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The Current Transcript for January 3, 2019

Host: Geoff Turner

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: We've made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges and if the detention is not appropriate, I will demand his immediate return.

GEOFF TURNER: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants Russia to play fair in the case of a jailed American, but the Russians claim they bagged a spy when they detained Paul Whelan. His family says he's just a regular guy attending a Moscow wedding. In half an hour, we'll talk about diplomacy and spycraft in the age of Putin. Also.

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VOICE: To hear that heart beat and know that you know Rob's got a second chance at life because of our son, the magnitude of it kind of hits home.

GT: We'll replay the story of Pat Loder. She lost her son at age 20, but thanks to organ donation, his heart beats on. But first.

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VOICE: She'll cut your head off and you won't even know you're bleeding. That's all you need to know about her. No one ever won betting against Nancy Pelosi.

GT: Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi might be a little gory in describing her mother Nancy's political skills, but there's no doubt that politicians in Washington are sharpening the knives this week. In the midst of a partial government shutdown, a fight over a border war and with the Mueller investigation looming over it all, newly minted members of Congress can expect bloodsport. Coming up, two very different takes on how that fight ought to unfold. I’m Geoff Turner, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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Democrats issuing 'a blizzard of subpoenas' against Trump isn't constructive, argues former Republican senator

Guests: Larry Pressler, Rob Goodman

GT: It is a new year and in Washington D.C. it's the start of a new session of Congress, with plenty of new faces being sworn into the House and Senate. But last year's partial government shutdown hasn't gone away and according to President Donald Trump, the shutdown could last "as long as it takes." He wants Democrats, who will now have a majority in the house, to fund his southern border wall, no matter what they think about it.

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VOICE: When they say the wall's immoral, well then you got to do something about the Vatican because the Vatican has the biggest wall of them all. The wall is immoral. Look at all of the countries that have walls and they work 100 percent.

GT: The president is also facing criticism from inside his own party. Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate, is entering the US Senate today, but he's already made waves this week with a scathing op-ed, criticizing the president's character. And then there's the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia, which is likely to wrap up in the coming months. You might say this new session of Congress is kicking off at an inflection point for American democracy. That's how a group of former senators put it in a Washington op-ed last month, including my first guest. Larry Pressler served as a Republican Senator for South Dakota from 1979 to 1997. He's also a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He joins us from our Washington studio. Hello.

LARRY PRESSLER: Hello. Good morning.

GT: Senator Pressler, let's start with this government shutdown, which is hanging over the swearing in ceremony. How well do you think the president has handled this issue?

LP: Well I think he's handled it pretty well and I've been through several of these back in my 22 years in Congress. We have one year funding in our Constitution, so we always have a crisis at the end of that year and there have been crises at the end for Democrats and Republicans. I remember George Bush had to raise taxes to solve a shutdown in the past and which broke a campaign pledge of his no new taxes. So I think that this will proceed along and I think that and I hope that some resolution on both sides will be reached. I think the Democrats are going to have to accept some money for the wall. He's only asking for $1.5 billion. Now that's a tiny amount. On the other hand, the Republicans are going to have to respect the new House majority, the Democratic House majority. Now you mentioned a letter that we had, that several of us had signed, 44 former senators, it wasn't named just to Trump, it also said the new House Democratic majority has to be very careful in terms of what it does constitutionally and we're, at least this Senator, this signer, hopes that the Congress will proceed to legislate on a bipartisan basis and not just be, as they say, a blizzard of subpoenas and a blizzard of investigations because, so we aim the letter at both sides, both President Trump and the new Democratic House.

GT: We'll get back to that letter in a moment, but I just want to stick for the moment with the question of the wall. I wonder how critical do you think that issue. Is seems that campaign promises aside, there's not necessarily a great deal of popular support. Why do you think the president is treating the southern border wall as such a critical issue?

LP: Well I think there is a lot of popular support for it. Depends on that those voters who voted for Trump, it was a campaign promise, so we'll put that aside and say politics, but people do want border security and it has been voted for before by Barack Obama and others. So it's a matter of lively debate and we seem to be stuck on semantics. I would urge both sides find a solution to that, but the president has said he will take the college student program, immigrants, he will take expanded legal immigration as part of the settlement. So I think that President Trump's side of it has not been reported, except on Fox News here, in terms of his side of it. And I'm a little concerned and I've been very critical of President Trump in some of my columns and I did not vote for him originally, but I think he's doing better than the national media gives him credit and in this case, I think he's got a strong argument. That's part of his program, a wall and it's a budget that is supposed to be full of compromises and he's made several compromises. Just recently for example, he's participated in a lot of compromises on this major criminal justice bill. It's a very big deal here in the United States, which will actually shorten sentences for some marijuana users. We've just passed a major farm bill. The appointment of two justices have occurred and he has and we have a new trade agreement with Canada and the United States. I got to greet my old friend, Brian Mulroney, at President Bush's funeral and there was everybody seems everybody in Canada seems to be happy with the outcome of that and I think we are here in the United States also. So the old NAFTA has been replaced. But all this has happened under the leadership of Mr. Lighthizer, who is our trade negotiator and is the president's trade negotiator. So a lot of positive things are happening and will continue to happen and I hope this budget thing can be settled in fairly short order.

GT: Now I also mentioned the criticism from Mitt Romney and I want you to hear some of what he said yesterday to CNN's Jake Tapper.

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VOICE 1: I think it's very important for a president to demonstrate the qualities of integrity and honesty, forthrightness, empathy and respect for the institutions of our democratic republic. I think those are all parts of the job. And while I agree with him on a lot of policy fronts and some of the work that's been done by the Republican leadership in Washington, there are places that relate to the, if you will forming of national character that I think we can do a better job.

GT: Now there is a lot more to it in his op-ed, but I wonder what you think of Senator-elect Romney had to say there.

LP: Well I think he's raised the bar and I think it's, I'm glad that he spoke out, but remember our presidential system is rough and tumble system and we get different types of characters. You'd say Bill Clinton, you could say maybe he didn't meet the moral bar all the time, but he did a lot of good things. Old Harry Truman talked in salty language all the time and he was a Democrat. So he was kind of more accepted by the national press, but we've heard a lot of salty language presidents and Donald Trump was elected president of the United States by the American people. And he is the president and I would predict he will probably be re-elected, but he has just undergone a relentless daily attack in our national press, except for Fox News. The New York Times, I don’t think ever gave him much credit for anything. I think they had a sentence or two praising him on his Korea initiatives and so forth, which were very significant. We've come a long ways with Korea from where we were before he started.

GT: It seems to me though that in the New York Times, if you want to bring up that example, there's a lot more to their criticism than criticism of salty language. They've documented decades of financial malfeasance. I wonder if it's you gave a comparison of President Clinton, the rough ride he got for his moral, what his perceived moral standing. I wonder if he, if President Trump is getting a bit of a pass from Republicans right now.

LP: Well I think both President Clinton and President Trump have been criticized on financial and moral issues, as they should be, but nothing has come up yet that there isn't really any, as far as I can see here, there's not a single impeachable offense, you know the some of the new Democrats coming in are talking impeachment in a blizzard of subpoenas and so forth. I think we reached a point in our history where we have to take a step back and realize that when we elect these people, we should allow them to do their jobs, for a time at least and perhaps prosecute them when they get out of office. But if and I've been in the government and when you have to defend a lawsuit, you have to do discovery, you have to turn every file over, you use up eight or ten people in a small office, just defending much smaller lawsuits. So I'm hopeful that we can have two years and that's why we signed that letter is to see if we couldn't have two years of bipartisan legislating here and the president has done it on several major bills. That criminal justice bill had been around for ten years and the president became personally involved and that's a major change. I mean we have less people in prison here. Also the president's proposal to get out of some points in the Middle East. As a Vietnam veteran, that's music to my ears. All the Vietnam veterans, who really fought in Vietnam, think that these foreign wars are absolutely crazy for us to continue. Are we going to stay there forever? And President Trump is the first one who's had the courage, he's taken a lot of fire. But we have such a powerful military industrial state in Washington and President Trump is the first one to stand up to it a little bit, but even he gets shut down.

GT: Now you're sounding optimistic, but you were one of 44 former senators who signed this op-ed in December in The Washington Post, which said that Congress is entering "a dangerous period." Why did you sign that?

LP: Well in part because I am concerned about some of the president's language, but also I'm very concerned about some of the new House leaders language. Mr. Nadler from the state of New York, the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has announced that he's going to start issuing a blizzard of subpoenas that every federal agency is going to be investigated and sued and so forth. And it's just not my feeling that that's a constructive thing to do. Every president of the United States, every administration will have some problems. We're a rough and tumble society here and people should try to solve these problems in the ballot box. These people should be working on defeating President Trump in 2020 at the ballot box. That's my concept of democracy. If the people don't agree then they shouldn't immediately turn around because a lot of people don't even acknowledge that Trump is president. A lot of them have a practice of not referring to him as President Trump, just referring to him as Trump and so forth. So that's what I'm a centrist who wants to get on with the business of government and I think it's the decent thing to do.

GT: Well I guess we will see how that unfolds this year, Senator Pressler and I thank you so much for your insights today.

LP: Thank you very much.

GT: Larry Pressler served as a Republican senator for South Dakota from 1979 to 1997. He was in our Washington D.C. studio. Now Rob Goodman has been listening in to our conversation. He's also a veteran of Capitol Hill. He worked for five years as a speechwriter for Democrats in the House and Senate. He's now a postdoctoral fellow in political science at McGill University and in Politico magazine, he's written some advice for Democrats, as they take control of the house. Rob Goodman joins me from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Hello.

ROB GOODMAN: Hello thanks for having me.

GT: Rob Goodman, tell me a little bit. What is your advice to Democrats?

RG: Well my advice is that oversight is part of Congress' duty under the Constitution. It's right that Congress looks into corruption in the Trump administration in the cabinet level departments, but at the same time, I don’t think it should let the focus on investigation detract from what ought to be the main focus, which ought to be shoring up democracy at a time when democracy is at an inflection point. I'd go for further than Senator Pressler suggests, that one of our parties, President Trump's party, he is looking dangerously like a quasi-authoritarian party right now. It's a party that believes in voter suppression. It's a party that is putting all of its eggs in the most undemocratic baskets of our Constitution, in an unrepresentative Senate, in an undemocratic Supreme Court, in policies to prevent Americans from exercising their franchise rights. And if Democrats want to really wage a fight for democracy in this country, what they ought to do is not let investigations take the spotlight away from their main focus on strengthening democracy and strengthening our most democratic institutions under our Constitution.

GT: And yet I think for a lot of Democrats and Democratic supporters, those investigations are necessary to address exactly the concerns that you're talking about. Why is that not the path and what's the alternative?

RG: Well I think you're right, those investigations are necessary, but I think they need to be part of a broader case. Let me take an example here. I think one thing that's going to be up for investigation in New Congress is the Republican administrations just disgraceful treatment of Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria, which led to hundreds of possibly even over a thousand deaths, which left the island without electricity for months and months and I think that deserves to be investigated. But at the same time, I think the investigation ought to be tied to the question of representation and democracy. It's not a coincidence that Puerto Rico received such an insufficient response from the federal government when its citizens are American citizens and yet aren't represented in the House and the Senate. I think the Senate, if it's going to be a more representative institution, ought to have seats replaced like the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. So it's not just a question of the Trump administration neglecting Americans during a time of national disaster, which ought to be investigated, it's that neglect is directly tied to a way in which our country isn't a fully democratic country. And if it were more fully democratic, I don't think that neglect would have happened in the same way. And I think that's a way of tying investigations to a broader case about democracy.

GT: You've talked also about democratic institutions. You just mentioned voter suppression. What more should or could Democrats in the House do to safeguard some of those institutions?

RG: Well I think HR1, which is the first bill Democrats are going to introduce in the House is very promising. It does things like create national automatic voter registration and try to make it easier to register to vote online. Also restricts the influence of big money in politics. I'd go further and do things like transitioning to a nationwide vote by mail system, which has been very successful in states like Oregon. And I recognize that because the Senate is not a representative institution, and is also an institution controlled by Republicans and we have a Republican president who is in power because he won an electoral college majority, after losing the popular vote. I recognize it for all these reasons, when Democrats try to strengthen the right to vote with a bill like HR1, it's not going to go anywhere. The reason to do this isn't because Democrats are going to unilaterally enact this legislation, the reason to do this is to establish the sharpest possible contrast and to build a platform that will enable Democrats at some point in the future to actually make something like this law. And I think it's really important to sharpen the contrast now and make sure that messages about Trump's personal corruption and as important as those may be, don't overshadow I think is the broader problems with our institutions.

GT: Now Senator Pressler was a signatory to a letter that talks or at least warns about a possible dangerous period in American democracy coming up. How fragile do you think democracy is in the United States right now?

RG: Well I think it's fragile to the extent that one of our parties, as I said, is going in a really scary direction. I think you could consider the Republican Party, could be what political scientists call an anti-system party. It's a party that doesn't really believe our institutions are working in their current shape and it's a party that, given the choice between enacting its policies and strengthening democracy, wants to enact its policies. You know I think David Frum, who is a Republican commentator, put this really well, you know the claim he made is that if conservatives are given the choice between conservatism and democracy, it looks like they're going to choose conservatism. In other words, it looks like they have a vision of what counts for them as economic liberty that trumps as it were the right of the people to express their opinions through the ballot box. And I think we see this in just how deeply Republican candidates in states from Georgia to Kansas were invested in strategies and making it more and more difficult for Americans, especially people of colour to vote. That's a scary thing to me. With that said, I read Senator Pressler's letter, the letter that he and several other senators signed, I think they're right that our democracy is endangered, but I think, as he mentioned, there is a lot of both sides language. And the reason I'm advising Democrats not to go all in on simply investigating Trump's personal corruption, is it's very easy to imagine in the future, a sort of both sides message coming out of this period that President Trump overreached, Democrats overreached, everyone got a little riled up. Let's just get back to normal. I think the broader point is that normal isn't working. The reason you get a Trump presidency in the first place is a place where normal has broken down. If Democrats think that they're going to weather the Trump storm and get back to normal, I think they're misleading themselves.

GT: And I think the partial government shutdown is probably part of that normal that you're talking about. How do you think it's been handled so far?

RG: Well I think in the long run, Republicans tend to take the blame for shutdowns because I think Americans really don't follow the ins and outs of the Congressional negotiation process, but the Republicans have a pretty clear brand as an anti-federal government party, as a party that's willing to go to the wall, so to speak, to insure its priorities. It's been behind the most recent high profile shutdowns. That said, I think the public's memory for who exactly takes the blame over these things is pretty short lived. As we saw the last time, the Republicans tried to shut down the government over Obamacare. I think the reason that Trump is so intransigent on the wall is because of all the issues that he has, this is an issue that plays extremely well with his base. This is an issue that motivates Republicans and I think it motivates some for some pretty scary reasons, but what I would suggest is that Trump knows this is the best thing he's got going for him, so he's going to continue to raise the salience of the wall and border security as long as possible. But with that said.

GT: Rob Goodman, we're going to have to let you go there, but thank you so much for sharing your insights today.

RG: Thanks so much.

GT: Rob Goodman worked on Capitol Hill for five years as a speechwriter for Democrats in the House and Senate. He's now a postdoctoral fellow in political science at McGill University. The CBC News is next. Then, is the Michigan man being held in Moscow a U.S. spy or collateral damage in a new kind of war between the United States and Russia? That discussion in our next half hour. I'm Geoff Turner in for Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

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U.S. should respond with 'all hell and fury' to arrest of American in Russia: Bill Browder

Guests: Bill Browder, Julia Davis

GT: Hello. I'm Geoff Turner, in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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GT: Still to come, we're revisiting a story that touched many hearts. After her son died, Pat Loder knew that some of his organs were still alive and well as transplants and so she went searching for the people living with them. We'll hear from Pat and the man living with her late son's heart in half an hour. But first, cloak and dagger or tit for tat.

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GT: He was born in Ottawa, he's a former US Marine and he heads up security for a Michigan auto parts company, but today Paul Whelan is being held by authorities in Russia, accused of being a US spy.

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VOICE: We've made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges and come to understand what it is he's been accused of and if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return.

GT: That's US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo weighing in on the case. And according to friends and family, Paul Whelan was in Moscow for a wedding and his detention there comes as a surprise. Though it does come on the heels of a Russian citizen being arrested and convicted in America. Maria Butina pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy against the U.S. and she's cooperating with authorities. Speaking with CBC's As It Happens on Tuesday, Paul Whelan's brother, David Whelan of Newmarket, Ontario, was reluctant to make a connection between the two cases.

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VOICE: We don't think that it's a likely story that he is a spy. I think it's very hard to know without more information from Paul or from the embassy. We live in a very complicated world and there may be connections and there could be just an arbitrary or have a different sort of explanation. So I've tended to avoid trying to talk about those connections because I don't think that they're useful in getting Paul to come home.

GT: Others however seem convinced that Paul Whelan has become a pawn in a political chess game. We've reached Bill Browder for his take on what's happening. He's an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and he's been the subject of several arrest requests by Russia. He's the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and the author of Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice. We've reached him in London, England. Hello.

BILL BROWDER: Hello there.

GT: What were your thoughts when you first heard about Paul Whelan's arrest?

BB: Well I thought the arrest was very unusual. In the world of espionage and counter espionage, people generally don't get arrested. They get caught, they get taken to the airport and they get deported and that's what's happened when Russia has found American alleged spies and that's what happens when the West finds Russian spies. Recently four Russians were caught red-handed about to try to cyber attack a Dutch chemical weapons testing facility, they were grabbed with all their equipment, taken to the airport and put on the next flight out. So the fact that the Russian secret police sort of abruptly announced that an American had been arrested and put in prison for espionage just immediately reeked of something else going on.

GT: Right, now Paul Whelan, he is a former Marine. He now works in security and Russia says he was arrested on suspicion of carrying out an active espionage. What's the probability that there could be any factual basis to that claim?

BB: Well so what you have to understand about the Russian government and the Putin regime is that they lie all the time about everything and particularly in these types of situations and so anything they say has to be watered down by 95 percent. And in this particular case, according to Russian media sources today, the act of "espionage" was that somebody supposedly delivered a thumb drive with the names of Russian agents on it. And I could easily imagine, without any exaggerating in any way, that if they wanted to set this guy up, somebody just comes, a bunch of police officers come to his hotel room, they throw a little, they say we want to search your room, they throw a little disc in your suitcase and then they grab it and say oh look what we found and there's your espionage.

GT: We heard Paul Whelan's brother David there hesitating to make any kind of connection between his brother's arrest and the case against the confessed Russian agent, Maria Butina, but a lot of people are going there. Do you see a connection?

BB: Well, so the obvious question is so why is Russia acting so much out of character and out of historic precedent with an alleged American spy and the answer is because a couple weeks ago the Americans got Maria Butina to flip, to basically. So here you had a Russian woman, who was working for a guy named Torchin, a Russian government official, who's one of Putin's guys and she was effectively funneling money into the NRA to pay for Trump's campaign. And she is now about to become a cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation. That is a very bad situation for Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin had no leverage. And so what better way to create leverage than to grab an American, arrest him, put him in Lefortovo prison, which is this dungeon underneath the KGB building and then make a big international incident out of it. And all of a sudden, by definition, Vladimir Putin had leverage. He's got a pawn.

GT: I understand the idea of leverage, but why this guy? It seems like kind of small potatoes, a former Marine, there for a wedding.

BB: Well they need somebody and you know the way that they, I mean so if I've seen how these guys operate and what they would have probably done is that every single American or every single person from any country, Canada included, if they want to travel to Russia, has to fill out a hugely invasive visa application form. And on that visa application form they got to put where they've ever been in the world, where they worked, where they worked before, who they knew, social media accounts etc. And so if the KGB was looking for somebody to arrest, they'd probably look for somebody who had government, former government contact. Somebody who maybe works in law enforcement or worked in the military because that makes them more credible alleged spies by let's say somebody who was working in a restaurant. And so they probably were looking for somebody to arrest and said this guy has got a pretty good background. He was a Marine, he worked in law enforcement, he works in corporate security. Perfect.

GT: So there's just enough there to help the story, including the fact I think he left the Marines under not perfect circumstance.

BB: Well even better, I mean and they can start throwing that around. It's not a bad, you know they always want to have a plausible story, doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be plausible. And I've seen how they operate in all sorts of trumped up cases connected to me and the people close to me and they just make stuff up, but there always has to be some plausibility in some way.

GT: I want to mention one of those cases because last year Spanish authorities arrested you on a Russian Interpol warrant and later released you. What's happening with that case and what was that all about?

BB: Well so the Russians are very mad at me and Vladimir Putin is very mad at me because I've been able to get a piece of legislation passed in the United States, Canada, U.K. and a number of European countries called the Magnitsky Act, which imposes visa sanctions and asset freezes on Putin's cronies. And because Putin has a lot of money in the West and his cronies have a lot of money in the West, they're furious with me. Russia has made seven attempts at having me arrested through Interpol. The most recent attempt was just last week, they just published documents and send them to Interpol for another Interpol arrest warrant and so you know I've seen up close and personal in granular detail, how they fabricate evidence, how they make stories up. And most of the time they don't even care how it looks. I mean in my case, after murdering my lawyer Sergei Magnitsky nine years ago, they brazenly accused me of murdering him, even though I haven't been in Russia for 15 years.

GT: I want to talk a little bit about the Magnitsky Act. As you mentioned, it's named for your deceased lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. How effective have those laws been?

BB: Well the main way we can test the effectiveness of the Magnitsky is to look at the reaction of the Putin regime to the Magnitsky Act. Vladimir Putin has made it his single largest foreign policy priority to have the Magnitsky repealed. You may remember that there was a Russian lawyer who went to Trump Tower in June of 2016 to meet with Donald Trump Jr. and that Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was there with one specific request on behalf of Vladimir Putin, which was to repeal the Magnitsky Act. And so the Magnitsky Act is something that's really gotten under Putin's skin. You may also remember at the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, the main request at the end of the summit between Putin and Trump was to hand me over. Putin asked Trump to hand me over and 11 Americans who were involved in passing the Magnitsky Act and so this something that's really gotten right under Vladimir Putin's skin.

GT: Now we heard a bit of tape there from Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a comparatively mild response. How do you think the U.S. should be responding to this situation?

BB: With all hell and fury they should respond to this type of situation because if this is allowed to go through, if this is allowed to happen, and then all Americans become bargaining chips in every authoritarian regime. And there's lots of tools the Americans have to deal with this. There should be no spy swap. There should be no spy swap for Maria Butina. It should be very simple. The American government should sanction another seven rich Russian oligarchs, as they did in April of this year because that's the stuff that Putin really hates because these people are holding money for Vladimir Putin. They're holding it in the West and it completely and absolutely destroys their business.

GT: Now you've pulled a lot of threads together in describing the implications of this. You mentioned Donald Trump Jr. and meetings around that are partly the subject of the Mueller investigation, what concerns you most about this case?

BB: Well what concerns me most about this case is that it's a very brazen act. The idea that the Russians would basically pluck an American, a sort of hapless American who's in Moscow for a wedding and take him hostage, it's a hostage situation, nothing less. It shows the brazeness of Putin and if this brazenness goes unpunished, then the world becomes a truly lawless place.

GT: Bill Browder, thank you very much for your time today.

BB: Thank you.

GT: Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and the author of Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice. He was in London, England. Now if people such as Bill Browder see the arrest of Paul Whelan as payback for Maria Butina, they could be forgiven. For months, Russian politicians have been calling for the arrests of Americans all on state TV. Here's just one example from the summer. It's Duma member at Leonid Kalashnikov.

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VOICE: We need to detain an American here and that's it. There is Butina, we immediately arrest some American from an NGO and that's all there is to it. That's the only language they understand.

GT: Julia Davis has been watching these developments closely. She is a journalist and a Russian media analyst who works with the Atlantic Council's Disinformation Portal. It tracks what it calls the Kremlin's information war. We've reached Julia Davis in Shreveport, Louisiana. Hello.

JULIA DAVIS: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

GT: Let me first get to your reaction to what we just heard from Bill Browder.

JD: He is absolutely correct. This is nothing less than a hostage situation. They simply grabbed the most convenient target that they could find, just in order to arrest an American, which by the way today the Russian media is claiming he might still have a Canadian citizenship as well. That is yet to be confirmed. But like you mentioned, I've been monitoring Russian state media and multiple lawmakers have been brainstorming on live air how they should start arresting Americans in retaliation for Maria Butina's arrest, as well as in retaliation for American sanctions against Russia.

GT: Now many observers, including Bill Browder, have suggested that the arrest of Paul Whelan is connected to that prosecution of Maria Butina in the U.S. What do you think of that connection?

JD: I absolutely believe there is a connection. Russian officials are extremely concerned about the information that might come out, as a result of Maria Butina's cooperation with U.S. authorities and they are potentially hoping to swap her for a low level target like Paul Whelan.

GT: Can you remind us for listeners who don't know the details of the case, remind us of some of the specifics of her case. What exactly was she convicted of doing?

JD: She was convicted for conspiracy to affect U.S. politics by forming connections with operatives of the Republican Party and infiltrating the Republican Party, the NRA and the Trump campaign, which she was directly interested in and she was the one who I'm sure you recalled, who asked the question of Donald Trump at the press conference and it would be very curious to find out whether that was set up in advance. Also based on the connections that she was able to form with their Republican operatives and she pleaded guilty to that, so I'm sure there's a lot more information that will come out in the future.

GT: If Paul Whelan's arrest is connected to Maria Butina case, then what is the end game here? What are the Russians ultimately trying to achieve?

JD: I believe they are hoping to swap Whelan for Butina in order to minimize the damage from her potential revelations.

GT: How well do you think they've calculated that though? We've just heard we know the case against Maria Butina, but if what Bill Browder says is correct, they don't have much on their hands in the case of Paul Whelan. How likely is there to be any kind of exchange like that?

JD: I think realistically speaking, there should not be even the possibility of a swap because we're talking completely different cases. I very much doubt Whelan had done anything even remotely close to Butina's activities, but in 2012 Putin rewrote Russian espionage a statute that widened and broadened it to such an extent where almost any activity could be classified something that is impacting their security. So he is probably being charged under some ridiculously strained allegation. So there is no comparison and there should be no swap.

GT: I'm sure there's a domestic political dimension to this for Vladimir Putin. How do you think all of this plays out with the Russian public?

JD: I think the Russian public has been fed by the propaganda machine to want retaliatory measures against Americans. So the Russians who support Putin and his hostilities against the West, probably are supportive of this latest action against the Americans. They have been encouraged to believe that there has to be retaliation against the West and the important part here is that the Kremlin never even considers changing its behavior. Instead it continues to escalate its activities against the West, hoping to get the sanctions removed or to get their spy returned through this hybrid warfare.

GT: Now I want to take this a little bit broader. There are two Canadian citizens in China being held on national security grounds, possibly in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive in Vancouver. Do you see parallels between those arrests and the arrest of Paul Whelan?

JD: Yes. It's another example of hostile authoritarian states that are attacking the West to retaliate against our actions against their corruption or unlawful activities. So they are looking at the Western citizens traveling abroad as potential hostages in this situation.

GT: So should we be expecting more of this in this current geopolitical environment?

JD: I think it would be very much realistic to expect that this type of behavior will continue and possibly escalate.

GT: Now Russian politicians have been openly talking about this conflict with the West in terms of war. I want to play a recent example. This is Andrey Svintov. He's a Russian member of the Duma and he's speaking on a state TV special about Maria Butina.

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VOICE: The official position of our Foreign Ministry is that Russian citizens should abstain from visiting the U.S. We're in a state of war. We're not exchanging blows by actual weapons, but information and intellectual weapons.

GT: How common is that sentiment that we just heard there from Andrey Svintov.

JD: It is a very common sentiment in Russia that Russia is actively at war with the West. It's an undeclared war and certainly not a conventional war, but an info war and a cyber war. And they believe that they are well justified in utilizing any means at their disposal to fight back against our sanctions. So yes, they believe they are at war with the West and it's high time that the West realizes that state of affairs. They truly are waging war against us.

GT: Why do Russian leaders frame it that way? What is that war? What is that war about? You mentioned the sanctions, but what is the ultimate underpinning, what are the spoils?

JD: The Putin regime believes that it should be able to do as it wishes with respect to the former Soviet republics and with respect to the Middle East and any time they believe that the West is interfering in their ability to do as Putin wishes. They consider it an act of war and they consider themselves empowered to strike back by the means of hybrid warfare.

GT: How badly are those U.S. imposed sanctions hurting Russia right now? How effective are other?

JD: Initially, the Russians made it a point to openly scoff and laugh at the U.S. sanctions, but they're not laughing anymore and they are admitting that the sanctions are having a tangible impact on their economy, although there are more severe sanctions that have been announced that have been called sanctions from hell and the Russians are even more concerned about the possibility of those sanctions being implemented. But with the sanctions that are in place right now, they admit that they are hurting and no one is laughing anymore.

GT: Is it possible that those sanctions are making the situation worse by ratcheting up the tension. Is it is conceivable that the gap could be closed, if they weren't into that kind of pressure?

JD: If there were no sanctions, Putin's activities in the post-Soviet place and in the Middle East would only escalate. So essentially, while the sanctions are ratcheting up the tensions, the removal of sanctions will only embolden Putin to go even further. So in a sense the choice to release the sanctions would make things even worse.

GT: And yet it seems that in situations such as Syria or in the Crimea that Putin doesn't seem to feel particularly bound regardless.

JD: He doesn't, but the sanctions are affecting the ability of businesses to freely operate in Crimea. He certainly feels emboldened in Syria by the planned U.S. withdrawal. Russia views that as a major victory. So unfortunately they will leave like they are gaining ground, but they are worried about the possibility of tougher sanctions.

GT: Now you heard Bill Browder's concerns and I believe you share those concerns about the implications of what seems to be a regular American citizen being plucked off the street by Russian authorities. What advice would you have for a Westerner's with interests in Russia? People who do business there or even just travel there.

JD: I would urge them to exercise maximum caution and if they don't have to go to Russia, it's probably best to abstain from going there because any American citizen is a potential target to be held hostage in Russia's ongoing war against the West.

GT: Julia Davis, thank you so much for being with us today.

JD: Thank you so much for having me.

GT: Julia Davis is an investigative journalist and a Russian media analyst who works with the Atlantic Council think tanks Disinformation Portal. She was in Shreveport, Louisiana. We did request comment from the Russian embassy in Ottawa, but we did not receive a response. Coming up in our next half hour, the beat goes on. We're revisiting Anna Maria Tremonti's conversation with Pat Loder and the man who lives with her late son's transplanted heart. I'm Geoff Turner, in for Anna Maria and you're listening to The Current.

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'His heart still beats strong to give life': How an organ donation united 2 families

Guests: Pat Loder, Robert Buttle

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: He enjoyed the outdoors, the outdoors was his playground really. Like most children, he grew up playing you know hockey until a concussion stopped him from doing that. But he also played you know soccer. He snowboarded, he snowmobiled. He loved to hunt, so he loved to fish. He was friendly. He was humble. He was one of these guys that if somebody needed something, it came second nature to him just to give it or offer up his parents' services to give it.

AMT: That was Pat Loder of Goose Bay speaking with me a year ago. She was telling us about Jeff, her son, who died by suicide in July of 2016. He was 20-years-old and about the only silver lining to that story was that his liver, his lungs and his heart, were donated to patients in need. Pat had a burning desire to meet those people who had received her son's organs. She was able to write letters, telling them about her son and wishing them good health. But in keeping with the provincial rules in Newfoundland and Labrador, those letters had to remain anonymous. One of the recipients, the man who has Jeff's heart, wrote back twice. In the time since we last spoke with Pat, she and her daughter Jodi, took to social media to try to connect with that man, without the anonymity. And it worked. They first spoke on the phone and then they finally got together in person a couple of weeks ago. They are both joining me now. Pat Loder is in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Robert Buttle of Kingston, Ontario, is with us from Ottawa. Hello to you both.

ROBERT BUTTLE: Hi.

PAT LODER: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: And I guess you already know each other, you can say hi if you want.

RB: Hi Pat.

PL: Good morning Rob. How is your evening? Good.

RB: It was pretty good. Yeah hi. I'm not real fussy on big cities, but this is a lot better than Toronto.

PL: Yeah, we'll pull you out to the east coast where you're comfortable.

RB: That would be nice.

AMT: Pat what was it like for you to finally meet Rob?

PL: Oh goodness. So I'd have to go back. Well I mean the social media side of it allowed us to talk and FaceTime prior to, but to actually meet face to face it was really nice to get the story behind his journey and to see the man you know that through organ donation we could help and change, but also to hear that heart beat and know that you know Rob's got a second chance at life because of our son. It's extremely emotional, but it's ver,y very, very, the magnitude of it just kind of hits home.

AMT: Well I'll get all the details in a minute, but just briefly Rob, how did you feel about meeting Pat?

RB: It was like she said, the social media thing sort of we had met through that. So I knew through that that they were good people, good family and that sort of thing, but to actually see her and I think it was a touch, like to be able to hug her. It's where it all came together and it was like, it's like sort of having another sister. Not quite, but very, very similar. And I think after some time together of talking and maybe visiting again or whatever, it will become that way. And yeah they were, we just kind of clicked. You know it's just one of those things that happens that her family and especially, Jeff, grew up the same way as I grew up. I mean it's uncanny and if I were to ever, ever lose one of my, we have four children, and it would just be devastating and I can, I feel for Pat everyday.

AMT: Pat, like what happened? You went to the door, what happened?

PL: OK so we got a cab from Ottawa down to Rob sister's, Sue's, I met at Manotick,.

RB: Manotick, yeah.

PL: Yeah. And so we pulled up and yeah. So everybody was kind of nervous and hesitant and yet anxious. And so Jodi went ahead of us and we kind of stood behind her and then she knocked on the door and Rob answered. And so you know she kind of fell into his arms almost and you could tell Rob was really nervous, right Rob?

RB: She jumped into my arms, I think.

PL: Yeah pretty much, yeah. So we gave her space you know to feel as much as she needed to feel and so then I came next and Rob was talking, like you know you could tell he was nervous. I was. We were all nervous because we didn't know emotionally, you know if you're going to just be a bubble on the floor really, right? And we just leaned in and and held each other and emotion-wise kind of held up because I could tell he was a bit nervous and so was I, but then Colin came in behind us and you know we were little bit of chatter and then Rob's sister, Sue, came out and Sue's like cheeks were filled with tears right. And that's when I lost it.I just grabbed her and maybe sister to sister, sho knows right?

RB: She's pretty emotional.

PL: Yeah. We had a good cry.

AMT: Rob when you opened that door, like you have the hand on the door knob, you open the door.

RB: Yeah. It was like she was saying like there's I don't know if anybody has ever gone through this sort of feeling or whatever. But it was of more anxious to see her and hoping that she was who I thought she was on the phone. And as soon as I seen her and just you know her, the way she presented herself and of course with Jodi jumping into my arms and I think Pat was right behind her, as far as hugs and whatever and you know, you just don't do that to people you've never met before, unless there's a real connection and there was a connection.

AMT: Pat, I heard you brought a stethoscope.

PL: Actually Jodi had brought a stethoscope. She had done paramedics, so and it's funny the stethoscope has J Loder written on it because both her brother, both of them, their names started with J and she had always figured that she would carry him wherever she went, if she had it on her stethoscope. So yeah the intent was that we would take some pictures and we would ask Rob if we could listen. But it didn't end up that way, Rob.

RB: No.

AMT: What happened? Did you use the stethoscope?

PL: No we didn't actually. So what we had done is we sat and we chatted for oh my God, it was hours, right?

RB: Yeah.

PL: I mean I had we had coffee, we had treats and then we had lunch and we had and it was hours. And it was a lovely afternoon. And before we were getting ready to leave, we said well you know why don't we take a few pictures. Right? And Sue, we were joking I don't know how it came about, but Sue said you know why don't you lean your head in on Rob's chest and listen to the heart. Like I do sometimes, like Rob you know sometimes don't have a shirt on. So she said I lean on his chest and I listen to that heart every now and then. And we actually have a piece of tape because as Jodi did that, you recorded it. Let's listen to that.

SOUNDCLIP

RB: Any other circumstance this would be weird.

[Laughter]

RB: It'd be real weird.

[Laughter]

RB: You hear how strong it is? Like you could hear the old one. Any time you need to hear it, just, I could put the telephone up to it.

[Laughter]

AMT: Aww, you could put the telephone up to it. That's so sweet. Rob what was it like for you to make that connection?

RB: Like I said it was weird at first. I mean you know we're standing out in the backyard and I'm unbuttoning my shirt for her to listen. But it's true what I did say about the heart being a lot stronger than my old heart. Now, of course my old heart would have been 60 years old and this one was 20 years old. So it's going to be stronger and it's been what's keeping me alive lately.

AMT: What kind of condition were you in before you got the heart transplant?

RB: I was in bad, bad shape. I'd say five years before the transplant, I was starting to deteriorate pretty good and I quit work because I'm a licensed carpenter and I couldn't do the things that you should be able to do and be able to you know charge money for doing it. And so I stopped doing that and it was a series of things. I was in Kingston Hospital two or three times and then they sent me to Ottawa and then Ottawa sent me to Toronto for the transplant. I had to go six months or so in Toronto and I asked to get stationed back at Ottawa because of its closer for us in Kingston.

AMT: This is after you got the heart recovery?

RB: Yeah. For the recovery, exactly.

AMT: Yeah, but his heart saved your life.

RB: Yeah his heart did save my life.

AMT: How are you feeling now? How's your health?

RB: Heart wise, I'm feeling 100 percent. My heart is working as well as it should. Lke if I was in really good shape and at this age, my heart should be working about 50-55% and that's what it's doing now. So that's, I can't expect any more now. It's working very well.

AMT: Pat what does it mean to you to know it and to see firsthand that Jeff's heart is keeping Rob alive?

PL: There's a lot of things Anna Maria because number one it's the man, okay the individual. I mean my thing was not so much to find Jeff's heart, it was to hear the story. We sat and we heard his story you know and to know that this man, you know like not only his family that meant a lot to him, but also like he mentored young people as they grew up. His friend, you know he has a huge circle of friends, like he's a good man. Right and I'm sorry Rob, talking about you.

RB: You're making me cry now.

PL: Yeah, but I mean at the end of the day it was always about hearing that story, right. And to know that from our side of it, that his heart still beats on to give life to Rob and allow Rob to have. Like we couldn't, Anna Maria, we could not have picked a better man. Like he was a match in so many ways, it wasn't only the organ match. You know.

RB: Don't cry.

AMT: You're gonna make me cry.

PL: The personality, when I hugged him it was almost, you know like Jodi referred to it as feeling at home, but it felt like we automatically connected on a whole different level. And I don't think it was Jeff as much because I don't you know, but when I leaned my ear to Rob's chest because I undid his buttons and his wife laughed as she was taking pictures of another woman undoing his shirt. When I laid my head on his chest, I heard my son, but I felt a good man's arms around me. So as a family that donated organs, we thought at the time it was something good to do. It was you know the right thing to do. It was probably finding a little bit of light in an awful dark period, but you know it's been way more than even we had anticipated. There's a sense of peace that I can't explain.

RB: That's what I was hoping for, Pat. I'm glad you found it.

AMT: I want to back up a bit because when we talked last year Pat, the two of you had exchanged letters, but you didn't know about the person who had Jeff's heart. So in the end, how did you end up finding each other?

PL: So we ended up getting a letter exactly two years to the anniversary of Rob's transplant. So it was just after the weekend of the anniversary of Jeff's passing and in it Rob had left a clue that he had gone, they had Christmas and everybody, but their son from North Bay had been home and Jodie had gone to school in North Bay to fall before that. So we jumped. You know we called CBC because they were helping us at the time and they did a quick interview and then they wrote up an article and posted on CBC website and we just blasted it to everybody we knew in Ontario, to blast it to North Bay. And that was a Friday and Sunday morning Rob, I guess you guys got a call from somebody about the article.

RB: Yeah, my daughter-in-law.

PL: Yeah.

RB: Said there's something really interesting on the internet. You should check it out. I think it has to do with you Rob and so we did and right off the bat I knew it was my letters. I mean obviously I knew what I wrote and then of course the fish at the end of the one letter sort of did it.

AMT: Your love of fish? You could see that in the picture.

RB: Yeah.

AMT: With her holding the letters.

RB: Yeah.

AMT: Did you have any doubts or worries about meeting the family of your donor, Rob?

RB: No. I had no worries about it. I wanted, right off the bat, right from the word go, I wanted to know who they were. I wanted to know where the heart sort of came from like I wanted to.My biggest thing was, was it a male or a female and the second thing would be how old it was and then after that, I mean it's nice to to know that the heart came from a person that had the exact same lifestyle as I do.

AMT: Those similarities between the two of you, the different ages, but those similarities, Pat. That matters, doesn't it?

PL: Yeah because again and like I mean you know, it gives you that piece that if there's anything, that heart's happy. You know, I mean if if he can drop a line in the water a few times a year, you know or be around a group of people laughing and having fun, right?

RB: Yup.

AMT: Then that heart's happy right and that heart now has a purpose. It has a good man to keep alive and that for us is a peace. And I think in a way Rob, it probably from and I can't speak I mean you know your side of it, but from a recipient side, I would think if I'm carrying something I need to know as much about it as possible as part of my healing and you know it possibly can be, but from a family perspective, you know we've all said to you right Rob, like we couldn't have asked for a better guy.

RB: Oh yeah. Yeah.

PL: Go enjoy life and as far as we're concerned, they're like an extension of our family and we will you know eventually meet up and do different things and we'll come up to theirs and meet their extended family and probably haul you guys down to the east coast and show you all Newfoundlound.

RB: I hope to. I hope to for sure.

AMT: There wasn't, you didn't have those expectations necessarily. I mean it could've, like you just don't know, right? There was no control over that.

PL: You have no idea. And there was no, they weren't the expectations at the time. It wasn't about meeting somebody and becoming a fit. You know connected or to anything. I just wanted to know the story.

RB: That was just a big bonus.

PL: Yeah, right.

RB: And It kind of, on the same subject as, I not only got the heart for myself, but it's going to impact my family unbelievably. Like I mean if it wasn't for that heart, I wouldn't be here now talking to you, which means you know my children would be devastated and their children and their children's children and this whole thing's just going to go on and on and on because of the generosity of the Loder family.

AMT: Well I want to ask you Rob because your wife has been with you through this, through your illness, the transplant, the meeting of the families, what's it been like for her?

RB: Hell. She I can't say enough about what she's done. I mean in Ottawa when I was there first, she was there every other day and then when I was in Toronto, that was real chaos there and she was up, she'd stay nights. I mean we're not a very rich family or anything like that, so I mean economically it was hard to do it. I mean we're going back and forth to Kingston pretty much every day.

AMT: What was it like for her to meet Pat and Jodi?

RB: They got along just about as well as Pat and my sister. Yeah she's a pretty easy to get along with girl.

AMT: Pat, we heard how emotional this has been for all of you. You wrote on Facebook, one heart unites two families.

PL: Yeah. Well, we come from a huge family, right? Like from our side of it, which is there's 195 on one side. There's probably that on the other side so and you know as Newfoundland and Labradorians, you know we always take people in under our wing. So like Rob doesn't realize, but he thinks he just you know became a part of a family of three, there's probably about 320 that want to hug him, so he's going to get lots of hugs.

RB: A lot of cold winters in Labrador then I guess?

PL: Absolutely, right.

AMT: A lot of ears on your chest.

PL: But even from our side of it, like Rob's children reached out to each of us and sent messages through Facebook and such. And it's.

RB: They're dying to meet you too, Pat.

PL: Yeah like I mean it's really, it's you can feel the emotion in their messages. You know you saved our dad, you know the grandad for their children. And I mean that's important, like family was big for us and still is. And to know that like these grandchildren still have their grandfather and these children still have their father because of our son.

RB: Yeah. That's big.

PL: It's big, right? The magnitude of it is huge. And you know it's warm, it's nice, it's humanity at its best.

AMT: Pat I know that you know it's still not that long ago that that Jeff died. How does that affect your whole process of grieving and your family's process of grieving?

PL: Our grief is still the same. You know you miss him. You will, you know. Like it doesn't change the grief and I said this right from the get go and I always thought it would, you know it would never change the grieve. But there's a sense of peace like after we met that day, for a week after or two weeks after, like you know some would say it was a high, but it wasn't. I mean we cried much more. We did. I mean we grieved, we lost because you can't do one without the other. Right? I mean we cried in Sue's sunroom, you know talking about Jeff. I mean and you guys cried as well, but you can't do one without the other. But there was a warm, there was a peace, that all wasn't lost and that there was something good that came out of something really, really horrible. And we give, I mean you know we give the Buttles the distance to live their lives. I mean we don't want to be fully immersed, you know, but I mean at the end of the day, it's really, really. If you can, donating organs is not going to hurt you. It will help you. It won't change your grieving process, but it will give you a ray of hope out there that life can be a little bit beautiful in something that's not beautiful, right?

AMT: What would you say to other families who are connected by the transplant of a loved one's organ?

RB: Pat you go ahead.

PL: Sure, yeah. One of the things I would say is that every province should change the legislation. If you have two consenting adults, you know we were lucky. Right? We were you know I was a pitbull on this and Jodi helped because of the social media side of it, but we were lucky to find Rob so quick. But every province should change their legislation, there's no reason to have this legislation in place that if you didn't have two consenting adults then that's fine. But if you had two consenting adults that wanted to meet, I think it should be encouraged and able. It helps on the healing for both families.

AMT: Robert, do you have anything to add to that?

RB: I'm just saying that my thoughts are very similar to Pat's. Now I think in some instances, there might be some problems. Because I mean everybody is different and they accept grief differently and and on and on. But I think once it's been accepted that both people have talked to each other through the mail and are in agreement to at least talk in person, I think they should be allowed to.

AMT: And I guess your families are are an example of the good that can come out of this.

RB: Exactly.

AMT: Despite the protectiveness of the various jurisdictions.

RB: Yeah. I mean you can't pick the heart or the family that you're getting the heart from, but they're a perfect family and they seem to like me, OK. So I think we're all right.