Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a good weekend. Looking at some headlines from over the weekend, we see the Associated Press, Biden Orders Review of Domestic Violent Extremist Threat. Washington Post, Capitol Attack Will Spur Broad Crackdown on Domestic Extremists. New York Times, Biden Will Seek to Define His Presidency By an Early Emphasis on Equity. Wall Street Journal, President Biden Will Keep Christopher Wray, Trump Appointee, as FBI Director, and he'll have his work cut out for him with the insurrection and all, won't he? New York Times, Man Threatened to Assassinate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Officials Say.

Now, here is the Bronx and Queens Congresswoman, speaking on her own Instagram feed, a few days ago.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I had a pretty traumatizing event happen to me. I do not know if I can even disclose the full details of that event due to security concerns, but I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die.

Brian: AOC on Instagram and from the Wall Street Journal, Trump Press Justice Department to go Directly to Supreme Court to Overturn Election Results. "The former president dropped the efforts to replace the acting attorney general after top DOJ officials agreed to resign en masse in protest if he succeeded, people familiar said." With me now on, and in all of these things, Wall Street Journal White House correspondent Tarini Parti. Thanks for coming on to help us start the week, Tarini, welcome back to WNYC.

Tarini Parti: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Can I start with Biden keeping the Trump-appointed FBI director, Christopher Wray, why did Biden decide to do that?

Tarini: It shouldn't be as much of a surprise that the president is keeping an FBI director. These are tenure terms, and they're designed to show that the FBI is politically independent from the administration. It's just that we've become sort of used to former President Trump, and obviously his firing of James Comey, and obviously many other former administration officials via tweet or just randomly. I think it shouldn't be as much of a surprise that President Biden is keeping Christopher Wray, but given the times, it is noteworthy that he has made the decision to keep him on, especially at a time when there's so much going on with these constant domestic violent threats.

Brian: It's a fact about FBI directors that not everybody knows. A president can hire and fire FBI directors, yes, but the term is supposed to be 10 years, as you say, to give the person more independence than other political appointees. That's part of why it was such a big deal when Trump fired Jim Comey when Comey wasn't doing exactly what Trump wanted. We saw that independence, even with Wray, who was appointed by Trump, when he contradicted Trump downplaying the threat from violent white supremacist groups in this congressional testimony by Wray in September.

FBI Director Christopher Wray: Within the domestic terrorism bucket category as a whole, racially-motivated violent extremism is I think the biggest bucket within that larger group, and within the racially-motivated violent extremist bucket, people ascribing to some kind of white supremacist type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that.

Brian: FBI Director Christopher Wray, in September now being officially retained by President Biden. Tarini, considering that he said that at that time, does it become a failure of Wray himself in some way that Capitol police weren't more primed for violent white supremacists to try to attack Congress during the rally that President Trump had called them to for the day of the election certification on January 6th. We know what happened now.

Tarini: Yes, there's several investigations obviously, ongoing, regarding the attack on the Capitol a few weeks ago. We'll hear more and try to figure out more about which agencies could have done more, what went wrong, but it was interesting that Wray himself acknowledges this in that congressional briefing, and he of course had a very fraught relationship with President Trump. After that briefing, there was always this back and forth during the president's final days in office of, will he or won't he fire Christopher Wray. It is interesting that Wray survived the end of the term and then is now being obviously kept on by President Biden.

Brian: The Wall Street Journal article on Biden's retention of Wray said, "The FBI is moving swiftly now in its a probe of hundreds of members of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th." It says,, "More than 100 people have been charged so far." The article says, "Investigators are focused particularly on the role of alleged right-wing militia members who may have planned the attack." How much would you say is known so far about how pre-planned versus how spontaneous the assault was?

Tarini: I think there's a lot of work being done in terms of looking at online forums, and what was being posted, and exactly how involved certain groups were in what happened on the Capitol. I think we still have to wait to see what comes out, but I think just these initial arrest and the initial part of the investigation has already shown that this was done on a large scale here, what we saw, and just looking at this particular incident, what could be done in the future to try to avoid something like this happening again, I think is going to be key for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

Brian: Listeners, we're lucky to have Wall Street Journal White House correspondent, Tarini Parti with us for this segment today, and we can take phone calls for her. It can be anything that she might be covering as a White House Correspondent, doesn't mean that she knows every single thing that's happening in the Biden/Harris administration so far, but we can go broad here. We're focusing so far on the retention of Christopher Wray and the investigation into white supremacist groups to try to protect against potential, further violent attacks by them, but we'll get into other things as well.

You always wanted to ask a White House Correspondent a question, but didn't have one over to dinner, you can do so now 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet a question @BrianLehrer. Staying on the investigation though Tarini, one of the rioters has now been charged with threatening to assassinate Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. He is 34-year-old Garrett Miller of Richardson, Texas.

If I'm reading the timeline correctly during the insurrection AOC tweeted the word, "Impeach," and Miller replied, "Assassinate AOC," according to prosecutors. Do you have any more information about the encounter that the congresswoman had in which he said in the clip that we played, that she was afraid she was going to get killed?

Tarini: This is getting, obviously, very scary here with members of Congress getting these types of threats and with the impeachment schedule starting just next month. This could get potentially worse with many members of Congress, obviously, coming out against President Trump. Obviously, the congressman sounded very scared and there's a clip that you played earlier. Hopefully, these types of events will be limited, but I don't think we have too much more information beyond the charges that were revealed by the Justice Department against this man, Garrett Miller of Texas. As you said, there are five criminal charges against him stemming from this interaction. He is believed to be a Trump supporter.

Brian: The same defendant, Miller, also allegedly threatened the Capitol police officer who shot and killed one insurrectionist who was crashing through a window close to where members of Congress were. Miller allegedly tweeted about that officer that he Miller would, "Hug his neck with a nice rope." You know what's amazing? The privilege involved in just putting those things, things like those on Twitter and thinking you can get away with it, don't you think?

Tarini: Yes, I think the-- we've known for a while now that Twitter can be a scary place, but I think we're really seeing that in the last couple of weeks, just how scary it can get.

Brian: I bet the role of any Republican lawmakers or members of their staffs. I don't think anyone has been tied directly to the violence so far, as opposed to general inflammatory. rhetoric and furthering the lie that there was some kind of evidence that Trump really won in a landslide, but there were tweets like, "This is 1776," which some people take as a call to violent overthrow. Is there anything more to report on that kind of thing regarding members of Congress or their staffs?

Tarini: I think, just what we saw in the aftermath of the election with several Republicans and staffers refusing to essentially acknowledge the results of the election, and the role that's played in what eventually happened. With all these Trump supporters believing that President Trump was rightfully the-- them believing that he had won the election and not accepting Joe Biden as their president. That went on for weeks, and what exactly happened in those weeks, and the role that they played.

I think we'll have to see what these investigations reveal, but just even looking at, as you said, their statements, and tweets, and stuff, we know that that could have played a role in terms of just convincing a lot of these Trump supporters that their belief that President Trump had won wasn't quite potentially true.

Brian: Have you seen that there is some concern being expressed by people concerned with civil rights and civil liberties, that the way the FBI investigates white supremacist groups is important, because if they go past certain lines, those tactics will eventually be used more and worse on Muslims and people of color. It's interesting because conservative media, if you've watched it at all, is filled with warnings that Biden wants to investigate you for being conservative, which is a distortion.

He wants to investigate people perceived to be at risk of committing acts of terrorism, but as we've seen with American Muslims in recent years, there is a gray area that gets innocent people onto watch lists just because of who they know and things like that. I'm curious if you see any strange political bedfellows emerging about rules for the road for these investigations.

Tarini Parti: Yes. I think on that note, I thought it was interesting when White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, last week, said that the administration was going to be directing law enforcement and intelligence officials to study the threat of domestic violent extremism, while announcing that she also said that they would be balancing First Amendment protection.

I think that goes to what you're saying. There has been a concern for years now, that focusing on such threats would lead to First Amendment concerns, whether it's within the Muslim community or conservatives. I thought it was interesting that she made that point. I think we don't too many details yet on how this administration is going to be handling this review, but I think the First Amendment aspect of it will continue to be something that raises concerns and something that, like you said, could produce some interesting bedfellows.

Brian: Denise in Chelsea, you're on WNYC with Wall Street Journal White House correspondent, Tarini Parti. Hi, Denise.

Denise: Hi. My question is about the National Guard on the night of the insurrection. When the news came out the next day that they were in Washington, DC, my daughter went on a riff, "Well, where were they? Did they stop off for coffee?" This, apparently been pictures of them in some kind of parking garage. My question then, and my question now, two weeks later, is there a name for the person that told the National Guard not to go to the Capitol?

Brian: Do you get the question, Tarini?

Tarini Parti: Yes, I'm not sure that we know the specifics of that. I think there was, as we know, some back and forth in terms of the National Guard going to the Capitol in the day of the insurrection. Ultimately, Virginia and Maryland did send National Guard members. DC sent obviously Metro police officers there. There was obviously that delay in getting the troops to the Capitol that day.

Brian: There's outrage even expressed now by President Biden, who I'm sure was not personally in this loop, of the decision-making process about some of those National Guard members having to sleep in a garage in close quarters. There are now 100-plus cases of COVID among National Guard members who were patrolling the Capitol for the inauguration. I don't know if they've been tied to those close quarters or how we perceive 100-something out of 25,000 troops, but I saw a video. I'm sure you saw a video, and maybe you've reported on National Guard troops in a COVID crisis being forced to congregate close together to sleep and outdoors no less. It is outrageous. Do you know how that happened?

Tarini: Yes, I think so. We know there are nearly 200 members is what we're reporting, who were deployed to DC who have tested positive. We've seen those pictures of them in that parking lot. I was on Capitol Hill the day of the inauguration and I can tell you that in certain parts, it is hard to be socially distant. They were wearing masks, but there were 26,000 officers or guard members, and of them, 200 members did end up testing positive. Given that this was happening in a global pandemic, obviously, did not make things any easier for law enforcement officials as they were dealing with potential threats the day of the inauguration.

I think there are a lot of members of Congress who were concerned after seeing those tweets and photos, and will be asking about how this actually happened, and why they were allowed to stay in this parking lot in such tight quarters,

Brian: Jack in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jack.

Jack: My question is why wasn't former Mayor Giuliani either arrested or charged? His speech was just as bad as the president's speech.

Brian: His speech on the day of the rally, at the rally, before the interaction. Tarini, the Giuliani quote is, "We're entering the combat phase." A much more direct incitement to insurrection than what the president is being accused of, so it seems on its surface. Is he being investigated?

Tarini: There's actually other news on the Giuliani front just this morning that Dominion, the election technology company, is suing Giuliani for $1.3 billion because he was talking about election fraud and the role of Dominion's voting systems. I think Rudy Giuliani is going to be potentially facing, obviously this lawsuit, and I haven't heard of specific investigations into exactly what he said, and how that potentially led to what happened on the Capitol, but I'm sure Democrats will be raising some concerns about what he said.

Brian: We've played that clip before. I don't have it in hand right now, the exact phrase that he used there was, "trial by combat," just before they were told to march to the Capitol. We'll continue in a minute with Tarini Parti, White House Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Tarini, when we come back, we'll segue from what Rudy Giuliani may be charged with at some point in the future, to the articles of impeachment, single article of impeachment being sent over to the Senate tonight in what comes next so stay with us Brian Lehrer, on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer with Tarini Parti, Wall Street Journal White House correspondent, here on WNYC. Before we get into impeachment, we have a call coming in on that concern about going too far in investigating people with potential white supremacist ties, and the concern that some people on the civil liberties left have been expressing because they say, "Hey, whatever they do, that's going to be new tactics or new laws. Ultimately, it's going to get used more severely against Muslims and against people of color." Joseph in The Bronx is calling on that, I believe. Joseph, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Joseph: Yes, very briefly. With regard to many of the arrests that are being made post-January 6th, many people are now being arrested, rounded up, and indicted for things that they said, as opposed to things that they actually did. Now, with regard to the content of that speech, it is a very dangerous territory that the FBI is treading on. I want to remind you of a case, a Supreme Court case, a landmark case, it was called Yates versus the United States in 1957, that actually legally protected speech that advocated for the overthrow of the government, provided that there was no connection to an actual artifice or scheme to do so.

Even people who advocate overthrowing the government online are protected by the First Amendment. I'd remind you that Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the Republic, said that the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. He also said, that rebellion every 20 years or so, was the healthy test of a functioning Republic. Are you going to dig him up and indict him for making those statements? Again, it's a very dangerous area that the FBI is going into, especially with their history.

Who the hell are they to judge what is and what isn't protected speech? Because again, they have a very long history of violating people's civil rights and civil liberties based on political ideology or religion, dating back from COINTELPRO in the 1960s, and '70s, when the pendulum back then was focused on people on the left wing of the spectrum. It's just now that people on the left, in the media, in government, in academia are in power. Now the pendulum has swung to the right, white nationalists, sovereign citizens, anti-government activists, what have you.

Again, the tactics remain the same, the FBI is still engaging in those tactics that they engaged in back in the '60s and '70s against civil rights activists, socialists, et cetera. Again, it's a very dangerous area that you're actually walking into with these creeps in the FBI. They can't be trusted to actually enter and to protect people's civil rights and civil liberties given their history. I think it's a very, very dangerous area that we're walking into.

Brian: Thank you very much for that. We might need to have a law professor or lawyer, former prosecutor, somebody, civil libertarian expert on this and talk about both the concept that Joseph articulates there, and the legal history of Supreme Court cases, and other federal cases that have defined where that line is, over time. Tarini, are they getting this question at the White House or at the FBI, and are they responding to it?

Tarini: Yes, Joseph clearly knows a lot more about this than I do, but I think this is going to be something that people are going to be concerned about and continue to raise questions about. Which is why, as I mentioned earlier, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki went into this by talking about the First Amendment rights and how they would be potentially balancing, looking at domestic violent extremism while also protecting First Amendment rights.

I know he referred to cases of people getting indicted based on what people were saying rather than what they were doing, and I don't know the specifics of all the cases, and I'm not sure if the FBI has, or federal officials are inviting people based on what they're saying and tweets alone, rather than actually tying them to certain actions with what we saw on January 6th.

Brian: Right. There's certainly case law that indicates, and there are laws and the Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to indicate if you are actually threatening an individual, then you can be prosecuted. If you're actually inciting to violence, you can be prosecuted, and that's different than expressing a view that you would like to see the government overthrown or something like that in the abstract.

They're going to have to find where those lines are in this case, and what kind of surveillance, because that's another area where this comes into play. Surveillance, what kind of surveillance is legally permissible or should be legally permissible when it comes to people who haven't committed any violent act yet, based on what groups they're associating with or things like that? What is the single standard there, left, right and other. We're just at the beginning of this, but I think we have a response to that caller with a different point of view, so let's keep going down this path. Lou on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lou.

Lou: Good morning, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I think the point has already been made by that gentleman who just left the phone. There was a difference between what happened in 1956, 1789 and what happened on January the 6th. You do not go into a crowded theater and then scream out, "Fire." The movie is already playing, you're going to cause chaos. In this case, the former president, his son, his lawyer, and then some of the members of the Congress actually incited insurrection. Falsely claiming, insisting, that he had won the election. Then the president, just stood there, directing people to to the Capitol to go at one side this seat of Parliament.

This is different. You see inciting violence is not some free speech. Free speech is almost wanting something to happen, willing it to happen, but you actually now physically went and did it really happen, and this is what happened in this case. I'll tell you something else Brian, when I saw what was happening during the 6th, I went through my break hour and my mind went straight to Monrovia, Liberia, because the Capitol building there is the exact replica of what you people have here. If this man, the outgoing president and his people had incited people to go to the Capitol in Monrovia in June like they did, all of them would have been worked o,n and brought all the way to Guantanamo Bay.

We wouldn't be talking about civil liberty and free speech. No, this is unacceptable. It's one thing to call Mexican rapists and criminals and all that kind of stuff. It's another thing as to make mockery of a journalist who is disabled. It's another thing else to incite people to go inside the parliament. This is not free speech, this is hooliganism. I told them, Brian, we have to stand up to these people, we can't just say, "Oh, that should be under the law. Let's go pray. Let's go demonstrate." No, enough is enough.

Brian: Lou, thank you. Thank you very much. I hear you about if this was certain other people, they'd be at Guantanamo Bay right now. Obviously, they did actually physically attack the Capitol. Then the question becomes, how deeply do you investigate other people who are in groups that they're in who didn't physically attack the Capitol?

As I said that process is just beginning, and this conversation is just beginning at the civil liberties level, as well as, of course, the public safety level. Tarini, the article of impeachment against Trump for inciting insurrection will be officially sent from the House to the Senate tonight. I see the trial is now scheduled to begin two weeks from tomorrow. Since you're a White House correspondent, how's the Biden White House feeling about this, as it tries to get cabinet members confirmed and get serious about fighting the pandemic, and inequality in America, and everything else?

Tarini: The trial is set to begin the week of February 8th. Publicly, of course, the administration has been saying that they expect Congress to be able to multitask, to be able to do the coronavirus negotiations, pass some sort of a relief package, and also handle the trial. In practice, it is going to be much more difficult to multitask and to do all of those things.

I think the way that they've done the schedule keeps that in mind. We're going to see, in the next two weeks, before the trial starts, we're going to see a lot more of President Biden's nominees get confirmed, we're going to see some continued discussions about the COVID aid package.

We already saw some back and forth on that on Sunday with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. I think we'll see a lot of that in the next two weeks. Then of course, when the trial begins, officially on February 9th, that is going to suck up a lot of time and energy, I'm sure, from these lawmakers.

Brian: Biden has always said he got into the presidential race after Trump made a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those standing against it at Charlottesville. Biden has used those words, moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those standing against it. I mentioned in the intro, a New York Times article from the weekend that says, "In his first days in office, Biden has devoted more attention to issues of racial equity than any president since Lyndon Johnson, a focus that has cheered civil rights activists and drawn early criticism from conservatives," the article says.

I'm curious if you, as a White House correspondent, see a tension for Biden or how they are articulating tension or no tension between his repeated calls for unity and his determination to advance racial equity in serious ways, which historically has drawn white backlash?

Tarini: Yes, based on what we've seen so far from his recovery proposal, by the speech, the executive orders he signed, it's clear that equity is going to be a key piece of what this administration tries to accomplish. You're right, it is going to be interesting to see if there's actually any bipartisan support for that. A lot of what he's done on that front right now is through executive order, which, of course the president can just do by signing it himself. He doesn't need Republican support for that.

A lot of the early actions on equity have been through executive order. For example, asking federal officials to look at inequality in the government and rooting out systemic racism in the federal workforce. He also revoked an executive order from Trump, that he signed back in September, ordering the government to stop using diversity training programs. Another executive order addressing the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color and underserved populations.

There's clearly a theme here on what he's doing on equity. He's basically using executive orders, but in his plan, in his coronavirus relief package plan, there are also proposals in there that would address these disparities in health care and the economy for Black and brown communities and those would require Republican support. I think as these negotiations play out in the next few days or weeks, maybe months, we'll see how many Republicans are willing to get on board with this and whether or not his focus on equity is in line with his focus on bipartisanship, or whether those two things are not really going to meet in the middle.

Brian: Listeners, we'll be doing a separate segment later this morning on equity in the pandemic response from the Biden administration, so that's coming up. I know, you got to go in a couple of minutes Tarini, but I see you've also been covering the vice president, how much of a sense can you get in just these first few days about what some of her substantive roles will be?

Tarini: What we know so far is that her portfolio is still being figured out. What her staff her said, and what President Biden has said is that she will be a full partner in his administration. We've seen her publicly at all the events that Biden has been signing executive orders. She's been by his side, as he's addressing the public, she's next to him. She's very publicly present and next to the president. In terms of the actual substantive work that she's doing, we still need to figure that out.

We know that she has, for example, been reaching out to mayors across the country to get support for the coronavirus relief package, that she does want to be more involved in issues of equity and racial justice. It's obviously just the first few days of the administration, and we'll see what subjects, and what her portfolio ends up being. President Biden has basically said that the job is essentially too big with all these crises, so he's going to delegate what he can't do, what he doesn't have time for to Vice President Harris. We'll see what those things end up being and how her role shapes out.

Brian: Wall Street Journal White House correspondent, Tarini Parti. Thanks so much. We really appreciate it, Tarini.

Tarini: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and coming up next, we're going to continue this conversation with a reporter from the Military Times on just how much white supremacy there is in the armed forces. Stay with us.

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