GOP unrest: Conservatives threaten to tank party’s 2024 spending bills

Posted on June 16, 2023 (Updated June 16, 2023) by Mike Lillis

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is seeking to appease his conservative agitators by targeting next year’s federal spending at last year’s levels.

It’s not going well.

A long list of conservatives left Washington this week accusing McCarthy and other GOP leaders of using budgetary “gimmicks” to create the false impression that they’re cutting 2024 outlays back to 2022 levels, rather than adopting the fundamental budget changes to realize those reductions and rein in deficit spending over the long haul.

The hard-liners are already threatening to oppose their own party’s spending bills when they hit the House floor later this year, undermining the Republicans’ leverage in the looming budget fight while heightening the chances of a government shutdown.

More House coverage from The Hill

The internal clash would also be an enormous headache for the Speaker, who’s already under fire from conservatives for his handling of the debt ceiling debate and faces intense pressure to hold the line on spending in the coming battle over government funding.

“He's not doing ‘22 spending levels; he’s talking ‘22 spending levels,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, said Thursday. “Talk is cheap.”

Biggs and a number of other conservatives fear that GOP appropriators intend to use a budgetary tool known as a rescission in the drafting of their 2024 spending bills. Rescissions essentially claw back spending that Congress has already appropriated for future programs, allowing appropriators to claim they're funding the government at one level while actually spending at another. The hard-liners say that mechanism will lead to higher deficits than they're ready to support.

“The idea of saying that we’re marking to 2022, but we're going to buy up to 2023 marks with rescissions, just — to me that's disingenuous,” Biggs said.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) speaks to reporters before a press conference held by the House Freedom Caucus regarding the proposed Biden-McCarthy debt limit deal on Tuesday, May 30, 2023.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), another Freedom Caucus member, agreed.

“My understanding is they're going to use ‘23 numbers, and then through rescissions, get back to ‘22 numbers. So if they don't get the rescission, then they don’t get the ‘22 number,” Buck said. “The whole predicate is, ‘We're going to do this with rescissions,’ and then the rescissions don't happen, and then everyone says, ‘Well, that wasn't my fault.’”

Buck said he hasn’t voted for any appropriations bill “in a long time.” And without more drastic cuts and fundamental structural changes, he’ll likely oppose this year’s bills, too.

“To go off the cliff at the ‘22 pace is not much different to me than going off the cliff at the ‘23 pace,” he said.

The opposition is significant because Democrats are already up in arms that McCarthy is targeting 2024 spending figures below the caps he negotiated with President Biden in this month's debt ceiling agreement. They’re vowing to oppose any appropriations bills that fall below those figures — leaving McCarthy with little room for GOP defections given the Republicans' slim House majority.

“It's our view that a resolution was reached, and was voted on in a bipartisan way, and at the end of the day, any spending agreement that is arrived at by the end of the year has to be consistent with the resolution of the default crisis,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Thursday in the Capitol.

“Otherwise, what was it all for?”

The issue of government spending has been at the center of the battle this year between McCarthy and the hard-line conservatives, who had sought in January to win a promise from the Speaker to cut 2024 spending down to 2022 levels — a reduction of roughly $130 billion from current spending. The conservatives were furious that, as part of this month’s debt ceiling deal between McCarthy and Biden, next year’s spending came in above that figure, essentially frozen at 2023 levels with a 1 percent increase slated for 2025.

McCarthy has responded by claiming the topline figure he negotiated with Biden was merely a ceiling, not an objective. He’s instructed appropriators to target 2024 funding below that cap, and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, announced this week that she’ll do just that.

“The Fiscal Responsibility Act set a topline spending cap – a ceiling, not a floor – for Fiscal Year 2024 bills,” Granger said in a statement Monday. “That is why I will use this opportunity to mark-up appropriations bills that limit new spending to the Fiscal Year 2022 topline level.”

Yet the conservatives are far from convinced.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) hailed Granger for putting out the statement. “But what I'm hearing,” he quickly added, “is that the intention is to claim 2022 [levels], and then utilize rescissions to take it back up to 2023, and claim that's some kind of a victory.”

“We need true 2022 levels, and then we ought to be utilizing targeted cuts and rescissions to go beneath that, not pretend 2022 levels plussed-up with rescissions,” he said.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) speaks to reporters as he heads to the House Chamber for a series of votes on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (Greg Nash)

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) delivered a similar warning this week, saying the key issue is “the paradigm around what constitutes 2022 spending levels.”

“We don't think you oughta be able to buy your way into those spending levels with rescissions. We think that you ought to appropriate to that level. Because if you're only able to get to the 2022 levels with rescissions, then the budgetary process is void of the programmatic reforms that are necessary,” Gaetz said.

“My concern with [Granger's] statement is that it seems still that 2022 levels are a term of art, rather than a term of math,” he continued. “I'm worried that Chair Granger's statement reflects a willingness to only get to 2022 spending levels through rescissions, which is not going to be palatable for my crew.”

Neither Granger’s office nor McCarthy’s responded to requests for comment Thursday.

The conservative criticisms have raised new questions about McCarthy’s ability to keep the confidence of his restive conference while cutting deals with Democrats to fund the government and prevent a shutdown. The Speaker has said the hard-liners are being unrealistic about governing in a divided Washington — but his arguments have failed to make those conservatives back down.

“Nobody wants a shutdown,” Gaetz said. “But we’re not gonna vote for budgetary gimmicks and deception as a strategy for funding the government.”

Mychael Schnell contributed.

House blocks resolution to censure Adam Schiff

Posted on June 14, 2023 (Updated June 14, 2023) by Mychael Schnell

The House on Wednesday effectively killed a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), voting for a Democratic-led motion to table the measure.

The chamber voted 225-196-7 to table the resolution. Twenty Republicans voted with Democrats to table the measure, while seven lawmakers — five Democrats, two Republicans — voted present.

“I think it says that Trump and his MAGA supporters view me as a threat,” Schiff said shortly after the resolution was tabled. “There’s a reason they signaled me out — they think I was effective in holding them accountable. And they won’t stop me.”

“And I think frankly this [is] deeply counterproductive to that goal but that’s their aim, to go after anybody that stands up to them, to try to make an example out of them. But it’s not gonna deter me for a moment,” he added.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced the censure measure in May but brought it to the floor as a privileged resolution on Tuesday, forcing the House to take action on the legislation. Democratic leadership motioned to table the measure, which requires a simple majority vote.

The effort by House Republicans to censure Schiff is the latest iteration of the conference’s longtime crusade against the California Democrat, who became a bogeyman to the right after spearheading efforts against former President Trump while he was in the White House.

A resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff was blocked by the House after twenty Republicans voted with Democrats to table the measure. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Schiff, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, led the first impeachment inquiry into Trump, which ended with the House impeaching him for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Schiff was also at the forefront of Democratic accusations that Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In January, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the Intelligence panel, following through on a promise he made before securing the Speaker’s gavel. He said the decision was made “in order to maintain a standard worthy of this committee’s responsibilities.”

And in May, Luna filed a resolution to expel Schiff, who is running for Senate, from the House.

As Schiff was speaking to reporters in the Capitol following the vote, Luna walked by and announced that she is planning to file another resolution to censure the California Democrat next week.

“I'll be filing to censure you next week,” she said. “And we'll get the votes for that.”

Asked about the interaction, Schiff said “this is what it takes to ratify Donald Trump.”

Luna’s censure resolution, which spans four pages, calls for censuring and condemning Schiff “for conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not befitting an elected Member of the House of Representatives.” It would also direct the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation into Schiff’s “lies, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

More Adam Schiff coverage from The Hill

Luna, a staunch Trump ally, brought the measure to the floor as a privileged resolution the same day the former president pleaded not guilty to 37 counts brought against him by the Department of Justice as part of the investigation into his handling of classified documents. Prosecutors allege that Trump willfully retained classified records and then obstructed efforts by authorities to collect them.

In a letter to Democratic colleagues on Tuesday, Schiff argued that Luna was forcing a vote on the censure resolution — which he called “false and defamatory” — to distract from Trump’s legal woes. He said it would discipline him for his work “holding Donald Trump accountable.”

“This partisan resolution to censure and fine me $16 million is only the latest attempt to gratify the former President’s MAGA allies, and distract from Donald Trump’s legal troubles by retaliating against me for my role in exposing his abuses of power, and leading the first impeachment against him,” he wrote.

“The intent of this resolution goes far beyond me and my role leading investigations of Donald Trump, and his first impeachment — an effort I would undertake again, and in a heartbeat, if it were necessary,” he later added. “This resolution plainly demonstrates the lengths our GOP colleagues will go to protect Donald Trump’s infinite lies – lies that incited a violent attack on this very building.”

Schiff also asserted that the censure resolution was “a clear attack on our constitutional system of checks and balances.”

“Once again, our GOP colleagues are using the leverage and resources of the House majority to rewrite history and promulgate far-right conspiracy theories — all to protect and serve Donald Trump,” he wrote.

In comments following the vote, Schiff said spending time on the floor to vote on the censure resolution was an abuse of the chamber's resources, and argued that it was a reflection of the lack of control McCarthy has over the chamber.

“But to use the House floor time this way is such an abuse of the resources of the House,” Schiff said, “and it shows how little control McCarthy has over the place that this even came to the floor.”

The resolution, which has 10 GOP cosponsors, zeroes in on Schiff’s previous comments about collusion between Trump and Russia. It cites the report from special counsel John Durham, released last month, that offered a scathing assessment of how the FBI launched and conducted an investigation into Trump’s ties to Moscow, concluding that authorities did not have sufficient information to begin the case.

It argues that Schiff “abused” the trust he was afforded as chair and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.

“By repeatedly telling these falsehoods, Representative Shiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people,” the resolution reads.

The measure also includes a non-binding “whereas” clause that says if the Ethics Committee finds that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information” that he should be fined $16 million. Luna said that dollar figure is half the amount of money that American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia.

The Justice Department in August 2019 said the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller cost $32 million.

Luna’s call for financial action was a point of concern for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who signaled ahead of the vote that he would support a motion to table the resolution. He argued that the fine would violate the Constitution.

“Adam Schiff acted unethically but if a resolution to fine him $16 million comes to the floor I will vote to table it. (vote against it)” Massie wrote on Twitter.

“The Constitution says the House may make its own rules but we can’t violate other (later) provisions of the Constitution. A $16 million fine is a violation of the 27th and 8th amendments,” he wrote in a subsequent tweet.

Updated at 6:21 p.m.

House GOP inches closer to Mayorkas impeachment amid discord in conference

Posted on June 14, 2023 (Updated June 14, 2023) by Rebecca Beitsch

House Republicans inched closer this week toward impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, officially launching an investigation that would serve as the basis for any inquiry.

But conservative supporters of the effort still face enormous hurdles, including a reluctance of leadership to take such a drastic step and the continued opposition from more moderate lawmakers in the GOP conference — barriers that even the loudest Mayorkas critics have been forced to acknowledge.

On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee said they would review Mayorkas’s performance through a five-phase plan, which Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said could be completed in a matter of 11 or 12 weeks.

“His policies have resulted in a humanitarian crisis this country has never seen,” Green said at a press conference.

“Today's hearing will begin the process of digging into all of the details. The cause and effect of Alejandro Mayorkas’s dereliction of duty. I hope the American people will listen intently. I hope the press will report this, honestly. I hope the president of the United States, the commander in chief charged with the security and protection of this country, will listen. He can't possibly know of all of these failures of Mayorkas and have not fired him already.”

It’s a process that faces a complex path in the House — and one that’s already highlighted several layers of division within the GOP conference. Not only is there discord between impeachment supporters and opponents, but there’s also growing tension among Mayorkas’s most vocal critics, all of whom seem to want to play a prominent role in the effort to oust him.

“We don't have the votes,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said Tuesday. Asked what would change the minds of the Republican opponents, he offered a biting criticism of his centrist colleagues.

“An embrace of logic and reason,” he said.

Green’s presser was followed by a hearing titled “Open Borders, Closed Case: Secretary Mayorkas’ Dereliction of Duty on the Border Crisis.”

Democrats argued the hearing’s name alone shows Republicans have already reached a conclusion on whether to take the dramatic step of impeaching a cabinet secretary — an action not seen since the 1870s.

“You may have a difference of opinion as to how the United States should process our asylum applicants. But the notion that that difference of a policy opinion would be the basis for a quote unquote, ‘case closed’ that Secretary Mayorkas is violating his duty, is preposterous and it is not any basis for impeachment,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who before entering Congress worked as lead counsel for the first impeachment inquiry against former President Trump.

The move, six months into GOP leadership of the House, follows wrangling within the conference over how speedily to pursue the topic.

While a slew of lawmakers introduced impeachment resolutions days after the contentious vote to give the gavel to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the most recent effort was offered by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a sign of discontent among those eager to speed ahead.

It also comes as border numbers have dropped in the weeks following the May lifting of a policy that allowed the U.S. to quickly deny entry to would-be asylum seekers, bucking widespread predictions of a surge of migrants. The repeal of that policy, however, was paired with the reintroduction of consequences for those caught wrongly crossing the border.

“The number of Border Patrol encounters have plummeted by 70 percent since the Biden administration ended Title 42 last month. The number of overall border encounters have dropped by 50 percent in that time, due in large part to [Homeland Security's] hard work under Secretary Mayorkas’s leadership,” ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said during the hearing.

“Calling a hearing and saying ‘case closed’ before you’ve heard any testimony is not legitimate oversight. ... It’s about House Republican leadership catering to its most extreme MAGA members, who want to impeach someone — anyone at all. It’s about trying to make good on GOP backroom deals to elect a Speaker, raise the debt ceiling and stave off a mutiny in the Republican ranks.”

The House Homeland Security Committee doesn’t have the power to ignite an impeachment inquiry. That task falls to the House Judiciary Committee.

Green has cast the investigation as an effort that will be handed off to the other panel and ultimately brought to fruition by Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

The firebrand Georgia congresswoman, however, offered her impeachment resolution with a tweet that included an emoji of a slice of cake, a reference to earlier comments that the debt ceiling package would be more appealing if it included “dessert” like an impeachment of Mayorkas or FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The move was a reflection of impatience from some in the GOP, even as McCarthy has largely stuck to comments he made while visiting the border late last year stressing the need to investigate.

“I know people are very frustrated with [Mayorkas],” McCarthy told CNN last month, but added that any impeachment process shouldn’t be pursued “for political reasons.”

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, suggested the Speaker is moving closer toward backing the impeachment effort.

"McCarthy has loosened up on that. Whereas quite some time ago he was a no, now he’s kinda saying — kinda saying — yes,” Biggs said. Other reluctant Republicans are also shifting, he said.

“There are people who were an absolute ‘no’ on it even a few weeks ago, and now told me that they're moveable,” he said. “There's probably two or three people that I'm trying to work on, see if I can move them my way. And if those two or three come along, I think then we're ready to go.”

Green sidestepped questions over whether the caucus would be able to secure the votes to impeach Mayorkas.

“I would say it’s intuitively obvious to the casual observer, that Republicans are individualists and we think independently, we’re not robots being told by a Speaker how to vote,” he said in a nod to the standstill on the House floor led by a group of far-right members who stalled a vote on a GOP bill on gas stoves as a way to voice frustration with McCarthy's handling of the debt ceiling.

“And so, there are many people with differences of opinions about this. And, you know, I'm in a leadership position, and from my leadership position, the direction of our committee is to get to the facts.”

The Department of Homeland Security has pushed back on GOP arguments and has largely blamed Congress for issues at the border.

“The immigration system has been terribly broken and outdated for decades. That is something about which everyone agrees, and it is my hope that they take that problem, and they fix it once and for all. In the meantime, within a broken system, we are doing everything that we can to increase its efficiency, to provide humanitarian relief when the law permits and to also deliver an enforcement consequence when the law dictates,” Mayorkas said earlier this year during an appearance on MSNBC.

“That is exactly what we are doing, and as far as I am concerned, I will continue to do that with tremendous pride with the people with whom I work." 

Green said his five-point plan includes investigations into cartels as well as the financial cost associated with migration.

“The guy has got to go,” Green said.

“We're going to hold him accountable. And if the president picks another guy that does this kind of stuff, we'll do what we have to do there too.”

Schiff ‘flattered’ by censure resolution, says GOP trying to distract from Trump legal problems

Posted on June 14, 2023 (Updated June 14, 2023) by Julia Shapero

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that he is “flattered” by a Republican push to censure him, suggesting that the resolution was driven by hopes of distracting from former President Trump’s legal woes.

“This is really an effort at the end of the day to distract from Donald Trump’s legal problems, to gratify Donald Trump by going after someone they feel was his most effective adversary,” Schiff said on “CNN This Morning.”

“I’m flattered by it,” he continued. “But the fact that Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy [R-Calif.] would take up this MAGA resolution when we have so many pressing challenges before the country is really a terrible abuse of House resources.”

Schiff also accused his Republican colleagues of bringing forward the censure resolution as retaliation for his leading the first impeachment inquiry into the former president.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who first introduced the censure measure late last month, called it to the floor Tuesday — the same day that Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified materials.

While Democrats could make a procedural motion to table the measure — which would effectively kill it — that would require a majority vote. The office of House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) said the House is expected to hold a procedural vote related to the resolution Wednesday.

Luna's resolution centers on Schiff’s previous allegations of collusion between Trump’s team and Russia, declaring them “falsehoods” and claiming that the congressman “purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people.”

GOP fears Trump legal woes will boomerang on them

Posted on June 14, 2023 (Updated June 14, 2023) by Alexander Bolton

Senate Republicans are worried former President Trump’s legal troubles will create a major headwind for GOP candidates in 2024.

They say the battle between the Justice Department and Trump, who pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he violated the Espionage Act and obstructed justice with his handling of classified documents, will become a primary litmus test — just as his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen became a prominent point of debate in last year’s GOP primaries.

They also worry Trump’s dominance of the media spotlight will turn off swing voters — especially suburban women — and hurt their chances of taking back the Senate or protecting their small House majority.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who has endorsed Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) for president, told reporters on Tuesday there’s “no question” the “serious” allegations against Trump will hurt the GOP if he is the nominee.

Rounds said voters will ultimately decide whether the charges disqualify Trump from holding office, but he predicted they will create a headwind.

“Voters are going to make that determination, but most certainly for a lot of us as you look at that, it’s not going to help,” he said. “This is not good for our party, clearly not good for our party.”

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) also warned Republicans will pay the price if Trump and his various legal battles dominate the political debate next year.

“I think if you look at the record, in ’18, ’20, and ’22, when he’s the issue, we lose,” Thune said, referring to Republicans’ loss of the House in the 2018 midterm election, their loss of the White House and Senate in the 2020 election and Senate Republicans’ failure to take back the upper chamber in 2022.

“I would rather have the issue be Biden and his policies. I think the way that you do that is you have a different nominee,” said Thune, who has also endorsed Scott for president.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) speaks during the weekly press conference following the Republican luncheon at the Capitol on Tuesday, June 13, 2023.

Asked whether he was worried the indictment could drag down the party in 2024, Thune replied: “I’m worried obviously about the Senate races.”

“There’s no question the political environment affects that, and the top of the ticket is part of the political environment,” he said.

Thune acknowledged the legal battle could help Trump in a primary, but he argued it would hurt the GOP at large in a general election.

“Everybody says, ‘Well, it gives him a political bump,’ and all that, and that may be true with the political base but, again, the people who decide national elections are the middle of the electorate. It’s the soccer moms, it’s the suburban voters, it’s younger voters, and I just think we’ve got a candidate who can appeal to those,” he said.

“A lot of the drama and the chaos that seems to be happening with an ongoing basis [with Trump] makes it harder to win those types of voters,” Thune observed.

More Senate coverage from The Hill

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters after last year’s disappointing midterm election that the “chaos” and “negativity” surrounding Trump hurt Senate GOP candidates, though he didn’t mention Trump by name.

On Tuesday, however, McConnell declined to go anywhere near Trump’s legal troubles when asked whether he would support the former president if he wins the party’s nomination.

“I’m just simply not going to comment on the candidates,” he said when asked about supporting Trump, noting the Republican presidential primary has been playing out for the past six months and will last for another year.

Asked about the indictment itself and whether Trump did anything wrong, McConnell replied: “I’m not going to start commenting on the various candidates we have running for president. There are a lot of them; it’s going to be interesting to watch.”

McConnell’s caution reflects in part the fact many GOP senators and Senate Republican candidates remain ardent fans of the former president.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) missed an important vote Tuesday on Biden’s nominee to serve as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; he was headed to Trump’s New Jersey golf club to attend a Trump rally.

Also on Tuesday, first-term Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) announced he would put a hold on Biden’s nominees to the Justice Department to protest the federal prosecution of Trump.

“If Merrick Garland wants to use these officials to harass Joe Biden’s political opponents, we will grind his department to a halt,” Vance said in a statement.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) asks questions during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday, May 16, 2023 to discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March.

Vance’s hold will require Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to go through the time-consuming process of scheduling votes on individual nominees.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters Tuesday that the Justice Department’s indictment will have a “galvanizing effect” on Republican voters and predicted Trump, who has a big lead in national and key primary state polls, will be the party’s nominee.

“I think voters see [the indictment] for what it is. It is politically motivated, clearly,” he said.

He noted that Trump has already faced two impeachment trials and multiple accusations over the years, including his recent indictment on 34 felony charges by the Manhattan district attorney and a jury’s decision to award author E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages after finding the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

“There’s always a lot of a lot around President Trump,” he said.

He disagreed with Senate Republican colleagues who blame Trump for the failure to win back the majority last year.

“If Senate Republicans want to blame somebody for that, we should go get a mirror,” he said.

A June 7-10 CBS/YouGov poll of 2,480 adults showed Trump leading his nearest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 38 percentage points. The survey recontacted 1,798 respondents after the federal indictment was unsealed.

House to consider resolution to censure Adam Schiff

Posted on June 14, 2023 (Updated June 14, 2023) by Mychael Schnell

The House is looking to consider a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) this week after a Republican lawmaker moved to force a vote on the measure.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, called the censure measure to the floor as a privileged resolution Tuesday, forcing action on the legislation. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said the measure would likely come to the floor Wednesday.

“I’m working with Rep. Luna. We want it to pass, so we’ll be working closely to get it brought to the floor,” he told reporters.

Democrats can make a procedural motion to table the measure, which would effectively kill it, but that would require a majority vote. The office of House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) said the House is expected to hold a procedural vote related to the resolution Wednesday.

Luna brought the resolution to the floor as a privileged resolution the same day that former President Trump — who was investigated by Schiff, which sparked GOP ire — pleaded not guilty to 37 counts following a Justice Department indictment on allegations that he improperly retained classified documents and refused to return them. Luna, a Trump ally, first introduced the measure May 23.

In a letter to Democratic colleagues Tuesday, first reported by CNN, Schiff called the resolution “false and defamatory” and argued that his GOP colleague was bringing it to the floor in an attempt “to gratify the former President’s MAGA allies, and distract from Donald Trump’s legal troubles by retaliating against me for my role in exposing his abuses of power, and leading the first impeachment against him.”

Schiff, who for years was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has accused Trump of colluding with Russia in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. He also led the first impeachment inquiry of the former president, leading to the House voting to impeach the then-president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

This is not the first time House Republicans have gone after Schiff. In January, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the Intelligence Committee, following through on a vow he had previously made. And in May, Luna filed a motion to expel Schiff from Congress.

Luna’s censure would condemn and censure Schiff “for conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not befitting an elected Member of the House of Representatives.”

The legislation, which stretches four pages, zeroes in on allegations Schiff made about collusion between Russia and Trump’s team. It argues the California Democrat “abused” the trust he was afforded as chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, two roles he previously held.

Luna cites a report from special counsel John Durham that offered a scathing critique of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign. Republicans have frequently used the report, issued last month, to bolster their argument that federal agencies have been weaponized against them.

“[Schiff] abused his position of authority, lied to the American people, cost American tax payers millions, and brought dishonor to our chamber,” Luna said on Twitter.

The resolution also said Schiff should be fined $16 million if the Ethics Committee, through an investigation, finds that the congressman “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information.” That figure is half the amount Luna says the American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation led by Schiff into potential collusion.

Schiff told reporters Tuesday that the censure resolution was an example of Republicans “placating Trump and once again showing their undying obedience to him,” and argued that the measure was damaging for Congress as an institution.

“I think [Republican] members understand or ought to understand what they’re doing with this is just damaging to the institution,” he said. “That’s not going to damage me, but it will damage the institution and, you know it’s just another sign of the bar being lowered and lowered and lowered that they’re taking up things like this.”

He also touched on that idea in a letter to colleagues.

“But regardless of how frivolous this resolution may seem, its consideration on the House floor will ultimately come at a cost to the country, our democracy, and to the integrity of the House of Representatives,” he wrote. “This resolution is not only a terrible misuse of House precedent and resources, but a clear attack on our constitutional system of checks and balances.”

He said he does not, however, plan to whip against the vote.

Mike Lillis and Emily Brooks contributed.

McConnell, GOP allies steer clear of defending Trump on indictment

Posted on June 13, 2023 (Updated June 13, 2023) by Alexander Bolton

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and his deputies are steering clear of defending former President Trump from felony charges brought by the Justice Department, signaling a deep split within the GOP over how to handle the former president’s legal problems.

While House Republican leaders and the leading Republican candidates for president have rallied behind Trump and attacked the Justice Department for targeting him unfairly, key Republican senators are reluctant to shield the former president from charges that he willfully mishandled top-secret documents and risked national security.

GOP senators say the 37-count indictment brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith is more serious and more credible than the 34 felony charges Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) brought against Trump in March.

“There are very serious allegations in the indictment, and I think the Justice Department — as they attempt to prove their case — they’ve got a high burden of proof to convince people that they’re handling this fairly and as they would for any other elected official,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said.

Asked if he viewed the special prosecutor’s case as more credible than the charges brought forth by the Manhattan attorney general, Thune replied: “Oh yeah.”

“That one was clearly, in my view, politically motivated, and the facts were pretty thin and the law was actually pretty thin in that case,” he said.

By contrast, he said the special prosecutor’s indictment is “serious” and “very detailed.”

“You’re talking about national security secrets, classified information,” he said.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to the Senate leadership team, offered a blunt assessment when asked about the charges that Trump violated the Espionage Act and conspired to obstruct justice.

“It’s not good,” he told reporters.

The details and photographic evidence included in the indictment have added to the discomfort of Republican senators, especially those like McConnell, who view safeguarding the nation’s military capabilities as among their most important responsibilities.

The Justice Department included photos of boxes of secret documents stored haphazardly around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, including the image of boxes stacked up in a bathroom, another of documents scattered across a storage room floor and a third of boxes stacked in a ballroom, where potentially hundreds or even thousands of people could have had access to them.

Republican senators worry the constant controversies swirling around Trump, and his pugnacious response to his critics, will make it very difficult for him to win a general election if he clinches the GOP presidential nomination next year.

“I think his unwillingness to appeal to voters beyond his base makes it unlikely that he could win a general election,” Cornyn said.

McConnell made no mention of the indictment when he spoke on the Senate floor Monday afternoon, and he did not respond to reporters’ questions as he walked to and from the Senate floor for his opening speech.

Several GOP senators are warning that the move by other Republicans to rush to Trump’s side may be a mistake.

“The charges in this case are quite serious and cannot be casually dismissed,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a statement. “Mishandling classified documents is a federal crime because it can expose national secrets, as well as the sources and methods they were obtained through.”

Murkowski told reporters Monday that the federal charges appear stronger than the case against Trump in New York and warned that having a nominee for president under indictment could spell disaster for the GOP in 2024.

“I don’t think that it is good for the Republican Party to have a nominee and …. the frontrunner under a series of indictments,” she said.

Murkowski declined to comment on Republicans who have rallied behind Trump but explained her own position: “I looked at what’s been laid out there and I think it’s serious stuff.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said the “allegations are serious and, if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection,” referring to incidents that led to Trump getting twice impeached.

Romney expressed exasperation over the situation Monday.

“I’m increasingly angry as I think about it. The country is going to go through angst and turmoil and that could have been avoided if President Trump would have just turned the documents in when he was asked to do so. All he had to do when the subpoena came was give the documents back and he wouldn’t have been indicted and the country wouldn’t have gone through what it’s going through. This was entirely avoidable if he just turned in the documents. Why didn’t he?” he said.

Both Murkowski and Romney have voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, though Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump over his actions related to Ukraine.

Other senior Senate Republicans are also keeping their distance from Trump.

“I’m late for this meeting and I’m just going to run to the meeting,” Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.), the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committees, told reporters as he walked quickly through the Capitol when asked about the national security implications laid out by the indictment.

Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst (Iowa) told a Washington Post reporter: “Let’s talk about ‘Roast and Ride’ and how wonderful it was,” referring to the fundraising event she held with Republican presidential hopefuls earlier this month in Des Moines.

Ernst said too much classified information is leaking out of secure confines but also criticized the Justice Department for indicting Trump but not high-profile Democrats such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Biden.

“I think across the board, we’ve seen many instances of classified documents getting out into areas where they shouldn’t be, but it seems there are two systems of justice here, one for President Trump and one for everybody else who’s had classified documents,” she said.

The indictment gives political ammunition to Democrats who say Trump’s alleged crimes go to “the heart and soul” of the nation’s defense.

“The indictment makes it clear that the information involved here was not casual, it went to the heart and soul of our defense of the United States, in terms of nuclear confrontations, maps, prepared invasion plans,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who also serves on the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

Durbin said he was “concerned” that Aileen Cannon, a federal district judge who was nominated by Trump, may have a role in presiding over Trump’s case in Southern District of Florida.

“I am concerned. She was a Trump appointee, she was overruled by the appellate court ... she's back in charge of this case again. This is an historic case,” he said.

"I still hope that she really does her very best to be neutral and a good judge," he added.

The RussiaGate Scandal Is Far From Over

Posted on June 12, 2023 by RealClearWire

By J. Peder Zane for RealClearWire

Special Counsel John Durham may have issued his final report last month, but the Russiagate scandal is far from over. This is not because there is no more to learn about the years-long effort by the Democratic Party, the FBI, CIA, and major news outlets to advance the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump teamed with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.

Rather it’s because Russiagate never ended. Unlike political scandals of the past – from the XYZ Affair to Watergate and Iran-Contra – it is not a discrete set of events with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it has become a form of governing in which the entrenched forces of the Washington bureaucracy punish their enemies, protect their friends and interfere in elections with impunity.

A continuous thread connects the schemes to deny the results of the 2016 election, to cover up the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes during the 2020 election, and the ongoing effort to tar President Biden’s opponents as extremists or racists.

Ironically, all of this is especially dangerous because it is out in the open. The profound misdeeds are not hidden in the dark web; they are part of the public record. And yet, none of the major malefactors – including Joe Biden, former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James B. Comey, and former CIA Director John Brennan, among others – have been held to account. Rather, they are lionized, and in some cases employed, by leading media organizations.

The breadth of these machinations is so extensive that I would need a book, rather than a column, to detail it. But here is a brief recap that can serve as a reminder of key events of this dark period of our history.

On July 28, 2016, then CIA Director John Brennan informed President Obama about intelligence reports indicating Hillary Clinton’s campaign “plan” to tie Donald Trump to Russia in order to distract the public from the growing controversy over her use of a private email server while Secretary of State. Notes in the margin – “JC,” “Susan,” and “Denis” – almost certainly refer to then FBI Director James Comey, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough.

On July 31, Comey’s FBI launched a counterintelligence probe into whether the Trump campaign was conspiring with Russia to damage Clinton through the release of her emails.

On Jan. 3, 2017, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer warned the president-elect not to challenge the intelligence community’s claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

On Jan. 5, 2017, in his finals days in office, Obama held an Oval Office meeting with Brennan, Comey, Rice, Vice President Biden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and others to strategize responses to alleged Russian election interference and Trump’s victory.

On Jan. 6, Comey briefed President-elect Trump about the Steele dossier – a series of absurd and salacious memos paid for and disseminated by the Clinton campaign that sought to tarnish Trump’s character while tying him and his campaign associates to the Kremlin.

On Jan. 10, CNN used a leak it received about Comey’s briefing to broadcast the dossier’s smears, fueling a partisan feeding frenzy that led to the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump/Russia ties. Buzzfeed News published the entire dossier the same day.

On Jan. 28, after assuring Trump privately that he wasn’t under investigation, Comey wrote a memo recounting that he’d boasted to the new president, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.” He then went to his car and typed up his version of the conversations. When Trump fired him on May 9, Comey immediately leaked the memos, in violation of FBI rules, to a sympathetic college professor in hopes, he conceded later, of prompting the appointment of a special prosecutor. On May 17, Robert S. Mueller III, a longtime Comey friend and ally, was appointed special counsel to investigate potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

On April 18, 2018, the New York Times and Washington Post shared the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign.” This work, much of which was based on leaks from anonymous government sources, was filled with “false and misleading claims” which, my RealClearInvestigations colleague Aaron Maté reported, the newspapers have still refused to correct.

On March 22, 2019, Mueller submitted a report on his investigation which “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Mueller, however, claimed that the source of these falsehoods was beyond his mandate, so he did not look into the role Clinton, Comey, Brennan, Obama, and other high-ranking Democrats played in ginning up charges of treason against a duly elected U.S. president.

On May 13, it was reported that Attorney General William Barr had appointed John Durham to examine the origins of the Russia probe. Barr upgraded Durham to a Special Counsel role on Dec. 1, 2020. Durham’s final report, issued last month, detailed the Clinton campaign’s central role in the Russiagate conspiracy while concluding that “the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election” because it relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.” Durham’s investigation also undermined the other pillar of the Russia hoax, endorsing earlier findings that there was no conclusive evidence that the Russians had hacked DNC servers. Like the Trump/Russia collusion theory, this claim also originated from associates of the Clinton campaign.

On Sept. 24, the Mueller report a bust, House Democrats began proceedings to make Trump just the third president in history to be impeached based on the claim that he sought foreign influence in America’s elections by holding up aid to Ukraine for a short period to pressure the country into looking into its potential connection to the Russiagate hoax and the Biden family’s work in Ukraine. The aid package was later delivered, and no investigation was undertaken. Nevertheless, the House approved two articles of impeachment on December 18, 2019, along party lines – all Republicans and three Democrats opposed the measure – and sent them to the GOP-controlled Senate, which acquitted Trump on Feb. 5, 2020, on another party-line vote (only Republican Mitt Romney crossed party lines to convict Trump on a single charge).

On Oct. 14, 2020, the New York Post reported “that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.” The article, based on email from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, suggested an influence-peddling scheme while flatly contradicting Joe Biden’s claim that he never discussed his son’s foreign business dealings.

On Oct. 17, Biden campaign official and future Secretary of State Antony Blinken discusses the laptop with former acting CIA Director Mike Morell.

On Oct. 19, Politico reported that a letter signed by Morell and 51 other former intelligence officials – including Brennan and Clapper – claimed that allegations in the Post article had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Echoing the false Russiagate claims, the letter continued, “For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.” Major news outlets and social media companies relied on this letter to downplay and suppress the revelations. The FBI, which had taken possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, refused to comment on its authenticity.

On Oct. 22, Joe Biden invoked the letter in his final debate with Trump to dismiss the laptop as “a Russian plant.” On November 3, Biden became president through razor-thin margins in key swing states.

On March 30, 2022, the Washington Post reported that it had authenticated thousands of emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop. CBS News subsequently verified almost all the contents of the laptop.

On May 15, 2023, the New York Post reported that the Internal Revenue Service removed “the entire investigative team” in its years-long tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden at the behest of President Biden’s Department of Justice. This purge came after several whistleblowers stepped forward claiming the probe was being slow-walked. The move also came after a series of revelations showed how the Biden family used a series of shell companies to funnel millions of dollars from foreign sources to at least nine family members – including Joe Biden’s young grandchildren. As Andrew C. McCarthy recently noted in the National Review, it is still not clear what the Bidens provided in exchange for this money, other than access to Joe.

On June 4, former FBI Director Comey, noting the long string of cases being brought against Trump by Democratic officials, told MSNBC that “it’s a crazy world that Donald Trump has dragged this country into, but he could be wearing an ankle brace while accepting the nomination at the Republican convention.”

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post The RussiaGate Scandal Is Far From Over appeared first on The Political Insider.

House Democrat: ‘Overwhelmingly devastating’ Trump indictment is of ‘serious importance’ to national security

Posted on June 11, 2023 (Updated June 11, 2023) by Julia Mueller

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Sunday characterized the federal indictment of former President Trump in connection with the handling of classified documents as "overwhelmingly devastating" and "of serious importance" to national security.

"This is an overwhelmingly devastating indictment that demonstrated Donald Trump believed the law does not apply to him, and that he would do anything he could to conceal and maintain possession of highly, highly classified national security information that would jeopardize our national security and would jeopardize the good men and women of the United States intelligence community who risked their lives to gather that information," Goldman said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"This is of serious, serious importance to our national security," Goldman, an attorney who served as the lead counsel in the first impeachment trial against Trump, stressed.

Trump was indicted last week on 37 counts in connection with his alleged mishandling of records at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Federal authorities also said the former president tried s to prevent the government from recovering the documents after the end of his White House term.

Goldman on Sunday also countered comments from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a Trump supporter who appeared earlier on the program and sparred with host Dana Bash over whether the former president had declassified the material at the heart of the investigation.

"He says, 'Yeah, we'll have to try to declassify it. As president, I could have declassified it. Now I can't, but this is still a secret,'" Goldman said, referring to Trump while paraphrasing a line from a transcript of an audio recording obtained by CNN.

"So there is no question based on his private recorded conversations that he did not declassify these documents. Mr. Jordan and Donald Trump and his defense team can try to spin this any way they want. But the evidence, based on his own recording, his own voice, says to the contrary," the House Democrat said.

Senate GOP leaders break with House on Trump indictment

Posted on June 11, 2023 (Updated June 12, 2023) by Alexander Bolton

Editor's note: This report has been updated to clarify that the indictment accuses former President Trump of showing a classified document about attacking Iran to a writer without security clearance.

Senate Republican leaders, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), are staying quiet about former President Trump’s indictment on 37 criminal charges, letting him twist in the wind and breaking with House Republican leaders who have rushed to Trump’s defense.

McConnell, who is careful not to comment on Trump or even repeat his name in public, has said to his GOP colleagues that he wants his party to turn the page on the former president, whom he sees as a flawed general election candidate and a drag on Senate Republican candidates.

The Senate GOP leader’s top deputies — Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) — have also indicated they don’t want Trump to win the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

They, along with McConnell, are letting Trump’s legal troubles unfold without coming to the former president’s defense, in contrast to Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who both issued statements Thursday criticizing the Justice Department before the indictment was unsealed to the public.

“They want him to go away, so they wouldn’t be very upset if this is the thing that finally takes him out,” a former Senate Republican aide said about the Senate Republican leaders’ silence on Trump’s indictment.

Republican senators were more outspoken in defending Trump in April, after liberal Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unveiled an indictment charging him with 34 felony counts related to business records fraud.

Even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) declined to express confidence in Bragg when asked about him in late March.

Special prosecutor Jack Smith, whom Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped in November to investigate Trump, has more credibility among Republicans.

“Jack Smith is very credible,” said the former Senate GOP aide.

“There is the reflection that he may have actually found finally the silver bullet” to end Trump’s political career, the former aide said, noting that Smith has a tape of Trump acknowledging that he had retained classified documents after leaving office that he didn’t declassify while president.

A Senate Republican aide said the indictment is “pretty damning.”

“The documents that he did have, and who he was showing them to and where he was storing them, is all pretty damning,” the aide said. “I don’t know if it will make a difference in the political landscape, but it certainly seems pretty bad.”

The indictment accuses Trump of showing a classified document laying out the military strategy for an attack against Iran to a writer who didn’t have security clearance.

The former president also showed a sensitive military map to a staffer for his political action committee.

Photos included in the indictment showed that Trump haphazardly stashed boxes of sensitive materials around his residence at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, including in a ballroom, a bathroom, a shower, office space and his bedroom.

One photo showed documents scattered across the floor of a storage room.

Nevertheless, House Republican leaders are speaking out forcefully against the indictment.

“This is going to disrupt the nation because it goes to the core of equal justice for all, which is not being seen today. And we’re not going to stand for it,” McCarthy told Fox News in an interview Friday.

Scalise tweeted Thursday evening “this sham indictment is the continuation of the endless political persecution of Donald Trump.”

Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a one-time advisor to McConnell’s leadership team and whose home state will host the second contest of next year’s Republican presidential primary, said the Department of Justice’s indictment may prove too much for Trump to overcome.

“At some point there’s a straw that breaks the camel’s back, and there’s a whole lot of straws on the back of Donald Trump right now,” he said.

Gregg called the legal problems facing Trump clearly “outside the norm for a major leader of our nation.”

A New York jury last month found Trump liable for sexual abuse and awarded his accuser, the writer E. Jean Carroll, a $5 million judgment.

“Most Republicans want somebody else, even Trump people want somebody else, because they want to win and they recognize Trump is incapable of winning a general election at this point,” Gregg said.

He said Senate Republican leaders should call on the GOP to move past the former president.

“I would be advising them to say, ‘Listen, we have to move on as a party. Let Donald Trump work through his legal issues, which are considerable, but we as a party need to move on, and let’s find ourselves a candidate for president who can win,’” he said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Friday evening said the charges brought by the Department of Justice are “quite serious and cannot be casually dismissed.”

She said in a statement that “mishandling classified documents is a federal crime because it can expose national secrets, as well as the sources and methods they were obtained through.”

Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, joined fellow Republican Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in being the only two Republican senators to criticize Trump shortly after the indictment became public.

Romney, who voted twice to convict Trump on impeachment charges in 2020 and 2021, defended the Justice Department from criticisms voiced by other Republicans that it is acting unfairly.

“By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others,” Romney said in a statement.

“Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so,” he said.

Senate conservatives have come to Trump’s defense, notably Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

“The Biden administration’s actions can only be compared to the type of oppressive tactics routinely seen in nations such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, which are absolutely alien and unacceptable in America,” Lee said in a statement. “It is an affront to our country’s glorious 246-year legacy of independence from tyranny, for the incumbent president of the United States to leverage the machinery of justice against a political rival.”

Cruz, speaking on his "The Verdict" podcast, called the indictment “an assault on democracy,” “garbage” and “a political attack from a thoroughly corrupted and weaponized Department of Justice.”

Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the third-ranking member of the Senate GOP leadership, who voted against the debt deal and is seen within the Senate GOP conference as someone who has tried to ally himself with its most conservative members, also criticized the indictment.

“This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice,” he said in a statement, pointing out that “large amounts of classified materials were found in President Biden’s garage in Delaware” yet “no indictment.”

Yet many other Republican senators, particularly those more closely allied with McConnell, are staying conspicuously quiet about Trump’s legal travails.

One GOP senator who requested anonymity defended the Justice Department, pushing back on accusations that because Garland is a Biden appointee, the prosecution is necessarily motivated by politics.

“Where do you draw the line?” the senator said. “Everybody owes their job to someone.

“We have to trust our institutions, and there’s not a lot of trust right now,” the senator added.

Updated at 10:47 a.m. EDT.