Washington Week full episode, December 9, 2022

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Senate uncertainty and more Trump legal problems.

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): The people have spoken.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The 2022 midterms finally come to a close as Democrats winning the Georgia runoff race an outright majority in the Senate.

SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA (I-AZ): Today's announcement is a reflection of my values, and I think the values of most Arizonians.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: But Senator Kyrsten Sinema announces she has left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): It seems to me would have a very hard time being sworn in as President of the United States.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And top Republicans criticize former President Donald Trump for calling for the termination of the Constitution.

Plus -- JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: She is safe.

She is on a plane.

She is on her way home.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: -- WNBA star, Brittney Griner, is released from Russian detention, next.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

It was another busy and complicated week of politics.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock beat his Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia Senate runoff election.

Here's what Warnock said during his victory speech where he thanked his mother.

RAPHAEL WARNOCK: She grew up in the 1950s and Waycross, Georgia, taking someone else's cotton and someone else's tobacco.

But tonight, she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Now, Warnock's win was also supposed to mean Senate Democrats would have a 51-49 majority.

But today, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced that she has left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent.

Now, Sinema is known to be close to many Senate Republicans but she says she does not plan to caucus with the GOP.

Now, meanwhile on Tuesday, President Biden announced his administration had successfully negotiated the release of star basketball player Brittney Griner from Russian detention.

She was part of a prisoner swap agreement for a Russian arms dealer.

And joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Maya King, Politics Reporter for The New York Times, and joining me here in studio, Laura Barron-Lopez, White House Correspondent for PBS Newshour, Josh Gerstein, Senior Legal Affairs Reporter for Politico, and Marianna Sotomayor, Congressional Reporter for The Washington Post.

Marianna, you know I'm going to start with you because there so much going on on your beat.

It was a roller coaster week for Democrat.

What more do we know about where this leaves Democrat in terms, of course, Warnock, winning but Sinema saying that she's now going to leave the party?

And what is behind, do you think, Sinema's -- the decision, what's driving her?

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, Congressional Reporter, The Washington Post: Yes.

I mean, Warnock win was significant for Democrats.

It finally broke that 50-50 stalemate that we've experienced the last two years.

And, really, what it meant was, okay, finally there 51, what does that mean?

Committees can now subpoena whoever they want.

They don't need to talk to Republicans to come to an agreement on that front.

You will physically see more Democrats sitting on those committees to move things faster, to approve judicial nominations that Biden might send forth, also other administration officials that may need to be nominated.

So, it is a little bit more procedural.

But Democrats are really feeling good.

This is a big victory.

All of these incumbents winning for the first time in I think almost 100 years it something we haven't seen for a long time.

And then you get this news about Sinema.

It is not going to change that 51-50 dynamic.

I think there were some Democrats that were very much fretting about that.

She herself has not said she's going to caucus with the Democrats, however, she says I want to be staying with my committees.

And that is the decision made by Democratic leadership.

Schumer, saying, she does have an independent streak.

This is part of her nature and, you know, he will continue to keep working with her.

The Republican also seeing this as a moment where maybe they will be able to have at least and ear into the Democratic caucus, be able to maybe continue working with her in a bipartisan manner, especially since the House is in Republican hands.

So, there is going to be influence there.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, White House Correspondent, PBS Newshour: Functionally speaking, Sinema would not go to the Democratic caucus meeting, so even prior to this.

And so she's not -- she's going to continue not going to those meetings that they used to hold.

The White House was asked about this multiple times today and they said that they were really confident that no matter what the dynamics of that 51-49 majority are not going to change.

They are confident that they can still work with Sinema as a partner and they stressed that she was a part of a lot of the things that the President got passed in the year, including the big infrastructure bill and many other priorities.

And so, they didn't say if they were given a heads-up or if they were aware of this coming but they really defended her and said that she has voted with the president 93 percent of the time.

And so they don't foresee that changing or their majority changing.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Now, Marianna, I want to go back to you because it's my understanding that Democrats are looking forward to using their new subpoena power to do things like investigate corporate abuses.

This was supposed to put an end to the power sharing agreement.

Is it your understanding, especially for our viewers, that this is going to change the function of the way the things are going to happen or is the Senate sort of going to function the way that Democrats had hopefully would?

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR: No, you're totally right.

They are going to be looking at more of that and be able to investigate more thoroughly, actually get people to come forward and testify if a numerous amount of committees want to be able to do that.

And I think Senate Democrats, in particular, are looking at this as, well, again, the House is going to be in Republican control.

Everything that House Democrats have been investigating while they have been in majority, that's something that Senate Democrats can also take up.

I don't think you are going to see them necessarily leaning as much on House Democrats have on investigating Trump and those kinds of things but they can do that if they want to and that's significant for them.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And, Maya, you covered this Georgia Senate race so closely, you broke a numbers of stories.

You also told our producers that you were sort of up close and personal with the Walker campaign in the last few days and sort of watched it collapse and saw all this.

What is your biggest take away from this race as someone who covered on the ground there in Georgia?

MAYA KING, Politics Reporter, The New York Times: Well, Georgia has really emerged as sort of a microcosm of so many of the trends that we are seeing in politics right now.

Of course, the influence of moderate voters, the way that voters across the country sort of rejected Trump-aligned candidates.

And, of course, that plays into this larger argument that I think he's also put very exemplary here in Georgia, which is this issue of candidate quality.

I think a lot of Republicans saw Herschel Walker as a shoe-in for Republicans in a year that was very good for them here in the state because he is such a big name as a football star but what they also had to realize is that he is a football star and not necessarily a politician, who is extremely untested and had a lot of baggage in his background.

In the final days of this race, I did spend a lot of time with the campaign.

And you could just see, they felt that the writing was on the wall.

They made a number of key missteps, the biggest of those being this issue of Saturday voting.

Democrats and Warnock's campaign actually sued to have their voters turn out and vote on a Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Republicans and Walker's campaign largely rejected that.

And they saw at how in these deeply Democratic areas of the state, there was explosive turnout while in the areas that were largely Republican-aligned, there just was a little bit of a dampening in enthusiasm for Walker.

And that, of course, came to pass with Warnock close to three points win finally on election night.

But that sort of that trend really started to materialize, I think, in the weekend and days before this runoff election on Tuesday.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And, Maya, I've been hearing from some of my sources that Senator Sinema's decision, it really makes Warnock's win even more consequential than what Democrats thought it was.

What is your sense there on the ground about how Sinema's -- sort of her decision changes the outlook of Democrats and sort of what they are thinking about this decision that she's making here?

MAYA KING: I think if you are a Georgia Democrat, you're really thankful for the $50 million that you spent to get Raphael Warnock elected.

I mean, this is really consequential and sort of immediate consequence now of Sinema's decision.

But beyond that, I spent a lot of time with Senator Warnock too and talk with him at length about what he wanted to accomplish in this next Congress if he was elected.

And he prioritized voting rights, continuing to lower health care costs, continuing to create jobs not just in Georgia but really across the Sunbelt here in the Deep South.

And so, I really wonder now what Sinema's now becoming Independent could mean for his legislative agenda.

All of those things require pretty heavy majorities in Congress and it's going to require senators, like Sinema, to sort of get on board with these policies.

It's very unclear if that would happen, though.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And, Josh, Trump endorsed six Senate Republican candidates, only one of them won.

I wonder what you make of sort of the benefit possibly for the Republicans with sticking with Trump as well sort of the challenge that come with that given the fact that we heard the former president talk about suspending the Constitution.

We've heard of the fact that he was not even invited this time around to go campaign for Walker.

JOSH GERSTEIN, Senior Legal Affairs Reporter, Politico: Yes.

I think, Yamiche, that this issue of candidate quality is more than an abstract issue.

It is tied to Trump.

I mean, he's the one that backed these candidates, that backed Herschel Walker, that backed Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania and said these were the guys to go with, these were the ones who could get it across the finish line, and in those two cases, they couldn't.

Now, Trump's people will say a lot of the people he endorsed did manage to get elected but that was mostly House candidates that were in safe Republican districts where just about any Republican could have been elected.

So, I do think that what happened in Georgia is contributing to this sense that Trump is losing more and more traction in the Republican Party.

And it is no longer sort of a whisper about questions about whether he's a good person to be leading the party going forward.

You have people in the establishment that I think are more willing to speak up a little bit, even though they still remain fearful of a backlash from Trump voters.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And, Laura, what do we know about sort of whether or not Republicans' influence Sinema's decision?

We know that she's close with some Republicans.

I also wonder what you're hearing about whether or not Republicans might think that they can lobby her more now, that she is someone who is an independent.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has long tried to lobby Sinema, and we've also seen where he's tried to lobby Senator Joe Manchin, the other very moderate, kind of independent Democratic senator from West Virginia.

But, again, the White House and Democrats seem confident that Sinema votes with them the majority of the time.

And when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer came out today, he again was saying, look, the dynamics here aren't going to change.

I think that Republicans are certainly going to try to bend Sinema's ear where they can to see where they can get her to not go along with Democratic priorities in this new Congress, but even if she does stick with Democrats in this new Congress, we are still talking about a House majority that is Republican and that is not going to pass the vast majority of these Democratic priorities at all.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: A really important point to think that whatever sort of President Biden wants, it's really going to stop for most cases in the House.

Marianna, that brings me in some ways to 2024.

Democrats are already facing an uphill battle when you look at the Senate map of that sort of election, that coming election in two years, which makes my head spin a little bit but here we are.

What does this make Sinema's decision, what impact could it have on the 2024 map?

Could Arizona be easier to pick up for Republicans?

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR: It could.

And that is something that a lot of Democrats were just thinking about.

Okay, we just put the 2020 midterms to bed and today we have to start thinking about 2024.

And a lot of people have been saying, a lot of Democrats in particular, thinking that she made that decision to become an independent for electoral reasons.

They do think that she knows that she cannot get elected as a Democrat.

Greg Stanton, who is a member -- a Democratic member from Arizona, tweeted it.

He said the quiet part out loud, basically saying, look, these are my poll numbers compared to her if we were to hypothetically run for a Senate race, and she would lose by 40 points.

Democrats just would not elect her.

So, this, becoming an independent, may help her bring in some Republican votes, get those Democratic voters who do like that independent streak within her and maybe repel Congressman Ruben Gallego, who has not been quiet about potentially primarying her at some point.

Hopefully, at least her orbit thinks this could be a signal to him that, you know what, you're going to make it way more difficult and make it easier potentially to elect a Republican to the Senate.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And, Maya, of course, all eyes were on Georgia when it comes to sort of how you win a swing state.

What's your reporting reveal on whether Georgia is really now a purple state?

And could it be a blueprint for Democrats to try to win some of these swing states that are going to be critical?

MAYA KING: I do believe that Georgia is a purple state but not without significant effort on the part of Democrats.

So, while Raphael Warnock was successful and, of course, Jon Ossoff won in 2021, I mean, that came at a cost of several hundred million dollars and lots and lots of on-the-ground mobilization and organization.

Georgia is a purple state for Democrats with a whole lot of work.

So, I do think that Senator Warnock's win provides a blueprint for how swing states or swing state candidates can campaign particularly to these very politically influential moderate voters in these suburban areas.

I think that Warnock and his team were really savvy in realizing pretty early on, one, that Walker did have some soft spots with conservatives in the suburbs of Atlanta, but, two, going out really strong with a message that was while in part anti-Walker, a very much pro-Warnock, underlining a lot of his bipartisan accomplishments.

But, again, I mean, it still was an extremely expensive race that did go into a four-week runoff and required not only mobilization by grassroots groups but lots of money on the airwaves and even a lawsuit to try to get voters back out and rebuild this Democratic coalition that, in many ways, is still taking shape in Georgia as the demographics change.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Really smart to sort of remind people how much it took to win Georgia.

And, Laura, really quickly, before we turn to all of the legal challenges that Trump just is having, but I want to just pause for a minute because Brittney Griner is home, right?

She is someone that I know so many people on the country were praying for.

She was in a Russian detention.

President Biden seems very, very happy about that.

Of course, there is some criticism because Paul Whelan, an American, he remains in Russian detention.

What are you hearing form White House officials about all of this?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, the White House was very careful as they announced that Brittney Griner would be returning home to show that they were very aware of the optics and the unfortunate case that Whelan would not be returning home with her, which they said repeatedly, White House officials told reporters this week, that they were trying the best that they could for months to negotiate for Whelan to be joining Brittney Griner and to come home, but that, ultimately, the Russians were not willing to allow him to come home based on the slate of options that the U.S. was trying to offer them to get him home as well.

They said that they -- also when they ultimately decided to bring an American home and enter into negotiations with another country that has taken an American hostage, that they are very aware of all the consequences that could come with that.

And they said that despite all of the consequences and all of the different things that they thought, the ramifications, they said that they still felt as though the best option was to bring her home.

And Paul Whelan's family agreed with the White House on that.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, an important story that we will continue to follow.

Thank you, Maya, for joining us and for sharing your great reporting from Georgia.

Meanwhile, this has been a tough week for former President Donald Trump featuring a host of legal challenges.

On Tuesday, Trump's real estate company was found guilty of tax fraud.

On Wednesday, The Washington Post first revealed additional documents marked classified were recently found in a Florida storage facility used by Trump.

And then that evening, a Democrat Bennie Thompson, chair of the January 6th committee, said the committee is considering sending to DOJ criminal referrals for Trump and others it has investigated.

Meanwhile, after Trump called for the U.S. Constitution to be suspended, many in the GOP roundly criticized him.

MIKE PENCE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I think anyone who serves in public office, anyone who aspires to serve in public office or serve again in public office should make it clear that they will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: That, of course, was former Vice President Mike Pence.

So, Josh, it's really -- you're part of the show to break all this down for us.

What sticks with you when you think about all these different legal challenges?

What's the biggest takeaway from this week?

JOSH GERSTEIN: Well, what I take away from it is that there are things going on around Trump that if they went on with any other president, just one part of this story, would be enormous.

But somehow amidst this maelstrom of legal problems that he's facing, things don't get as much attention I think the biggest threat he faces is the stream of former advisers and officials that are going in front of grand juries in Washington and down in Atlanta, Fulton County grand jury down there, to testify about the both the Mar-a-Lago document issue here in Washington, that grand jury, as well as the broader question of efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

And each appearance doesn't get a lot of attention but it is a big deal for a former White House counsel, like Pat Cipollone, to go in front of the federal grand jury and, we presume, testify against his former boss, although we don't know exactly what was said behind closed doors.

For someone like Stephen Miller, everybody knows what a close adviser Stephen Miller was, basically President Trump's right hand man, also appearing before the federal grand jury in Washington.

So, when the president -- the former president sees things like that, I think that's what he has to be most concerned about.

Although, as you point, there's a lot of other bad news he's gotten on the legal front, especially his company being convicted of criminal tax fraud in New York.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, I want to ask you about that.

What is the practical impact of that?

What's the significance of that?

JOSH GERSTEIN: Well, I think it could be significant in a couple different ways.

One is there are sometimes covenants and so forth when they get these large loans for $100 or $150 million on their real estate properties of sort of good behavior, just like you might have a contract that says an individual has to behave themselves, so does a company.

And if they've been convicted of a felony, that could be a problem for them.

It is also possible that they could lose some contracts.

And then remember, Tish James, the attorney general up there in New York, is pursuing this kind of effort to basically put the Trump Organization into what amounts, I think, to a form of receivership.

And for them to be convicted of criminal tax fraud certainly helps her effort to get that kind of oversight that could basically unravel the whole Trump business empire.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Marianna, there's all the stuff that Josh just broke down -- we're still happy you're here, Josh.

And then there is, of course, the January 6th committee.

What more do we know about the potential for criminal referrals and what that sort of reveals about where the committee's work is heading?

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR: Yes.

It's pretty significant because the chairman, Bennie Thompson, months ago said we're likely not going to be making criminal referrals at the time.

Other committee members said, well there is still an opportunity to discuss that.

The fact that they are coming out and saying that this is going to happen means that they could have found something during their investigation over the last couple of months.

We don't know anymore about who they targeted, the number of critical referrals that they will be making but it is likely to happen soon because this committee is coming to an end.

It's a Republican majority.

McCarthy said he will disband this committee, as it is.

And the committee is preparing to release its final report likely a couple of days before Christmas.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: We all appreciate that.

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR: I know.

We really do.

We cannot turn off our brains just yet.

And they're likely possibly going to also do a public presentation at that point in time.

But to your point about the Christmas holidays, it's unclear how many people will tune into that.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And what are you hearing at the White House and what are they saying maybe behind closed doors about all of these legal problems, especially for Trump, obviously, who is running for president again?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I mean, the White House has viewed their streak this past few month as being a very good streak.

And they're very aware of the fact that the past month has not been very good for the former president, Trump.

I mean, publicly, they are very careful, as you know, to not comment on not just the January 6 investigation but also the wider investigations, really trying to show that they are letting A.G. Garland be totally independent, as well as the other investigations that are going on.

You know, they speak out, and they did recently, the White House did this week, when they saw the former president say that the Constitution should be terminated.

And we do know that President Biden, because of the fact that he has given speeches and privately has met with historians views what happened on January 6th as a total attack on the Constitution and on the democratic election process.

And so they will continue to speak out against that even if they don't engage in the investigations.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And, Josh, tell me what your reporting says about the DOJ possibly receiving these criminal referrals and how they might integrate all of the information, all of the transcripts and other things that the January 6th committee hands them.

JOSH GERSTEIN: Well, they definitely said they want to get all that material that the House has developed and take a close look at it.

I don't know whether they think there is going to be bombshells in there that lead directly to criminal charges or the possibility of criminal charges that prosecutors aren't looking at right now.

But one thing you want to do if you are thinking of bringing a criminal case, especially against a former president of the United States, is you want to pressure test it.

So, you need to look at all the testimony that different people have given in different places and make sure there isn't something there that you are overlooking.

I do think that this all fits together with a sense that this legal problem for Trump and his potential criminal exposure is really building to ahead in the early months of next year when they brought in Jack Smith to be the special counsel to oversee both the Mar-a-Lago probe and the election related investigations.

The one watchword we heard again and again from people at the Justice Department was they want to move quickly.

There is not going to be delayed.

We're not replacing all the investigators and all the prosecutors.

We're bringing in this one additional layer of what's supposed to be a form independence within the department.

But this isn't going to be like the Mueller investigation where we hire 18 prosecutors and bring in a whole new team of FBI agents.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: And I'm also curious (ph) in the minute that we have left here.

The DOJ also subpoenaed for Trump's communications his campaign's communications, election officials in three states.

It's Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.

What is the significance of that with all this other stuff going on?

JOSH GERSTEIN: Well, what was fascinating with that subpoena was they listed 19 different individuals.

You have people like Joe diGenova, Vicky Teonsing, lawyers that have worked with the president, people that worked on the president's campaign.

And they are asking election officials in these states for all of their communications, emails, any other records of interactions, because one of these grand juries that the special counsel is overseeing is looking at we think whether there was a conspiracy of some sort to interfere with the election results and the certification of the election results in 2020.

And this, I think, shows the speed with which and the aggressiveness with which the investigators are moving so that they can be at some kind of a decision point maybe by, say, February or so of next year.

And if there are going to be charges here, I think there is a sense at the Justice Department that it is better for that to happen sooner rather than later before we get into the -- really the throes of the 2024 presidential race.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Yes.

Well, definitely, all the things that we are going to keep watching, definitely going to have you back, Josh, because we're going to keep breaking out all these legal challenges.

So, thank you, of course, to our panelists for joining us and for sharing your reporting.

And tomorrow's PBS News Weekend, how rising prices are changing the ways many Americans celebrate the holidays.

I'm Yamiche Alcindor.

Good night from Washington.