Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the Justice Department’s detailed indictment proves former President Trump had a “maligned intent” in keeping the documents that were taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after his presidency ended.
Schiff told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace in an interview on Friday that the indictment is “stunning” in the amount of detail that was included and the extent to which it demonstrates that Trump was not acting in good faith concerning the documents.
“First of all, it’s stunning in its detail and in the degree to which it shows so clearly Donald Trump’s malign intent,” the lawmaker said. “The most difficult element, often, to prove is what did the defendant intend.”
“But here Donald Trump has made so crystal clear in the conversations that are recorded, instructions that he gives to his aide to move the boxes, in his deceitfulness with his own attorneys, it’s just so graphic,” he added.
Schiff, who served as an impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment trial, said the decision about whether Trump should be charged was not a difficult one for special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation. He said the evidence included in the indictment is “so powerful that I don’t think special counsel had any choice but to go forward.”
The indictment, which was unsealed on Friday, includes several examples of Trump allegedly trying to prevent federal authorities from obtaining the documents that were taken to Mar-a-Lago. On one occasion, he reportedly had an aide — who was also indicted in the case — move boxes of documents out of one room without informing his attorney who was looking for documents that needed to be turned over to comply with a subpoena that was issued.
The document also includes a transcript of a conversation Trump had in which he asks his attorneys if they could just ignore the subpoena.
Schiff said he was also “stunned” that the documents include information on military plans, the nuclear capabilities of U.S. enemies and the country’s vulnerabilities.
“But I think this is the way of special counsel and a speaking indictment, letting all the American people know that this isn’t a paperwork violation,” he said. “These are national secrets that present real national security risks to the country.”
The California Democrat said after Trump announced on Thursday that he had been indicted that the charges were “another affirmation of the rule of law.”
“For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been,” Schiff said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Friday said the charges contained in a 37-count indictment brought by Justice Department (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith against former President Trump are “quite serious and cannot be casually dismissed.”
Murkowski, who says the Republican Party needs to move past Trump and was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict him on an impeachment charge in 2021, 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.”
“The unlawful retention and obstruction of justice related to classified documents are also criminal matters,” she wrote. “Anyone found guilty — whether an analyst, a former president, or another elected or appointed official — should face the same set of consequences."
The Alaska senator joined Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in being the only two Republican senators to criticize Trump shortly after news of the indictment broke Thursday evening.
“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, pushing back on criticism from other Republicans who say the DOJ is being driven by politics and unfairly targeting Trump.
“Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents," he said in his statement, adding "but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so."
FILE - Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asks a question during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
Romney continued, calling the allegations "serious" and said, if proven, they "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."
The Senate’s top two Republican leaders, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Minority Whip John Thune (S.D.) — who both have made little secret of their desire for the party to move past Trump and find a new nominee for president in 2024 — have stayed quiet about the indictment since it was unveiled.
House Republican leaders, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), and other Senate Republicans, however, have slammed the Justice Department for bringing charges against a former president.
“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.
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday weighed in on former President Trump’s indictment in connection with an investigation into his handling of classified documents, with many arguing that the news shows the former president and current 2024 candidate isn’t above the law.
“Trump’s apparent indictment on multiple charges arising from his retention of classified materials is another affirmation of the rule of law,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who played a central role in Trump's first impeachment.
Trump, who is running for president in 2024, said on Thursday that his legal team had been told he was indicted and summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
“For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been,” Schiff said of Trump.
The California Democrat was also among the lawmakers who sat on the last congressional session’s House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, which criminally referred Trump to the Justice Department.
“The former twice-impeached president is now twice-indicted,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
“Twice impeached. Twice indicted. The only former president in history to face federal charges. This man is a national embarrassment,” wrote Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.)
Trump was also indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan earlier this year on criminal charges.
Democrats on Thursday took to Twitter to echo sentiments that the former president’s federal indictment proves the rule of law.
“No one is above the law,” wrote Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
“Never before has a former president been indicted for a federal crime," Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) tweeted. "By indicting Trump & holding him accountable for his actions, America’s justice system is once again showing its strength & reminding us all: No one is above the law in this country, not even former presidents."
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Trump will "have his day in court, in Miami and Manhattan and Atlanta too if it comes to it," celebrating the indictment from the Justice Department's special counsel.
He was referring to the latest federal indictment, the Manhattan indictment and a district attorney's probe in Georgia into 2020 election interference.
"But I am grateful to live in a nation where no man is above the law," he said.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) also called Trump "a con man who damaged our institutions, turned us against each other, and who will be finally held accountable by the country he tried to destroy."
The relationship between Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) jelled this month as they worked together on a debt ceiling deal.
McConnell played an instrumental role as adviser to McCarthy and President Biden during months of stalemate, when the president refused to negotiate directly with the Speaker.
The veteran Kentucky deal-maker helped break the impasse when he called Biden directly after a May 9 meeting of the top four congressional leaders and informed the president bluntly that he needed to cut a deal with McCarthy, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
“There was a lot of back-channel communication, and I think what Speaker McCarthy asked for and what he got was the support from the Republicans over here, which produced some leverage. Every time Biden said he wasn’t going to negotiate or it was going to be clean debt ceiling or nothing, the fact that [Senate Republicans] also said ‘no debt ceiling’ strengthened his hand,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to McConnell’s leadership team.
McCarthy also won plaudits from McConnell and other GOP senators by winning passage in April of a GOP plan to raise the debt ceiling and cut $4.8 trillion from the deficit.
“I was very pleasantly surprised because we saw the Speaker’s election, and it wasn’t exactly a well-oiled machine,” said Cornyn, referring to the 15 votes McCarthy needed to win election as House Speaker.
McCarthy’s struggles prompted worries in the Senate that he would have a tough time passing legislation. Those doubts were a major factor in the decision by some GOP senators to support the $1.7 trillion omnibus package McConnell negotiated with Biden and congressional Democrats at the end of 2022. Senators feared McCarthy wouldn’t be able to move spending bills if they got punted into this year.
The lack of trust was so severe that McCarthy met with Senate Republicans in the Senate’s famed Mansfield Room on Dec. 21 to plead with them to have faith in his ability to lead.
“He talked about how we need to work better together than we have in the past,” then-Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told reporters after the meeting.
McConnell played a major role in unifying the Senate GOP conference behind McCarthy as their lead negotiator on the debt limit, despite those doubts.
After Biden invited McCarthy, McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) to the White House for a meeting that made little progress, McConnell called the president to deliver a blunt message.
He told Biden he needed to “shrink the room” and had to work with McCarthy directly, according to an Associated Press report that was confirmed by a person familiar with the conversation. He made it clear he would not intervene to hash out a last-minute deal like he did in 2011.
Cornyn said House passage of the GOP debt-limit plan caught Biden off guard.
“Because he was able to keep his troops together, I think that stunned Biden folks because they thought [House Republicans] were going to collapse and be unsuccessful,” he said.
Senate Republicans and GOP aides believe the rapport that McCarthy and McConnell developed will pay dividends going forward as they tackle other tough issues, like avoiding a government shutdown and providing more military and economic aid for Ukraine.
Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who advised McConnell’s political campaigns, said the teamwork developed during the debt limit fight was “quite important and shows the strategic awareness of both men.”
“The role he played was an adviser to both Biden and McCarthy and the advice was very simple, and he had been giving it publicly: These two guys are going to have to cut a deal,” Jennings said.
“McConnell was the clear-eyed person here. ... I think this was a great moment for Republican Party unity,” he added.
McConnell for years was the top Republican in Washington, but now he is ceding more of the spotlight to McCarthy, who had little leverage when he was in the House minority.
The two split publicly over last year’s omnibus spending package, which McConnell backed as a win for the Defense Department. McCarthy opposed it and even asked Senate Republicans to block it to give the incoming House GOP majority a chance to renegotiate the spending levels.
Aides said they met regularly throughout 2021 and 2022, but McConnell and McCarthy rarely appeared together in public.
Each leader has a very different relationship with former President Donald Trump.
McConnell excoriated Trump on the Senate floor after his 2021 impeachment trial for fanning unsubstantiated claims that Biden won the 2020 presidential election because of widespread fraud.
He said the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was spurred by “the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole” that Trump “kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
McCarthy, by contrast, joined a majority of the House Republican conference in voting on Jan. 6 to sustain objections to the certification of the 2020 election.
They also split over a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package Biden signed into law in November 2021.
McConnell hailed the law as a major win for his home state, which is set to receive more than $2.2 billion for its transportation needs, while McCarthy whipped his House GOP colleagues to oppose it.
And while McConnell voted for a bipartisan bill to address gun violence after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and a bipartisan bill to invest tens of billions of dollars in the domestic semi-conductor manufacturing industry, McCarthy voted against both of them.
McCarthy panned the Chips and Science Act as a “$280 billion blank check” to the semiconductor industry.
Those votes fueled concerns among Senate Republicans about McCarthy’s willingness to stand up to conservatives in his conference.
Asked about those doubts, Jennings observed: “The House Republicans are a diverse and rowdy bunch.”
“Were there questions about how they would all end up jelling and working together? Sure. That’s natural,” he said. “I think there was some basic wondering. … I don’t think it’s fair to couch it as, ‘Oh everybody thought McCarthy was weak or whatever.’ I think that’s what the punditry was."
The House Homeland Security subcommittee overseeing border enforcement is hearing from two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials on Tuesday afternoon regarding the lead-up to the end of Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that significantly limited migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.
The subcommittee's chair, Rep. Chairman Clay Higgins (R-La.), was highly critical of the Biden administration’s approach to the transition, saying in a statement that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas contributed to what Higgins characterized as a failure. For months, House Republicans have expressed strong disapproval of Mayorkas’s job performance, and have called for his impeachment.
Testifying today will be Customs and Border Protection Acting Deputy Commissioner Benjamine Huffman and Blas Nuñez-Neto, the assistant secretary in charge of border and immigration for the DHS planning office.
He got President Biden to negotiate. And then he got a deal. Now, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is in the final phase of his debt ceiling saga: whipping up enough support for the bill in the House GOP conference to secure his political future.
Basic political wisdom dictates that McCarthy needs a majority of House Republicans to support the bill in order to maintain his political power, and McCarthy has repeatedly said that he will meet that standard. He knows he’ll need Democratic help to pass the measure, but the more GOP members that vote with him, the better for the Speaker.
“If a majority of Republicans are against a piece of legislation and you use Democrats to pass it, that would immediately be a black letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy to allow his ascent to the Speakership, and it would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said on Newsmax on Tuesday, referring to a move to oust McCarthy from the Speakership.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks to reporters at the Capitol following a meeting at the White House with Congressional leaders and Vice President Harris to discuss the debit ceiling on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. (Greg Nash)
As of Tuesday evening, more than two dozen members of the slim, four-seat GOP majority in the House said they will vote against the bill, meaning McCarthy will need to rely on Democratic members supporting the Biden-blessed deal to pass the bill.
If more Democrats than Republicans vote for the bill, McCarthy could be in hot water.
“I am predicting it'll have more Democrat votes than Republican votes,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said Tuesday. “Democrats are truly being told to suppress their enthusiasm, to not talk about it publicly.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that Republicans committed to deliver at least two-thirds of their conference — around 150 GOP members — in favor of the bill. He said Democrats would provide the vote needed to pass the bill, but vowed to hold McCarthy to that number.
McCarthy did not answer a question Tuesday on whether he could deliver 150 GOP votes for the bill, but said that he expects the bill to pass.
Some members are already starting to threaten McCarthy’s grasp on the Speaker's gavel, officially ending the honeymoon that lasted for months after the four-day, 15-ballot saga to elect McCarthy as Speaker in January.
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) became the first GOP member to publicly call for ousting McCarthy by making a motion to vacate the chair over the debt deal Tuesday. While it takes just one member to force a vote on ousting the Speaker — a threshold McCarthy agreed to lower from five during his drawn-out Speaker election in January — Bishop did not explicitly commit to making that motion.
And Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) confirmed an NBC News report that in a House Freedom Caucus call Monday night, he asked whether they were considering calling a motion to vacate due to spending levels in the debt bill being higher than fiscal 2022 levels.
"[Rep.] Scott Perry [R-Pa.], the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told me it's premature,” Buck said on MSNBC on Tuesday.
Republican leaders called members back to Washington for votes and a conference meeting Tuesday evening, allowing leadership to whip support for the bill in person.
“We're kicking way beyond our weight. We barely control half of a third of the government,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said in a House GOP press call Monday evening.
In a two-and-half hour House GOP conference meeting stretching into Tuesday night, opponents of the bill aired grievances, while leaders and their allies argued in favor of the bill. Members left the meeting saying their minds had not been changed.
But the meeting also aimed to lessen any retaliation against leadership by those angry with the bill.
“It's a foregone conclusion it's gonna pass. They're gonna have Democrat support to pass it,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). “And so, we just talked about the after-effects. I don't think McCarthy wants another uprising like this.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who was a swing vote on a procedural hurdle to advance the bill in the House Rules Committee, announced his support for the bill in the meeting. It is the first legislation that he can vote for that has a chance to make it into law that cuts spending, he said.
“The engineer and the problem-solver in me wanted to vote for the bill, and the politician did not,” Massie said. “I'm going against my political instincts in voting for it.”
The deal that McCarthy struck with Biden claws back some spending, increases work requirements on public assistance programs and does not include tax increases — meeting all of the Speaker’s stated red lines for a deal.
But it has significantly fewer cuts and policy reforms less than the “Limit, Save, Grow” legislation the House GOP passed in April. Some members accuse GOP leadership of overstating how much money the bill saves, pointing out loopholes that can undermine or nullify some of the GOP’s stated wins.
Members of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus are pushing GOP members to vote against the bill — warning that their conservative credentials are on the line.
“If every Republican voted the way that they campaigned, they would vote against tomorrow’s bad deal,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said in a press conference Tuesday.
Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, will oppose the bill and include a “key vote” against it on its scorecard — a metric of conservatism that holds weight with many Republican members of Congress, campaign donors and voters. The conservative advocacy organization FreedomWorks also called a “key vote” against the bill Tuesday.
Some members are showing that they can be swayed. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told reporters that while the bill is a “shit sandwich,” she is interested in what “sides” leaders can provide to make the metaphorical meal more appetizing — such as a balanced budget amendment or rescinding more IRS funding. “Dessert,” Greene said, would be impeaching Biden or Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
McCarthy brushed off conservative criticism of the bill Tuesday.
“I’m not sure what in the bill people are concerned about. It is the largest savings of $2.1 trillion we’ve ever had,” McCarthy told reporters, citing what Republicans say are preliminary Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates of how much the deal could reduce the deficit.
Critics of that figure say that appropriations targets past 2025 are not enforceable.
McCarthy also told CNN that he is not worried about his Speakership, saying that he is “still standing” and that reporters are “underestimating” him.
Some of the opposition to the bill is coming outside of the House Freedom Caucus.
First-term Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) — who flew back from visiting his wife and newborn in the hospital in order to vote for McCarthy for Speaker in January — said Tuesday that he will vote no on the bill. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), a senior member on the House Ways and Means Committee, also tweeted he plans to oppose the bill.
To some Republicans, the opposition to the deal is puzzling.
“We don't control all those levers of power. So we can't throw a Hail Mary pass on every play, which is what some that are our conference may want to do,” Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) said Monday, saying the bill “is like a 60-yard pass, maybe completed pass.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Tuesday that she’s inclined to support the bipartisan debt ceiling proposal set to hit the House floor Wednesday, but she first wants to secure a commitment from GOP leaders to move several other proposals in the future, including the impeachment of President Biden or a top cabinet official.
“If you have to eat a shit sandwich, you want to have sides, OK? It makes it much better,” Greene told reporters just outside the Capitol office of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “So what I'm looking for is, I'm looking for some sides and some desserts.”
Greene named two “sides” in particular: A vote on a balanced budget amendment and another on legislation to prevent the hiring of new IRS agents — not only in 2024, as the bipartisan debt-limit bill would do — but also in the years to follow.
President Biden last year signed legislation providing the IRS with $80 billion over a decade to streamline customer service, update technology and hire auditors to go after those who don’t pay the taxes they owe.
Republicans have attacked the extra funding, arguing falsely that the IRS intends to use it to hire 87,000 new agents to target middle-class workers, particularly Republicans.
“There were audits and conservative groups were targeted,” Greene said. “One of the sides … I would like to see with this shit sandwich is a way to completely wipe out the 87,000 IRS agents.”
Then she named her “beautiful dessert.”
“Somebody needs to be impeached,” Greene said. She singled out Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Homeland Security Department, as “the lowest hanging fruit” in the eyes of Republicans for his handling of the migrant crisis at the southern border.
“The border is a serious issue that matters to everyone all over the country, even the Democrat mayor of New York City, the Democrat mayor in Chicago, and just people everywhere,” she said.
Lax security at the border has also allowed the flow of illicit drugs from Mexico, Greene continued, which in turn has contributed to the deadly fentanyl crisis across the United States.
“Three hundred Americans are dying every single day,” she said. “Mayorkas, and I argue Biden as well — President Biden — both of them should be impeached for that.”
Greene said the proposals she’s seeking would not be attached to the debt-ceiling bill, but could come later.
“It doesn’t have to happen necessarily today,” she said. “But it can happen quickly, and I’m working on that.”
Greene emphasized that she remains undecided on Wednesday's debt ceiling vote — “I’m still coming to my decision,” she said — but she also suggested those Republicans fighting to kill the proposal were playing into the hands of Senate Democratic leaders who would prefer a “clean” debt ceiling hike without the GOP spending cuts. She predicted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — with an assist from GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) — would attempt to attach the proposal to more funding for the war in Ukraine, which she opposes.
“I don’t want to see that happen,” she said. “I don’t want to see our group responsible for more funding to Ukraine.”
The comments arrive as McCarthy and his leadership team are racing to shore up GOP support for the debt ceiling proposal they secured Saturday with the White House following tough-fought negotiations that spanned most of the month.
The Treasury Department has warned that, without congressional action, the government will default on its obligations June 5 for the first time in the nation’s history.
A group of conservatives has balked at the agreement, saying it doesn’t contain nearly the level of spending cuts needed to rein in deficits and the national debt. Some of those conservatives are now floating the notion that they’ll try to topple McCarthy from the Speakership for his handling of the negotiations.
Greene, however, threw cold water on that idea, praising McCarthy for his work ethic and blasting his conservative detractors for dividing the party.
“I think some of this talk is maybe for attention, maybe for fundraising,” she said. “It’s not serious, and it would be a horrible decision.”
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) announced Thursday night he will not run for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, allowing Republicans to breathe easy and opening a clear path for David McCormick to take on Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) next year.
Mastriano made the news official during a Facebook Live event mere months after he lost the state's gubernatorial contest to Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) by nearly 15 points.
"At this time, we have decided not to run for the U.S. Senate, but to continue to serve in Harrisburg," Mastriano said. "I know for some that will be disappointing. For others, it won't be disappointing because you're like, 'Who's going to fill his seat? Who's going to be our voice in Harrisburg?'"
"We need to beat [Casey]. While I have decided not to run, someone else will decide to run, and someone else will win the primary next year and be the nominee. Whoever is that nominee, I will support them," he continued. "We hope you will too because I don't want any other Republican candidate to go through what we went through last year when our own party betrayed us."
A bid by Mastriano, a hard-line conservative who won former President Trump's endorsement in 2022, would not have been greeted kindly by many top Republicans, who believe that in losing the governor's mansion, he hurt the party in congressional contests and in state legislature races, including the GOP's loss of the state House.
Mastriano’s decision means the road is wide open for McCormick, who narrowly lost the state's GOP Senate primary last year to Mehmet Oz, to nab the party’s nomination to take on Casey.
McCormick has yet to decide on whether to launch a second straight Senate bid, but he is expected to do so later this summer or in the fall as establishment GOP forces line up behind him.
“I thank Doug for his years of military and public service and his dedication to Pennsylvania,” McCormick said in a statement. "I am seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate because Bob Casey has consistently made life worse for Pennsylvania families over the past 18 years, and our state deserves better."
"We need a Republican nominee who can build a broad coalition of Pennsylvanians to defeat Bob Casey and improve the lives of Pennsylvania families," he added.
The potential candidate-in-waiting has remained in the news throughout the year with the rollout of a book and an ongoing book tour. He has also kept up meetings across the state with party leaders, including at the county level.
Among those pushing for him to run is Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who has made clear he believes McCormick is the type of candidate who can win a primary and a general election matchup against the three-term Senate Democrat with a legendary name in Pennsylvania politics.
“[McCormick] would be a candidate that I think unites Republicans in Pennsylvania and he’d be a very strong candidate in the primary and the general,” Daines said in March.
In addition, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is run by allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has also signaled its backing of the former Bridgewater Associates CEO.
The Pennsylvania Senate contest is widely expected to be one of the most expensive on the 2024 map, with sources telling The Hill the nominee is expected to need at least $100 million for the potential brawl. McCormick could dip into his own bank account to help fund his efforts, though he is not expected to do so after he dropped $14 million into last year’s primary contest in only five months.
Casey won his seat in 2006 by defeating then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). He has also handily won reelection twice, having most recently defeated then-Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) by a 13-point margin.
Democrats had been salivating at the possibility of Mastriano entering the race. Shapiro’s team last year spent $3 million to boost Mastriano in a seven-candidate field and ensure he would be their general election opponent.
“Tonight Mastriano threatened that he and his supporters will continue looming over Republicans in Pennsylvania, which will make their Senate Primary dynamics in even messier — and guarantee whichever candidate emerges will be badly damaged and out of step with the voters who will decide the general election," the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said in a statement.
Mastriano’s performance last year also seemed to turn off former President Trump, who reportedly was opposed to him entering the race and did not plan to endorse him in a potential Senate bid.
Trump, of course, spoke harshly of McCormick during his Senate bid last year, likening him to former Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who voted to convict the president in his second impeachment trial over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and called him a “liberal Wall Street Republican.”
Republicans and Democrats battled during a tense hearing Thursday over three FBI agents who Republicans say were retaliated against for blowing the whistle on bias at the agency— and who Democrats argue the GOP is using to legitimize the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
GOP lawmakers accused the FBI of retaliating against “truth tellers” by revoking their security clearances because they espoused conservative views and took their concerns to Republicans on the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
“Politics is driving the federal agencies,” said Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of both the Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee, alleging that the government targets citizens who are not politically correct.
“What’s just as frightening is if you’re one of the good employees who come forward to talk about the targeting, you become the target,” he added.
Democrats countered by arguing that the GOP, in the words of Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), was using the hearing as “a vehicle to legitimize the events of Jan. 6 and the people who perpetrated it.”
They questioned the FBI agents’ credibility and whether they should be considered whistleblowers, sparred with Republicans over access to documents and materials, and accused the panel of being a tool for former President Trump.
“This select committee is a clearing house for testing conspiracy theories for Donald Trump to use in his 2024 presidential campaign,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (V.I.), the panel’s ranking Democrat.
“You all have employment grievances. That doesn’t make you whistleblowers,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said.
The hearing, which took place just days after special counsel John Durham released a report that offered stark criticism for the FBI’s opening of an investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign ties to Russia, underscored GOP suspicions of the federal intelligence and law enforcement organizations.
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) at one point referenced the piercing evil eye from J. R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" series to describe the FBI.
“The Eye of Sauron has turned inward, and it is operating with a white-hot intensity that seeks to destroy everything in its path,” she said.
The hearing accompanied the Thursday release of an interim staff report from the panel’s Republicans that detailed what it says are abuses by the FBI, as described by what Republicans say are dozens of whistleblowers.
Allegations both in the report and in the hearing range from the agents being directed to scribble down license plate numbers in a parking lot outside a school board meeting to being pressured to open cases on people who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, but did not enter the Capitol.
Democrats had already preemptively countered the GOP’s “weaponization” investigation, writing in a 300-page report in March that some of the GOP witnesses were connected to committee Republicans through people with deep ties to former President Trump. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) reiterated and established at the hearing that two of the witnesses had received donations from Kash Patel, a former top Department of Defense official who is a surrogate for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Jordan brushed off the financial connection between witnesses and Trump allies in a press conference Thursday.
“They’ve got a family. How are they supposed to pay their family?” he asked.
The FBI in a statement asserted that it does not retaliate against protected whistleblowers.
“The FBI’s mission is to uphold the Constitution and protect the American people. The FBI has not and will not retaliate against individuals who make protected whistleblower disclosures,” the agency said in a statement to The Hill in response to the subcommittee hearing.
Thursday’s hearing also came just one day after the FBI sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that went into more detail about the reasons why the agency revoked the security clearances from three agents, including two of those who testified at the subcommittee hearing Thursday.
According to a copy of the FBI letter obtained by The Hill, agent Brett Gloss, who did not testify at the hearing and has not been charged with a crime, was in a restricted area of the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, amounting to criminal trespass and “questionable judgment” that indicated he may not properly safeguard classified or sensitive information.
Agent Marcus Allen, one of the witnesses at Thursday’s hearing, had his security clearance revoked after the agency found he “espoused alternative theories to coworkers” about Jan. 6 “in apparent attempts to hinder investigative activity,” including sharing a theory that federal law enforcement had infiltrated the crowd.
“It appears I was retaliated against because I forwarded information to my superiors that questioned the official narrative of January 6th,” Allen said in the Thursday hearing. He also said the FBI’s assertion that his supervisor “admonished” him was inaccurate.
The FBI also found that one case related to Jan. 6 was closed after Allen said he did not find any relevant information about a subject — but that case was later reopened after another FBI employee found relevant information that was publicly available. That person assaulted a Capitol Police officer on Jan. 6, the agency said.
At one point in the hearing, Democrats stumbled in an attempt to push back on the witnesses’ credibility when Sánchez asked Allen to address a Twitter account with the name “Marcus Allen” that had retweeted a tweet asserting that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) staged the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Allen responded that it was not his Twitter account — and that he did not agree with the message, condemning the violence at the Capitol on that day.
The FBI said agent Stephen Friend had his security clearance revoked after he acknowledged that he “publicly released sensitive FBI information on his personal social media accounts without authorization,” participated in unapproved media interviews, and secretly recorded a meeting with FBI management.
Friend testified to the committee that after raising concerns to his superiors with how the FBI was handling investigations into Jan. 6 subjects, the FBI suspended him without pay.
Friend testified that he was assigned to attend a school board meeting and took down the information from attendees’ license plates in the parking lot. He also said that after he was suspended from the FBI, his investigations of child sexual exploitation material were handed off to local law enforcement rather than to another federal agent.
A third witness, Garrett O’Boyle, who had his security clearance suspended but not yet fully revoked, was suspended without pay after he raised concerns with his chain of command and then made disclosures to Congress. He had just made a move across the country for the job, and he choked up as he described the FBI holding his family’s belongings — including his children’s clothing — for six weeks before they could access them.
Jordan said that O’Boyle was the first whistleblower to tell the committee about the process the FBI was using to assess threats against school board members, which he said have resulted in zero prosecutions.
“When citizens in this country get to the point where they can call the most powerful law-enforcement agency in the world on their neighbor just because they disagree with them, that is chilling to the First Amendment rights of the people who are getting the FBI called on them,” O’Boyle said in the hearing.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) opened and called for an investigation into Anheuser-Busch over its collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, saying that the company was potentially marketing its products to a younger audience through the partnership.
Cruz and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sent a letter to Brendan Whitworth, the Anheuser-Busch CEO and chairman of the Beer Institute, urging him to open an investigation into whether the company violated guidelines that prohibit beer companies from promoting their products to a younger audience. The Beer Institute is the beer industry's self-regulatory body that establishes buying and advertising guidelines for beer companies to follow.
The senators allege that Mulvaney's TikTok series, "Days of Girlhood," skews her audience to those whose ages are younger than the Beer Institute's guidelines.
The letter specifically pointed to various TikTok videos Mulvaney posted leading up to her partnership with Bud Light, where she posted a sponsored video of her drinking a can of beer.
"The use of the phrase 'Girlhood' was not a slip of the tongue but rather emblematic of a series of Mulvaney’s online content that was specifically used to target, market to, and attract an audience of young people who are well below the legal drinking age in the United States," the senators wrote.
They called on Whitworth to cut the company's ties with Mulvaney and apologize for allegedly marketing its products to an underage audience. The duo also asked for more information about how the company vets its partnerships, specifically its collaboration with Mulvaney.
"We would urge you, in your capacity at Anheuser-Busch, to avoid a lengthy investigation by the Beer Institute by instead having Anheuser-Busch publicly sever its relationship with Dylan Mulvaney, publicly apologize to the American people for marketing alcoholic beverages to minors, and direct Dylan Mulvaney to remove any Anheuser-Busch content from" her social media platforms, the senators wrote.
Cruz also reiterated the letter he sent while on "Fox and Friends" Thursday, accusing Anheuser-Busch of marketing its content to teenagers.
"We're calling on the Beer Institute to investigate the degree to which Anheuser-Busch knowingly was marketing to children in going down this road," Cruz said.
