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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Considering that it's three days before Christmas and members of Congress want to go home and there's a blizzard in half the country making them want to flee even faster, there's an incredible amount of high-stakes business being conducted in national politics right now. The full January 6 committee report is due out any minute. Tax accountants and politicians and others are combing through two decades of Donald Trump's tax returns which the House Ways and Means Committee finally got permission to release and already shows some shocking evasions of accountability by Trump.

Congress is finishing the big so-called omnibus spending bill all the government funding for the rest of the fiscal year through next September and even as of yesterday, some of you heard Senator Gillibrand on this show said she was still negotiating for at least one part of it. Last night, in a surprise visit, as you've all heard, Ukraine's President Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of Congress and argued for how Americans should view the $44 billion he's apparently about to get for the war in the new budget, and more to come after that.

President Zelenskyy: Your money is not charity, it's an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.

Brian Lehrer: Not charity, but an investment, argued President Zelenskyy. On this Thursday morning before Christmas, day 4 of Hanukkah, and intense National Weather Day and National Politics Day, we welcome New York Times congressional reporter Luke Broadwater. Luke, thanks for some time on a day when you have many moving parts to cover. I know you're waiting for that January 6th committee report. You're checking your inbox every minute. Welcome back to WNYC.

Luke Broadwater: Thanks for having me. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I want to put out two questions here for you. One, do you see the money for Ukraine more as charity is a good cause? Anybody's going to disagree with that but do you see it more as charity or more as an investment as President Zelenskyy wants us to see it. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Two, I'd love to hear from any tax accountants. Hello, tax accountants. Are you listening out there? Are you helping your clients file some end-of-the-year partial returns or whatever? Look up from that. Tax accountants, I would love to hear what you make of Trump's tax returns to the extent that you've been able to see them in the press so far. Are there any bombshells here?

Was he hiding anything that you can discern for all these years since he started running for president? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Anyone on Zelenskyy, tax accountants on Trump's returns? 212-433-9692. Or tweet @BrianLehrer. Luke, let me start on your most recent article in The Times. It's about something you're seeing in the January 6th committee deposition transcripts. They released that part of the final report yesterday as they wrap up their work and your article was called A Common Answer to January 6th Panel Questions The 5th. That's, obviously, taking the fifth, don't have to testify so as not to incriminate myself. How common and by what kinds of people?

Luke Broadwater: Well, yesterday, the committee started rolling out the written transcripts of their more than 800 or even 1,000 depositions. We're going to see hundreds more of these come out during the next week or so but the first 34 they released had to deal with people who, basically, invoke the Fifth Amendment repeatedly, time and time again, in some cases, more than 100 times throughout the course of these interviews. There are a lot of close allies of Donald Trump, people like Roger Stone, people like Alex Jones, Donald Trump's fundraisers, rally organizers. It really runs the gamut of conservative activists like Charlie Kirk and open racists like Nick Fuentes.

We're invoking their rights against self-incrimination again and again. The committee says this really stymied a lot of their work because if people will not answer the questions, it will block certain lines of the investigation. The committee actually thinks they could have referred more people for criminal referrals to the justice department if they had gotten more answers. These transcripts did show some interesting things based on the questions the investigators were asking because the investigators had obtained text messages and emails through subpoenas. They were able to read certain text messages to these non-cooperative witnesses. You could glean information about the investigation from those questions.

Brian Lehrer: You just told me at least one thing that I didn't know, which is that Nick Fuentes, who people mostly first heard of because of that dinner with Trump with Kanye West, and that he's a white supremacist and a Holocaust denier that Nick Fuentes was a witness before the January 6th committee, in what context?

Luke Broadwater: In the course of the investigation, one of the various teams on the committee got extremely interested in the role of right-wing extremism and how that motivated people to attack the Capitol. Nick Fuentes was on Capitol grounds on January 6th with a bullhorn in his hand firing up his supporters, I think he calls them Groypers. They wanted to hear from him and they brought him in. He invoked the Fifth Amendment time and time again. In fact, his lawyer was quite pugnacious and openly sparred with the committee verbally, at one time accusing the committee of grandstanding.

One of the lawyers on the committee shot back like isn't it ironic that Nick Fuentes is accusing us of grandstanding. He didn't give them much information. He believed, look, you can only invoke the Fifth Amendment if you believe your answer to the question could potentially incriminate you. The fact that they were doing this, again and again, was telling to the committee, it blocked the inquiry but it did shine some light on how many people believe they had some criminal exposure due to January 6th.

Brian Lehrer: Did you say Fuentes with his bullhorn on January 6th called the crowd Groypers? What does that mean?

Luke Broadwater: I'm not super well-versed in Nick Fuentes but that's what he calls his supporters. That's like a nickname for themselves. I don't know enough about Nick Fuentes's world to explain the way he comes up with his nicknames. We do know that Nick Fuentes is an openly racist that he does have a following among some young and disinfected men who are angry. The committee wanted to see what role he played. Look, other, Alex Jones appeared before the committee. He played an influential role. He was there on January 6th.

It came out during some of these transcripts that the very rich heiress who was a fan of Alex Jones had listened to his show and decided to donate $3 million to put on the rallies before January 6th to bring all those people to Washington. You might think of some of these people as just far-right extremists, no one listens to them but they do have influence, and they do have influence with some wealthy people who can organize things and make things happen and that's what we saw with Alex Jones.

Brian Lehrer: Well, maybe if Trump is reelected in '24, he'll make Nick Fuentes the homeland security secretary or something. Any American has a right to take the fifth not to incriminate themselves and juries aren't supposed to infer guilt from that. I hear what you just said about how many of these witnesses took the fifth for much more than things that could directly incriminate themselves. There seem to be some organized stonewalling going on. What can you glean as a journalist from the pattern of who has taken the fifth around what questions? Any information that you can infer from that?

Luke Broadwater: Well, I think you learn more from the questions than the answers. For instance, Mike Roman, who was one of Donald Trump's top employees on the campaign. It comes out in the questioning because of the emails and texts the committee obtained, that he had really organized the so-called fake electoral plot, and that he had directed his deputy to deliver documents related to the fake electors to Capitol Hill. There's a text message from his deputy saying, "Mission accomplished," with a picture of himself posing in front of the capitol.

You could see a direct connection there through the questions of the Trump campaign, the fake electors and delivering them to the capitol to try to get Donald Trump to remain in power on January 6th, despite having lost those states in question. You could glean information but it was more from the questions than the answers. These more than 30 people clearly believed they had some criminal exposure or their lawyers believed that they answered these questions. It could open them up to maybe a Justice Department investigation.

They took the fifth to all things. For instance, do you believe in the peaceful transfer of power? Mike Flynn asked that question and he takes the fifth to it. Charlie Kirk takes the fifth on his age and his education but he's willing to admit his hometown to the committee. At times they were willing to answer a question here or there but it was generally a legal stance that if we start talking about this, we could get ourselves in trouble. It's better just to plead the fifth repeatedly.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we are with Luke Broadwater, congressional correspondent for The New York Times. As we talk about various pieces of big business here just before Christmas break in Washington and we're going to jump around from thing to thing, since there are four different things that we're following here, the full January 6th committee report coming out bit by bit, we've just been talking about some of the deposition transcripts, tax accountants and others, combing through two decades of Donald Trump's tax returns just released yesterday. Congress finishing the big spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year and implications from that.

President Zelenskyy's speech before a joint session of Congress last night, we played the clip of him saying all these many billions of dollars that the US is giving them is not charity but an investment. Let me take a few of your reactions to that right now. Charles in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Charles.

Charles: Thank you, Brian. I was listening to Zelenskyy and he's weathered by the war. It's like a wicket that scratched, it goes over and over. I wanted to say that I feel we're the fixer of the war. We've been cloned into it. At some point, we're going to have to give a step forward to the plate and just tell Putin that has to stop ourselves because when you have a not-for-profit, there's no scene coming back for it but the prize is democracy. I just feel that at some point, we're going to have to either step up to the plate because the way he sounded yesterday was very weathered. It just meant that there's trouble down the road.

Brian Lehrer: When you say step up to the plate, do you mean direct military involvement rather than just funding?

Charles: I think if we gave him a rule, a serious threat about something, that might just be enough. I just think that all might need to do. I don't know how that's going to be. I think that everything that we've done in orchestrated what we want to do and help them that could work.

Brian Lehrer: Charles, thank you very much. That direct military threat to Russia could intimidate Putin. It could escalate the conflict into God knows what. Luke, were you in the hall yesterday as a congressional reporter for that speech to go?

Luke Broadwater: I was. I didn't get to get a seat in the chamber itself because it was packed and a couple of my colleagues had gotten the seats but I was there in the building and there was very tight security. They made us all move our cars at one point and to block off some certain streets for Zelenskyy's arrival and departure. He was received very well on the Hill.

There was a lot of concern from some quarters that the far right in the Republican party would mount some revolt against him. Some of them did remain seated in their seats while others were applauding him. It was a very small number for the most part. You saw a lot of uniformity of Congress coming together, Republicans and Democrats from both chambers supporting Zelenskyy and what he stands for.

They're preparing to send a whole bunch more aid to Ukraine. Right now, there's some $50 billion in this spending package to support Ukraine, mostly on defense. No offensive weapons are being offered up but defensive systems to help the Ukrainians here. If you talk to the lawmakers in the hall from both parties, they really do see this as a fight for democracy. That if Russia isn't stopped here, who is to stop the next dictator, the next aggressor from invading another country? They do see the role America is playing here as quite important. The majority of the Congress is standing united behind Zelenskyy.

Brian Lehrer: Ozan in Levittown is calling in thinking he knows what Nick Fuentes meant by the word Groypers to the January 6th crowd.

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Luke Broadwater: You might know more than me, go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Ozan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Ozan: Hi, Brian. Thank you for such a wonderful show. I listen to you as often as I can. Now, this is just conjecture but I would assume that Groypers would be a play on the word Goyim in referring to layman of non-Jewish heritage.

Brian Lehrer: He's an open anti-Semite, he would address his followers as Goyim, meaning non-Jew. You're just speculating.

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I got you. That's an interesting speculation but I just want to label it as speculation and be clear that that's what it is. Ozan, thank you for that. Call us again. Jessica in Montclair, back to Zelenskyy. Jessica, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Jessica: Hi, Brian. Thank you for your wonderful show. My question is about whether you think there might be a backlash of anti-Semitism from Zelenskyy's speech because he talked about the growing relationship between Russia and Iran. While he didn't mention Israel by name, he inferred how keeping this alliance at bay is helping our other allies in the region. As a Jewish person who's watching rising anti-Semitism all around me, it scared me. It made me a little nervous. I wondered what you thought about.

Brian Lehrer: Zelenskyy himself is Jewish. Did that you know that?

Jessica: Yes, I do know that.

Brian Lehrer: Jessica, thank you. I tend to take when he talks about the region, Luke, that he's really talking about Eastern Europe. I guess when you mentioned Iran, Israel might be seen as one of the countries that's most directly threatened by Iran. I don't know.

Luke Broadwater: I took those comments to be about support for democracies, generally. Look, on Capitol Hill, there's a lot of people are concerned about the rising anti-Semitism that we're seeing around the world. If you just look at, back to Nick Fuentes, who's having dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, people that are openly praising Hitler and praising Nazis and it's really sick stuff. The fact that it's being done by rich and powerful people and influential people and they have the ear of the former president is very worrisome to many people. You do see, I think, some backlash on some dark corners of the right against Zelenskyy that is based in anti-Semitism. I think it is a fair point the caller raises.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth in Queens sees this as a false choice. Is it charity or is it an investment? All this money we're sending to Ukraine. Elizabeth, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Elizabeth: Hi, Brian. Thank you for having me. Always been a fan. I don't know if anyone had an opportunity to view Zelenskyy being interviewed by David Letterman but it was a very profound interview that really brought me to tears because when you ask the repercussions of war. If we look back, the Vietnam War, if you go to any veterans Hospital, you'll see that from decades ago, those veterans are still there and still suffering. When you ask, is it a difference between a charity or an investment, I absolutely think it's both. If we don't invest in this war to stop, then it's going to be ongoing and it could never end. I really encourage everyone to donate to this war and make it stop.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, the conundrum in Vietnam was because we kept funding the war, we kept it going. It was only when we stopped funding it that it ended, even though it meant the Communist North won. Elizabeth, I hear you, maybe Zelenskyy would like saying, okay, it's both. Don't forget the investment part of it. Thank you for that perspective. Listeners, we've taken a few Zelenskyy reaction calls now. I want to clear the board. If you were calling to talk about Zelenskyy's speech, I'm going to ask you to make way for any tax accountants who might be out there who were not getting yet.

I think because the Zelenskyy speech was so moving and so consequential to so many of you, the board filled right up with people who wanted to react to that. Of course, that was broadcast everywhere last night here and on many television networks. Now, any tax accountants happened to be out there who've started to look at the Trump tax returns that got released by the House Ways and Means committee yesterday, after all these years of waiting for them? 212-433-WNYC, tax accountants you know the subtext, you know what's said and not said with some of these numbers.

What was he hiding? Well, maybe he wasn't hiding anything and he was just trying to make a show of not releasing his tax returns to garner more support. The government can't push us around. Do we have any tax accountants listening who've been reading now the news reports or maybe the returns themselves released just in the last day or so? We want your impressions of Trump's tax returns. I'm going fishing, I know, but maybe some tax accountants are out there right now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

We'll see if we get any and continue with congressional reporter for the New York Times, Luke Broadwater, right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with New York Times congressional reporter, Luke Broadwater, who we are told will have to jump if the January 6th committee report gets released. Luke, give us a little real-time here. Are you checking your texts, checking your email? Is somebody going to call you right away when this happened? This was supposed to happen yesterday, wasn't it? Why didn't it?

Luke Broadwater: Right. I've been covering this committee for 18 months and everything always takes longer than anticipated. It's a large committee with a lot of decision-makers on it, and sometimes there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and it slows things down. Yesterday I was supposed to come out at noon. I heard there were some issues with the government printing office. Then as it got later into the afternoon, Zelenskyyy was in the house and you know, it, I don't think it made a lot of sense to release the report as the eyes of the country were all on Zelenskyyy and his speech. I think they were probably waiting for a day when there could be more focus on their findings in this report.

Brian Lehrer: Managing the news cycle. One of the biggest questions, I think, for whether to indict Trump, and of course, we all know the news from earlier this week that they announced criminal referrals to the Justice Department with recommendations. One of the biggest questions, I think, for whether to indict Trump is whether they can prove that he didn't really believe the election was stolen. If he did not really believe it, then fraud and insurrection become much easier to prove.

Now, the committee gave us lots of evidence that top advisors told Trump that it was all BS to use Bill Barr's word, but he did have this cadre of advisors, Giuliani, John Eastman, some of the others who kept egging him on. His defenders on TV yesterday, I don't know if you saw any of this on Cable, were saying he was getting conflicting advice, which means he could have plausibly believed what he was claiming, which would make it the big delusion more than the big lie. From what you've seen of the report and following the committee for 18 months like you just said, can they prove he knew better?

Luke Broadwater: Intent is important for criminality, but it's not the only thing. It might be hard to prove intent with Donald Trump because he says so many different things at different times and those who defend him, it is true he was getting conflicting advice. He was getting reasonable advice from people who were based in the world of facts. Donald Trump preferred not to listen to them. He preferred anybody who would tell him anything he wanted to hear no matter how crazy or non-factual it was.

You see this time and time again in the various transcripts where a lawyer from the Justice Department will go into Donald Trump and say, and Donald Trump will have a list of things he's read on the internet or heard in memes or on talk radio or something and he'll say, "Well, what about the people moving the boxes in Georgia?" The Justice Department official will say, "Sir, we checked into that. There was no fraud there. They were just moving the box. Those votes were all counted."

Then he'll immediately pinball to another accusation. "Well, what about them flipping votes via USB port?" "Sir, we checked into that. There was no there there." He would just keep looking for the next crazy theory that would mean that he actually won and you heard that with the call with Brad Raffensperger too. I mean, find me 11,000 votes, the exact number I need. It shouldn't be hard, just find the votes that I need to win. That's what he cared about and yes, did he have

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Although his defenders say about that, he believed that there were a lot of missing votes in Georgia and he just needed Raffensperger to find 11,000 of the votes that he thought were really out there. I'm just saying that's his side.

Luke Broadwater: I know. Raffensperger is telling him repeatedly, "Sir, there's not all these 11,000 fraudulent votes. There aren't all these votes out there," but he doesn't want to hear it. I think a sane, calm, logical review of the evidence shows just what I said, that Donald Trump was listening to the people he wanted to but it is fair to point out there were people willing to do that, to walk in there and say, "Sir, we're uncovering fraud or we heard about Italy switching votes through thermometers or Chinese ballots coming in on a plane to Arizona."

These were things people really alleged. Maybe some of them actually believed them. There was a congressional aid that drove out to an airport to inspect the plane that supposedly brought in the Chinese ballots. There was just really bonker stuff that people were running down trying to prove Donald Trump won an election. He clearly lost.

Brian Lehrer: I think I missed the Italian thermometer story along the way.

Luke Broadwater: They had the Defense Department call the Italian consulate about it. That's how high up the chain they went with some of this crazy stuff.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe the thing that most clearly would get Giuliani and some of the others into legal hot water, I'm not sure if it rises to Trump, maybe it does, is that there's such a record of Giuliani and some of the others saying things to the public that were completely outrageous about all these types of conspiracies you were just describing. Then when they got into court, or to the deposition to the committee and how to say things under oath, they didn't go there. That would seem to suggest deceitful intent.

Luke Broadwater: He, in particular, when he would go into court to my, to the best of my knowledge, wouldn't lie. He would say, "Sir, this is not a fraud case. We're arguing that this statute was misinterpreted," or he would tell some people in confidence, we have a lot of allegations, but we don't have any proof. He sometimes would admit that what they had was a lot of conjecture, but no real evidence.

Now, of course, that didn't stop them from holding a series of hearings around the country in various states where they put on a whole bunch of evidence that made it seem like there was all this fraud in the election, but then only to go in court and not actually allege any of it because none of it could actually be proven.

Brian Lehrer: I want to go onto the other big document dump on Trump. Many years of his tax returns released by the House Ways and Means Committee. I know it's some of your Times colleagues, not you, reporting directly on that, but as a congressional reporter, do you have a sense of what Democrats are pointing to as the most damning reveal or to here if Trump resisted this release since he started running for president in the first place? We're all looking at this to say, what was he hiding? Are there answers to that question?

Luke Broadwater: Chairman Neal and the House Ways and Means Committee fought for years to get these documents. When they finally got them, they were able to complete a report and now recommend legislation, which is on the House floor right now. One of the things they were able to determine was that, for some reason, and I'm not exactly sure why, Trump was not getting the annual presidential audit that the IRS is supposed to do as other presidents did, and they need to do more investigation to determine exactly why that was the case. They view that there was something amiss.

Brian Lehrer: In other words, when previous presidents were in office, as a matter of course, maybe as a matter of law, you tell me, the IRS audited their tax returns, but when Trump got into office, the IRS did not audit his tax returns.

Luke Broadwater: Correct. Or at least I believe they did once, but it wasn't every year as had been the practice for previous presidents. This bill that Neal is actually arguing for on the floor right now would do two things. One, it would make it a legal obligation for every president to release their tax returns, and two, it would compel an audit of those returns every year by the IRS. It probably won't pass the Senate. There are a lot of Republicans who don't want to be seen as disloyal to Donald Trump, but that's one of the key findings.

The other is, and you're seeing this in some of the news reports, is just how little tax Trump did pay. We knew a lot of this from the New York Times investigative reporting, the series a few years ago about how all the write-offs that Trump would use and how he would count very large losses for his companies and not have to pay tax. I think that's probably the other main thing you're seeing in the returns.

Brian Lehrer: I guess on that, I don't know if it's just what rich people do, because they can because there are all these loopholes in the tax codes where they can write off this and that, and even though they have a ton of money, they can legally pay no taxes or little tax or if Trump is really engaging in some tax fraud like his company was just convicted of in New York?

Luke Broadwater: Those are all good questions. I would note that Mazars, the accounting firm earlier this year said it could no longer stand behind the financial documents that had been provided to it by the Trump Organization the business. I think there is some question about whether Trump and the Trump Organization were fully honest with how they did their taxes, but that's all a matter of investigation and I guess we'll see.

Brian Lehrer: We're not getting any actual tax accountants calling in. Maybe they're all too busy filing people's end-of-the-year.

Luke Broadwater: I, unfortunately, am not an expert in accounting.

Brian Lehrer: We have Carol in Manhattan who says she's in the process of looking at what he's done, and she is a real estate investment banker. Carol, thank you so much for lending your voice to this segment. Welcome to WNYC.

Carol: Thank you so much. Quite a fantastic conversation so thank you, Mr. Lehrer. I'm a real estate invest banker, and without naming names I can share with you that as a banker, we are all very interested in now combing through the real estate tax, the IRS tax forms because we believe that they will differ greatly from what we have in terms of presentations from the Trump Organization to acquire loans. As a result, that will be quite the problem for a lot of bankers and going forward as well as potential issues to deal with legally.

Traditionally, we say that the developers have three sets of books, one for the IRS, one for the bankers, and then the actual ones. We think that this is no different. Let me just add one little segue here. Interestingly, yesterday Senator Gillibrand was talking about Santos and not being able to get rid of him because of all the things that the New York Times found, but I really question what they did to Al Franken, and I think that there is a way to deal with that. I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you for listening and again, great conversation and bankers are now really racing to get access to all the information and do what we need to do. We get to that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Carol. Thank you so much for that. Usually, when people bring up Gillibrand and Al Franken in the same breath, it's I'll never forgive her for her role in running Al Franken out of the Senate, for not enough sexual harassment in some people's opinions. In this case, Luke, she's saying, well, they got Al Franken to resign over something that wasn't a crime and so this guy, George Santos, who was just elected new Republican from Tom Suozzi's old district in Queens and Nassau County, who the Times revealed made up almost his entire resume if the Times reporting is accurate. He didn't really go to Baruch college where he said.

He didn't really work at Citibank and Goldman Sachs like he said. He didn't really have four employees killed in the Pulse nightclub massacre like he said. At least they couldn't find any of the victims who were listed as employees of his. If he's made up so much of his resume, but it's not a crime, he could legally be seated anyway when Congress starts up in January, but are you, as a congressional reporter, hearing any reaction to that, especially from the Republican leadership? Can we really seat this guy if he's a total fraud?

Luke Broadwater: Well, that's the key difference between Al Franken and Santos is in Franken's case, his own party turned on him.

Brian Lehrer: Correct.

Luke Broadwater: If the Republicans are standing with Santos, or at least not making an issue of it, there won't be the pressure to resign internally on the Hill. People are responsive much more to their party's leadership and the consensus of their party than they are to say newspaper articles or the media more generally. There's another question is whether we're in a post-shame America. For the most part, I do think Democrats can still be [laughs] ashamed out of office.

It does seem like on the Republican side of the aisle, there are fewer and fewer things that will cause Republicans to force out someone from public office. You look at stripping Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committees, the Democrats had to do that ultimately. A few years ago, the Republicans were willing to do it to Steve King after he said some racist things, but it does seem-

Brian Lehrer: Not anymore.

Luke Broadwater: Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make. Thanks.

Brian Lehrer: The takeaway for the end of the year from Luke Broadwater, congressional reporter for the New York Times. We are now living in a post-shame America. Though maybe more on one side of the aisle than the other. Well, we are not ashamed at all for having had you on today. Good luck going through the January 6th committee full report when it gets released, maybe any minute, and happy holidays. Thanks for coming on today, Luke.

Luke Broadwater: Great. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. A lot more to come. Stay with us.

 

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