House Republicans are ramping up their investigation into President Joe Biden’s health, targeting a new round of former aides with interview requests.
GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chair of the House Oversight Committee, announced on Wednesday that he’s now seeking testimony from more top Biden officials, including former chief of staff Ron Klain and senior adviser Anita Dunn. Also on Comer’s list are longtime adviser Mike Donilon, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, and counselor Steve Ricchetti.
“The Committee requests your testimony to evaluate your eye-witness account of former President Biden’s decline,” Comer wrote in nearly identical letters, adding that the aides must agree to appear by June 11 or face a subpoena.
This latest batch of targets follows Comer’s round of demands last month, when he requested to question Biden’s personal physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, and White House staffers Anthony Bernal, Neera Tanden, Annie Tomasini, and Ashley Williams.
“These five former senior advisors were eyewitnesses to President Biden’s condition and operations within the Biden White House,” Comer said, claiming that they could shed light on who was really “calling the shots.”
It’s not clear what Comer expects to get out of this, but we won’t have to wait long to find out.
On Tuesday, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that staff attorneys have already been in touch with the various aides’ legal teams and that he expects each official to testify voluntarily. Where that actually happens, and what the GOP even considers a “win” here, remains to be seen.
But even if this whole thing turns up nothing, Republicans will still have accomplished what they set out to do: keep the attacks on Biden coming. It’s all part of a larger GOP effort to undermine Biden’s legacy by painting him as unfit for office, even after leaving it.
Ed Martin, pardon attorney for the Department of Justice
Similarly, President Donald Trump’s pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, Ed Martin, is now digging into Biden’s end-of-term clemency decisions, including the mechanics of how they were approved.
While Biden’s health decline was evident during his chaotic final debate against Trump, there’s no public proof that others were running the show for him or that he couldn’t perform the core duties of the presidency. His allies have rejected that framing outright.
But those facts haven’t slowed the GOP down. According to CNN, the House Judiciary Committee is also preparing to interview David Weiss, the former Hunter Biden special counsel, behind closed doors this week. And Republicans have also been chasing two DOJ tax prosecutors involved in the Hunter Biden probe.
These moves are easier with a compliant House and White House, and the political benefits are obvious. The investigations feed their narrative, keep Biden in the headlines, and pull focus from GOP turmoil. Even Comer admits as much.
“It is a whole different environment,” he told CNN.
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy described the insurrectionists who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political dissidents” during a rant about federal law enforcement on Friday.
Campos-Duffy, who is perhaps best known for appearing on MTV’s “The Real World” in the 1990s, made her claim during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
“We have an FBI, a DOD, and a Homeland Security that has given us zero confidence. They've said nothing with a border open and terrorists flowing over the borders. They've been directing agents to go after political dissidents from J6, from January 6, instead of going after terrorists,” Duffy said while commenting on the New Orleans attackerwho was reported to be inspired by ISIS.
Campos-Duffy’s sympathetic description of the insurrections echoes that of Donald Trump, who has floated the idea of pardoning them and has referred to the armed attack as a “day of love.”
In reality, the attackers violently forced their way into the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from fulfilling one of its longest-running and most important functions: certifying the presidential election results.
At least seven people died as a result of the Jan. 6 attack, a direct contradiction to the casual language that Campos-Duffy used to describe the rioters. More than 1,200 people have been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection, with some charges including sedition against the United States. In fact, Trump was also charged—and even impeached—for his role in inciting the attack.
Campos-Duffy’s underlying argument that the U.S. government fails to go after terrorists is also faulty. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. military executed a drone strike in 2022 that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, alongside Osama bin Laden, led the terrorist group Al Qaeda and assisted in the planning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The drone strike was a continuation of policy from Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama, who ordered the operation that successfully killed bin Laden in 2011.
Looks like the latest Fox News rant was just that—a rant.
The second-term president likely will seek to cut off spending that lawmakers have already appropriated, setting off a constitutional struggle within the branches. If successful, he could wield the power to punish perceived foes.
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Donald Trump is entering his second term with vows to cut a vast array of government services and a radical plan to do so. Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike.
“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”
His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.
Trump’s designs on the budget are part of his administration’s larger plan to consolidate as much power in the executive branch as possible. This month, he pressured the Senate to go into recess so he could appoint his cabinet without any oversight. (So far, Republicans who control the chamber have not agreed to do so.) His key advisers have spelled out plans to bring independent agencies, such as the Department of Justice, under political control.
If Trump were to assert a power to kill congressionally approved programs, it would almost certainly tee up a fight in the federal courts and Congress and, experts say, could fundamentally alter Congress’ bedrock power.
“It’s an effort to wrest the entire power of the purse away from Congress, and that is just not the constitutional design,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a Georgetown Law professor who has written about the federal budget and appropriations process. “The president doesn’t have the authority to go into the budget bit by bit and pull out the stuff he doesn’t like.”
Trump’s claim to have impoundment power contravenes a Nixon-era law that forbids presidents from blocking spending over policy disagreements as well as a string of federal court rulings that prevent presidents from refusing to spend money unless Congress grants them the flexibility.
Elon Musk and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during a campaign rally on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania.
In an op-ed published Wednesday, tech billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who are overseeing the newly created, nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency, wrote that they planned to slash federal spending and fire civil servants. Some of their efforts could offer Trump his first Supreme Court test of the post-Watergate Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires the president to spend the money Congress approves. The law allows exceptions, such as when the executive branch can achieve Congress’ goals by spending less, but not as a means for the president to kill programs he opposes.
Trump and his aides have been telegraphing his plans for a hostile takeover of the budgeting process for months. Trump has decried the 1974 law as “not a very good act” in his campaign video and said, “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State.”
Musk and Ramaswamy have seized that mantle, writing, “We believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question.”
The once-obscure debate over impoundment has come into vogue in MAGA circles thanks to veterans of Trump’s first administration who remain his close allies. Russell Vought, Trump’s former budget director, and Mark Paoletta, who served under Vought as the Office of Management and Budget general counsel, have worked to popularize the idea from the Trump-aligned think tank Vought founded, the Center for Renewing America.
On Friday, Trump announced he had picked Vought to lead OMB again. “Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump said in a statement.
Vought was also a top architect of the controversial Project 2025. In private remarks to a gathering of MAGA luminaries uncovered by ProPublica, Vought boasted that he was assembling a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel so that Trump is armed on day one with the legal rationalizations to realize his agenda.
“I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral,” Vought said.
Trump spokespeople and Vought did not respond to requests for comment.
The prospect of Trump seizing vast control over federal spending is not merely about reducing the size of the federal government, a long-standing conservative goal. It is also fueling new fears about his promises of vengeance.
A similar power grab led to his first impeachment. During his first term, Trump held up nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while he pressured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his family. The U.S. Government Accountability Office later ruled his actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
Pasachoff predicted that, when advantageous, the incoming Trump administration will attempt to achieve the goals of impoundment without picking such a high-profile fight.
Trump tested piecemeal ways beyond the Ukrainian arms imbroglio to withhold federal funding as a means to punish his perceived enemies, said Bobby Kogan, a former OMB adviser under Biden and the senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning think tank American Progress. After devastating wildfires in California and Washington, Trump delayed or refused to sign disaster declarations that would have unlocked federal relief aid because neither state had voted for him. He targeted so-called sanctuary cities by conditioning federal grants on local law enforcement’s willingness to cooperate with mass deportation efforts. The Biden administration eventually withdrew the policy.
Trump and his aides claim there is a long presidential history of impoundment dating back to Thomas Jefferson.
Most historical examples involve the military and cases where Congress had explicitly given presidents permission to use discretion, said Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. Jefferson, for example, decided not to spend money Congress had appropriated for gun boats — a decision the law, which appropriated money for “a number not exceeding fifteen gun boats” using “a sum not exceeding fifty thousand dollars,” authorized him to make.
President Donald Trump listens while acting OMB Director Russell Vought speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Oct. 9, 2019.
President Richard Nixon took impoundment to a new extreme, wielding the concept to gut billions of dollars from programs he simply opposed, such as highway improvements, water treatment, drug rehabilitation and disaster relief for farmers. He faced overwhelming pushback both from Congress and in the courts. More than a half dozen federal judges and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the appropriations bills at issue did not give Nixon the flexibility to cut individual programs.
Vought and his allies argue the limits Congress placed in 1974 are unconstitutional, saying a clause in the Constitution obligating the president to “faithfully execute” the law also implies his power to forbid its enforcement. (Trump is fond of describing Article II, where this clause lives, as giving him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”)
The Supreme Court has never directly weighed in on whether impoundment is constitutional. But it threw water on that reasoning in an 1838 case, Kendall v. U.S., about a federal debt payment.
“To contend that the obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed, implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel construction of the constitution, and entirely inadmissible,” the justices wrote.
During his cutting spree, Nixon’s own Justice Department argued roughly the same.
“With respect to the suggestion that the President has a constitutional power to decline to spend appropriated funds,” William Rehnquist, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel whom Nixon later appointed to the Supreme Court, warned in a 1969 legal memo, “we must conclude that existence of such a broad power is supported by neither reason nor precedent.”
Less than two weeks remain until the election that will determine which political party controls the House of Representatives, but House Republicans are already battling over how they would run the chamber come January 2025.
Control of the House remains a toss-up, with forecasting models giving Democrats a slight edge to regain the majority. But if Republicans do maintain control, it looks like they will have a difficult time even agreeing on how to govern themselves, Politico reported.
While Speaker Mike Johnson and his allies would gladly nuke the archaic “motion to vacate” rule, a small group of right-wing members wants to preserve the provision that allows a single member to force a vote to oust the speaker of the House, according to Politico. That same faction used this tool to boot Kevin McCarthy in October 2023, a mere 269 days after he was elected speaker following a humiliating 15-round voting marathon.
The latest report of infighting is just another embarrassing display from the GOP, which has barely been able to govern with a narrow majority.
When Republicans regained the House majority in 2023, the squabbling was so bad that barely any legislation was passed that year. The New York Times reported that the GOP majority passed just 27 bills that became law, far fewer than the 248 bills passed by a Democratic majority in 2022.
Republicans struggled to pass even basic messaging bills that reeked of partisanship. For example, it took multiple tries to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—a sham impeachment that the Senate then rejected.
What’s more, GOP lawmakers have been fighting with each other—and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has been at the center of many of those fights.
Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado had a fight on the House floor, with Greene calling Boebert a “little bitch.”
Other Republicans then criticized Greene after she made an idiotic statement falsely blaming the government for creating Hurricane Helene to impact Republicans’ chances of winning the election.
Ultimately, the chaos and frustration GOP lawmakers created in the House caused a number of members on both sides of the aisle to announce their retirement earlier this year.
It’s time for adults to run the show and for voters to put Republicans back in the minority, where they belong.
The latest poll from Siena College for The New York Times suggests Republicans are on track to retake the Senate, with their candidates leading in Montana—which is held by Democratic Sen. Jon Tester—as well as in Florida and Texas, Democrats’ two best pickup opportunities.
With the retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin, Republicans are all but sure to nab his seat in dark-red West Virginia. If this poll’s results bear out, Democrats’ 51-49 Senate majority would slip to a 49-51 minority, assuming they win in every other contested Senate seat they currently hold.
This should energize every Democrat to get out to vote and drive turnout to record levels. And there’s some evidence that may already be happening.
In Montana, Tester faces Republican Tim Sheehy, a political newcomer. The Donald Trump-esque play of presenting nonexpertise as being a “political outsider” appears to have resonated in the Big Sky State. The Times poll shows Tester down 8 percentage points, with 44% to Sheehy’s 52% among likely voters. However, 538’s polling average shows a closer race, with Sheehy ahead by 5.4 points.
Losing this seat and Manchin’s would effectively halt the agenda of a President Kamala Harris if she were elected this year. It would slow down cabinet appointments or force her to use acting secretaries. It would enable politicized impeachment trials if Republicans also held their House majority. Perhaps most consequently of all, a Republican Senate majority would be able to swat down any of Harris’ potential Supreme Court nominees.
Given Tester’s long odds of holding his seat, Democrats turn to their two best Senate pickup opportunities: Texas and Florida.
Vying for his third term, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz lead’s Democrat Colin Allred by 4 points, 48% to 44% percent, in what the Times calls Democrats’ “best opportunity” for flipping a seat. The poll’s result is in line with 538’s polling average for the race, which shows Cruz ahead by 3.6 points.
In Florida, Republican Sen. Rick Scott holds a large 9-point lead over Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, 49% to 40%. That being said, 538’s polling average shows a tighter race, with Scott half that lead, at 4.5 points.
As Daily Kos reported in September, polls are not election results, and because of that, “they can be changed by donating, mobilizing, and voting for Democratic candidates.”
Turnout is already breaking records. In New Mexico, early voting indicates a historic level of turnout. The same goes for Ohio, whose most populous county saw a higher level of first-day early voting this year than in 2016. Ohio is also where Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is fighting to keep his seat. 538’s polling average shows him leading by 2.3 points.
But Democrats need to keep the momentum. Mobilizing their voters will be crucial in not only defending vulnerable seats but also expanding their majority where possible. Grassroots efforts, shoe-leather canvassing, and targeted outreach can make a difference in galvanizing support and turnout.
Members of Congress are heading home for the final reelection sprint, and you can almost hear the scurrying footsteps as Republican lawmakers flee from their duties. They’re vacating the Capitol earlier than usual, and that’s not a shock. As Daily Kos reported, House Republicans have trouble with actual governing—but when it comes to vindictive “investigations,” their energy is endless
This exodus will take place after a Wednesday night House vote on a funding bill that will keep the government open through Dec. 20. The continuing resolution is expected to pass, but it’s worth keeping an eye on which Republicans vote against it—and why, other than to throw spokes in the wheels of legislative efficiency.
Congress will return after the November election to a long to-do list, including annual defense authorization funding, a farm bill that needs extending, and tax and health care provisions that need finalizing. As Punchbowl News writes, “all of this is being left undone as lawmakers head home to take care of their ultimate must-have—getting reelected.”
But instead of focusing on, you know, keeping the government running, the House GOP is going after President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and a Cabinet member.
On Wednesday, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced it is investigating the Biden-Harris administration for flying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 presidential election, alleging that he was in effect campaigning for Harris.
“If the Biden-Harris Administration attempted to use a foreign leader to benefit the Vice President’s presidential campaign, this is an abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer dollars,” the committee wrote in a statement on X.
Another misuse of taxpayer dollars would be to use them to fund futile investigations, hearings, and impeachment efforts.
The fractured and feckless House GOP has more lofty plans when Congress comes back in November: Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul on Tuesday announced a resolution to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for not appearing before the committee on days when Blinken was in Egypt, France, and at the United Nations General Assembly doing his actual job. The committee demanded that Blinken show up to testify on the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The full House could vote to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress, and kick it up to the Justice Department. That seems like an important objective when their efforts to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Biden all went nowhere.
Republicans’ focus on all the wrong issues highlights their struggle to show Americans that they are actually working to improve their lives. However, this hasn’t stopped them from resorting to familiar obstructionist tactics.
While Wednesday’s stopgap government spending bill may have the votes, the future remains uncertain. House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised to torpedo the so-called Christmas omnibus bill, which has historically been used to fund the government in one fell swoop. His obstinance means Congress members may not be able to return home in time for the holidays. Bah humbug.
“There won’t be a Christmas omnibus,” Johnson vowed at a Tuesday press conference.
GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, best known for fabricating her entire life story, told Fox News that she has a plan to get the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“Several months ago, I introduced a resolution for something called inherent contempt of Congress. This is something that Congress has the authority to do, and it hasn’t been done since the early 1900’s,” she told host Maria Bartiromo on Monday.
Luna was responding to questions about the Justice Department’s announcement that it would not prosecute Garland for not turning over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.
“And what that allows Congress to do is really be the punitive arm and really hold Garland accountable by using the sergeant-at-arms to essentially go and get him,” Luna went on, “as well as the tapes, bring him to the well of the house and really be a check-and-balance on the Department of Justice.”
Like most of what Luna says, there are all kinds of facts being misrepresented here. For one, her assertion that she introduced her inherent contempt of Congress resolution “several months ago” is belied by the fact that she actually announced it on May 7. And while that is technically more than one month, it is far less than several months. Though, to be fair, her announcement could have been missed, since it came the same day that Stormy Daniels was testifying … in Trump’s criminal trial.
The sergeant-at-arms is "the chamber’s primary law enforcement official and protocol officer, responsible for maintaining security on the House floor and the House side of the U.S. Capitol complex.”
The case from the “early 1900’s” that Luna is referring to is something some legal scholars felt was more apropos to the unwillingness to comply with requests from Congress by the Trump administration.
The Teapot Dome scandal, which involved President Warren G. Harding’s Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall’s no-bid contract to lease federal oil fields in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, happened in 1922. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty was heavily criticized at the time for not more thoroughly investigating Fall, who was later convicted of taking a $100,000 bribe.
The scandal escalated to the Senate committee subpoenaing Mally S. Daugherty, the attorney general’s brother.
When Mally Daugherty refused to show up to testify before Congress, the Senate Sergeant at Arms David S. Barry deputized John J. McGrain to arrest him and bring him to Washington to testify.
The Republicans’ fixation on getting audio, despite having already received the entire transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, has been a transparently political endeavor. Hur, a Republican, released a 375-page report in February saying that no charges were warranted and that Biden had likely kept the documents as a private citizen by “mistake.”
Since then, House Republicans voted to hold Garland in contempt. Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to take the Garland contempt case to court after the DOJ announced it planned no further action. But whether Johnson will bring Luna’s resolution to a vote remains to be seen.
There has been very little tangible action that has come out of the GOP’s neverending political theater. This past year it spent an inordinate amount of time attacking Biden’s border security while trying to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—a stunt that failed miserably.
Luna’s newest resolution is the GOP’s latest political stunt to create a cloud of doubt over Biden’s reelection campaign against convicted felon Trump.
Hopium Chronicles' Simon Rosenberg joins Markos to discuss the “red wave-ification” of the economy and how prepared Democrats are for November. There is still work to do but we have a better candidate—and we have the edge.
Former President Donald Trump said he would consider tapping Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. attorney general if he wins a second term in the White House, calling his longtime ally “a very talented guy” and praising his tenure as Texas’ chief legal officer.
“I would, actually,” Trump said Saturday when asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for the national post. “He’s very, very talented. I mean, we have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it. But he’s a very talented guy.”
Paxton has long been a close ally of Trump, famously waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump’s 2020 election loss in four battleground states. He also spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021.
Paxton’s loyalty was rewarded with an endorsement from Trump in the 2022 primary, which helped the attorney general fend off three prominent GOP challengers.
Trump also came to Paxton’s defense when he was impeached last year for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor. After Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate, Trump claimed credit, citing his “intervention” on his Truth Social platform, where he denounced the proceedings and threatened political retribution for Republicans who backed the impeachment.
“I fought for him when he had the difficulty and we won,” he told KDFW. “He had some people really after him, and I thought it was really unfair.”
Trump’s latest comments, delivered at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Dallas, come after a series of recent polls have shown the presumptive Republican nominee leading President Joe Biden in a handful of key battleground states.
Paxton has also seen his political prospects rise in recent months, after prosecutors agreed in March to drop three felony counts of securities fraud that had loomed over Paxton for nearly his entire tenure as attorney general. The resolution of the nine-year-old case, along with Paxton’s impeachment acquittal in the Senate last fall, has brought him closer than ever to a political career devoid of legal drama.
Still, Paxton’s critics say he is far from vindicated. He remains under federal investigation for the same allegations that formed the basis of his impeachment, and he continues to face a whistleblower lawsuit from former deputies who said they were illegally fired for reporting Paxton to law enforcement. A separate lawsuit from the state bar seeks to penalize Paxton for his 2020 election challenge, which relied on discredited claims of election fraud.
If nominated, Paxton would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The chamber is narrowly divided along party lines, with Democrats holding a 51-49 majority. One of the most prominent Republican members, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, has been an outspoken critic of Paxton, while Paxton has openly entertained the idea of challenging Cornyn in 2026.
Paxton is not the only Texan Trump has floated for a high-profile spot in his potential administration. In February, he said Gov. Greg Abbott is “absolutely” on his short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Abbott has since downplayed his interest in the job.
The House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee are holding hearings Thursday to consider holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. The Department of Justice has refused to provide recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden and his ghostwriter in the classified documents probe, having already provided the transcripts of those interviews.
The outcome of these meetings isn’t in question; committee chairs Jim Jordan and James Comer will push the contempt vote to the House floor. They remain intent on finding anything that they can use to impeach Biden and/or members of his administration, and they won’t let the fact that their efforts so far have been ridiculous stop them.
It took them two tries to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, only for the Senate to swat it away. The star witness in their Biden impeachment case turned out to be a Russian mole. And they’ve already been down the road of trying to use Hur’s report to prove Biden unfit for office—a game that Hur refused to play in Jordan’s disastrous hearing. But no embarrassing defeat is going to stop them.
“These audio recordings are important to our investigation of President Biden’s willful retention of classified documents and his fitness to be President of the United States,” Comer said in a press release.
The DOJ has in fact been providing information to Comer and Jordan. In February, it even gave them access to two of the classified documents Biden had from his time as vice president, which Comer insisted were critical to his investigations.
But Comer “has not yet taken us up on our offer,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote in refusing the team’s subpoena for more information.
Uriarte detailed all of the information they had provided in response to their demands and subpoenas in his initial letter to Jordan and Comer in April and concluded “we are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information, but because you did.”
In his second letter to the chairs, Uriarte reiterated that point.
“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” he wrote. “[T]he Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”
The purpose, of course, is having audio and video that they can chop up to show Biden unfavorably in their televised hearings. They got the transcripts for their hearing with Hur, but they didn’t find anything, so of course they’re doubling down. It’s Jordan and Comer—what else are they going to do?
Ian Bassin is the former associate White House counsel and co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. Protect Democracy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group focused on anti-authoritarianism, how to protect our democracy, and safeguarding our free and fair elections.
House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden has fizzled out. But the two members tasked with the job, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Oversight Chair James Comer, needing to atone for their failure, have picked another fight: threatening to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt over the Department of Justice’s refusal to provide the audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents probe.
Garland is refusing to play their game.
On Thursday, the DOJ refused for a second time to provide that audio, arguing that it has complied in full with the committees’ subpoenas for information. It provided both the transcription of the Biden interview as well as Hur’s interview with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer for Jordan’s big disaster of a hearing. Two months ago, it even gave Jordan and Comer access to two of the classified documents, which Comer insisted were critical to his investigations.
But Comer “has not yet taken us up on our offer,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote.
In Uriarte’s first letter to Jordan and Comer earlier this month, he detailed all of the information they had provided in response to their demands and subpoenas.
“The Committees’ reaction is difficult to explain in terms of any lack of information or frustration of any informational or investigative imperative, given the Department’s actual conduct,” Uriarte wrote. “We are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information, but because you did.”
“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” he wrote. “[T]he Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”
Those purposes are clearly political. They need to keep up the fight against Biden and are scrambling for whatever they can get. They also probably believe that the audio of the interview could be damaging to Biden. Hur’s report included gratuitous hits about Biden’s age and mental acuity, so Jordan and Comer want to play it during their hearings, knowing that the media would eat that up.
Uriarte outlined the DOJ’s concern about that, writing that it would impinge on Biden’s privacy and that “courts have recognized the privacy interest in one’s voice—including tone, pauses, emotional reactions, and cues—is distinct from the privacy interest in a written transcript of one’s conversation.”
He also implied that Comer and Jordan can’t be trusted with the audio, writing that it could be manipulated by “cutting, erasing, and splicing.”
That’s a safe assumption on Uriarte’s part.
After basically crying “uncle” on impeaching Biden on influence peddling, being humiliated over their Alejandro Mayorkas impeachment stunt, and losing on Ukraine and government funding, Jordan and Comer are itching for revenge.
“The Committees have demanded information you know we have principled reasons to protect, and then accused us of obstruction for upholding those principles,” Uriarte wrote. “This deepens our concern that the Committees may be seeking conflict for conflict’s sake.”
Here's one way to avoid dealing with election results you don't like: just wipe them from the record books. It's not Orwell—it's Arizona, and we're talking all about it on this week's episode of "The Downballot." This fall, voters have the chance to deny new terms to two conservative Supreme Court justices, but a Republican amendment would retroactively declare those elections null and void—and all but eliminate the system Arizona has used to evaluate judges for 50 years. We're going to guess voters won't like this one bit … if it even makes it to the ballot in the first place.
