Category: News

GOP leaders move to defang Biden impeachment measure from Boebert

Posted on (Updated by Emily Brooks

House Republican leaders moved to defang an effort from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to impeach President Biden, after the unexpected fight exposed sharp divisions within the GOP over how aggressively to confront their adversary in the White House.

The House Rules Committee met on Wednesday evening to craft a rule that will refer Boebert’s resolution to impeach Biden to the House Homeland Security and Judiciary committees. Boebert’s resolution cited Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration as grounds for impeachment.

“Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans are committed to fulfilling regular order and undertaking investigations prior to taking up the serious constitutional duty of impeachment,” House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in the hearing.

A formal vote on the rule to re-refer Boebert’s resolution will occur on Thursday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said.

Before GOP leadership moved to craft the new rule, House Democrats had planned to make a motion to table the resolution, essentially killing it. Such a motion would not be in order for the rule, stripping Democrats of the opportunity to defend Biden amid an impeachment threat.

It also protects Republicans from taking a potentially politically tricky vote. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said earlier on Wednesday that Republicans who voted to table the impeachment articles could face attacks based on that vote in primaries.

Boebert’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the rule to refer her resolution to the committees.

Boebert’s privileged motion on Tuesday, forcing action on her impeachment resolution this week, caught GOP leaders by surprise and sparked rare public pushback from Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), as well as immediate rebukes from scores of fellow Republicans. 

The critics warned that the formal move to oust Biden is wildly premature, harming the Republicans’ ongoing efforts to investigate the president on a range of issues — from public policy to personal finances — while undermining potential impeachment efforts in the future.

At a closed-door meeting of the House GOP conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, McCarthy took the remarkable step of urging his troops to oppose the impeachment resolution when it hits the floor later in the week, a House Republican told The Hill.

“This is one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress. I think you've got to go through the process. You've got to have the investigation,” McCarthy later said. “And throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we're doing right now.”

McCarthy told reporters he called Boebert on Tuesday and asked her to address the issue at Wednesday’s conference meeting before moving to force a vote. Boebert told McCarthy she would think about it, according to the Speaker, but then she went ahead and made the privileged motion on Tuesday anyway.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Colorado Republican did not show up.

Boebert instead appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s show Wednesday morning, defending her move to force a vote on impeachment despite the opposition from her leadership.

“I would love for committees to do the work, but I haven’t seen the work be done on this particular subject,” Boebert said. She later said there are not enough GOP votes to pass impeachment articles out of committee.

“This, I’m hoping, generates enthusiasm with the base to contact their members of Congress and say, ‘We want something done while you have the majority,’” Boebert said.

Boebert’s move derailed the GOP focus on other Biden-focused criticism. Lawmakers had been eager to keep the spotlight on the president’s son Hunter Biden agreeing to a plea deal involving federal tax and gun charges.

And her GOP critics, while no fans of the president, said the move fractures the GOP at a crucial political moment while jumping ahead of the various probes into Biden’s White House. 

“It's a person thinking about themselves instead of the team,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who emphasized the importance of conducting hearings before voting on something as momentous as ousting a sitting president. Bacon represents a district Biden carried in 2020.

Republicans spent years hammering Democrats for what they said were a pair of thinly-argued impeachments of Trump, and many warned that Boebert’s impeachment effort — which sidesteps all committee action — follows in the same flawed mold.

“I feel like it was cheapened in the last Congress; we shouldn't follow the same footprints,” Bacon said. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he prefers to see any impeachment effort later go through the House Judiciary Committee, as his panel probes a swath of issues — from Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border to the foreign business dealings by the president’s family members.

“In five months, I think we've produced a lot of information,” Comer said “This is gonna take, you know, many more months, unfortunately. The FBI is fighting us, the DOJ is fighting us, big money lawyers are fighting us. I think we're going as fast as we can.”

When it comes to border issues, Comer said he is more in favor of starting with building a case against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas first.

Most House Republicans hungry for retribution over the U.S.-Mexico border have focused on Mayorkas rather than Biden. Last week, the House GOP launched an investigation that could serve as the basis of an eventual Mayorkas impeachment.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also said he would prefer impeachments to go through his committee, though was not necessarily opposed to impeaching Biden.

"I think there's a better way to do it,” Jordan said.

Democrats plan to make a motion to table Boebert's impeachment resolution, essentially killing it. And many Republicans said they’re ready to support the Democratic measure.

Boebert is one of four members who have led articles of impeachment against Biden this year, with each one pointing to Biden’s handling of the border and immigration issues.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has had public dust-ups with Boebert in the past, accused Boebert of copying her impeachment push.

“I had already introduced articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for the border, asked her to co-sponsor mine, she didn’t. She basically copied my articles and then introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution,” Greene said. “So of course I support 'em because they’re identical to mine.”

“They’re basically a copycat,” she added.

Greene added that GOP members were mad at Boebert because her privileged motion “came out of nowhere.”

More privileged resolutions on impeachment could be coming. Greene said she will convert all her impeachment articles against Biden and top figures in his administration into privileged resolutions to use “when I feel it’s necessary.”

Amid the pushback, some conservatives defended Boebert’s strategy, even though it would circumvent the conventional committee process they demanded of GOP leaders this year. 

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus who was one of several Republicans to push for regular order during the drawn-out Speaker’s race in January — argued that lawmakers were not trying to circumvent the process by bringing up privileged resolutions.

“Regular order also includes individual members being able to represent their districts,” Perry said. “[It] might not be what I do, but if that’s what they see as necessary, then that’s their prerogative.”

House Republicans vote to censure Adam Schiff

Posted on (Updated by Mychael Schnell

House Republicans on Wednesday voted to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a rare reprimand of a sitting lawmaker that the GOP conference delivered as a rebuke for his efforts against former President Trump.

The vote — 213-209-6 — is the culmination of a week-long push led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), which was stymied last week when a band of Republicans joined Democrats in blocking a censure resolution from coming to the floor for a vote. It advanced on Wednesday after Luna made changes to the measure.

It also marked the apex of Republicans’ years-long campaign against Schiff, who emerged as a bogeyman on the right for his unrelenting criticism of Trump’s alleged ties with Russia, and was cemented as a chief GOP adversary on Capitol Hill when he led the first impeachment inquiry targeting Trump.

A stunning scene took place after the vote, as Democrats in the chamber surrounded Schiff on the House floor, chanting “Adam, Adam.” They interrupted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who had taken the gavel for the vote, repeatedly as he tried to deliver the results of the vote.

Schiff — who is currently entrenched in a competitive Senate primary against two House colleagues — embraced the extraordinary punishment, declaring on the floor in an impassioned speech that he would repeat his past actions of holding “a dangerous and out of control president accountable” if called upon to do so in the future.

“Today, I wear this partisan vote as a badge of honor,” Schiff said Wednesday. “Knowing that I have lived my oath. Knowing that I have done my duty, to hold a dangerous and out of control president accountable. And knowing that I would do so again — in a heartbeat — if the circumstances should ever require it.”

Luna’s resolution censures Schiff “for misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives,” and it directs the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation into the congressman’s “falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

The four-page measure accuses Schiff of spreading false claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, abusing the trust afforded to him as chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee when airing the Trump-Russia allegations, and behaving “dishonestly and dishonorably” when discussing events related to Trump’s first impeachment.

“The American people do not trust Congress. The cyclical pattern of lies has worn down the credibility of every institution and every official in the United States government. You see it, I see it,” Luna said on the House floor during debate Wednesday.

“If we run away from the opportunity to hold this man accountable there is only one fault, and that is of ourselves,” she continued. “We will betray the people who trusted us and sent us here to do the right thing, we will be responsible of any shred of justice in this body, and we will reject the duty that we swore an oath to protect upon taking office.”

Luna first moved to censure Schiff last week, bringing a censure resolution — which she introduced last month — to the floor as a privileged measure, which forced the House to act on it. But 20 Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a motion to table the measure, a move that blocked it from coming to the floor for a vote.

A number of the GOP defectors took issue with a non-binding “whereas” clause in the measure that said if the Ethics Committee found that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information,” he should be fined $16 million, saying that it was unconstitutional. That dollar figure, the resolution claimed, was half the amount of money that American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia.

In an effort to allay those concerns, Luna introduced a new, revamped resolution at the end of last week that nixed the fine language — the chief difference between the two — and made a handful of other revisions. Additionally, the new resolution just calls for censuring Schiff while the original involved censuring and condemning the congressman.

The Florida Republican called the revised resolution to the floor as a privileged measure on Tuesday, restarting the process for the second time in a week and forcing another vote.

The changes were enough to erase the GOP concerns: all Republicans voted against a Democratic-led motion to table the resolution, sending it to the floor for a vote and setting up what would become just the sixth censure of a lawmaker since 1980, and the twenty-fifth in history, according to the House website.

The House last censured a lawmaker in November 2021, when Democrats delivered a rebuke to Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for posting an anime video depicting him violently attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and President Biden. Before that, the most recent censures were in December 2010 and July 1983.

It was not, however, the House GOP’s first rebuke of Schiff. Earlier this year, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked him and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the House Intelligence Committee. Luna has also filed a resolution to expel Schiff, though it has not progressed in the chamber.

Throughout the week-long censure saga, Democrats accused Luna — a vocal Trump supporter — and Republicans of launching an effort against Schiff as a way to distract from the former president’s legal troubles. Trump was indicted by the Justice Department on 37 counts earlier this month as part of the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents. He pleaded not guilty.

“The party of Lincoln and his Lincolnites has become the party of Luna and her Luna followers. Today's mad-cap antics are an obvious deflection from Trump's deepening legal troubles,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, said on the House floor.

“The GOP simply has no ideas for our economy, no ideas for our country and no idea for our people, but is on an embarrassing revenge tour on behalf of Donald Trump, who treats them like a ventriloquist's dummy,” he later added.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Republicans transformed the House into a “puppet show.”

“Today we are on the floor of the House, where the other side has turned this body, this chamber — where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and social security and everything were instituted — they’ve turned it into a puppet show. A puppet show,” she said during debate on the floor Wednesday.

Pelosi, who endorsed Schiff in his Senate race, was seated next to her colleague from California during a portion of Wednesday’s vote.

“And you know what?” Pelosi added, "the puppeteer, Donald Trump, is shining a light on the strings. You look miserable.”

Luna, for her part, disputed the claim that Republicans were bringing the Schiff resolution because of Trump. 

“If we want to talk about these little, fun games and comments back and forth, we’re here not about Donald Trump, we’re not here about Jan. 6, we’re here about the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee that used a lie that broke apart this country,” Luna said during debate.

Ocasio-Cortez joins other squad members in boycotting Modi speech

Posted on (Updated by Sarakshi Rai

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is joining other progressives in boycotting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's joint address to Congress.

In a tweet, the New York Democrat urged her colleagues who stand for "pluralism, tolerance and freedom of speech" to join her boycott.

Ocasio-Cortez highlighted Modi's previous ban from entering the U.S. and reports from the State Department on India's record on religious freedoms, as well as the country's current ranking in the Press Freedom Index.

"A joint address is among the most prestigious invitations and honors the United States Congress can extend. We should not do so for individuals with deeply troubling human rights records - particularly for individuals whom our own State Department has concluded are engaged in systematic human rights abuses of religious minorities and caste-oppressed communities," Ocasio-Cortez added.

Her statement comes a day after Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the two Muslim women in Congress, said they would not be attending the Indian leader's speech.

Tlaib added Tuesday on Twitter that Modi’s “long history of human rights abuses, anti-democratic actions, targeting Muslims and religious minorities, and censoring journalists is unacceptable.”

“Prime Minister Modi’s government has repressed religious minorities, emboldened violent Hindu nationalist groups, and targeted journalists/human rights advocates with impunity,” Omar wrote in her own statement.

While Democrats in both the House and the Senate have urged President Biden to address the issue of human rights in his meetings with Modi, the historic address is set to be a widely attended event.

This will be the Indian prime minister’s second address to the joint session of Congress and first official state visit to the United States.

5 things to know about the culture war hiding inside House appropriations bills

Posted on (Updated by Saul Elbein

House Republicans are turning the federal funding process into a new front in the culture wars.

As the GOP-controlled Appropriations Committee prepares its version of the bills that underwrite the work of federal agencies, members are slipping in a wide range of new provisions that seek to undercut federal environmental and diversity policy. 

That adds a new chapter to the ongoing saga in which Republicans have turned the budgetary process into a means to influence federal policy in the rest of government. 

Last month, the House secured trillions in spending cuts and an easier permitting process for infrastructure as payment for passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act — the chamber’s version of the deal that aimed to raise the national debt limit and keep the federal government open. 

In the deal, Republicans got far less than they had initially wanted, Appropriations Chairwoman Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) conceded in late May. 

“Some of our friends are critical that we didn’t get more. I wanted more, too. But we got the change in direction we need, and we can’t lose that,” she said. 

“We conservatives need to build on this win.“

The bills that the Appropriations Committee has released under Granger since May seek to advance conservative priorities by sliding language into the often-unrelated legislation that finances agencies like the departments of Agriculture or Defense.

That’s a “misuse” of the appropriations process, said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen. 

“Many of these policies are so unpopular and so clearly outside of public interest that they certainly could not pass on their own,” Gilbert said. 

“So they were attached to a must-pass piece of legislation, and they’re riding along.”

Public Citizen is part of the Clean Budget Coalition, an alliance of more than 100 labor, civil society and environmental groups. The coalition has called on lawmakers to remove the 39 such “poison pills” in the appropriations package.

In a statement, coalition members called on lawmakers to remove “these unpopular and controversial special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists” from the must-pass legislation that keeps the government running.

These span a wide range of conservative priorities, from bans on drag performances and display of the Pride flag at federal facilities to prohibiting Biden administration environmental justice initiatives. 

Here are five things these riders would do, from restricting LGBTQ rights and abortion access to kneecapping energy efficiency standards and keeping cigarettes high in nicotine.

Cutting medical care

Military personnel — or their partners — serving in states where abortion is illegal may get the Pentagon to pay for their travel to terminate a pregnancy.

Since 2021, the Department of Defense has also covered transition care for “a handful of million dollars per year” for the few thousand transgender service members in the U.S. military.

The House version of the Defense funding bill ends both policies. It “prohibits the use of funds for paid leave and travel or related expenses” for an abortion. Other language “prohibits the use of funds to perform medical procedures that attempt to change an individual’s biological gender.”

Other riders filed in May prohibit the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency from providing abortions and gender-affirming care to migrants in U.S. custody

Two riders take aim at medication abortions.

One rider reverses the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision to allow the abortion pill mifepristone to be dispensed for home use through certain pharmacies, not just in person and in hospitals.  

And a further rider in the House bill funding the agency seeks to protect “the lives of unborn children by including a provision that ends mail-order chemical abortion drugs.”

Legalizing discrimination in the military

Several riders in the Defense and Military Construction bills seek to counter attempts by the Biden administration to diversify the military — and its vast pool of contractors.

Under Biden, the Defense Department has described an increased focus on diversity as a means to “foster an integrated culture of agility, innovation, and acceptance.” It has described that goal as a means “ to prevail against the global security challenges facing the United States” and created a new title — the Deputy Inspector General for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility — to oversee it.’’

House Republicans disagree. A series of riders in the Defense Appropriations bill defunds that position for the Pentagon and prohibits the “implementation, administration or enforcement” of Biden’s executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Others ban the use of drag queens as military recruiters or their employment in events like drag queen story hours.

And the Clean Budget Coalition argues that one innocuous-sounding pair of provisions — which prohibit “censoring [the] constitutionally protected speech of Americans” and protect them “against religious discrimination” — are a stealthy means to allow arms contractors to get around federal discrimination laws. The coalition contends this language allows defense contractors to justify discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious terms while allowing them to continue selling arms and components to the U.S. military.

Pushing back on environmental justice

Another cluster of riders seeks to block the Biden administration’s push to use the vast power of America’s energy spending and entitlement programs to reverse historical discrimination, particularly around land, water and the environment.

“A clear feeling in many minority communities is that they have been targeted for unwanted land uses and have little if any, power to remedy their dilemma,” a Department of Energy report concluded.

One attempt to address that history has been the Justice40 initiative, which seeks to put 40 percent of the benefits of any federal energy spending into disadvantaged communities. A rider in the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill defunds that initiative and blocks those communities from preferential access to resources around clean energy, energy efficiency and transit. 

Other language in that bill takes back “billions of dollars in wasteful spending” from Biden clean energy stimulus packages, including $4.5 billion in rebates for new, non-polluting electric appliances and $1 billion to help state governments “implement the latest energy codes.”

Other riders seek to block the larger intellectual wellspring that environmental justice came out of. Separate riders block funding to agencies that use DEI, critical race theory — an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — and the concepts derived from them.

Another rider blocks federal enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, which seeks to counter abusive or anti-competitive actions by big meatpackers.

Overriding environmental laws

This January, the federal government rewrote the definition of the Waters of the United States, a once-obscure bit of administrative law that has been hotly contested since the Obama administration. That administration’s policy of counting upstream and seasonal creeks as “waters” triggered a backlash from farmers and developers because it put such waterways — and any project that might impact them — under the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act.

While the Supreme Court threw out that Obama-era language in May — ruling that to be protected, wetlands had to be connect in an “indistinguishable” way to a navigable lake or river — the Biden administration had already moved on. A new “waters” definition considers “waters” to refer to any creek or waterway that has “a significant nexus” of connection to protected waters, even if that connection is only seasonal or underground. 

A rider in the Energy and Water Development bill quietly blocks that new definition, thereby “returning to state control of waterways” that Republicans argue have “historically have not fallen under federal jurisdiction.”

Another rider targeted the new Energy Department efficiency standards for the national electric grid, which the agency said would save energy and cut fossil fuel use — particularly through the use of more energy-efficient forms of steel in the cores of new transformers. 

But the transformer industry and many utilities argued that the new requirements were too stringent, too soon. 

“This technology change will disrupt existing manufacturing processes for the entire industry and its supply chain, making the proposed January 2027 effective date a much too short timeframe,” transformer manufacturers Powersmith wrote in a comment on the proposed rule. 

The House agreed. Its version of the Energy and Water Development legislation prevents the Energy Department from passing “onerous energy conservation standards on distribution transformers.”

And riders in the Agriculture and Rural Development bill ban eliminates funding for “climate hubs and climate change research and “conservation equity agreements,” as well as almost $4 billion in rural clean energy.

Keeping cigarettes maximally addictive 

In June, the FDA proposed sweeping restrictions to the tobacco and flavored vape industries, which restricted the levels of nicotine — the addictive chemical in cigarettes and vapes — and banned flavors like menthol.

The FDA noted that these compounds are not toxic in and of themselves in announcements accompanying the proposed rules. But flavoring helps get people smoking, and while nicotine isn’t harmful in itself, “it’s the ingredient that makes it very hard to quit smoking,” contributing to nearly half a million premature deaths per year. 

Riders slipped into the Agriculture appropriations bill eliminate those restrictions. Section 768 of that bill now bans the use of federal funds to “set maximum nicotine level for cigarettes,” while 769 prohibits any ban or standard setting around the use of menthol or other “characterizing flavors.”

Unlike most of the other measures, however — which conservatives promoted themselves under “Conservative Priority” lists in white papers summarizing the bills — the nicotine protections were curiously absent from the explanatory materials released by the Appropriations committee, though they made it into the actual bill.

Both parties hear what they want to hear during rare Durham public hearing

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Beitsch

Special counsel John Durham was both lionized and scrutinized by lawmakers as he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss his probe into the FBI’s 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign. 

Durham provided little new information in his May report but confirmed a series of FBI missteps previously documented by the news media, including that the FBI failed to provide a full picture of the evidence when seeking a wiretap of Trump campaign aide Carter Page.  

In a rare public appearance Wednesday, Durham called his findings “sobering.” 

“The problems identified in the report are not susceptible to overnight fixes. … They cannot be addressed solely by enhancing training or additional policy requirements. Rather, what is required is accountability, both in terms of the standards to which our law enforcement personnel hold themselves and in the consequences they face for violation of laws and policies of relevance,” he said. 

More House coverage from The Hill

Over more than five hours of questioning, Republicans and Democrats zeroed in on the parts of the report most favorable to their positions.  

To Republicans, Durham’s scathing 305-page report supports their arguments about a Department of Justice and FBI that has been weaponized against former President Trump.  

Democrats argued the report backed the FBI’s initial decision to open a probe into the Trump campaign, something they view as significant, since Trump called for Durham's appointment with high expectations that he’d find damaging material on the FBI.  

Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a chief Trump defender who has cast the FBI as “rotted to the core,” said the report served as an example that the bureau requires serious reform, as “any one of us could be next.”  

“There is [a double standard at the Department of Justice]. That has got to change, and I don't think more training, more rules is going to do it. I think we have to fundamentally change the FISA process, and we have to use the appropriations process to limit how American tax dollars are spent at the Department of Justice,” he added, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has the power to authorize a wiretap. 

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It was a tip from an Australian diplomat that ignited the FBI’s interest. The diplomat had spoken with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who told him that Russia had damaging emails from then-competitor Hillary Clinton. It was that tip, not the later debunked Steele Dossier, that led the FBI to initiate the investigation. 

“We have many areas of disagreement across the aisle, but I am relieved that we have no disagreement about one of the fundamental conclusions of your report: that it was incumbent upon the FBI to open some form of investigation when presented with evidence that a presidential candidate and his associates are either coordinating campaign efforts with a hostile nation or being manipulated by such a hostile nation,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.). 

Several Democrats attacked Durham’s work, criticizing the report for not offering any recommendations for the FBI and calling attention to its failure to lead to criminal convictions. 

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) noted that five Trump campaign associates were convicted of various crimes following the Mueller investigation.  

“In contrast to multiple Trump associates who were convicted, you brought two cases to a jury trial based on this investigation, and you lost both. So I don't actually know what we're doing here, because the author of the Durham report concedes that the FBI had enough information to investigate,” he said. 

“And thank goodness the FBI did, because vulnerable Trump associates who committed crimes were held accountable. And the best way to summarize what happened is: Thank you to the brave men and women of the FBI for doing their jobs.” 

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.)

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) addresses reporters after a closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting on Tuesday, June 6, 2023.

Republicans pivoted between complaints over the Justice Department and the treatment of Trump to possible FISA reforms that would limit law enforcement authority for spying both in the U.S. and abroad.  

“You detail how FBI personnel working on FISA applications violated protocols. They were cavalier at best, as you said, in your own words, towards accuracy and completeness. Senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons or entities and … a significant reliance on investigative and leads provided or funded by Trump's political opponents were relied upon here,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said. 

Johnson went on to lament the involvement of Peter Strzok, previously deputy assistant director the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, who made negative comments about Trump in texts. 

“He said horrible things about President Trump, and all of his supporters by the way, how could we say he did not have political bias?” 

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.)

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) leaves a closed-door House Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday, June 6, 2023.

Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) criticized the FISA application that allowed the FBI to wiretap Page. 

“A FISA application was pursued without disclosing some relevant information to prosecutors or the court, without following standard procedural rules, utilizing investigative techniques that were the most intrusive without first exhausting other techniques, and instead pursuing the most invasive method possible from the outset against Mr. Page,” she said. 

Durham was also at times berated for his work, including by those who said he did not do enough to probe FBI misdeeds after Trump said Durham’s report would reveal the “crime of the century.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was also gifted time by other members to question the course of the investigation.

Schiff critiqued Durham’s decision to issue a statement about an inspector general’s report on the same topic and repeatedly asked why one of the top prosecutors on the investigation resigned, a question Durham refused to answer.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said Durham’s investigative trip to Italy was just “looking for authentic pasta” as he griped that the special counsel’s work was insufficient.

“It seems like more than disappointment. It seems like you weren't really trying to expose the true core of the corruption,” Gaetz said. 

“It's not what's in your report that is telling, it's the omission, it's the lack of work you did. ... You let the country down.”

McConnell: Democrats should ‘stay out’ of Supreme Court’s business 

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) says Senate Democrats don’t have any jurisdiction over the Supreme Court’s ethics and should “stay out” of the court’s business, after ProPublica reported conservative Justice Samuel Alito accepted a luxury fishing vacation from wealthy benefactors. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chairman of a key Judiciary subcommittee, said in response to the report that they will mark up Supreme Court ethics legislation. 

But McConnell sent a strong signal Wednesday that any Supreme Court ethics reform bill is not likely to get enough Republican support to overcome a filibuster. 

“Look, the Supreme Court, in my view, can’t be dictated to by Congress. I think the chief justice will address these issues. Congress should stay out of it, because we don’t, I think, have the jurisdiction to tell the Supreme Court how to handle the issue,” he said. 

McConnell said he has “full confidence” in Chief Justice John Roberts to address any ethical issues facing the court.  

“I have total confidence in Chief Justice John Roberts to in effect look out for the court as well as its reputation,” he said.  

The Senate GOP leader made his comments after ProPublica reported that Alito did not publicly disclose a 2008 trip he took to a luxury fishing lodge in Alaska, and that he flew there aboard a private plane owned by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.  

Alito then did not recuse himself in 2014, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Singer’s hedge fund in a legal battle that resulted in the fund receiving a $2.4 billion payout.  

Alito explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed responding to ProPublica’s reporting that he was not required to report the trip nor recuse himself from the court case.  

Senate Democrats warned Wednesday that they will take matters into their own hands if Roberts doesn’t announce new ethics guidelines for the high court soon. 

“The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards.  But for too long that has been the case with the United States Supreme Court.  That needs to change.  That’s why when the Senate returns after the July 4th recess, the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up Supreme Court ethics legislation,” Durbin and Whitehouse said in a joint statement.  

“We hope that before that time, Chief Justice Roberts will take the lead and bring Supreme Court ethics in line with all other federal judges.  But if the Court won’t act, then Congress must,” they said.  

Whitehouse is the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights.  

Other Republicans joined McConnell in pushing back against Democratic calls to pass Supreme Court ethics legislation.  

“They’ve been after everybody from Clarence Thomas to anybody they can get their teeth into to try to undermine the credibility of the court. I think all of us need to be concerned about the public confidence in the courts, but this is not something that the Congress has any authority over. This is something the court itself needs to come to grips with,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  

House advances Schiff censure resolution, teeing up final vote

Posted on (Updated by Mychael Schnell

The House advanced a resolution Wednesday to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), overcoming a procedural hurdle that blocked a similar measure targeting the Democrat last week and teeing up a final vote later in the day.

A motion to table the measure was rejected 218-208 on party lines, with Republicans rejecting the Democratic-led effort to block the resolution from coming to the floor for a vote.

The chamber is expected to vote on the censure resolution, which will require a simple majority, late Wednesday afternoon. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters Tuesday that he expects the resolution to pass the House.

Wednesday’s vote marked the second time the House voted on a motion to table a resolution to censure Schiff for his handling of investigations into former President Trump.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) forced a vote on a resolution to censure Schiff last week, but the effort was blocked after 20 Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a motion to table the measure, effectively killing it.

Some of the GOP defectors raised concerns with a nonbinding “whereas” clause in the resolution that said if the Ethics Committee found that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information,” he should be fined $16 million.

That number was half the amount of money that American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia, according to the resolution.

Luna, however, introduced a revised censure resolution last week — which nixed the fine language, among other changes — and brought it to the floor as a privileged measure Tuesday.

A number of last week’s GOP defectors changed their vote and helped advance the bill Wednesday.

Luna’s resolution seeks to censure Schiff “for misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives.” It would also direct the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation of him.

In addition to removing language about a $16 million fine, the revised Schiff censure resolution just calls for censuring Schiff; last week’s involved censuring and condemning the congressman.

The new version also omitted nonbinding “whereas” clauses that say Schiff “purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people” and that he “exploited” his positions on the House Intelligence Committee “to encourage and excuse abusive intelligence investigations of Americans for political purposes.”

The revamped resolution does, however, add several clauses: It cites a March 2019 letter signed by Republicans on the Intelligence panel calling on Schiff — the committee's chairman at the time — to resign from the top post, argues that Schiff “hindered the ability of the Intelligence Committee to fulfill its oversight responsibilities over the Intelligence Community” and says he “misled the American people and brought disrepute upon the House of Representatives.”

Republicans bash Boebert for forcing Biden impeachment vote: ‘Frivolous’

Posted on (Updated by Mike Lillis

House Republicans teed off Wednesday on one of their own colleagues, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), over her stunning move to force a vote this week to impeach President Biden.

While no fans of the president, Boebert’s GOP critics said her move to stage an impeachment vote this week is wildly premature, harming the Republicans’ ongoing efforts to investigate the Biden family’s business dealings while undermining potential impeachment efforts in the future.

At a closed-door meeting of the GOP conference on Capitol Hill, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) took the remarkable step of urging his troops to oppose the impeachment resolution when it hits the floor later in the week, a House Republican told The Hill.

“I don't think it's the right thing to do,” McCarthy later told reporters.

“This is one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress. I think you've got to go through the process. You've got to have the investigation,” McCarthy said. “And throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we're doing right now.”

More House coverage from The Hill

McCarthy told reporters that he called Boebert on Tuesday and asked her to talk to the closed-door House GOP conference meeting about her impeachment resolution before moving to force a vote. McCarthy said Boebert told him she would think about it, but then went ahead and made the privileged motion Tuesday anyway.

The Colorado Republican also did not attend Wednesday's meeting.

Boebert instead appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s show Wednesday morning, defending her move to force a vote on impeachment despite leadership encouraging her not to.

“I would love for committees to do the work, but I haven’t seen the work be done on this particular subject,” Boebert said. She later said that there are not enough GOP votes to pass impeachment articles out of committee.

“This, I’m hoping, generates enthusiasm with the base to contact their members of Congress and say, ‘We want something done while you have the majority,’” Boebert said.

McCarthy told Republicans that he opposed the two impeachments of former President Trump because Democrats were acting on emotion, not facts, according to a source familiar with the Speaker’s remarks.

Boebert made the surprise privileged motion Tuesday evening to bring up her resolution to impeach Biden over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, forcing a floor vote on the measure some time this week. Democrats plan to make a motion to table the resolution, blocking a vote on impeachment itself. The table resolution is expected to succeed. 

On Bannon’s show, she urged Republicans to not vote to table her impeachment resolution.

“We have the majority. This does not have to be tabled,” Boebert said. “If we have Republicans stick together, we can have that debate about the sovereignty of our nation and how important it is to shut the southern border down and secure it.”

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Boebert’s impeachment push comes as Republicans have tried to turn their attention to other Biden-focused criticism this week. After the president’s son, Hunter Biden, agreed to a plea deal involving federal tax and gun charges Tuesday, Republicans dug in on their investigation into the business dealings of Biden’s family members.

It also follows Boebrt’s ideological ally, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), forcing a vote on censuring Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) over his handling of investigations into Trump and the first Trump impeachment. The House will vote Tuesday on a modified version of the resolution after 20 House Republicans helped to tank the Schiff censure resolution last week.

McCarthy argued that the Schiff censure was a reason to not rush impeachment articles.

“We're going to censure Schiff for actually doing the exact same thing — lying to the American public and taking us through impeachment,” McCarthy said. “We're going to turn around the next day and do try to do the same thing that Schiff did? I just don't think that's honest.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) speaks during a press conference held by the House Freedom Caucus regarding the proposed Biden-McCarthy debt limit deal on Tuesday, May 30, 2023.

More privileged resolutions could be coming. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that she will convert all her impeachment articles against Biden and top figures in his administration into privileged resolutions to use “when I feel it’s necessary.”

Republicans have spent years hammering Democrats for what they said were a pair of thinly argued impeachments of Trump, and many are now warning that Boebert’s impeachment effort — which sidesteps all committee action — follows in the same flawed mold.

“This shouldn't be playground games, in my view. This should be serious,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) groused Wednesday. “If there's real facts for impeachment then you go there. But doing this is wrong, and I think the majority of the conference feels that way.”

Bacon said there are “viable areas” of Biden’s background that merit investigation, but he suggested there’s no proof of wrongdoing — at least not yet — to warrant impeachment.

“Impeachment shouldn't be something that is frivolous,” he said. “We should get to the facts of that, but just doing a privileged motion is wrong,” he said. “It's a person thinking about themselves instead of the team.”  

Rep. Don Bacon is among the Republicans bashing Rep. Lauren Boebert over forcing a vote to impeach President Biden. (Greg Nash)

Others quickly piled on.  

“I think that things like impeachment are one of the most awesome powers of the Congress, it's not something you should flippantly exercise in two days. And I think that it actually undermines efforts to hold people accountable in the future,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a close McCarthy ally, told reporters.

He said the “right way” to go about the matter is through regular order, “empowering the committee chairs and members.”

“It's important for the Republican conference to act together in unison to counter the bad policies of the Biden administration,” Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) said. “And therefore, if members want to suggest or bring up the idea of a privileged motion, they ought to come to the conference to discuss that in advance and have a collective discussion of it before they take the decision to do it.”

Greene said some members of the conference were mad at Boebert because her privileged motion “came out of nowhere.” And some of the criticism was personal. Greene, who has had public dust-ups with Boebert in the past, accused Boebert of copying her own impeachment push.

“I had already introduced articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for the border, asked her to co-sponsor mine, she didn’t. She basically copied my articles and then introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution,” Greene said. “So of course I support ‘em because they’re identical to mine.”

“They’re basically a copycat,” she added.

Not all Republicans were criticizing Boebert on Wednesday. Some conservatives defended her strategy, even as it would circumvent the conventional committee process they had demanded of GOP leaders this year. 

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus who was one of several Republicans who pushed for regular order during the drawn-out Speaker’s race in January — argued that lawmakers were not trying to circumvent the process by bringing up privileged resolutions.

“Regular order also includes individual members being able to represent their districts,” Perry said. “[It] might not be what I do, but if that’s what they see as necessary then that’s their prerogative.”

Updated at 12:59 p.m.

Republicans rage over Hunter Biden — with some notable exceptions

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Republican lawmakers are venting their frustration over what they say is an overly lenient plea agreement between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors, further escalating GOP tensions with the Justice Department.   

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday led the backlash from Republican lawmakers.   

“It continues to show the two-tier system in America,” McCarthy told reporters, echoing the arguments Republicans deployed after the Justice Department earlier this month unsealed a 37-count indictment against former President Trump.  

“If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the DOJ tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time. But if you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal,” McCarthy said.   

Biden agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanors for failing to pay income taxes in 2017 and 2018. He also agreed to enter a pretrial diversion program for possessing a firearm while being an unlawful user or addicted to a controlled substance.   

The plea deal, however, divided Republican leaders, just as Trump’s indictment drew mixed responses from GOP lawmakers last week.   

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to comment about Biden’s legal problems as he walked to the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon.   

His opening remarks on the floor made no mention of the president’s son and focused instead on what he called “the Biden administration’s radical nominees” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing.   

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) also held back from lashing out at the Justice Department, pointing out that the U.S. attorney who cut the deal was a Trump appointee.   

“The justice system, I guess, has got to work its way out. He’s going to plead to a couple tax evasion charges and a gun charge. I don’t know that this is necessarily the end of the road for him, probably not. At least the preliminary stage of it is done,” Thune told reporters.  

Asked about Republican criticisms of a two-tiered system and a sweetheart deal, Thune said: “I don’t know what else they got on him, but I do think the American people have to be convinced that the justice system treats everybody equally under the law.”  

“This was a — my understanding is at least — Trump-appointed U.S. attorney. So we’ll see where it goes from here,” he added.   

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) wasn’t in the mood Tuesday to delve into the political wrangling over Hunter Biden’s plea deal.  

“I don’t have any reaction, ask me about something else,” she said. 

On the other side of the Capitol, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) echoed McCarthy’s claim of a “two-tiered system of justice.”   

“Hunter Biden is getting away with a slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery,” he said.    

Republican lawmakers for months have pushed allegations based on anonymous sources that Biden received preferential treatment from the Internal Revenue Service and was involved in a bribery scheme with a Ukrainian energy company.   

But those thinly sourced claims were left unaddressed by a document outlining the plea agreement that U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump appointee, filed with the U.S. district court in Wilmington, Del.  

Comer vowed to continue his investigation, pledging: “We will not rest until the full extent of President Biden’s involvement in the family’s schemes are revealed.”  

The Republican National Committee on Tuesday tweeted out a video clip of one of Hunter Biden’s attorneys telling MSNBC he didn’t remember prosecutors ever asking about Biden’s infamous laptop.   

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has highlighted unverified allegations by an anonymous foreign national that the Bidens were involved in a bribery scheme, pointed out that Weiss, the U.S. attorney, said his investigation of Hunter Biden is ongoing.   

Asked if he expected additional charges, Grassley said: “All I know is what Weiss said, the case is still open.”   

“Today’s plea deal cannot be the final word given the significant body of evidence that the FBI and Justice Department has at its disposal. It certainly won’t be for me,” he said in a statement released earlier Tuesday.  

He said he and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) sent material, including bank records, to the U.S. attorney, and it "doesn’t look to me like Weiss gave much credit to it with this very weak result that was announced today.”  

Johnson, who has worked closely with Grassley, said “it stinks to high heaven.”  

“The fact that they have now an IRS whistleblower coming forward and saying that the entire IRS investigatory team almost in unprecedented fashion was pulled off the case [and it] sounds like there’s allegations that they on purpose they allowed the statute of limitations to expire on more serious charges — there’s so many things that I would want investigated in terms of Hunter Biden,” he said.

Other Republican senators joined in the attacks on the Justice Department.   

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) called the plea deal “a slap on the wrist.”   

“This doesn’t show equal justice. It’s a mockery of our legal system by a family that has no respect for our laws,” he said.  

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who has endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, called it “nothing more than a wrist slap from his dad’s DOJ.”  

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) called the deal “troubling.”   

Lee retweeted criticisms of the agreement circulated by Brett Tolman, the executive director of Right On Crime, a conservative advocacy group, who said pretrial diversion programs normally exclude offenses involving the brandishing a firearm.  

Many Senate and House Republicans lashed out against Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith last week after the Justice Department charged Trump with violations of the Espionage Act and conspiring to obstruct justice.  

They also argued the lack of charges against President Biden, who kept classified documents from his service in the Senate and vice president in the Obama administration, showed the federal prosecution of Trump was motivated by politics.   

“So Hunter Biden gets a special plea deal, slap on the wrist — probably won’t do a day of time — while DOJ charges Trump as a spy and tries to put him in prison forever. Two standards of ‘justice,’” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) tweeted in response to the deal.   

One Senate Republican aide said Hunter Biden appeared to get a fairly lenient deal from the Justice Department but pointed out he cooperated with prosecutors, in contrast to Trump.

“Of course, Hunter got off easy, but he cooperated, unlike Trump,” the aide said, noting the special counsel’s indictment against the former president alleges Trump deliberately misled his lawyer about cooperating with a grand jury subpoena.   

Democrats on Tuesday argued the charges against Biden, coming just a week after the prosecutors unsealed the indictment of Trump, shows the Justice Department is applying the law fairly.   

“Neither Hunter Biden nor Donald Trump are above the law. They’re both held responsible and are going to go through the process. Joe Biden’s son just did, just completed it,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). 

Emily Brooks and Al Weaver contributed.

Trump slams Republicans who voted to block censure resolution against Schiff

Posted on (Updated by Jared Gans

Former President Trump slammed the House Republicans who voted with Democrats to block the resolution that would have censured Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). 

Trump said in a Truth Social post Friday that any Republican who opposed the censure resolution should face a primary challenge for the GOP nomination in their next election. 

“Any Republican voting against his CENSURE, or worse, should immediately be primaried. There are plenty of great candidates out there,” he said. 

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced the resolution last month and brought it to the floor as a privileged resolution Tuesday, requiring the House to take action on it. But Democrats were able to successfully pass a motion to table the resolution, with 20 Republicans joining them and effectively stopping it from proceeding. 

"Anna Paulina Luna is a STAR," Trump wrote Friday, adding, "She never gives up, especially in holding total lowlifes like Adam 'Shifty' Schiff responsible for their lies, deceit, deception, and actually putting our Country at great risk..."

Schiff has received widespread criticism from many in the GOP over his role as one of the leaders of the first impeachment inquiry against Trump. Schiff was serving as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time. 

He also led Democratic accusations that the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked Schiff from serving on the Intelligence Committee in January, accusing him of lying about Trump’s ties to Russia. 

The censure resolution included a nonbinding clause stating that if the House Ethics Committee found that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information,” he should be fined $16 million. Luna said the amount is half of the cost of the investigation into the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia. 

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), one of the 20 who voted against the resolution, said he opposed the effort because of the fine, arguing it violates the Constitution. 

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the current chairman of the Intelligence Committee, was also one of the GOP “no” votes. 

Luna is planning to try to bring the censure resolution up again, with the potential $16 million fine removed from the text, Axios reported. At least a couple of the Republicans who voted against the resolution could switch their votes to be in favor without the fine included. 

Schiff said after the resolution was tabled that he was “flattered” by the censure attempt, saying it is only an effort to distract from Trump’s ongoing legal challenges. 

He tweeted Wednesday that Luna told him that she is filing another censure resolution next week that will pass. 

“They aren't giving up. But I’ve got news: neither am I,” he said.