Jan. 6 panel recommends criminal charges against Trump

Transcript

NIALA: Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today!

It’s Tuesday, December 20th.

I’m Niala Boodhoo.

Today: the health stories to watch as we head into the new year. But first, the January 6th committee recommends criminal charges against former President Trump. That is today’s One Big Thing.

CLERK: Mr. Chairman, on this vote there are nine I’s and zero no’s.

NIALA: That's the January 6th committee voting yesterday to refer former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. The committee accused Trump of committing four federal crimes, two conspiracy charges of fraud and false statement, obstruction of an official proceeding and inciting an insurrection.

JAMIE RASKIN: We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today. Just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report.

NIALA: That's Representative Jamie Raskin. Axios’ Congressional Reporters Andrew Solender and Alayna Treene have been covering this story.

Alayna, this is an unprecedented move by a congressional committee. Can you walk us through exactly what happened yesterday?

ALAYNA TREENE: The hearing walked through some of the greatest hits, I'd argue from their investigation just to really put a finer point on why they came to the decision that they did, which was at the end of the hearing they introduced that they would be making criminal referrals for the former president. The first was an obstruction of an official proceeding, the second conspiracy to defraud the United States.Third conspiracy to make a false statement and fourth to quote, incite, assist or aid or comfort and insurrection. And this is a huge deal, like you said, Niala, this has never happened for any congressional committee before. But the members said that they thought this was necessary due to the scale of the illegal behavior that Trump and his allies engaged in during their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

NIALA: Andrew, who else was implicated here?

ANDREW SOLENDER: A number of Trump's allies are implicated in various of the charges. So, the main one is John Eastman, the lawyer who Trump sort of enlisted to help him come up with these various schemes, to try to overturn the election. Such as, trying to convince, you know, former Vice President Mike Pence that he could, you know, single-handedly reject electors on January 6th. Other players include Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows the former chief of staff, Ken Chesebro is another one. The only one for insurrection, though it's probably worth noting, is for Trump. None of his allies are part of that referral, it's just him.

NIALA: Yesterday was the last public meeting for this panel that has for the past 18 months, reviewed tons of evidence, conducted hundreds of interviews, portions of the final report were provided to Axios. What are some of the new revelations here?

ANDREW: Yeah so, you know, one vignette is Bill Stepien, Trump's former campaign manager. Talking about how he viewed himself as part of “team normal,” in contrast to Rudy Giuliani, who was spreading a lot of these conspiracy theories. And Stepian talked about how he sort of quiet quit the Trump campaign when Giuliani was brought on to spread some of these conspiracy theories. In another instance, Trump was handed a note about the Ashley Babbitt shooting that said, “one time civilian gunshot wound to the chest at door of house chamber.” And the committee's report says that they have no evidence that note changed Trump's state of mind or any evidence that he expressed remorse about the shooting. You know, just a lot of different little pieces of evidence, little pieces of testimony that can change our perspective on some of these key events.

NIALA: What happens next here?

ALAYNA: Well, it's up to the Justice Department to decide what they want to do with these referrals, if they will actually bring criminal charges against the former president, against other individuals that they've listed in their report. With Donald Trump running in 2024, they do wanna get this done and wrapped up sooner rather than later so that it doesn't have the appearance of being more political. But it really is a Justice Department determination here in Congress. It really is out of their hands to do anything that can rise to the level of actual prosecution.

NIALA: Alayna Treene and Andrew Solander cover Capitol Hill for Axios. Thanks to both of you for joining me.

ANDREW: Thank you.

ALAYNA: Thank you Niala.

NIALA: In other Washington news, the Supreme Court yesterday decided to temporarily halt the ending of the Trump-era Title 42 border policy that lets the U.S. turn migrants away at the U.S. border without a chance for asylum. The policy had been set to expire tomorrow.

The move came after a coalition of Republican-led states that yesterday asked the nation's top court to intervene to keep the policy in place, after a lower court judge had previously ordered Title 42 to end. We’ll keep watching this story.

In a moment, health stories of 2022 that will shape the new year.

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The health stories to watch as we head into the new year

NIALA: Welcome back to Axios Today. I’m Niala Boodhoo.

Heading into the holiday season, the so-called tripledemic of covid, RSV and flu has prompted some cities to encourage masks again. But, it seems like people are by and large ignoring these suggestions, intent on getting back to a pre-pandemic version of the holidays.

The tripledemic is just one of the big health stories of the last year – and Axios’ Senior Healthcare Editor Adriel Bettelheim is here to catch us up quick on that and what else he’s watching for in 2023. Hi Adriel.

ADRIEL BETTELHEIM: Hi, nice to be with you.

NIALA: Adriel, let's start with Covid. The public health emergency designation that's been in place during the pandemic means many more people were able to stay on Medicaid than is typically the case. Is that emergency designation expected to be lifted soon? And if so, what will happen to all those people?

ADRIEL: Well, the designation is gonna run through April, and then afterwards, it's kind of the Biden administration's call. They have to give 60 days notice if they want to let it lapse. It's widely expected at some point that they are going to lift it. And what that'll do is, well, it'll trigger a lot of things because many things in healthcare are riding on that designation. But one of the things is that states for the first time since the pandemic, can start redetermining who's eligible for this safety net program, Medicaid. And that is estimated to result in a big spike of uninsured people, cause states were paid extra to keep people on the Medicaid roles throughout the emergency. They're saying perhaps 14, perhaps 15 million people could fall off.

NIALA: What can people expect in terms of developments for Covid vaccines next year?

ADRIEL: The FDA has scheduled a hearing of its outside advisors next month, late January, where they're gonna discuss new formulations. And I think where they're trying to head is to a point where they're not just reacting to crises and waves of disease, but they're kind of come up with a more, long-term strategy, that possibly, you know, acknowledges that Covid is not going away, but it's falling in line perhaps with other seasonal respiratory illnesses. In some years, covid could be the worst and other years it's flu or RSV and maybe they eventually come up with a vaccine for two or three of them. So, that's the beginning of what could be a year-long process involving FDA, CDC and other public health agencies and states.

NIALA: Adriel, I wanted to ask you about another big development in healthcare this year.

The approval of new drugs that basically reverse engineer your genetics to prevent diseases like Alzheimer's from developing. Can you tell us more about that?

ADRIEL: Well, I mean this, this era of multimillion dollar gene therapies has arrived, and that's great for patients with debilitating diseases, but it presents huge affordability challenges. These therapies are ranging, you know, from 850,000 to 2.1 million and, you know, that doesn't include new oncology drugs and such. So, while this gives hope and could extend lives, you know, if you have a drug that's $1.5 million, how is that gonna be covered? Are insurers gonna pay for it? Is there gonna be some massive co-pays? Do state or federal governments have to step in? So a lot of this will come down to Medicare determining whether they're gonna pay for it, and private insurers possibly following.

NIALA: Abortion politics has been a huge story this year. What have you been watching and what are you going to be watching for here?

ADRIEL: So the overturning of Roe v. Wade, you know, obviously scrambled calculus for all types of reproductive health. There's now a patchwork of laws with, you know, half of the states roughly allowing abortions. Half of it, either outlawing it or expected to. And now there's gonna be follow-on attempts to put more curbs on the procedure. There is of course in Congress, talk about Republicans, putting in place a 15 week federal ban. That's not obviously gonna happen with Democrats still controlling the Senate and President Biden's still in office. But there's a symbolic effect of that and states are gonna be enacting more curbs. So the big question is how do they write these laws? If they're very broad there is some concern that the anti-abortion laws could also net up things like fertility treatments or surrogacy. And, if that happens, there will obviously be court challenges and you wind up having judges in courts making reproductive health policy.

NIALA: Adriel Bettelheim is a senior healthcare editor for Axios. Thanks, Adriel.

ADRIEL: Thank you.

NIALA: That’s it for us today!

I’m Niala Boodhoo - thanks for listening - stay safe and we’ll see you back here tomorrow morning.