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Tag: Impeachment

  • What to know about the impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

    What to know about the impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

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    AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Senate is set to gavel in Tuesday for the impeachment trial of state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a formal airing of corruption allegations that could lead Republican lawmakers to oust one of their own as lead lawyer for America’s largest red state.

    In May, the state House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton on articles including bribery and abuse of public trust. It was a sudden rebuke by the GOP-controlled chamber of a star of the conservative legal movement who has weathered years of scandal and alleged crimes.

    Paxton is only the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached. The House vote suspended the 60-year-old from the office he used in 2020 to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn President Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of Donald Trump.

    Paxton decried the impeachment as a “politically motivated sham” and said he expects to be acquitted. His lawyers have said he won’t testify before the Senate, but the trial remains fraught with political and legal risk.

    The attorney general is under federal investigation for the same conduct that prompted his impeachment, and his lawyers say removal from office would open the door to Paxton taking a plea in a long-stalled state fraud case.

    Here’s what Paxton is accused of and how the trial will work.

    WHY WAS PAXTON IMPEACHED?

    At the center of Paxton’s impeachment is his relationship with a wealthy donor that prompted the attorney general’s top deputies to revolt.

    In 2020, the group reported their boss to the FBI, saying Paxton broke the law to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul fight a separate federal investigation. Paul allegedly reciprocated, including by employing a woman with whom Paxton had an extramarital affair.

    Paul was indicted in June on federal criminal charges that he made false statements to banks to get more than $170 million in loans. He pleaded not guilty.

    Paul gave Paxton a $25,000 campaign donation in 2018 and the men bonded over a shared feeling that they were the targets of corrupt law enforcement, according to a memo by one of the staffers who went to the FBI. Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015 but is yet to stand trial.

    The eight deputies who reported Paxton — largely staunch conservatives whom he handpicked for their jobs — went to law enforcement after he ignored their warnings to not hire an outside lawyer to investigate Paul’s allegations of wrongdoing by the FBI. All eight were subsequently fired or quit and four of them sued under the state whistleblower act.

    Paxton is also accused of pressuring his staff to intervene in other of Paul’s legal troubles, including litigation with an Austin-based nonprofit group and property foreclosure sales.

    WHAT DID PAXTON GET IN RETURN?

    In return, the impeachment prosecutors say Paul bankrolled renovations to one of Paxton’s homes and facilitated his affair.

    Paxton privately acknowledged the affair with a state Senate aide in 2018 and told a small group of staff that it was over. But the impeachment prosecutors say Paxton carried on with the woman, who Paul hired in Austin so she could be closer to the attorney general. The developer also allegedly set up an Uber account under a pseudonym that Paxton used to discreetly see the woman.

    After Paxton’s staff revolted, the attorney general rushed to cover up that Paul had paid for costly renovations to his million-dollar Austin home, according to the prosecutors. Paxton’s lawyers released documents showing he paid a company tied to Paul hours after his deputies went to the FBI.

    HOW WILL THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL WORK?

    The Senate trial is expected to last two or three weeks and will have elements that resemble proceedings in criminal and civil courts.

    There’s a defendant, defense lawyers, prosecutors, opening statements, closing arguments and witnesses who will be called to testify and can be cross-examined. The “jury” is the 31-member Senate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, presides over the Senate and will serve as the “judge.”

    A two-thirds majority of the chamber — or 21 of the 31 senators — must vote against Paxton to secure a conviction. That’s where the politics come into play. There are 19 Senate Republicans and 12 Democrats. If all 12 Democrats vote to convict Paxton, they still need at least nine Republicans.

    Or, the Senate could vote by a simple majority to dismiss the charges against him.

    Among the senators is Paxton’s wife, Angela Paxton. Trial rules don’t allow her to participate or to vote. But her presence, which is mandated by state law, means she counts as one of the 31 senators present at the trial.

    There are other conflicts that likely wouldn’t be allowed in a court of law.

    Patrick loaned Paxton’s 2022 reelection campaign $125,000, and this year accepted $3 million in campaign donations and loans from Defend Texas Liberty, a pro-Paxton political action committee. Another Republican senator, Brian Hughes, may be called by prosecutors to testify, and the woman Paxton had an affair with used to work for Republican Sen. Donna Campbell.

    IF PAXTON IS CONVICTED

    Paxton has been suspended without pay since the House voted in May to impeach him. If the Senate convicts him, he would be removed from office.

    But it would take another Senate vote to decide whether he should be permanently barred from holding office. That would also require a two-thirds majority, or 21 votes.

    In 1917, Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson was removed from office for misapplication of public funds, embezzlement and the diversion of a special fund. The Senate also voted to bar him from holding future office.

    That didn’t entirely remove him from Texas politics. Ferguson’s wife, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, ran for governor in 1924 promising she would seek her husband’s advice and Texas would “get two governors for the price of one.” She was elected twice, first in 1924 and again in 1932.

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  • Matt Gaetz Says Biden Impeachment A ‘Platform’ To Tarnish President Before 2024

    Matt Gaetz Says Biden Impeachment A ‘Platform’ To Tarnish President Before 2024

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    WASHINGTON ― Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) this week described impeaching President Joe Biden as less an opportunity to remove Biden from office than a performance for the American people.

    Gaetz said that even if the House impeaches Biden, there’s little chance the Democratic-controlled Senate would convict and remove the president from office.

    “The purpose of that impeachment, from my standpoint, is not to force a vote that loses ― it’s to put on a trial in the Senate, and by the way, not for the sake of conviction,” Gaetz said during a live audio interview on Twitter.

    “The purpose of the impeachment to me is to use the Senate as the stage, but they’re not the jury. The jury is the American people,” Gaetz continued. “And if we had the Senate as the stage and the platform for James Comer to put on his evidence and advance this impeachment, it will not result in a conviction, but the true verdict can still be rendered by the American people.”

    In other words, a Biden impeachment would be less about Congress fulfilling its constitutional duty than ensuring Biden loses the next election because Gaetz assumes the evidence wouldn’t convince Senate Democrats to vote to convict. (Bipartisan Senate guilty votes are not impossible to achieve; seven Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting to convict Donald Trump for the 2021 insurrection.)

    House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has overseen Republicans’ investigation into the Biden family and has sought to connect the president to his son Hunter Biden’s income from foreign nationals. So far, witness testimony and bank records haven’t established such a connection.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said the House will open an impeachment inquiry against the president, though McCarthy has emphasized that the inquiry would not necessarily lead to actual impeachment. Instead, he described it as a way to bolster Comer’s investigation since executive branch agencies and courts would likely be more willing to accommodate congressional requests for information if the House threatens impeachment.

    Right-wing Republicans have been clamoring for impeachment, while moderates have seemed skeptical. Gaetz, one of the most far-right members of the House GOP conference, suggested he thinks McCarthy’s staking out a weak position.

    “When we talk about it like, ‘Oh, well, if we have an inquiry, then we can get more evidence,’ what you’re saying implicitly in that is that you don’t feel like you have sufficient evidence now,” Gaetz said.

    Democrats have skewered Comer for taking credit for Joe Biden’s sagging poll numbers. On Wednesday, the Democratic staff on his committee blasted his Biden probe as a deliberate effort to distract attention from Trump’s various criminal indictments.

    A spokesperson for the Oversight Committee said that the committee has “produced concrete evidence through bank records and witness testimony that reveals Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s corrupt influence peddling schemes.”

    So far, the “involvement” Republicans have established amounts to occasional phone conversations about the weather that Republicans insist are inherently corrupt. Democrats describe the younger Biden making money off his name as unsavory but not corrupt.

    A former business partner named Devon Archer told the committee that Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone in the presence of foreign investors as if to show off his “brand” as someone with Washington connections; Archer also said the conversations weren’t about business and that he didn’t witness Joe Biden do his son any official favors.

    “I think you have to understand that there was no business conversation about a cap table or a fee or anything like that,” Archer said. “It was, you know, just general niceties and, you know, conversation in general, you know, about the geography, about the weather, whatever it may be.”

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  • How Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump’s Toxic, Twisted Bromance Nearly Drove the Country Off a Cliff

    How Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump’s Toxic, Twisted Bromance Nearly Drove the Country Off a Cliff

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    Inside the Hive host Brian Stelter talks to Rudy Giuliani biographer Andrew Kirtzman and Vanity Fair executive editor Claire Howorth about the epic fall of “America’s Mayor” and his yearslong, symbiotic relationship with Donald Trump. “There’s something about Rudy that makes Donald Trump swoon,” says Kirtzman.

    A veteran political reporter, Kirtzman considers the Giuliani saga to be “one of the great rise and fall stories of our lifetime.” He recalls Giuliani being an “extraordinary prosecutor” and was alongside him on September 11, remarking that the former New York City mayor acted as a “calm, fatherly general.” 

    “The Giuliani that I watched from two feet away that whole morning was, if anything, more impressive than the Giuliani that people watched across the world on television,” Kirtzman says, adding that “there was a reason he became the most admired man in America for a short time.” But Kirtzman watched Giuliani spiral after his failed 2008 presidential bid, and sink even lower in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

    When asked what happened to Giuliani, Kirtzman says that if “you had to boil it down to one word it would be ‘desperation.’ It would be desperation for power and money kind of on the way up, and then desperation to recapture his relevance, his fame after he lost the 2008 presidential race.” It’s after that letdown that Giuliani “went downhill into the clutches of Donald Trump’s arms, it was the flameout of his race for president.”

    More recently, of course, Giuliani was central to Trump’s first impeachment, over pressuring Ukraine for dirt on the Bidens, and his second, in advising the president as he tried to overturn the 2020 election. Giuliani appears to be co-conspirator 1 in the DOJ’s latest indictment of Trump and may face charges himself in Washington, DC, as well as Georgia. 

    “I think that Giuliani will never admit any kind of fault,” says Kirtzman, adding: “He is never going to admit that he was wrong about anything. And right now, he’s throwing spaghetti against the wall, just like hoping something will stick, hoping he can muddy the waters, but he’s in terrible trouble.”

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    Brian Stelter

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  • House Republicans Lurch Toward Impeachment Inquiry Against Joe Biden

    House Republicans Lurch Toward Impeachment Inquiry Against Joe Biden

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    WASHINGTON ― House Republicans may soon pull the trigger on the ultimate weapon they can wield against President Joe Biden: impeachment.

    The party’s itch for revenge over the dual impeachments of former President Donald Trump is leading them headlong toward pursuing the same thing, despite repeatedly failing to deliver evidence of Biden’s purported wrongdoing, and despite the risk of an electoral backlash.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested this week that Republicans would move forward with an impeachment inquiry after they return from their August recess next month.

    “When you move to an impeachment inquiry, it empowers Congress, Republicans and Democrats, within their subpoena to be able to get the answers they need,” McCarthy said Monday in an interview on Fox News.

    McCarthy has stressed that Republicans at this point only plan to pursue an impeachment inquiry, rather than an actual vote of impeachment on the House floor, as a means of escalating their investigations into the Bidens. But that distinction likely won’t appease House conservatives, many of whom already want to see Biden impeached.

    “I personally intend on filing our own impeachment resolution just based on the corruption and bribery information that’s been brought forward to the House,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) said in a Tuesday interview with Fox News Business. “It is long past time to start the impeachment process.”

    Democrats faced their own internal debates over whether to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump in 2019. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other Democratic leaders were initially hesitant to announce an impeachment inquiry, despite special counsel Robert Mueller all but asking them to. But the full House voted to authorize impeachment articles, on charges of abuse of power and obstructing a congressional investigation, just a few months after the impeachment inquiry began.

    In theory, as McCarthy said, a House impeachment probe could both encourage executive branch agencies to cooperate with information requests, and make courts more amenable to ordering the executive branch to comply.

    Republicans have claimed that the president is entangled in his son’s past business dealings with foreign nationals in Ukraine and China. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma at the same time that his father, as vice president during the Obama administration, pushed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor.

    Trump pursued the same allegation against the Bidens in 2019, and even tried to coerce the government of Ukraine into announcing a sham investigation. During the subsequent impeachment proceedings against Trump, a parade of senior State Department officials testified that firing the prosecutor was a U.S. foreign policy priority, not something Biden came up with on his own.

    Over the past few months, Republicans have routinely claimed that new evidence implicates the president, but a close reading of their material shows that it doesn’t. House oversight committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) claimed last week, for instance, that a former business partner of Hunter Biden testified that he witnessed Burisma honchos telling Hunter to make his father fire the prosecutor. The transcript revealed that Comer misrepresented the testimony.

    Still, Republicans hope that keeping the Biden family in the news will drag down the president’s poll numbers and make it harder for the president to tout “Bidenomics” or low unemployment and declining rates of inflation.

    “The more voters hear about the Biden family corruption scandal, the further you will see Biden’s trustworthiness rating slip,” a Republican strategist said, requesting anonymity to discuss party strategy. “It’s already torching Democrats’ ability to sell ‘Bidenomics’ or any other policy to the American people.”

    Doug Heye, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, suggested that Republicans would be playing with fire by moving to impeach Biden right now. The party’s impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton famously backfired, boosting Clinton’s approval rating and helping Democrats in the 1998 midterms.

    “It’s hard to see a scenario where focusing on something only a narrow part of the base wants to see, at the expense of all the things that have put Biden’s numbers so low, would help,” Heye told HuffPost.

    While impeaching Biden might excite the party base, there’s no guarantee House Republicans would actually have the votes to pull it off. McCarthy can only lose four votes, and there are 18 Republicans who represent House districts that Biden carried in 2020.

    That small margin for error is what the Congressional Integrity Project, a 501(c)4 political group formed to defend Biden from GOP investigations, is hoping to exploit. The group announced Monday that it’s launching a digital ad campaign calling out the 18 Republicans in their districts for failing to stand up to “bogus impeachment stunts.”

    “Every Republican who fails to denounce these political stunts is complicit in using taxpayers’ money on behalf of Donald Trump,” said Kyle Herrig, the group’s executive director.

    It’s hard to predict how impeachment would play out politically. Compared to the multiyear saga over Trump’s dealings with Russia and Ukraine, the GOP investigations into Biden have generated limited headlines. High-quality public polling on the question of impeachment is almost nonexistent.

    Republicans predicted Democrats would suffer a backlash in 2020 after impeaching Trump in 2019. While Democrats did underperform at the House level, the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic downturn meant impeachment ultimately played little role in the day-to-day political fights leading up to the election.

    Senate Republicans are wary of the idea of impeaching Biden, a risky move that could spoil their chance to capitalize on a once-in-a-generation map and take back control of the upper chamber next year. Although the decision whether to impeach a president ultimately rests with the House, top Republican senators have suggested proceeding with caution.

    “Impeachment ought to be rare rather than common,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said at a weekly press conference last month. “And so I’m not surprised that having been treated the way they were, House Republicans… begin to open up the possibility of doing it again. And I think this is not good for the country, to have repeated impeachment problems.”

    “We gotta do the hard work. They cheapened the process the last two [impeachments]. We don’t want to repeat that mistake,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), referring to the two Democratic-led impeachments of Trump.

    McCarthy suggested Monday on Fox News that the Biden administration’s stonewalling was actually forcing Republicans to move toward impeachment.

    “The actions of the Biden administration withholding information,” McCarthy said, “will rise to the level where we need [an] impeachment inquiry, to get the strength of the Congress to get the information that we need to give to the American public and follow through on our constitutional authority.”

    The White House pointed out on Tuesday, however, that the Treasury Department has complied by giving Republicans access to “suspicious activity reports” that banks used to flag transactions connected to Hunter Biden. And in response to a subpoena, the Justice Department let the House oversight committee look at a raw FBI file containing an unverified bribe allegation from a Ukrainian oligarch.

    “Speaker McCarthy has decided the truth should not get in the way of his and House Republicans’ relentless efforts to smear the President,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in an email. “They are prioritizing their own extreme, far-right political agenda at the expense of focusing on what really matters to the American people: working together to make their lives better.”

    Pelosi may have summed up how Democrats feel about impeachment during a Friday appearance on MSNBC, calling it a “diversionary tactic” and predicting it would backfire on the GOP.

    “If they want to subject their members who are in difficult districts, subject them to that, bring it on,” she said. “Just bring it on.”

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  • House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics

    House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

    The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

    Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

    “I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

    It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

    As their target list on behalf of Trump grows, House Republicans are also cranking up the heat on their own investigations into the Biden family.

    Just this week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to move ahead with an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden after the House returns from August recess if the Biden administration does not turn over more documents and information related to the Republican led investigations related to Hunter Biden – the strongest sign yet that House Republicans are poised to launch an impeachment inquiry of the president.

    A McCarthy spokesperson did not respond to CNN’s request for comment to elaborate on the speaker’s remark that opening an impeachment inquiry hinged on whether committees received the “bank statements, the credit card statements and other” documents they were asking for.

    House Oversight chair James Comer has subpoenaed six banks for information regarding specific Biden family business associates, received testimony from Hunter Biden’s associates and reviewed hundreds of suspicious activity reports related to the Biden family at the Treasury Department. The Kentucky Republican has not yet subpoenaed bank records from Biden family members themselves. He boasted in June on Fox Business that “every subpoena that I have signed as chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we’ve gotten 100% of what we’ve requested, whether it’s with the FBI, or with banks, or with Treasury.”

    The House Judiciary chair, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, just subpoenaed four individuals involved in the Hunter Biden criminal probe and has requested a number of documents and interviews pertaining to special counsel David Weiss’ ongoing criminal investigation.

    There is still some skepticism among more moderate Republicans, however, about whether they should be trying to intervene in ongoing investigations and whether an impeachment inquiry is warranted.

    Behind the scenes, members of the House Judiciary panel, who would help oversee an impeachment inquiry, have recently been discussing how all signs are pointing towards the House launching one in short order.

    “We had even some of our more moderate members saying that the oversight wasn’t serious if the next step wasn’t an impeachment inquiry,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a top Trump surrogate and Judiciary panel member, told CNN about a recent committee call. “There was great interest among my Judiciary colleagues to really include and involve everyone in the conference. There’s a real desire to get everyone on board and go through the evidence with those who might remain skeptical.”

    Trump’s allies have called for Congress to expunge Trump’s two previous impeachments, a move that has sparked pushback by many even among House Republicans.

    Greene, who spoke with McCarthy on Tuesday, said she doesn’t think the votes are there yet for expunging Trump’s previous two impeachments, even as the former president continues to promote the idea on Truth Social. But she said, “I think the impeachment inquiry looks very, very good.”

    “He is spending the recess talking about it constantly,” Greene added of McCarthy. “I really feel strongly that that’s something that’s going to happen.”

    Even before Trump’s indictment in Fulton County his congressional allies were laying the groundwork to take aim at Willis and broader election laws.

    GOP Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina introduced a longshot bill earlier this year to give current and former presidents and vice presidents the ability to move their civil or criminal cases from a state court to a federal court as the investigation in Fulton County was ongoing. Fry introduced the bill shortly after Trump was indicted by Bragg on more than 30 counts related to business fraud.

    The Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fry’s bill, is examining ways to move this bill forward and schedule a markup, two sources familiar with the process told CNN.

    Fry, who tweeted shortly after the Fulton County indictment that the outcome underscores the need for his bill, said in a statement to CNN, “these rogue prosecutors shouldn’t be able to wield unwarranted power and target our nation’s top leaders for their political agendas.”

    Separately, the House Committee on Administration has been working on a conservative election integrity package that Republicans are calling “transformative,” but Democrats frame as “designed to appease extremist election deniers.”

    Republicans argue the bill gives states the tools to strengthen voter integrity, implement selection reforms in Washington, DC, and protects conservatives’ political speech. Democrats, meanwhile, contest the legislation attacks the freedom to vote, burdens election workers and creates less transparency in elections.

    One of the nine hearings that Republicans held on the bill, which recently passed out of committee and is ready for a floor vote in the House, was held last month in Atlanta.

    The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, accused Republicans of playing defense for Trump through the field hearing, which Republicans have said was not the case.

    “One might ask, why are we here in Georgia? The answer is simple. We’re here because in 2020, Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost. There was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia, there were no suitcases full of fake ballots, no voting machines changed any votes. In fact, we know of only one possible crime that took place, because it was recorded on tape,” Morelle said.

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have also accused their Republican counterparts of coinciding the release of key interview transcripts with days consumed by Trump’s legal woes, according to a recent memo released by Democratic committee staff.

    An Oversight Committee spokesperson said in a statement to CNN, “to be clear, there was absolutely no connection between the transcript releases and anything else covered in the news.”

    The types of moves Republicans made on behalf of Trump in the wake of the Fulton County indictment are not necessarily new. After Trump was indicted by the Department of Justice in two separate cases, Greene called for Congress to defund Smith’s office, who is overseeing the two federal indictment cases, and House Freedom Caucus members issued a statement Monday that they would not support even a short-term government spending bill that does not address what they see as the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

    Gaetz recently introduced a resolution to censure and condemn the judge presiding over Trump’s federal indictment in the 2020 election subversion case.

    Despite the partisan back and forth, Trump’s Capitol Hill allies remain unfazed. But, not all Republicans have bought into the Trump defensive strategy.

    “Nobody is paying attention other than the people who are obsessed with Trump,” a senior Republican lawmaker told CNN.

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  • Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is holding its first hearing Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden – and Republicans on the committee have made a series of false and misleading claims, as well as some other claims that have left out critical context.

    Below is a CNN fact check. This article will be updated as additional fact checks are completed.

    Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks at the hearing on Thursday that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies” and “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”

    Facts First: The $20 million figure is roughly accurate for Joe Biden’s family and associates, according to the bank records subpoenaed by the committee, but the phrase “the Bidens and their associates” obscures the fact that there is no public evidence to date that President Joe Biden himself received any of this money. And it’s worth noting that a large chunk of the money went to the “associates” – Hunter Biden’s business partners – not even Biden’s family itself.

    So far, none of the bank records obtained by the committee have shown any payments to Joe Biden. And a Washington Post analysis in August found that, of about $23 million in payments the committee had identified from foreign sources, nearly $7.5 million went to members of the Biden family – almost all of it to Hunter Biden – and the rest to people Hunter Biden did business with. (The Post also questioned the use of the vague phrase “shell companies,” noting that “virtually all of the companies” that had been listed by the committee at the time had “legitimate business interests” or “clearly identified business investments.”)

    A Republican aide for the House Oversight Committee disputed the Post’s analysis on Thursday, saying that bank records obtained by the panel actually show that, of $24 million in payments between 2014 and 2019, $15 million went to members of the Biden family and $9 million went to associates. CNN has reached out to the Post for comment; the committee has not publicly released the underlying bank records that would definitively show the breakdown in payments.

    The records obtained by the committee have shown that during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, Hunter Biden made millions of dollars through complex financial arrangements from private equity deals, legal fees and corporate consulting in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere. Again, Republicans have not produced evidence that Joe Biden got paid in any of these arrangements.

    Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio repeated a false claim about Hunter Biden that CNN debunked when Jordan made the same claim last week.

    Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden himself said he was unqualified to sit on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

    “Hunter Biden’s not qualified, fact number two, to sit on the board. Not my words, his words. He said he got on the board because of the brand, because of the name,” Jordan said Thursday.

    Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”

    When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”

    When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”

    Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.

    A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.

    Jordan cited new documents obtained from IRS whistleblowers, made public by House Republicans on Wednesday, to argue that the Justice Department improperly blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden in a 2020 search warrant related to Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings.

    “We learned yesterday, in the search warrant…examining Hunter Biden electronic communications, they weren’t allowed to ask about Political Figure 1,” Jordan said. “Political Figure number 1 is the big guy, is Joe Biden.”

    Facts First: This is highly misleading. The Justice Department official who gave this instruction said Joe Biden’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in the search warrant because there wasn’t any legal basis to do so. Furthermore, this occurred during Trump’s presidency, so it doesn’t prove pro-Biden meddling by the Biden-era Justice Department.

    The August 2020 email from a deputy to now-special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who is leading the Hunter Biden probe, said the warrant was for “BS,” an apparent reference to Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was on the board.

    The Weiss deputy said in the email that “other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant” and that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to emails released by House Republicans. Another document released by the GOP confirm that Joe Biden is “Political Figure 1.”

    Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators need to establish probable cause and secure approval from a judge. If federal prosecutors believed the references to Joe Biden weren’t within the legal scope of what the warrant was looking for, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or lawful to include them.

    Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee recently uncovered “two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals; this happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States – and Joe Biden’s home is listed on the beneficiary address.”

    Facts First: This lacks important context. Comer was correct that the committee has found evidence of two wire transfers sent to Hunter Biden from Chinese nationals in the second half of 2019, during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he did not explain that Joe Biden’s home being listed as the beneficiary address doesn’t demonstrate that Joe Biden received any of the money. Nor did he explain that there may well be benign reasons for the inclusion of the address. Hunter Biden has lived at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware, home at times and listed that address on his driver’s license; Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement to CNN this week that the address was listed on these transfers simply because it was the address Hunter Biden used on the bank account the money was going to, which Lowell said Hunter Biden did “because it was his only permanent address at the time.”

    “This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Lowell said in the statement. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”

    White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday: “Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents’ house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer…It’s bananas…Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to.”

    Comer told CNN this week his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around the time of the transfers, which occurred in July 2019 and August 2019. Joe Biden was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary at the time.

    Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed at the Thursday hearing, “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.

    Facts First: Mace’s claim is false; we do not “already know” that Joe Biden took any bribe. The claim about a bribe from Burisma is a completely unproven allegation. The FBI informant who relayed the claim to the FBI in 2020 was merely reporting something he said he had been told by Burisma’s chief executive. Later in the hearing, a witness called by the committee Republicans, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, called “the bribery allegation” the most concerning piece of evidence he had heard today – but he immediately cautioned that “you have to only take that so far” given that it is “a secondhand account.”

    According to an internal FBI document made public by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa earlier this year over the strong objections of the FBI, the informant said in 2020 – when Donald Trump was president – that the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, had claimed in 2016 that he made a $5 million payment to “one Biden” and another $5 million payment to “another Biden.” But the FBI document did not contain any proof for the claim, and the document said the informant was “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of the claim.

    Republicans have tried to boost the credibility the allegation by saying it was in an FBI document and that the FBI had viewed the informant as highly credible. But the document merely memorialized the information provided by the informant; it does not demonstrate that the information is true. And Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year that he had not been aware of any such payments to the Bidens; Archer characterized Zlochevsky’s reported claim as an example of the Ukrainian businessman embellishing his influence.

    Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, falsely claimed that Hunter Biden never paid taxes on his foreign income.

    He said Hunter Biden “failed to pay any taxes” on the millions of dollars he got from Ukrainian companies, and that this shows how “the Biden family doesn’t have to” pay taxes.

    “Who’s going to write the check for the money Hunter Biden didn’t pay?” Burchett asked, adding that “hardworking Americans” would end up footing the bill.

    Facts First: This is false. Hunter Biden repeatedly missed IRS deadlines, and his conduct was so egregious that federal investigators believe it was criminal, but he eventually belatedly paid all of his back taxes, plus interest and penalties, to the tune of about $2 million.

    Documents from Hunter Biden’s criminal cases indicate that he repeatedly missed tax deadlines, even though he had the funds and was repeatedly warned by his accountant and business partners. He was prepared to plead guilty to two misdemeanors in July, for failing to pay taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, before the plea deal collapsed.

    But there’s a difference between failing to pay taxes on time and failing to pay taxes at all. In 2021, while the criminal investigation was still underway and before any charges were filed, Hunter Biden paid roughly $2 million to the IRS to cover all the back taxes, plus penalties and interest.

    Hunter Biden was able to make the massive payment thanks to a roughly $2 million loan from a friend and attorney who has been supporting him during his legal troubles, according to court filings.

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused a Republican member of the committee, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, of cutting out “critical context” from an image of a purported text message that Donalds displayed earlier in the Thursday hearing. Ocasio-Cortez also said that Donalds had displayed a “fabricated image.”

    The dispute was over an image Donalds showed of a purported 2018 text message from the president’s brother James Biden to the president’s son Hunter Biden – provided by IRS whistleblowers and released by House Republicans on Wednesday – in which James Biden purportedly wrote, “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father [sic] alone !! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work.”

    After showing the image, Donalds asked a witness at the committee, “If you saw a text message like this between the president’s brother and the president’s son, wouldn’t you be concerned about them trying to give plausible deniability for the president of the United States to not have any knowledge of said business dealings?”

    Facts First: Donalds didn’t invent the James Biden text message, but Ocasio-Cortez was correct that Donalds left out critical context – specifically, context that showed there was no sign that the purported text exchange between James Biden and Hunter Biden was about business dealings. The information released by House Republicans this week appeared to show that James Biden’s purported text about getting “help” from Joe Biden came in direct response to a purported Hunter Biden text saying he could not afford alimony, school tuition for his children, food and gas “w/o [without] Dad.” Donalds did not display this purported Hunter Biden text at the Thursday hearing.

    In other words, when James Biden purportedly mentioned the possibility of several months of help from Joe Biden, he gave no indication he was referring to some sort of business transaction, much less the foreign transactions that House Republicans have been focused on in their investigations into the president. But Donalds didn’t make that clear.

    With that said, Ocasio-Cortez herself could have been clearer about what she meant when she claimed the image Donalds showed was “fabricated.”

    The contents of the purported James Biden text Donalds displayed were not made up, according to the IRS whistleblowers. What appeared to be novel was the graphic Donalds used; he showed the text in a form that made it look like a screenshot from an iPhone text conversation, with white words over a blue background bubble. The House Republican spreadsheet that the words were taken from did not include any such graphics, and, again, it did include the preceding purported Hunter Biden message that Donalds didn’t show.

    Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas said at the Thursday hearing, “In an interview back in 2019 with The New Yorker, even Hunter admitted that he talked to his dad about business, specifically Burisma.”

    Facts First: This needs context. The 2019 New Yorker article in question reported that Hunter Biden said he recalled Joe Biden discussing Burisma with him “just once” in a brief exchange that consisted of this: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’”

    It’s fair for Fallon to say that this counts as Joe Biden discussing business with his son, but Fallon did not mention how brief and limited Hunter Biden said the purported discussion was.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Biden advisers plotted impeachment response plan ahead of McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement | CNN Politics

    Biden advisers plotted impeachment response plan ahead of McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden’s team has begun to execute an impeachment playbook more than a year in the making: Discredit the investigators while sticking to the business of governing.

    Biden’s aides spent the August congressional recess honing their plans after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested in late July he was likely to open an impeachment inquiry.

    But they’d been hiring staff and gaming out possible scenarios for months before that, consulting veterans of past impeachments and determining the contours of their response.

    The principal objective for Biden’s team is countering what many Democrats fear could become an ingrained narrative of self-dealing about the president – despite a lack of any evidence so far of wrongdoing.

    “If you don’t answer it, it can sink into the voter psyche. They’re walking that line,” a person familiar with White House thinking said.

    On Wednesday evening, Biden made his first public comments on McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry, linking the inquiry to the upcoming showdown over funding the government. Congress faces a September 30 deadline to keep the government open and McCarthy is facing deep divisions within his own conference about how to handle the matter.

    “Well, I tell you what, I don’t know quite why, but they just knew they wanted to impeach me. And now, the best I can tell, they want to impeach me because they want to shut down the government.”

    “So look, look, I got a job to do. Everybody always asked about impeachment. I get up every day, not a joke, not focused on impeachment. I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got to deal with the issues that affect the American people every single solitary day.”

    The impeachment inquiry comes at a fragile political moment for the president. Widespread concern about his age and reelection prospects have caused jitters in Democratic circles. Some allies have voiced private concern at how intense attention on his son Hunter Biden could become a drag on him, politically and emotionally.

    But Biden’s advisers believe the inquiry announced Tuesday by McCarthy could be used to their advantage if Republicans are viewed as overstepping in their claims or shirking their governing responsibilities, according to officials who laid out their plans.

    An impeachment inquiry would give Republicans broad new powers to request documents and testimony about the Bidens. Even an inquiry with shaky foundations lacking support from a majority of lawmakers will still consume time and energy inside the White House.

    While House Republicans have so far failed to surface anything showing President Biden profited from his son’s business, they have found that Hunter Biden used his father’s name to help advance deals. A former partner, Devin Archer, testified that there were “maybe 20 times” when Joe Biden was placed on speakerphone during meetings with his and Hunter Biden’s business partners, though said “nothing” of importance was ever discussed during these calls.

    Even as Republicans continue failing to produce direct evidence tying the president to his son’s foreign business dealings, some polls already show concern among voters. Sixty-one percent of Americans said in a CNN poll released last week they think Biden had at least some involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, with 42% saying they think he acted illegally, and 18% saying that his actions were unethical but not illegal.

    For now, the White House views the situation from a communications standpoint rather than as a legal issue. They have yet to formally hear from any of the committees involved.

    “We see this as a political communications battle as opposed to a legitimate impeachment inquiry,” a source familiar with the White House’s strategy said.

    The aggressive messaging posture, that source said, represents a recognition that there’s a need to fill the vacuum and push back on Republicans.

    With the prospect of a government shutdown looming if lawmakers cannot come to agreement on a new spending package by September 30, Democrats also see an opportunity to point out what they view as a fractured conference unable to perform the basic duties of their jobs.

    As early as last summer, the White House began laying the ground to respond to Republican investigations in the event of a GOP takeover in the House of Representatives. In the hours after McCarthy opened the inquiry, the White House launched an aggressive messaging strategy centered on the lack of evidence so far linking the president to anything illegal.

    The crux of the West Wing’s message: House Republicans “can’t even say what they’re impeaching him for,” White House spokesman Ian Sams told CNN on Wednesday.

    The response strategy taking shape included a blitz of cable news appearances by Sams, social media posts and a letter from the White House to news executives urging them to intensify their scrutiny of House Republicans.

    Biden’s campaign also seized on the impeachment announcement, blasting an email with Vice President Kamala Harris’ name telling supporters it was time to “stand behind our president” while criticizing House Republicans by name for launching the inquiry.

    “Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and MAGA Republicans just launched a beyond ridiculous impeachment inquiry into President Biden,” the fundraising email reads.

    The email from Harris was the “best performing” email sent in her name this cycle, two sources familiar with the campaign’s fundraising efforts said. They declined to offer an exact dollar amount raised. The sources said the email expanded their active email list by 700,000, helping them grow the universe of fundraising emails that users actually see, instead of having them go to spam, the sources said.

    “We believe this is the latest example of MAGA extremism that regular voters, regular American people will reject to our advantage,” one of the sources said.

    The email is the first of what is expected to be several efforts by the Biden campaign to use the new inquiry to its advantage and raise money off the effort.

    The close association between former President Donald Trump and House Republicans who pushed for the inquiry – Trump discussed the matter with members over the past several days – has also provided an opening for Biden’s aides to paint the step as an exercise in MAGA extremism.

    Talking points distributed by the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday suggested Biden supporters cast the impeachment as “McCarthy doing Trump’s bidding.”

    “As Trump pressured Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans to move forward with a baseless impeachment, McCarthy immediately obliged,” one of the talking points reads.

    Still, for all of the preparation, impeachment-related steps are unwelcome for any White House. In the past, those proceedings have become all-consuming distractions, despite best-laid efforts to rise above or ignore. Like during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, the Biden White House has sought to separate its response operation from the ongoing work of the administration.

    That includes building a team of two dozen lawyers, legislative staff and communications advisers to push back against a potential impeachment. Along with spokesman Sams, the White House last summer named Dick Sauber to serve as a special counsel and Russ Anello, a former Democratic staff director of the House Oversight Committee, as an adviser to response to oversight requests.

    Biden’s campaign also brought on Ammar Moussa, an official at the Democratic National Committee, to act as the campaign’s rapid response director whose portfolio includes responding to issues like an impeachment inquiry. The campaign sent around talking points to allies after McCarthy’s announcement, and will continue preparing its surrogates with information on impeachment matters for television appearances.

    And a Democratic group, Congressional Integrity Project, has been one of the outside entities leading the charge on messaging against the impeachment efforts, including through polling memos and fact sheets. One of the group’s objectives is targeting the 18 House Republicans in districts Biden won.

    “While McCarthy is trying to avoid a vote on an impeachment inquiry to save the Biden 18 from going on the record, the American people deserve to know where the Biden 18 stand on an evidence-free impeachment, and we will hold them accountable for the promises they made to the American people when they ran for their office,” said Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project.

    Biden himself has yet to directly weigh in since McCarthy’s announcement, but he made implicit nods to the possibility over the past months, suggesting it was an attempt to distract from an improving economy.

    “Republicans may have to find something else to criticize me for now that inflation is coming down. Maybe they’ll decide to impeach me because it’s coming down,” he said during an event at a manufacturing facility in Maine. “I don’t know. I love that one.”

    That comment aside, it’s unlikely Biden himself will make a habit of commenting on the proceedings going forward. He stared ahead without answering when questioned about the matter during an event at the White House on Wednesday focused on efforts to cure cancer.

    An element of the White House strategy is keeping him focused on his governing duties, including plans to deliver what the White House has billed as a “major economic address” in Maryland on Thursday. He also continues focusing on foreign policy with a trip to the annual United Nations meetings in New York next week.

    “The White House is going to do it from the standpoint of making sure they can answer everything legally from a communications standpoint, while keeping Joe Biden and Kamala Harris above the fray and focused on governing and communicating the domestic agenda,” a source familiar with the matter said.

    This story has been updated with additional developments on Wednesday.

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  • Kevin McCarthy opens impeachment inquiry without passing budget despite once criticizing Democrats for the same | CNN Politics

    Kevin McCarthy opens impeachment inquiry without passing budget despite once criticizing Democrats for the same | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    In 2019, then-Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy vehemently criticized Democrats for initiating an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump without first passing a budget and securing government funding to prevent a shutdown.

    Fast forward four years later and McCarthy, now the House Speaker, is pushing ahead with a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden while in the midst of another budget crisis and an unresolved looming government shutdown.

    McCarthy called for the inquiry, even as House Republicans have yet to prove allegations that Biden profited off of his son’s foreign business dealings, to appease far-right members of the Republican caucus who have threatened his speakership.

    In 2019, McCarthy said Democrats were prioritizing a politically-driven impeachment of Trump over the government’s basic responsibilities.

    “This is the day that Alexander Hamilton feared and warned would come,” he said at a news conference on December 5, 2019. “This is the day the nation is weaker because they surely cannot put their animosity or their fear of losing an election in the future in front of all the other things that the American people want.”

    “They don’t even have a budget,” he added. Congress passed a spending package two a few weeks later, averting a government shutdown.

    McCarthy did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Now Congress faces a looming deadline at the end of the month to fund the government and some conservative members of the Republican caucus say they will not support a bill that doesn’t contain spending cuts.

    In comments made on radio shows and in press conferences in 2019 reviewed by CNN’s KFile, McCarthy repeatedly said Democrats’ actions demeaned the impeachment process to a point that every subsequent president could be impeached – something he said he hoped wouldn’t happen.

    “This is exactly what Alexander Hamilton warned us about, that with impeachment, that you would have a party actually grab it and, and not worry about the rule of law, but just the animosity that you have. And I’ve never seen the animosity in our lifetime,” said McCarthy to California local radio station KERN in late December 2019. “I’m sure there’s been animosity like this before, but not to this level. And maybe social media and other things drive it.

    “And if you, and if you lower it to this level, when they ended up with just those two articles, every president would’ve been impeached. And what does it mean for the future? Have we, have we now demeaned impeachment so low that everybody’s gonna have this?” he added.

    “Sometimes something happens so bad we need to learn from and come back from at this moment in time,” McCarthy continued. “I hope that’s the moment of where we are.”

    Trump was impeached for the first time by the House of Representatives in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The impeachment proceedings were initiated after allegations that he solicited foreign interference from Ukraine to benefit his 2020 reelection campaign and obstructed the subsequent congressional investigation.

    Trump was acquitted by the Senate in early 2020.

    McCarthy made similar comments at a press conference in November 2019.

    “I think what Republicans are doing is standing up for the constitution,” said McCarthy. “I think it’s the same thing that Alexander Hamilton warned us about, that you would use it for political gain from the same basis of going forward.

    “I think what Republicans are standing up for is the idea of what they ran on. First thing, I think a majority should do is pass a budget, which the Democrats have not done. They should actually make sure that they fund the government, which we have not done. We’re working to now have another continuing resolution, so our troops are not being provided the resources they need or the pay raise that they have earned.”

    McCarthy also lamented that impeachment has “overtaken every single committee” and emphasized “what is not being done in Congress.”

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  • House GOP push to launch Biden impeachment probe runs into Senate Republican skepticism | CNN Politics

    House GOP push to launch Biden impeachment probe runs into Senate Republican skepticism | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Republicans are not only facing resistance from within their own ranks to impeach President Joe Biden, they’re also getting a cool reception from another key constituency: Senate Republicans.

    The concerns raised from lawmakers across the Capitol – who would be the jury in an impeachment trial if it came to that – adds another layer of GOP opposition, and further exposes that Republicans are not unified in their pursuit of impeaching Biden.

    Republicans in the Senate are nervous that the push to impeach could backfire politically and give Biden a boost – all the while distracting from their efforts to paint the president as out of touch on the economy. Moreover, a number of Senate Republicans liken the Biden impeachment efforts to the two impeachments of then-President Donald Trump that they sharply criticized, even though the situations are markedly different.

    And some are deeply skeptical that House Republicans have gathered enough evidence to launch impeachment proceedings over Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings – much less charge the president with committing high crimes or misdemeanors over them.

    “We got so many things we need to be focusing on,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, said when asked about impeaching Biden. “I don’t see the glaring evidence that says we need to move forward, I didn’t see it in the Trump case and voted against it. I don’t see it in this case.”

    Indeed, even though many senators said they encouraged their Republican colleagues in the House to keep investigating the Biden family, they emphasized that time is running out and that the evidence against the president still has not met the threshold needed to move forward.

    “I’m not for going through another damn trial to be honest with you,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, told CNN.

    Pointing out that an election year is approaching Tuberville added, “I don’t think they got enough time to do it.”

    He warned Republicans in the House, “You better have an ironclad case. When you go after a former president or a president, have all of your ducks in a row. Make sure you got what you need to have. Don’t be guessing. Don’t just be throwing mud.”

    GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota also did not want to see House Republicans move too quickly.

    “They have every right to do it, and they have all of the evidence they would need to certainly start with an inquiry,” Cramer said. “What I don’t want to see them do is rush to an impeachment judgment prior to the full process.”

    Sen. Marco Rubio, a conservative Florida Republican, warned House Republicans about the dangers of pursuing impeachment.

    While Rubio conceded that an impeachment inquiry can be useful to get information that the Biden administration has refused to turn over, he added, “I still think it’s a dangerous tool.”

    Rubio told CNN: “These are extraordinary measures and deeply damage the country. So, that’s why we have term limits, that’s why we have vice presidents and that’s why we have elections. But they’re an extraordinary measure, they should not be routine.”

    Republican leadership in the Senate have also been trying to distance themselves from the House GOP effort. The House returns to session this week after a six-week summer recess, with many members clamoring to move forward with an impeachment inquiry against the president — and Speaker Kevin McCarthy signaling he’s prepared to open up a formal inquiry. The issue is just the latest divide between House and Senate Republicans, who are deeply split over spending and their posture toward Ukraine.

    It’s not uncommon for senators – who represent entire states as opposed to some of the gerrymandered districts in the House – to take different approaches to issues than their House counterparts. But the split on impeachment could undermine the lower chamber’s effort to proceed, especially as they work to convince holdouts to get on on board.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters in July that another impeachment proceeding is “not good for the country,” when asked about House Republicans inching towards an impeachment inquiry into Biden.

    “I said two years ago, when we had not one but two impeachments, that once we go down this path, it incentives the other side to do the same thing,” McConnell said.

    “Impeachment ought to be rare, rather than common,” he said. “And so I’m not surprised that having been treated the way they were, House Republicans last Congress, begin to open up the possibility of doing it again. And I think this is not good for the country, to have repeated impeachment problems.”

    Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican and member of GOP leadership, refused to say if he thought it was a good idea for the House to launch an impeachment inquiry.

    “I don’t think that Speaker McCarthy’s position,” Cornyn said when asked about his personal view about a potential impeachment inquiry. “So, I assume it’s not going to happen unless he’s on board.”

    Asked again, Cornyn sidestepped.

    “I don’t think the House particularly cares what members of the Senate think,” he told CNN. “If they actually do it, then our responsibility kicks in. But I’m not going to speculate about what they ultimately will do. I know there are some differences of opinion.”

    Asked if he believed it were politically risky to pursue impeachment, Cornyn turned to other reporters and said: “Anybody else?”

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  • Hunter Biden’s former business partner testifying behind closed doors for GOP-led committee | CNN Politics

    Hunter Biden’s former business partner testifying behind closed doors for GOP-led committee | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer is meeting behind closed doors Monday with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill, the latest development in the Republican-led investigations into the president’s son.

    The Justice Department submitted a new request over the weekend asking a judge to schedule a date for Archer to surrender to prison and begin serving out his one-year sentence resulting from a conviction in an unrelated fraud case, according to court filings. The move prompted immediate speculation among some Republicans that the Biden administration was attempting to prevent Archer from answering questions about Hunter Biden before the GOP-led committee, though in a court filing, the government explicitly requested that Archer’s sentence begin after he completes his congressional testimony.

    In a statement, Archer’s attorney said his client does not believe the DOJ request is connected in any way to the upcoming closed-door interview, despite continuing to fight demands related to scheduling a surrender date. “We are aware of speculation that the Department of Justice’s weekend request to have Mr. Archer report to prison is an attempt by the Biden administration to intimidate him in advance of his meeting with the House Oversight Committee on Monday,” Matthew Schwartz, an attorney for Archer, said in a statement Sunday.

    “To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation. In any case, Mr. Archer will do what he has planned to do all along, which is to show up on Monday and to honestly answer the questions that are put to him by the Congressional investigators,” Schwartz added.

    While House Oversight Chairman James Comer would only go as far as to call the timing of DOJ’s letter “odd” in an interview with Fox News on Sunday, the letter prompted more bombastic reactions from other House Republicans.

    Archer’s testimony comes as House Republicans appear to be shifting their focus away from trying to impeach members of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet and prioritizing efforts to impeach the president himself by linking him to controversial business dealings by his son, Hunter.

    And they are doing so with the apparent support of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, CNN recently reported.

    As a result, House investigations related to Hunter Biden are now expected to take center stage as Republicans continue to try to link the President to his son’s controversial business dealings.

    But speaking to CNN in recent weeks, McCarthy signaled that Republicans have yet to verify the most salacious allegations against Biden, namely that as vice president he engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national in order to benefit his son’s career, an allegation the White House furiously denies.

    But he said that launching an impeachment inquiry would unleash the full power of the House to turn over critical information, mirroring an argument advanced by House Democrats when they impeached then-President Donald Trump in 2019.

    McCarthy – who sources said has also been consulting with former House GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich on the issue – has warmed up to an idea of going after the president rather than members of his Cabinet. In recent weeks, he delivered his most explicit threat yet to Biden, saying House Republicans’ investigations into the Biden family’s business deals appear to be rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional details.

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  • House Speaker Kevin McCarthy floats an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy floats an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden

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    WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says Republican lawmakers may consider an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden over unproven claims of financial misconduct, responding to enormous GOP pressure to demonstrate support for Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

    In remarks Tuesday at the Capitol, McCarthy said the questions House Republicans are raising about the Biden family finances need to be investigated. So far, he acknowledged, the House’s probes have not proven any wrongdoing, but an impeachment inquiry “allows Congress to get the information to be able to know the truth.”

    An impeachment inquiry by the House would be a first step toward bringing articles of impeachment. Such a probe could be as lengthy or swift as the House determines, potentially stretching into campaign season.

    “We will follow this to the end,” he said, first floating the idea late Monday on Fox News.

    It’s the strongest comment yet from McCarthy on a potential Biden impeachment after the Republican leader sidelined earlier efforts by House conservatives to launch such an inquiry.

    With a slim majority in the House, McCarthy faces demands from Trump allies to elevate their priorities. Trump himself questioned at a Fox News town hall last week why Biden has not yet been impeached.

    McCarthy has not yet endorsed Trump, who is the GOP’s early frontrunner for president, or any other Republican candidates. He denied a report that he is considering House votes to expunge Trump’s two impeachments as another way of showing support.

    McCarthy on Tuesday gave no timeline for launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden and said he hadn’t spoken to Trump about it. He declined to say if he would be making a presidential endorsement.

    Asked if he felt pressure from Trump, he scoffed, “Do I look like I’m under pressure?”

    White House spokesman Ian Sams said the House GOP’s “eagerness to go after POTUS regardless of the truth is seemingly bottomless,” using shorthand for the President of the United States.

    “Instead of focusing on the real issues Americans want us to address like continuing to lower inflation or create jobs, this is what the House GOP wants to prioritize,” Sams said on Twitter.

    Republicans in Congress have ramped up investigations of Biden and his son Hunter Biden. House Republicans are digging into the family finances, particularly payments the younger Biden received from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that became tangled in the first impeachment of Trump.

    Hunter Biden has since reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of having failed to pay income taxes for several years. He is set to appear in court this week in that case.

    But Republicans continue to pursue a largely debunked theory stemming from the first Trump impeachment about Burisma, with newer information. An unnamed confidential FBI informant claimed that Burisma company officials in 2015 and 2016 sought to pay the Bidens $5 million each in return for their help ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor who was purportedly investigating the company.

    The Justice Department launched a review of the informant’s claims in 2020 under Trump’s Attorney General William Barr. The probe was closed eight months later with insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.

    Still, last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released the FBI’s so-called FD-1023 form — with unverified claims from the informant — providing a full, public look at the allegations.

    Grassley is working with House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., who had subpoenaed the FBI for the document.

    Democrats on the Oversight panel countered Monday with a four-page memo rebutting the allegations. They point to other documents, including from Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of some of the conversations and disputed the allegations. Parnas said one of the Burisma officials told him the claims are not true.

    The Democrats also note that it wasn’t just Biden who wanted Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin ousted, but other Western allies were also raising concerns that Shokin was failing to investigate corruption in Ukraine.

    Biden has repeatedly said he never speaks to his son about his overseas business dealings.

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined Tuesday to entertain questions about potential impeachment proceedings, reflecting the administration’s thinking that it is a political diversion that doesn’t have support of the public or even the entirety of McCarthy’s GOP majority.

    McCarthy’s brief comments late Monday on Fox appeared intentional rather than simple banter with the show’s host, Sean Hannity. He said that Biden’s actions are “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry.”

    The speaker’s appearance came as Trump was meeting at his Bedminster, N.J., club with Ohioans including Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who would presumably lead an impeachment inquiry. A spokesman for Jordan said the visit was about unrelated Ohio matters.

    McCarthy said Tuesday that the committees will continue their investigations. The Oversight Committee is expected to hold a closed-door interview Monday with Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, who was convicted of securities fraud in a separate case.

    Republicans have complained about the administration’s slow response to some committee queries. McCarthy said that if the administration “denies us the ability to get the information we’re asking for, that would rise to an impeachment inquiry.”

    Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Tuesday in a statement that McCarthy “has made sure the House majority is little more than an arm” of Trump’s 2024 campaign.

    “It’s clear that Donald Trump is the real Speaker of the House,” Harrison said. “This is another political stunt intended to help Trump.”

    A Biden impeachment may divide the ranks of McCarthy’s House GOP majority, as moderate Republicans pan the effort. Senate Republicans also appeared wary of the idea.

    “I’ll say what I’ve said before, and that is I think the best way to change the presidency is win the election. And that means looking forward, not backward,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican.

    But Trump backer Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is also a close McCarthy ally, quickly voiced support.

    “We need to expunge,” she said of Trump’s two impeachments, and “we must impeach Joe Biden.”

    House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would oppose Republican efforts to open a Biden impeachment inquiry “because it’s not anchored in facts or reality. It’s anchored in extremism.”

    Trump’s first impeachment by the House, which resulted in charges that he pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens, all while threatening to withhold military aid President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to deter Russia, lasted several months in 2019. Trump was later acquitted by the Senate.

    Trump’s second impeachment in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was swift — he was charged by the House a week later for inciting an insurrection. He was again acquitted by the Senate.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Farnoush Amiri, Kevin Freking, Jill Colvin and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this story.

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  • Inside McCarthy’s sudden warming to a Biden impeachment inquiry | CNN Politics

    Inside McCarthy’s sudden warming to a Biden impeachment inquiry | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy in recent weeks has heard similar advice from both a senior House Republican and an influential conservative lawyer: prioritize the impeachment of President Joe Biden over a member of his Cabinet.

    Part of the thinking, according to multiple sources familiar with the internal discussions, is that if House Republicans are going to expend precious resources on the politically tricky task of an impeachment, they might as well go after their highest target as opposed to the attorney general or secretary of homeland security.

    And McCarthy – who sources said has also been consulting with former House GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich on the issue – has warmed up to an idea that has long been relegated to the fringes of his conference. This week, he delivered his most explicit threat yet to Biden, saying their investigations into the Biden family’s business deals appear to be rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.

    Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, McCarthy signaled that Republicans have yet to verify the most salacious allegations against Biden, namely that as vice president he engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national in order to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s career, an allegation the White House furiously denies. But he said that launching an impeachment inquiry would unleash the full power of the House to turn over critical information, mirroring an argument advanced by House Democrats when they impeached then-President Donald Trump in 2019.

    “How do you get to the bottom of the truth? The only way Congress can do that is go to an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said Tuesday, stopping short of formally moving to open such a probe.

    It all amounts to a consequential shift in thinking among Republican leaders, who were previously reluctant to call for Biden’s impeachment and have instead focused more energy on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Those were largely seen as lower stakes fights that could be easier to sell to the party and the public.

    Yet as some of the GOP’s investigative lines have lost momentum – border crossings are down in recent weeks, for example – and Republicans believe they have uncovered compelling new information about Hunter Biden, they increasingly see the president as their most ripe candidate for impeachment.

    Rep. Mike Johnson, a member of the GOP leadership team from Louisiana, told CNN on Tuesday that “all the evidence leads to the big guy.”

    “Speaking as a member of the Judiciary Committee, we’re certainly at the point of an impeachment inquiry. … I feel like we’re there,” Johnson said. “And so we’ll continue to investigate and see if we’re going to follow the facts where they lead we’re not going to use impeachment for a political tool, like the Democrats did in the last administration. We will not do that. But we do have an obligation on the Constitution to follow the facts.”

    As another senior GOP source put it: “When you’re going deer hunting, you don’t shoot geese in the sky.”

    Even some of the more hardline members of McCarthy’s conference said that if the GOP needs to settle on one target, it should be Joe Biden.

    “If I had to pick one, I would pick Biden,” said Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican and member of the House Freedom Caucus.

    The White House has maintained that Biden has had no involvement in his son’s business deals, and Republicans have yet to link Biden directly to them.

    But even with more Republicans coalescing around the idea, impeachment would still be a complicated and time consuming endeavor, given McCarthy’s razor thin majority and the need to fund the government by September 30. And there’s anxiety about impeachment backfiring with the party’s moderates while energizing the Democratic base, all for an effort that is sure to be doomed in the Senate – a similar concern shared by Democrats in 2019, when they launched their first impeachment into Trump ahead of the 2020 election, proceedings that took about three months to complete in the House.

    In moving to potentially make Biden just the fourth president in US history to get impeached, McCarthy could appease some of his sharpest critics in his conference, especially as the House will have to cut a deal in the fall to keep the government funded and prevent a shutdown. Some on his far-right, who have threatened to boot him from the speakership if he strays from their demands, are now praising his embrace of potential impeachment proceedings.

    “We probably should have moved to an impeachment inquiry probably sooner than this,” said Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, a former leader of the House Freedom Caucus. But he added: “I understand.”

    “He was reticent at first,” Biggs said of McCarthy. “We don’t want to look like our colleagues across the aisle. But as we’ve continued to amass evidence and information, I certainly think (at) a bare minimum, we should be doing an impeachment inquiry.”

    Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia Republican who tried to prevent McCarthy from winning the speakership, said of McCarthy: “I don’t think there’s any question that him speaking to that has caused a paradigm shift.”

    “I’m just glad to hear that the speaker is recognizing that that we need to follow the evidence and the truth wherever it might lead us,” Good said. “I don’t know how anyone, any objective, reasonable person couldn’t come to the conclusion that this appears to be impeachment worthy.”

    But GOP Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the Judiciary Committee and hardline Freedom Caucus who has been more skeptical of impeachment, shot back at the idea he would take impeachment cues from the speaker: “The Freedom Caucus hasn’t listened to McCarthy in years.”

    “I can’t imagine that we would start now,” he told CNN.

    With concerns among vulnerable members that impeaching Biden may not be a winning message in their districts, House Republicans would like to wrap up any such proceedings before year’s end, according to senior Republican sources familiar with the party’s thinking. But that means Republicans are going to have to make a decision soon on if – and whom – they want to impeach, given the desire among Republicans for impeachment hearings and a formal inquiry process. The House is slated to leave at the end of this week for a six-week recess.

    Getting an impeachment resolution through the narrowly divided House – where McCarthy can lose no more than four of his members on party-line votes – will only get tougher in an election year, Republicans say.

    Plus Republicans still appear to be all over the map on their impeachment strategy.

    Firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who is not only seeking to expunge Trump’s two impeachments but also introduced a slew of impeachment articles against Biden and members of his Cabinet, told CNN: “I couldn’t prioritize one.”

    That sentiment was echoed by Rep. Ralph Norman, a hard-right South Carolina Republican who said impeaching Biden is just “the start of the list.”

    “His judgment is wrong on who he has in office,” Norman said. “They got to have to be accountable. And I think you’re seeing the accountability now.”

    But with economic concerns expected to dominate voters’ minds in next year’s elections, many in the House GOP have been skeptical about moving forward with charging the president with committing a high crime or misdemeanor.

    Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon, whose district Biden carried in 2020, told CNN that the House needs to be deliberate.

    “This needs to be thoroughly vetted in the Judiciary Committee,” Bacon said, arguing the approach needs to differ from the two impeachments under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    “The Watergate profile is what we should benchmark off of, not the Pelosi method of putting it on the floor without a single committee hearing,” Bacon said. “Pelosi watered down and lowered the threshold for impeachment, and we should not follow her example. It’s not good for the country.”

    In the first Trump impeachment, House Democrats led a number of closed and open hearings before charging Trump with abuse of power and obstructing Congress. In the second impeachment, Democrats charged Trump with inciting the January 6, 2021, insurrection just days after the deadly attack in the Capitol.

    Republicans have already had a tough time convincing even members of the House Judiciary Committee, where impeachment articles would originate. Indeed, one GOP Judiciary member who has been skeptical of a Mayorkas impeachment leaned over to share that assessment with a Democrat on the panel during a recent hearing.

    During a private leadership meeting on Tuesday, McCarthy stressed the difference between opening an impeachment inquiry and actually voting to impeach someone – an important distinction that could be key to convincing moderates skeptical of impeachment to back a formal inquiry. Still, McCarthy fielded questions from members during the meeting about how this could impact the party’s more vulnerable members.

    Democrats say Republicans are just using the threat of impeachment as a political stunt to help boost Trump, who remains their frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary.

    “It’s clear that Donald Trump is the real Speaker of the House,” Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Party, said in a statement. “He has made sure the House majority is little more than an arm of his 2024 campaign, and Kevin McCarthy is happy to do his bidding.”

    Indeed, McCarthy has been under pressure to placate Trump, particularly after he questioned Trump’s strength as a candidate – comments he quickly walked back. As CNN previously reported, McCarthy told Trump in a private phone call that he supports the idea of expunging his past two impeachments and said he would bring the idea up with the rest of the conference.

    But there’s no sign that GOP leadership is planning to bring such a symbolic resolution to the floor any time soon, with many Republicans pouring cold water on the idea. That has privately frustrated Trump, who called Greene earlier this month to complain about the lack of action from McCarthy, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

    McCarthy has had to walk a tightrope on the issue of impeachment amid growing frustration from his right flank, which has been itching to launch impeachment proceedings. Last month, McCarthy opted to defer a push from GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado to force a snap floor vote on impeaching Biden over his handling of the southern border and immigration problems, saying they need time to gather the facts and build a case.

    On Tuesday, Boebert took notice of the apparent shift in McCarthy’s tone.

    “The Speaker of the House is now talking impeachment,” Boebert tweeted. “The Biden corruption has risen to a level that there is no other response that can possibly be leveled against it. Impeachment is a very big deal, but these are incredibly serious crimes. I look forward to holding Joe Biden accountable for all that he’s done.”

    Hunter Biden walks to a waiting SUV after arriving with US President Joe Biden at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, on July 4.

    Republicans argue that a string of recent developments have generated new momentum that has helped bring McCarthy on board and will even satisfy the remaining holdouts.

    Last week, GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa released an internal FBI document containing unverified allegations that both Hunter and Joe Biden were involved in an illegal foreign bribery scheme that Republicans had been trying to make public for weeks, despite serious warnings from the FBI.

    The House Oversight Committee held a hearing last week that put a spotlight on two IRS whistleblowers who have claimed that the Justice Department politicized the Hunter Biden criminal probe, and has a deposition with Hunter Biden’s long-time associate and Burisma co-board member Devon Archer next week. And the House Judiciary Committee just secured assurance from the Justice Department that US Attorney David Weiss, who is overseeing the Hunter Biden criminal probe, can testify publicly before Congress this fall.

    But Republicans still have yet to tie such allegations directly to the president’s actions, which will be a major hurdle for GOP leaders to clear if they move ahead with impeaching Biden. The White House has repeatedly stated that the allegations launched by Republicans have all been debunked.

    Part of the consideration for House Republicans will be figuring out how to delineate or combine the work currently being conducted by House Oversight Chair James Comer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, who are in constant communication with each other and McCarthy, sources told CNN.

    Comer confirmed he has been regularly briefing McCarthy on his Hunter Biden probes, which he thinks helped give McCarthy the “confidence” to publicly raise the idea of an impeachment inquiry. But he said it’s ultimately “McCarthy’s decision.”

    With just three days to go before the House stands in recess for six weeks, Greene, who continues to serve as a conduit to Trump in the House and has been relentless in pushing McCarthy toward a Biden impeachment, wasted no time in making her case again on the House floor.

    And afterward, the firebrand conservative had this message to her reluctant GOP colleagues: “Any Republican that can’t move forward on impeachment with all of the information and overwhelming evidence that we have, I really don’t know why they’re here to be honest with you.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • South Korean court overturns impeachment of government minister ousted over deadly crowd crush

    South Korean court overturns impeachment of government minister ousted over deadly crowd crush

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    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday overturned the impeachment of the public safety minister ousted over a Halloween crowd surge that killed nearly 160 people last October at a nightlife district in the capital, Seoul.

    The court’s decision allows Lee Sang-min to return as the minister of the interior and safety. Vice Minister Han Chang-seob has served as acting minister since February when South Korea’s opposition-controlled parliament voted to impeach Lee, saying he should be held responsible for the government’s failure to employ effective crowd control measures and its botched emergency response, which contributed to the high death toll in Itaewon.

    Lee, 58, is seen as a key ally of conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose office welcomed the decision and had accused the opposition liberals of creating “shameful history” by pushing for his impeachment.

    In rejecting the parliamentary impeachment of Lee, the court said he could not be held chiefly responsible for the crowd crush, which it said reflected broader failures across different government organizations to “develop a combined ability to respond to large-scale disasters.”

    There’s not enough evidence to prove that Lee failed to carry out his legal and constitutional duties as a government official to protect the safety and lives of citizens, the court said.

    Lee was the first Cabinet minister impeached by the National Assembly, which previously impeached conservative President Park Geun-hye in 2016. The Constitutional Court formally removed Park from office in March 2017 by upholding lawmakers’ decision to impeach her. She was imprisoned for corruption before her liberal successor, Moon Jae-in, pardoned her in December 2021.

    Following a 74-day investigation into the crowd crush in January, a special investigation team led by the National Police Agency concluded that police and municipal officials in Seoul’s Yongsan district failed to plan out effective crowd control measures despite correctly anticipating huge crowds of Halloween revelers in Itaewon.

    Police also ignored hotline calls placed by pedestrians who warned of swelling crowds before the surge turned deadly on Oct. 28. Officials also botched their response before people began getting toppled over and crushed in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel and failed to establish control of the scene and allow paramedics to reach the injured in time, according to the investigation.

    Police have pursued criminal charges, including involuntary manslaughter and negligence, against 23 officials — about half of them law enforcement officers — over the lack of crowd controls and safety measures in Itaewon.

    But critics, including opposition politicians and families of the victims, have claimed that police investigators went soft on the higher members of Yoon’s government, including Lee and National Policy Agency Commissioner General Yoon Hee-keun, who had faced calls to resign.

    Despite anticipating a crowd of more than 100,000, Seoul police had assigned 137 officers to Itaewon on the day of the crush. Some experts have called the crush in Itaewon a “manmade disaster” that could have been prevented with fairly simple steps, such as employing more police and public workers to monitor bottleneck points, enforcing one-way walk lanes and blocking narrow pathways.

    Lee faced huge criticism shortly after the crowd crush after he insisted that having more police and emergency personnel on the ground still wouldn’t have prevented the tragedy in Itaewon, in what was seen as an attempt to sidestep questions about the lack of preventive measures.

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  • Pelosi Scoffs At GOP Proposal To Erase Trump’s Impeachments

    Pelosi Scoffs At GOP Proposal To Erase Trump’s Impeachments

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    Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as “not responsible” following his reported support for expunging former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments.

    McCarthy, in an effort to make up to Trump for his failure to endorse a 2024 GOP candidate and expressing public doubts about the former president’s prospects, promised to hold a House vote to wipe the impeachments from Trump’s record, a source told Politico. The outlet said another source denied that McCarthy made such a pledge.

    “Kevin is playing politics, it’s not even clear if he constitutionally can expunge those things,” said Pelosi, who served as speaker for eight years. “If he wants to put his members on the spot, his members in difficult races on the spot, that’s a decision he has to make but this is not responsible.”

    She continued: “This is about being afraid. As I’ve said before, Donald Trump is the puppeteer and what does he do all the time? Shine a light on the strings. These people look pathetic.”

    Politico, which reported on the “secret” expungement promise last week, noted that McCarthy’s own leadership team is split on revisiting Trump’s record of disgrace.

    Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced resolutions last month expunging the two Trump impeachments. It’s uncertain whether GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach Trump, namely Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.), would back such an effort.

    “I understand why individuals want to do it, and we’d look at it,” he said then.

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  • Pelosi says McCarthy is ‘playing politics’ with impeachment expungement | CNN Politics

    Pelosi says McCarthy is ‘playing politics’ with impeachment expungement | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was “playing politics” with the idea of expunging former President Donald Trump’s two impeachments.

    “Kevin is, you know, playing politics. It is not even clear if he constitutionally can expunge those things. If he wants to put his members on the spot, his members in difficult races on the spot, that is a decision he has to make. But this is not responsible,” Pelosi told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    McCarthy said in a private call with Trump that he personally backed the idea of expunging the former president’s two impeachments and would bring it up to the conference to gauge support. However, he has not scheduled a floor vote, and when asked about the idea on Thursday, McCarthy said it should “go through committee like anything else.”

    The California Republican has been working overtime to placate Trump after an interview last month in which McCarthy said he thinks the former president can win in 2024 but did not know if he was the “strongest” candidate, prompting outrage from Trump advisers and allies. McCarthy called Trump to apologize after the interview, claiming he misspoke on CNBC, sources told CNN.

    “This is about being afraid. As I have said before, Donald Trump is the puppeteer. And what does he do all the time but shine the light on the strings? These people look pathetic,” Pelosi said Sunday.

    Pelosi also labeled the recent “Weaponization of the Federal Government” hearing from a GOP-led panel as “clown show.”

    The hearing saw Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testify that he has never been anti-vaccine, racist or antisemitic, despite the fact that he has promoted a litany of conspiracies and discriminatory statements over the years.

    Republicans had called Kennedy and others as witnesses as part of their probe into alleged censorship against conservatives at large technology companies.

    “What a ridiculous clown show, again, on the part of the Republicans,” Pelosi said.

    A member of the House of Representatives since 1987, Pelosi would not say whether she plans to run for reelection.

    Turning to the economy, Pelosi said Sunday she was “so proud” of President Joe Biden’s record but urged him to “get out there” and tout recent economic trends.

    “This president did such a remarkable job. He is a person of such knowledge, such vision for the country, such knowledge of the issues, such strategic thinking and such a legislator, and, on top of it all, a person who connects with the American people,” she said.

    US annual inflation slowed to 3% last month, according to the Consumer Price Index by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a sharp cooldown from June of last year, when surging energy costs helped inflation spike to 9.1%

    The US economy added 209,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate was 3.6%, the BLS reported. The monthly job gains represent a significant slowing from the breakneck pace of employment growth seen during the recovery from the pandemic; however, the current labor market is outpacing what was seen in and prior to February 2020.

    “He’s just going to have to make sure the American people know at that kitchen table what this means to them,” she said.

    Pelosi separately called it “completely, totally ridiculous” that Alabama GOP Gov. Kay Ivey approved a new congressional map with just one majority-Black district, despite a court order calling for the redrawn lines to create two majority-Black districts or “something quite close to it.”

    “Something is wrong with that picture, and it’s larger. You see the racism that is happening in our country,” Pelosi said Sunday.

    She added: “What has happened to the Republican Party that they have taken it to this?”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Texas governor names second interim attorney general ahead of Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial

    Texas governor names second interim attorney general ahead of Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial

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    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has picked a longtime aide to serve as the state’s second acting attorney general following Republican Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment on allegations of misconduct and crimes

    ByJAKE BLEIBERG Associated Press

    FILE – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton makes a statement at his office, May 26, 2023, in Austin, Texas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has picked a longtime aide to serve as the state’s second acting attorney general following Paxton’s historic impeachment on allegations of misconduct and crimes, the governor’s office announced Monday, July 10. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

    The Associated Press

    DALLAS — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has picked a longtime aide to serve as the state’s second acting attorney general following Republican Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment on allegations of misconduct and crimes, the governor’s office announced Monday.

    Angela Colmenero will step in as the state’s top lawyer on an interim basis starting Friday while Paxton awaits a trial in the state Senate that could result in his permanent removal, the office said. The trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 5.

    Colmenero, a lawyer and Abbott’s deputy chief of staff, will take over the role from John Scott, a former Texas secretary of state who the governor named as a “short-term interim” following Paxton’s impeachment in May by the Republican-led House of Representatives. In a statement, Abbott touted Colmenero’s “experience in state government and expertise in litigation.” Colmenero previously worked in the state attorney general’s office for nearly a decade.

    Paxton is temporarily suspended from office pending the outcome of his trial on 20 articles of impeachment that include charges of bribery and abuse of office. Separately, he is under FBI investigation over accusations that he used his power to help a donor. The donor was indicted in a federal court in Austin last month on charges of making false statements to banks.

    Paxton’s defense team has said he will not testify in his impeachment trial. He is also still awaiting trial on felony securities fraud charges from 2015. He has pleaded not guilty and has never been given a deposition in the case’s eight-year history, impeachment managers said.

    Abbott thanked Scott and said the Monday announcement “follows” his departure. A spokesperson for the governor did not immediately answer questions about when Scott left. Scott did not immediately respond to a call and email seeking comment.

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  • House Republicans push off Biden impeachment bid for now as hard-right clamors for action

    House Republicans push off Biden impeachment bid for now as hard-right clamors for action

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Eager to impeach President Joe Biden, hard-right House Republicans forced a vote Thursday that sent the matter to congressional committees in a clear demonstration of the challenge that Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces in controlling the majority party.

    The ability of single lawmaker in the 435-member House to drive an impeachment resolution this week caught Republicans off guard and many of them viewed it as a distraction from other priorities.

    The measure charges Biden with “high crimes and misdemeanors” over his handling of the U.S. border with Mexico.

    Rep. Lauren Boebert, backed by allies, was able to use House rules to force a snap vote on such a grave constitutional matter. The 219-208 party-line vote sent her resolution to committees for possible consideration, like any other bill. They are under no obligation to do anything.

    Still, Boebert, R-Colo., argued during debate, “The House is taking historic action.”

    The episode underscores the hold that the House conservative flank exerts over McCarthy, compelling him to accommodate their hard-right priorities if he wants to stay in power.

    Conservatives are gearing up for more. The process Boebert employed is the same method that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., relied on to force a vote Wednesday to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff over his investigations into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

    “There’s going to be no end to this,” Schiff said.

    “Kevin McCarthy has no control over his conference,” Schiff said. ”The race to the extreme is now running the House of Representatives and of course it’s doing terrible damage to the institution.”

    During Thursday’s debate, Republicans were admonished multiple times by the presiding officer to tone down their remarks.

    Democrats argued that the case against Biden made a mockery of the seriousness of impeachment and was merely an attempt to distract from the twice-impeached Trump, the former Republican president now indicted for hording classified documents under the Espionage Act.

    “Today they’re dishonoring this House and dishonoring themselves by bringing to the floor this ridiculous impeachment referral resolution,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, suggesting Trump put his allies up to it.

    “This body has become a place where extreme, outlandish and nutty issues get debated passionately, and important ones not at all,” McGovern said. “In short, the Republican Party is a joke.”

    The vote capped days of maneuvering by McCarthy, R-Calif., to quell the uprising within his party over a roll call that many did not to take.

    A sudden vote to impeach Biden would have been politically difficult for GOP lawmakers and a potentially embarrassing spectacle for McCarthy, splitting his party. In a private meeting Wednesday, McCarthy encouraged lawmakers to consider the traditional process for bringing such consequential legislation forward. Boebert had used what is called a privileged resolution to force the vote.

    In the end, McCarthy negotiated a deal with her to send the Biden impeachment resolution for review to the House Judiciary Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, fending off a vote for some time.

    “I think it’s best for everybody,” McCarthy said.

    But conservatives said more such votes are ahead.

    “We are just beginning,” said Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, an influential member of the House Freedom Caucus.

    Conservatives are lining up votes, for example, to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and censure Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who was the chairman of the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. It’s part of their effort to steer control of the House from the traditional centers of power, including the speaker’s office.

    “This is what we were talking about,” said Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a leader in the conservative efforts to block McCarthy’s rise to speaker.

    Boebert said that if the committees drag their feet, she would bring her resolution back to the floor “every day for the rest of my time here in Congress,” forcing a House vote on Biden’s impeachment.

    Rank-and-file Republicans were angry at being forced into the position of having to vote on a resolution to impeach Biden even though they had not gone through the traditional process of an impeachment inquiry. They resented a single lawmaker jumping the queue of priorities.

    In one fiery exchange overheard Wednesday on the House floor, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., laid into Boebert for taking the Biden impeachment on her own. Greene has her own articles of impeachment against the president.

    Greene confirmed a report about the exchange later and said of Boebert, “She has a great skill and talent for making most people here not like her.”

    Boebert declined to comment about the conversation, only saying it’s “not middle school.”

    Trump was impeached twice — on corruption and obstruction charges over withholding military aid to Ukraine while seeking political dirt on Biden, and later on charges of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. Both times, Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

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  • Even a Damning Federal Case Can’t Break the GOP’s Devotion to Donald Trump

    Even a Damning Federal Case Can’t Break the GOP’s Devotion to Donald Trump

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    When Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped a 38-count federal indictment Friday afternoon against Donald Trump and a coconspirator, complete with shocking allegations of stashing nuclear secrets around Mar-a-Lago, it felt like everyone was holding their collective breath. Just like in the immediate aftermath of January 6, this was a moment when Republicans might finally decide to rid themselves of Trump. 

    Like so many aspects of the Trump era, this was historic—and not in a good way. Trump became the first former president in history to face federal charges, 31 of which were related to the Espionage Act. Even Richard Nixon wasn’t indicted! While one might argue the Stormy Daniels hush money indictment from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was politically motivated (it wasn’t), or that it presents legal challenges (fair point), the gravity of the federal indictment against Trump was such that it would seem hard to simply shrug off. Here was a former president being portrayed as putting the nation’s security at risk. The filing includes photos of boxes allegedly filled with classified documents piled high in a strange chandelier-adorned marble bathroom, in office and storage rooms, and a ballroom which looks like it deeply missed the previous owner Marjorie Merriweather Post’s dulcet touch.

    For a minute, it felt like this indictment might move the needle. It was, after all, so detailed, and perhaps most damning was Trump’s apparent admission of guilt. “As president, I could have declassified them, now I can’t,” Trump reportedly said in a recording. So it seems we know what the (former) president knew and when he knew it. Legal experts have spoken about how devastating the case looks for the 45th president, with Trump’s own former attorney general Bill Barr saying that “if even half of it is true, then he’s toast.” The New York Times’ editorial board, arguing why Trump should never again be trusted with the nation’s secrets, noted that the potential prison sentences for these charges “add up to as much as 420 years.”

    And yet, if one hoped sanity might return to the GOP, anyone who’s been writing about this Trump-ruled party the past seven years knew Republicans would treat this federal indictment like they did the Access Hollywood tape, the first impeachment, the January 6 insurrection, the second impeachment, and the earlier indictment: They would rally behind him.  

    If Republicans could stand up to Trump, they could start taking their party back from this lawless lunatic and signal a return to a Republican Party that operated within the normal bounds of the law. But the writing was already on the wall shortly after the indictment was unsealed, with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt brazenly tweeting, “First read of indictment and my reaction is ‘That’s it? The conspiracy is with the aide who moved the boxes? No documents were sold or given to third parties not in his close employ?’” The defense by a fairly mainstream GOP pundit—someone who has had a column in The Washington Post and stops on Meet the Press—was basically that if the former president hadn’t actually tried to sell the secrets, was it really so bad? This seems like a low standard even for Trump.

    The post-indictment news cycle quickly devolved into silly season. The editorial page at the Rupert Murdoch–owned Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “Do prosecutors understand the forces they are unleashing?” The editorial board continued, “The greatest irony of the age of Trump is that for all his violating of democratic norms, his frenzied opponents have done and are doing their own considerable damage to democracy.”

    Republicans framed this meticulously detailed federal indictment as an affront to democracy, and not as the only way to keep a rogue ex-president in check. The backlash was swift and fierce and it has included cameos from typical Trump loyalists, like Representative Jim Jordan, who claimed on CNN that Trump declassified everything (which is contradicted by Trump’s own statement about not declassifying a document), and Senator Lindsey Graham, who snapped at ABC’s George Stephanopoulos while trying to turn the conversation to Hillary Clinton. South Dakota senator Mike Rounds, one of the few GOP lawmakers to call out Trump’s election lies, said, “The unprecedented action of indicting in federal court a former president, who is also a current candidate for president, cannot be taken lightly as it is inherently political and will have a lasting impact on our nation.”

    Meanwhile, besides familiar Trump critic Senator Mitt Romney, the GOP messaging has been clear: Attempting to hold Trump accountable is worse than the former guy allegedly doing crimes. Sure, Scotland could arrest former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, France could send former president Nicolas Sarkozy to jail, and Italy could charge late prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in 35 criminal cases, but when it comes to Trump, that’s just American exceptionalism. The once Never Trump turned deeply Trumpy senator from Ohio, JD Vance, tweeted, “The question of whether Trump should have kept those documents is fundamentally a political question. Criticize it, attack it, vote against it. But prosecuting a president over his own government’s documents is turning a political issue into a legal one.”

    Republicans are trapped in a Möbius strip of their own misery, a spin cycle of fuckery that they created and that they deserve. Republican elected officials are presumably so scared of alienating the base (and potentially becoming targets themselves) that they continue to support the albatross that is losing them elections and undermining our democracy. Trump has somehow managed to make supporting his fight against the law a litmus test for GOP candidates, so the already slim possibility of defeating him in a primary gets slimmer. He’s effectively being supported by the people who are supposed to be running against him. 

    With every indictment, the GOP base gets more activated by Trump, but the chasm between the base and the general electorate grows. Yes, the GOP is reaping what it sowed. But we all risk getting buried in the process.  

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    Molly Jong-Fast

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  • FBI arrests Nate Paul, businessman linked to impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

    FBI arrests Nate Paul, businessman linked to impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

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    The FBI on Thursday arrested a businessman at the center of the scandal that led to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment, a move that came amid new questions about the men’s dealings raised by financial records the Republican’s lawyers made public to try to clear him of bribery allegations.

    Nate Paul, 36, was taken into custody by federal agents and booked into an Austin jail in the afternoon, according to Travis County Sheriff’s Office records. It was not immediately clear what charges led to his arrest, but the records showed he was being held on a federal detainer for a felony.

    Paul’s arrest followed a yearslong federal investigation into the Austin real estate developer — a probe that Paxton involved his office in, setting off a chain of events that ultimately led to his impeachment last month.

    Lawyers for Paul did not immediately respond to requests for comment. One of Paxton’s defense attorneys, Dan Cogdell, said he had no additional information on the arrest. The FBI declined to comment, and a spokesman for federal prosecutors in West Texas did not respond to inquiries.

    FBI agents examining Paul’s troubled real estate empire searched his Austin offices and palatial home in 2019. The next year, eight of Paxton ‘s top deputies reported the attorney general to the FBI on allegations of bribery and abusing his office to help Paul, including by hiring an outside lawyer to examine the developer’s claims of wrongdoing by federal agents.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
    July 29th, 2015 Austin, Texas USA: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton testifies in front of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, just a few days before a grand jury indicts him on three felonies.Two charges of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register. Paxton is expected to surrender on August 3rd, 2015

    Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images


    The allegations by Paxton’s staff prompted an FBI investigation, which remains ongoing, and are central to articles of impeachment overwhelmingly approved by the GOP-led state House of Representatives.

    On Wednesday, Paxton’s defense team showed a packed room of journalists a bank statement that included a 2020 wire transfer purportedly showing him, and not a donor, paying more than $120,000 for a home renovation.

    The wire transfer was dated Oct. 1, 2020 — the same day Paxton’s deputies signed a letter informing the head of human resources at the Texas attorney general’s office that they had reported Paxton to the FBI.

    The $121,000 payment was to Cupertino Builders, whose manager was an associate of Paul, state corporation and court records show.

    The company did not incorporate as a business in Texas until more than three weeks after the transaction took place. A company of the same name was formed in Delaware in April of that year, although public filings there do not make clear who is behind it.

    Last year a court-appointed overseer for some of Paul’s companies wrote in a report that Cupertino Builders was used for “fraudulent transfers” from his business to Narsimha Raju Sagiraju, who was convicted of fraud in California in 2016. The report described Sagiraju as Paul’s “friend.”

    Paul, who also employed a woman with whom Paxton acknowledged having an extramarital affair, has denied bribing Paxton. In a deposition, Paul described Sagiraju as an “independent contractor” and said he didn’t remember how they first met.

    The timing of the payment — and the identity of who was paid for renovations at Paxton’s home in Austin — was not publicly known before his new legal team held a news conference Wednesday in which they put financial documents on a projector screen while criticizing the impeachment. They were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.


    Ken Paxton headed to Senate trial after impeachment

    01:41

    Tony Buzbee, a prominent Houston attorney who was hired by Paxton over the weekend and led the news conference, said by email Thursday that receipts “clearly demonstrate” Paxton paid for the repairs. He did not address questions about the timing of the payments or Cupertino Builders.

    “Without any evidence the politicians leading this sham impeachment falsely accused General Paxton of not paying for the repairs to his home. That is a lie,” Buzbee said.

    Since becoming just the third sitting official in Texas history to be impeached, Paxton has attacked the proceedings as politically motivated and rushed, saying he was never given the chance to rebut the accusations in the state House.

    “We have the receipts,” Buzbee told reporters Wednesday as the documents flashed onscreen. “This is the type of evidence we tried to offer them once we found out this foolishness was going on.”

    Paxton is temporarily suspended from office pending the outcome of a trial in the Texas Senate that is set to begin no later than Aug. 28. The jury will be the members of the 31-seat Senate; one of them, Paxton’s wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, has not said whether she will recuse herself.

    The Paxtons purchased the Austin house in 2018. When it was remodeled two years later, Paxton’s former staff alleged in court documents, Paul “was involved in” the work.

    Among the 20 articles of impeachment are accusations that Paxton used the power of his office to help Paul over unproven claims of an elaborate conspiracy to steal $200 million of the developer’s properties. The FBI searched Paul’s home in 2019, but he has not been charged and his attorneys have denied wrongdoing.

    The city has no record of building permits from the time of the renovations. A different Austin contractor — not Cupertino Builders — received a federal grand jury subpoena in 2021 for records related to work on Paxton’s home that started in January 2020.

    Cupertino Builders was formed in October 2020 and dissolved less than two years later, according to Texas corporation records. Its manager was Sagiraju, who said in a deposition for an unrelated case that he did “consulting” work for Paul’s business and had an email address with Paul’s company.

    Sagiraju acknowledged that he served prison time for securities fraud and grand theft in California before moving to Austin, according to a transcript of the deposition. He said he was first introduced to Paul by a mutual friend before his prison term and they later did “a few projects” together.

    A lawyer for Sagiraju did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Paxton was separately indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, though he has yet to stand trial.

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  • FBI arrests Texas businessman linked to impeachment of state Attorney General Ken Paxton

    FBI arrests Texas businessman linked to impeachment of state Attorney General Ken Paxton

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    AUSTIN, Texas — The FBI on Thursday arrested a businessman at the center of the scandal that led to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment, a move that came amid new questions about the men’s dealings raised by financial records the Republican’s lawyers made public to try to clear him of bribery allegations.

    Nate Paul, 36, was taken into custody by federal agents and booked into an Austin jail in the afternoon, according Travis County Sheriff’s Office records. It was not immediately clear what charges led to his arrest, but the records showed he was being held on a federal detainer for a felony.

    Paul’s arrest followed a yearslong federal investigation into the Austin real estate developer — a probe that Paxton involved his office in, setting off a chain of events that ultimately led to his impeachment last month.

    Lawyers for Paul did not immediately respond to requests for comment.One of Paxton’s defense attorneys, Dan Cogdell, said he had no additional information on the arrest. The FBI declined to comment, and a spokesman for federal prosecutors in West Texas did not respond to inquires.

    FBI agents examining Paul’s troubled real estate empire searched his Austin offices and palatial home in 2019. The next year, seven of Paxton ’s top deputies reported the attorney general to the FBI on allegations of bribery and abusing his office to help Paul, including by hiiring an outside lawyer to examine the developer’s claims of wrongdoing by federal agents.

    The allegations by Paxton’s staff prompted separate FBI investigation of the attorney general, which remains ongoing, and are central to articles of impeachment overwhelmingly approved by the GOP-led state House of Representatives.

    On Wednesday, Paxton’s defense team showed a packed room of journalists a bank statement that included a 2020 wire transfer purportedly showing him, and not a donor, paying more than $120,000 for a home renovation.

    The wire transfer was dated Oct. 1, 2020 — the same day Paxton’s deputies signed a letter informing the head of human resources at the Texas attorney general’s office that they had reported Paxton to the FBI.

    The $121,000 payment was to Cupertino Builders, whose manager was an associate of Paul, state corporation and court records show.

    The company did not incorporate as a business in Texas until more than three weeks after the transaction took place. A company of the same name was formed in Delaware in April of that year, although public filings there do not make clear who is behind it.

    Last year a court-appointed overseer for some of Paul’s companies wrote in a report that Cupertino Builders was used for “fraudulent transfers” from his business to Narsimha Raju Sagiraju, who was convicted of fraud in California in 2016. The report described Sagiraju as Paul’s “friend.”

    Paul, who also employed a woman with whom Paxton acknowledged having an extramarital affair, has denied bribing Paxton. In a deposition, Paul described Sagiraju as an “independent contractor” and said he didn’t remember how they first met.

    The timing of the payment — and the identity of who was paid for renovations at Paxton’s home in Austin — was not publicly known before his new legal team held a news conference Wednesday in which they put financial documents on a projector screen while criticizing the impeachment. They were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

    Tony Buzbee, a prominent Houston attorney who was hired by Paxton over the weekend and led the news conference, said by email Thursday that receipts “clearly demonstrate” Paxton paid for the repairs. He did not address questions about the timing of the payments or Cupertino Builders.

    “Without any evidence the politicians leading this sham impeachment falsely accused General Paxton of not paying for the repairs to his home. That is a lie,” Buzbee said.

    Since becoming just the third sitting official in Texas history to be impeached, Paxton has attacked the proceedings as politically motivated and rushed, saying he was never given the chance to rebut the accusations in the state House.

    “We have the receipts,” Buzbee told reporters Wednesday as the documents flashed onscreen. “This is the type of evidence we tried to offer them once we found out this foolishness was going on.”

    Paxton is temporarily suspended from office pending the outcome of a trial in the Texas Senate that is set to begin no later than Aug. 28. The “jury” will be the members of the 31-seat Senate; one of them, Paxton’s wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, has not said whether she will recuse herself.

    The Paxtons purchased the Austin house in 2018. When it was remodeled two years later, Paxton’s former staff alleged in court documents, Paul “was involved in” the work.

    Among the 20 articles of impeachment are accusations that Paxton used the power of his office to help Paul over unproven claims of an elaborate conspiracy to steal $200 million of the developer’s properties. The FBI searched Paul’s home in 2019, but he has not been charged and his attorneys have denied wrongdoing.

    The city has no record of building permits from the time of the renovations. A different Austin contractor — not Cupertino Builders — received a federal grand jury subpoena in 2021 for records related to work on Paxton’s home that started in January 2020.

    Cupertino Builders was formed in October 2020 and dissolved less than two years later, according to Texas corporation records. Its manager was Sagiraju, who said in a deposition for an unrelated case that he did “consulting” work for Paul’s business and had an email address with Paul’s company.

    Sagiraju acknowledged that he served prison time for securities fraud and grand theft in California before moving to Austin, according to a transcript of the deposition. He said he was first introduced to Paul by a mutual friend before his prison term and they later did “a few projects” together.

    A lawyer for Sagiraju did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Paxton was separately indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, though he has yet to stand trial. ___ Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Associated Press journalists Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas and Derek Karikari in New York contributed.

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