Sedition Charges, Voting Rights and COVID Confusion

- Sedition charges, COVID confusion, and the fight for voting rights.

(crowd chanting) - [Announcer] Members of the extremist Oath Keepers group charged for their role in the Capitol attack.

- Omicron, with it's extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody.

- [Announcer] And as Omicron ravages America, the Supreme Court strikes down the president's vaccine or test mandate for big businesses.

Plus.

- I'm tired of being quiet!

- [Announcer] President Biden doubles down on voting rights legislation.

- Do you want to be on the side of the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?

Do you wanna be in the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?

- [Announcer] But fails to get his own party behind that push.

- While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country.

- [Announcer] Next.

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(upbeat music) - Good evening, everyone, and welcome to "Washington Week."

I'm Amina Nawaz in for Yamiche Alcindor.

This week, we saw major developments in the investigation into the January 6th attack.

More than a year after the insurrection, the justice department has brought the most serious charges to date, seditious conspiracy, against the leader and members of a far right extremist group known as the Oath Keepers.

They are accused of attempting to overthrow the United States government.

Joining me tonight to discuss the latest news on all this from Washington, Devlin Barrett, national security and law enforcement reporter at "The Washington Post."

Jeff Bennett, chief Washington correspondent at the "PBS NewsHour."

And Leigh Ann Caldwell, NBC News's Capitol Hill correspondent.

Welcome to you all, thanks so much for being here.

Devlin, I wanna start with you because seditious conspiracy is not a charge we hear often, I don't believe it's used very often, but it is the most serious charge related to January 6th so far.

So what do you know about why the Department of Justice brought these specific charges against these specific people more than a year after the attack?

- So we know this is a question that justice department prosecutors have been wrestling with for at least nine months.

Because seditious conspiracy, when you look at the law and the way it makes it illegal, essentially, to conspire, to take down the U.S. government to act... To try to prevent the enforcement or execution of U.S laws, it is in some ways a good description of what happened on January 6th, but it's so rarely used because lawmakers and prosecutors are often afraid that it could be overused or abused if it became a regular thing.

And judges, historically, in recent times, are not necessarily big fans of the law either.

But here, they finally decided to go for it, I think in large part because their understanding of what the Oath Keepers did that day and in the months prior so perfectly matched the way that law is written.

- And do we know, Devlin, anything new about the Oath Keepers and their role from these charges?

Or any of your sources?

I mean, previously we know about another extremist group, the Proud Boys, who were also out there, and contacts that they had with the Trump White House, do we know of any similar contacts between this group, the Oath Keepers and the Trump White House?

- We don't.

But the thing to remember is from the moment of the election was over in 2020, a lot of these far right extremist groups were sort of in a common public conversation about how to stop the steal, in their words.

Creating these sort of fantastical notions of what massive voter fraud could have taken place, and there was sort of this broad public conversation which involved discussing the Insurrection Act, among other things, and all of these pieces were coming together and crystallizing, really, in December of 2020.

And that's how we ended up at January 6th and all the violence we saw on January 6th.

- Leigh Ann, what about on Capitol Hill?

We see, obviously, what the Department of Justice is up to, we also know the House Select Committee continues to investigate the origins of January 6th, we know they've tried to get Kevin McCarthy to cooperate and he's refused, what are your sources telling you about the committee's work and where it is now?

- Yeah, well, on Capitol Hill, that is the focus, is what the committee is doing, and they're pretty far along in their investigation.

We know that Congress usually moves very slowly, and on a scale, and relatively speaking, this January 6th committee is moving extremely quickly, they've spoken with already more than 350 people, and we don't hear about all those, the ones we hear about are the ones usually that they don't speak to, the ones who have been subpoenaed, the ones who are not willing to cooperate with the committee, but there's a lot of people who are cooperating, they've gotten more than 25,000 pages worth of documents.

The latest development, of course, was a request for leader McCarthy to come and speak, he has sent a very strong signal that he's not going to, and that's a very strong signal that he has sent to the rest of his Republican members, if they are asked to cooperate with the committee.

And then just last night, there was a new front on that, and they sent subpoenas to four social media companies, including Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, Twitter, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and Reddit.

And one member of the committee, Representative Jamie Raskin, had told me a while ago that one critical part of this investigation is going to be what they get from those social media companies, this is going to be not only a people driven investigation, but also a data driven investigation, Amina.

- Devlin, before I let you go, I have to ask, big picture, when you see the Department of Justice moving forward in this way now, does that tell you or signal in any way they have moved into a new phase of accountability, of the investigation into January 6th?

And what do you expect to happen next?

- Well, look, I expect, but before they're done arresting and charging people, there will be more than a thousand people charged in January 6 for a whole wide array of crimes.

This week's events do really indicate that they are moving up a rung here, and it's an important rung.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they end up making a lot of similar arrests and similar charges for sedition conspiracy, what the Oath Keepers did was pretty unique in some ways, as far as we can tell.

So there is a lot more activity to do, there is a lot more cooperation to be gained, and a lot more details to come out, but I think what you saw in these charges is they have a pretty good worldview into how the Oath Keepers did what they did and why.

- A lot more work for you ahead, it sounds like, too, that is Devlin Barrett who covers national security over at "The Washington Post."

Devlin, thank you so much for being with us tonight.

- Thank you.

- Now, onto another big story from this week, earlier in the week, President Biden and Vice President Harris went to Atlanta where they spoke forcefully on the need to change Senate rules to pass voting rights protections.

- The threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bill.

Debate them, vote, let the majority prevail.

And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this.

(crowd cheering) - But among those not in attendance, some of Georgia's leading voting rights activists boycotting Biden's remarks in protest.

- Well, at this point, we don't need another speech, we don't need him to come to Georgia and use us as a prop, what we need is work.

- Back in DC, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the president's speech as quote, "Profoundly unpresidential."

- The president's rant yesterday was incoherent, incorrect, and beneath his office.

- Two days later, on Thursday, President Biden went to Capitol Hill to rally Democrats to back his push.

And Jeff Bennett, that is where I turn to you because the numbers for President Biden in the Senate, they just aren't there on this issue.

- Yeah.

- Is there any concern in the White House that the president is spending too much political capital on a plan that has a near zero chance of success?

- It's such an interesting point that you make, Amina, because I can tell you based on my reporting, one of the reasons why President Biden hadn't invested more fully in this issue of voting rights much earlier in his term, the way many voting rights advocates and members of the Democratic base wanted him to, was because he knew that this was the likely outcome, he knew how intractable this entire process was, in large part because there were not the votes in the Senate to move this legislation through regular order.

And of course, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, those two senators, their stated positions on having a carve out in the filibuster to move the legislation through with 51 votes, their stated positions on doing that had not changed.

And so, I thought it was particularly interesting that just really an hour before President Biden made his visit to the Senate, where he was in hoping to sort of prod and cajole and persuade those Democrats in the Senate to get on board, you had Kyrsten Sinema, a first term Senator, deliver that floor speech.

Basically cutting off the president before he was even able to arrive there on the Senate and make his case.

And the president left that gathering speaking about this process in the past tense, saying, "We missed it."

Basically saying, "We missed the opportunity."

Now, he has pointed to a history, and he'd made the point that if you look at the course of American history, most civil rights legislation has failed, at least on the first pass, but to quote him, he says, "We always go back and we try to get it," and hopefully, they can get it on the second pass.

But really, there is no plan B right now, there is no legislation, there is no executive action that can meet the moment, that can really address the problem that exists right now as Democrats see it, given that you have 19 states having passed 34 laws, that number is expected to grow, that not only make it harder for people to vote, but also inject partisans into this process that should be and has been for the most part, apolitical.

- Leigh Ann, talk to me about senators Manchin and Sinema in this, because they were in that room when President Biden went to try to rally support, they went to the White House for a private meeting with him after that, what do we know about where they are now?

And do Democrats think there's any daylight there, any daylight for them to shift on this?

- There is no daylight, they are not going to shift.

This meeting yesterday by President Biden behind closed doors with Democrats...

Senator Sinema's people tell me that he knew what her position was, that she had just reiterated, in that speech on the Senate floor, right before he came, her position that she had last week, the same one that she had last month, and the one that she had for many, many months before that.

And Senator Joe Manchin, even though he was involved in these negotiations with his fellow Democrats for weeks and months even, on the Senate rules change, he never got there.

And this is a pattern that we have now seen twice just in the past few months with Senator Manchin, that he talks and talks and talks to his fellow colleagues, leaving them thinking that there perhaps is room for him to change his mind, and then he just pulls the rug right out of them, and from under them, and he doesn't.

And so...

The question I have is if Senator Schumer moves forward with this vote on changing the rules next week, which he expects to do so, is it just gonna be those two Democrats or are there gonna be other Democrats who also can't support this rule change?

But my sources are telling me it's likely just going to be Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin.

- So Jeff, where does all this leave the president?

I mean, you heard that speech he delivered about the importance of voting rights protections, he called it a threat to our democracy, it's existential in the way he presents it.

Is there anything else in the way of executive actions or any other action he can take that would work towards that goal?

- Not unilaterally, I mean, there has been some talk on the Hill of a bipartisan group trying to find a way to rewrite the Electoral Count Act, and basically make clear the vagaries in that law that President Trump tried to exploit, remember, that was the process where President Trump tried to inject his then vice president, Mike Pence, and say, "You go to the floor of that house and you reject those Biden slate of electors."

And Vice President Mike Pence made clear that his role was really only ceremonial.

The idea is to change that law and to really firm up the way that it's written.

But again, that is no substitute for the asymmetry here where you have a growing number of Republican led states changing laws, and I've talked to voting rights advocates and organizers who say, in the past, they've always been told, "We'll out organize the suppression, just help Democrats win more elections."

The way some of these laws have been written, they cannot out organize it.

- So voting rights is clearly top of the Biden agenda, so too is the pandemic.

And on Thursday, the Supreme Court blocked president Biden's vaccine or test mandate for big businesses but left a similar, more limited mandate for healthcare workers in place.

It was another blow to a White House struggling to control COVID's spread as tests remain scarce and trust in the official pandemic response plummets.

Meanwhile, at a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill, Dr. Anthony Fauci accused Senator Rand Paul of attacking him for quote, "Political gain."

- Go to Rand Paul website, and you see fire Dr. Fauci, with a little box that says, "Contribute here."

You can do $5, $10, $20, $100, so you are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain.

- Joining us now to discuss the latest on the pandemic, Yasmeen Abutaleb, she's national health policy reporter for "The Washington Post."

Yasmeen, welcome to the conversation, thanks for being here, let's start with that Supreme Court ruling, right?

Because the president responded, he said, it's unfortunate, it's disappointing, but he also said he's calling on states and businesses to still put those same rules into place, are they likely to do that?

- I think it's pretty unlikely that the businesses that haven't done this yet are going to suddenly do it.

You did see there were some companies that were waiting for kind of permission or the federal government to carve a path for them to do this and give them some political cover to do it.

So you have seen some major employers like United Airlines, Tyson Foods, a few others, who went ahead and put in place a vaccine mandate and saw that the vaccination rate increased dramatically.

But I think a lot of companies that haven't done it yet probably are not going to, they were waiting to see how this case was going to play out, we're also in a moment where there are a lot of labor shortages, so there are people who are reticent to do this when they're already struggling to have enough workers, so I think this is a huge blow to the Biden plan to combat the pandemic, only recently have you seen them turning to something kind of other than vaccination as a major tool, and the vaccination rate hasn't really budged for the last few months, and I think it's highly unlikely it budgets any more significantly.

- What about the Biden plan to get more tests out there?

To meet this incredible demand?

Yasmeen, the White House announced today they're buying a total of 1 billion rapid tests that Americans can request for free at a website, that's COVIDTests.gov.

500 million are gonna be available on January 19th, the tests will ship seven to 12 days after that.

Yasmeen, based on all of this, on where we are in the Omicron wave, is all of this happening too late?

- It is late for the current surge that we're dealing with, although some experts note that...

There are some signs that the Omicron surge might be slowing a bit on the Eastern Seaboard, nowhere near over, but at least slowing in the increase of cases.

But the U.S. is a huge country, it hasn't peaked in many parts of the country, so actually, the testing website will probably be really useful for the parts of the country that are gonna deal with their surge a couple of weeks after the Eastern Seaboard and some of these major metropolitan areas that we've seen, we've seen it with every other way, but it sort of happens regionally, it doesn't all happen at once.

And you saw them... President Biden announced yesterday that they're going to purchase an additional 500 million tests to deal with future waves.

It's kind of the first time we've seen either White House, the Trump or Biden administration, actually try to plan ahead on the testing front, I mean, two years in, we never have enough tests in the middle of a surge.

- Jeff, it's worth reminding people, we know this administration came in at an awful situation with the pandemic, we're in... Nearly into year three of the pandemic, but Biden is approaching the end of his first complete year, and after an impressive vaccine rollout, they seem to have lost momentum, they certainly seem to have lost control in many narratives.

Do you get that sense from people in the White House you talk to?

- Well, it's interesting, President Biden himself has said that he was hired to solve problems, but so many of these problems appear to be persistent, certainly in a way that this White House did not expect.

And when it comes to the COVID crisis, yes, I think there are legitimate questions as to why the White House wasn't better prepared in terms of testing, there's this new effort to send masks out to American families, why that wasn't started much earlier given that Dr. Fauci, over the summer, had talked about how he'd expected the winter to be pretty tough when it comes to COVID, this was before anyone knew that Omicron was even on the scene, just generally what we know about infectious diseases, infectious respiratory diseases.

But the Biden administration certainly believes it deserves credit for pivoting quickly, that when they recognize that there's a problem, to change plans quickly enough to it to address it, and so, that is why starting next week, for instance, Americans will be able to go online and request rapid at home COVID tests, and they should arrive seven to 12 days, the White House says, after they're requested, so by the end of the month, the idea is that any American family who needs and wants COVID tests could get them.

It's a good start, but it's no match for the current moment where people who might have an infection in their homes can't get a test and have to have to figure out how to deal with it on their own, yeah.

- Yasmeen, before we let you go, I have to ask you about this other confusion around the guidance that's been coming from the CDC and other health officials, because people are really confused.

And the credibility of a lot of these officials has taken a hit during the pandemic.

So do you see CDC officials, other health officials, changing up how they are messaging to ease some of that confusion?

- That's a great question, I mean, the CDC did come out with new guidance today on higher quality masks, and it was also pretty confusing.

It sort of said KN95s and N95 masks would be better if you think you need it, but it wasn't very strong guidance, and I think the CDC is in a tough position because they're not a regulatory agency, they can't force people to do anything, but there has been a lot of confusion and a lot of mixed messaging from various administration officials about what's in the guidance, what's not in the guidance, and you've seen it play out across the country, where people who have been careful for two or more years now are really trying their best to comply, but they're having to make these individual risk assessments because it's honestly not entirely clear what people are supposed to be doing.

And so dependent on specific situations on where you work, on whether you're going in, or you're not, you're a healthcare worker, you're an essential worker.

And I think it's really, really confusing for people who do want to follow the guidance to know exactly what they're supposed to wanna do right now.

- It's a confusing time for a lot of people, but Yasmeen, we're so grateful that you helped fill in some of that information, that is Yasmeen Abutaleb of "The Washington Post" joining us tonight, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- And of course, all of this brings us to something chief on American's minds, that is the economy.

Inflation has surged to a 40 year high, and Americans are feeling the pain of price hikes.

Meanwhile, COVID and winter weather are snarling supply chains leaving some grocery stores empty.

The Biden administration is under pressure to take action.

Let's now turn to Leigh Ann on this, because Leigh Ann, I wonder about the movement of funds early in the pandemic from the federal government, I think top of a lot of people's minds are, is there more help on the way?

Could there be more federal financial help from lawmakers?

- It's still yet to be seen.

There are discussions that are happening about more help, more assistance, perhaps for small businesses, and some more relief aid, but there's a couple of things going on here, and one is there is some concern from members, both Republicans and Democrats, that they wanna know how all the money has been spent already, the billions of trillions of dollars that have already gone out the door that was a debate during the last big COVID relief bill as well, and that's a large part why Republicans said why they wouldn't support the last $1.9 trillion one.

And so, there's still some of that left, especially 'cause that was such a massive infusion.

And then there's another thing, if there's more relief aid, Republicans and Democrats, I'm told, are in disagreement on how to pay for it, if it should in fact be paid for, how to offset this money.

So these discussions are happening, but they're kind of stuck, and they don't seem to be imminent at this point, Amina.

- Jeff, this is the president grappling with a once in a century pandemic, and economic recession, this country is not nearly out of the woods yet, and he owns this, even as he has pledged to fix it.

What is at stake if he cannot get his arms around both the pandemic and the economy?

- Potentially, his reelection is at stake, I mean, if you look at it purely through a political lens, but President Biden is someone who has spent half a century in public life.

White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked this very thing earlier in the week, and she said, "The hard things are hard."

And this president realizes and fully accepts the fact that he bears responsibility for all that goes well and all that doesn't.

And so, in this White House, you do have a group, let's talk about, for instance, on the COVID front, you have a group that says they are committed to confronting the challenges that they face.

On the inflation side of things, the president, the White House, and his group of economic advisers have a fairly limited toolbox to address inflation, given that it really has stemmed so much from the COVID crisis.

But what the president also knows, I'm told, is that he will be judged by this.

Perhaps not on voting rights, perhaps not on necessarily any other sort of domestic agenda item, Build Back Better, whether or not that gets passed, people will judge him based on the way they feel about their own lives, and based on the way they feel about their own kitchen table issues, whether there is food in the grocery stores, of whether their kids are able to go back to school five days a week and feel safe, and whether or not their families are safe and healthy, given this intractable resurgent COVID crisis.

And President Biden is not responsible for all of it, and can't necessarily solve it on his own, but he does know that he will be held to account at the end of the day, whether it's the midterms or the 2024 reelect.

- Jeff Bennett, always making very clear for us why all of these issues matter way outside of Washington.

I can't thank you both enough, Jeff and Leigh Ann, for joining us and for sharing your reporting tonight.

We will continue our conversation on President Biden's challenges and the economy on "The Washington Week Extra."

You can find it on our website, on Facebook, and on YouTube.

Also, tune in Monday to the "PBS NewsHour," Martin Luther King the third discusses his family's latest push for federal voting rights legislation.

Thank you for joining us, I'm Amina Nawaz, good night from Washington.

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