. I'm a retired US Marine. I was appalled at the events on January 6th, much like I was appalled with the events of 9/11. Of course, there wasn't the loss of life on January 6th, but the symbolism was there. It gave aid and comfort to our enemies around the world. I'm equally appalled that my Republican friends, and I have many, don't seem to think it was that big of a deal. That's frightening.

Mike Pence specifically, from what I've seen tapes and heard, he was running for his life that day and came very close to losing his life. I assume that if he runs for president in the future in politics, he's going to campaign. We as Americans and Republicans cannot allow him to get on the stage during a debate or the campaign and just simply say, as I assume he will, "I'm not here to talk about the past. I'm here to talk about policies and move the country forward," which is of course admirable. That particular day, we need to hear from him what he was thinking, where his allegiances lie.

He also showed great courage by showing up on the podium the day during the inauguration. That particular day, Americans need to hear from him, you were running for your life. I want to know what role you played, how you feel now about the administration and going forward?

Brian Lehrer: Stay there for a second. Let me play you a clip of Pence, something that he has said since that of course made a lot of news. Tell me how much this cleans his image for you. Here is Mike Pence talking about what Trump wanted him to do on January 6th, not to certify the election.

Mike Pence: President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. Frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

Brian Lehrer: They played that clip in the hearing yesterday. Jack, you're familiar with it?

Jack: No, I haven't heard that. That's the Mike Pence I want to support. That's the Mike Pence who has a US Marine Corps son, but yet for four years, as he served Donald Trump, he seemed to fall and defer. It's just not going to be enough for me as he campaigns to not want to talk about that day. That does sound like the strong Mike Pence that I want to believe exists, who showed up on the podium the day of the inauguration. Thank you for playing that clip. Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for calling in. We'll continue in a minute to break down yesterday's January 6th hearing and take more of your calls and tweets, and talk more with NPR's Claudia Grisales. We can take your reactions to the committee presentation yesterday in particular, any of the new details like about the Secret Service, which we've been talking about, or Pelosi and Pence and Schumer on the phone, or the subpoena for Trump, the vote of the committee to subpoena Donald Trump, which we're going to get to right after this break. Stay with us

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Liz Cheney: This afternoon I am offering this resolution, that the committee direct the chairman to issue a subpoena for relevant documents and testimony under oath from Donald John Trump in connection with the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.

Brian Lehrer: January 6th Committee Vice Chair, Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, with a bombshell at the end of the presentation yesterday. They voted to issue a subpoena to Trump to testify before the committee. This is going to Donald Trump himself. Nobody knew this was coming outside the committee itself. Still with us, NPR congressional reporter Claudia Grisales. Claudia, just on the logistics, can the committee subpoena Trump on its own, or is that a committee recommendation that now goes to the full House?

Claudia Grisales: This is a pretty technical process in terms of how this will work. We're still waiting to hear from the committee on next steps. For example, oftentimes when the committee announces a public subpoena as they did last night, that they would be issuing it, it will include a letter that accompanies the subpoena detailing why the subpoena is being issued, questions about issues they want to address with the witness. There is a series of steps that needs to be followed. There is not a lot of precedent for this. That needs to be shared in terms of how the committee goes forward in terms of issuing the subpoena.

There's some questions still to be answered. As well as, regardless of how it is issued, the questions, the legal battle that could be ahead. As we know, the former President already responded very quickly on a social media app calling the panel a "bust" and just attacking the panel as he has before. Whenever these questions come up for him to testify, for example, before Congress, it doesn't happen. It seems very unlikely for us to see that happen. Yes, it's going to be interesting to watch all the steps to come when it comes to issuing the subpoena and what will follow after.

Brian Lehrer: Just clarify something for me, besides whatever Trump may do to resist it, will it likely lead to a contentious floor debate in the full House, with Republicans denouncing the committee on the House floor and things like that?

Claudia Grisales: That's one question I don't know the answer to. That's something that the committee hasn't quite walked us through the steps on, and so that's to be determined. I haven't heard of any kind of floor discussion that would follow for that. It could be something that comes directly from the committee. Again, we have to see what next steps the committee is going to be taking here.

Brian Lehrer: Most pundits who I've seen last night and this morning, don't think this will actually result in Trump testifying. I think you were just echoing some of that. From what you can tell with your reporting, does the committee expect it to result in Donald Trump actually testifying?

Claudia Grisales: They were being coy about it when they were asked about it last night. For example, Chairman Bennie Thompson didn't go exactly into what his expectations were. One theme that we keep hearing these members touch on is that regardless, that Trump is a central figure in this January 6th investigation, and the least they have to do for their part is to ask him to appear. If he doesn't, that means they just go forward with their final report by the end of the year. They know that they did not get Trump's testimony in the end if in fact he does refuse to appear.

Brian Lehrer: Trump did say something or tweet something, or not on Twitter, but on his own social media, I'm not sure where this was, but something yesterday about wanting to testify. Did you see that?

Claudia Grisales: Yes. There have been moments where the former President has teased that he would like to appear for various testimony. We have seen this play before. It could be just more of the same in terms of teasing that interest. Again, it often ends up with the former President declining to appear to testify, and that's why that's the expectation once again this time around

Brian Lehrer: Ben in Clifton, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ben.

Ben: Hi. Good morning. It just feels like we can go deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole of discovering how ill-equipped he is or dangerous he is as a leader of this country or anything else for that matter. It just feels more and more Kafkaesque that he still could become reelected.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. There's nothing in the law that stops even a person convicted of a felony from running for reelection and being elected, if that's what the people choose. Ben implies something that I was thinking about. Claudia, as a matter of politics, a subpoena for Trump to testify is a risk, isn't it? Because the presentations to date have been straightforward evidence, although with no cross-examination by a defense attorney. Trump, presumably, will turn it into a circus of lies and accusations that will rally his base, perhaps help him and the MAGA movement politically more than it will hurt, and won't advance our knowledge of January 6th or the big lie that led to it.

What Ben in Clifton is calling about there, Trump being reelected despite everything that everybody's learning, could actually become more possible as a result of activating the base. Have committee members addressed that concern?

Claudia Grisales: This has come up with previous witnesses, where there was a concern that a witness, a controversial figure would come in, like a Roger Stone or Steve Bannon would come in and bring this circus with them in terms of what the panel was focusing on its investigation. I hear that concern also with the former President, but again, he seems unlikely to appear. It seems if that is the case, that would be a moot point in terms of adding that.

At the same time, Vice Chair Liz Cheney noted this last night, that about 30 witnesses have not fully cooperated with the committee. They took the Fifth. They didn't share the information they knew. In the past, they have run into witnesses who were not cooperative, but as we have seen, they have found workarounds, which is, talked to aids, other individuals who were in the room and could share details from critical moments they wanted to know about.

If I could touch on one other point, from your previous call and others, you have mentioned individuals who have surrounded the former President. A lot of them are no longer rallying around him. A lot of his folks are gone. Bill Barr was a key figure for the Trump presidency as Attorney General. As we've seen, he spent a lot of time talking to the January 6th panel about what he knew and blowing up these claims that the then-President had about widespread fraud in the election. We also saw that with even Mike Pompeo appearing behind closed doors. Also, when we're talking about, for example, the FBI, that there are folks in there-- that there may be MAGA ranks in there.

If we look at it, let's look at the Mar-a-Lago investigation recently and how the former President turned on the FBI and put some agents in danger. A lot has shifted since he was in office. He did have a different cast, if you will, surrounding him. It's unclear if he's running for President again. If he's able to get into office again, who will be around him this time around, if indeed he runs for President?

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned Bill Barr and how he's turned. I thought one of the highlights yesterday was an edit of William Barr specifically debunking election fraud claims and then Trump repeating them anyway. Here's an example of that.

William Barr: I went into this and would tell them how crazy some of these allegations were and how ridiculous some of them were. I'm talking about some of the things like more absentee votes were cast in Pennsylvania than there were absentee ballots request. Stuff like that was just easy to blow up. There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.

Trump: There were more votes than there were voters. Think of that. You had more votes than you had voters. That's an easy one to figure and spy the thousands.

Brian Lehrer: That's how they played it in the committee presentation yesterday. Barr there followed immediately by Trump. Did they establish a timeline, Claudia, that Barr had advised Trump that that claim was fake before the Trump clip?

Claudia Grisales: I cannot remember when that clip was dated. Was it December?

Brian Lehrer: I'm not sure.

Claudia Grisales: What we understand is that Barr was raising these concerns by December. It's spoken to the Associated Press. That was infuriating for the President that his Attorney General has stepped out in such a way and rebuked these claims of fraud. It's possible that word of that was reaching the White House even before the then-president was making those kind of remarks.

As we saw, that's a theme that's been repeated over and over. That advisors, that top cabinet officials were telling then-President Trump that there was no widespread fraud. That these were conspiracy theories. Trying to pull him back into reality, and that he was still, even after all those efforts, even as he acknowledged at some points, as we heard from Cassidy Hutchinson, the White House aide, yesterday as well, running into him saying, "I don't want people to know we lost." That he was aware of this loss, but yet he continued to push forward with these false claims.

Brian Lehrer: Gary in Corning, on the subpoena to Trump. Gary, you're on WNYC.

Gary: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I want to know what the point of a subpoena is if someone can just reject it with impunity and there'd be no consequences.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that is a good question. Claudia, if they're not anticipating that Trump will comply with the subpoena and that he won't be forced to comply with the subpoena, then as Gary in Corning asks, what's the point?

Claudia Grisales: That is a great question. We have seen that with other witnesses. What is the point of issuing a subpoena if there's no repercussions that they respond? Now, in Trump's case, in particular for the committee, it will be very critical for them. As we saw, as they made this decision yesterday, earlier in the day, that they're checking a box here and they're saying, "We're going to be telling our full story, our full findings of this investigation, and it's going to stand on its own without Trump's input because he did not want to appear."

This was the approach we saw in the last impeachment of then-President Trump, in terms of saying he has no response. Our argument stands. It shows how solid our argument is because the former President can't even take a moment to try and rebut it before us. For them, it gives their argument of this story, that they're going to tell fully by the end of the year, more strength, they believe, before the American public.

Brian Lehrer: They did point out on the committee that Steve Bannon has been convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the committee subpoena, and he's currently awaiting sentencing. Is that what they want for Trump, if necessary, to make a constitutional point for the future?

Claudia Grisales: They have not ruled out additional steps. That could be an option, that they could try and pursue this. That is going to be a big question before the panel. Whether they do that, I am not sure that will just prolong this fight for them. They are running out of time. They do sunset December 31st and they need to get this report out. It's unclear right now whether they could pursue that avenue, but it is a possibility.

Brian Lehrer: Well, the story's not over, but the segment is. On we go. We thank NPR's Claudia Grisales. Still full of energy, spit and vinegar, despite lagging the hearing. It's exhausting. I was doing it too. You were there in the hall. I was just watching television, logging minute by minute and then figuring out what clips of tape to pull. You're doing it in there and you're probably going and interviewing people afterwards and then creating all these reporter pieces for NPR and doing The Politics Podcast. That's a workday.

Claudia Grisales: It is a workday, but lucky for me, there's a huge crew, so we can trade off. For example, my colleague was on the Hill in the room yesterday while I was in studio at our headquarters. We have a lot of folks helping out. That's the beauty of it. We can all trade places and help each other out. That is key to getting there.

Brian Lehrer: NPR congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, thanks so much.

Claudia Grisales: Thank you. Great to be with you.

 

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