Tag: international-impeachment

Dilma Rousseff Fast Facts | CNN

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Here’s a look at the life of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

Birth date: December 14, 1947

Birth place: Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Birth name: Dilma Vana Rousseff

Father: Pedro Rousseff, construction entrepreneur

Mother: Dilma Jane (da Silva) Rousseff, teacher

Marriages: Carlos Araujo (1973-2000, divorced); Claudio Galeno Linhares (1968-early 1970s, divorced)

Children: with Carlos Araujo: Paula, 1976

Education: Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, B.A. Economics, 1977

Prior to running for president, she had never run for an elected office.

Joined the resistance movement against the military dictatorship and was jailed and allegedly tortured in the early 1970s.

Rousseff democratized Brazil’s electricity sector through the “Luz Para Todos” (Light for All) program, which made electricity widely available, even in rural areas.

1986 – Finance secretary for the city of Porto Alegre.

2003 – Is named minister of mines and energy by President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.

2003-2010 – Serves as chair of Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run oil company.

June 2005-March 2010 – Lula da Silva’s chief of staff.

April 2009 – Is diagnosed with stage one lymphoma and begins treatment. By September, she is declared cancer free.

October 31, 2010 – Wins a run-off election to become Brazil’s first female president.

September 21, 2011 – Becomes the first female leader to kick off the annual United Nations General Assembly debates.

2011 – Allegations of corruption are the basis of her dismissal of six cabinet ministers in her first year in office. Between June and December, her chief of staff, ministers of tourism, agriculture, transportation, sports and labor along with 20 transportation employees resign as a result of the scandal.

September 17, 2013 – The United States and Brazil jointly agree to postpone Rousseff’s state visit to Washington next month due to controversy over reports the US government was spying on her communications.

September 24, 2013 – In a speech before the UN General Assembly, Rousseff speaks about allegations that the US National Security Agency spied on her. “Tampering in such a manner in the lives and affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and, as such, it is an affront to the principles that should otherwise govern relations among countries, especially among friendly nations.”

2014 – Executives at Petrobras are accused of illegally “diverting” billions from the company’s accounts for their personal use or to pay off officials. Rousseff served as chair of Petrobras during many of the years when the alleged corruption took place. She denies any knowledge of the corruption.

October 26, 2014 – Is reelected president.

December 2, 2015 – A bid to impeach Rousseff is launched by the speaker of the country’s lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha. Rousseff has been accused of hiding a budgetary deficit to win reelection in 2014, and opponents blame her for the worst recession in decades.

April 17, 2016 – A total of 367 lawmakers in the Brazilian parliament’s lower house vote to impeach Rousseff, comfortably more than the two-thirds majority required by law. The impeachment motion will next go to the country’s Senate.

May 12, 2016 – The Brazilian Senate votes 55-22 to begin an impeachment trial against Rousseff. Rousseff will step down for 180 days and Vice President Michel Temer will serve as interim president while the trial takes place.

August 4, 2016 – After a final report concludes that reasons exist to proceed with formally removing Rousseff, the Brazilian Senate impeachment commission votes in favor of trying the suspended president in front of the full senate chamber.

August 25, 2016 – Rousseff’s impeachment trial begins.

August 31, 2016 – Brazil’s Senate votes 61-20 in favor of removing Rousseff from office.

September 5, 2017 – Corruption charges are filed against Rousseff, her predecessor Lula da Silva, and six Workers’ Party members. They are accused of running a criminal organization, to divert funds from state-owned oil firm Petrobras. The charges are related to Operation Car Wash, a lengthy money laundering investigation conducted by the Brazilian government. Lula da Silva, Rousseff, and the Workers’ party deny the allegations.

October 7, 2018 – Rousseff only receives 15% of the vote for senator in the general election.

March 24, 2023 – The New Development Bank announces its board of governors elected Rousseff as its new president.

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December 25, 2023
Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics

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House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.

Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.

None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.

Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.

Here’s takeaways from Thursday’s first impeachment inquiry hearing:

While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.

Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.

“I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing,” Dubinsky said. “More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment.”

He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities.

Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.

“I want to emphasize what it is that we’re here today for. This is a question of an impeachment inquiry. It is not a vote on articles of impeachment,” Turley said. “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish. But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”

Turley said that Biden’s false statements about his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business endeavors, as well as the unproven allegations that Biden may have benefited from his son’s business deals, were reason for the House to move forward with the impeachment inquiry. (CNN has previously reported that Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time, including by evidence uncovered by House Republicans.)

Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has repeatedly backed up Republican arguments on key legal matters in recent years, including his opposition to Trump’s first and second impeachments.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushed Turley further on his comments, asking whether he would vote “no” today on impeachment.

“On this evidence, certainly,” Turley said. “At the moment, these are allegations. There is some credible evidence there that is the basis of the allegations.”

House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas.

House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.

Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released Internal Revenue Service documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.

Ahead of the hearing, the Republican chairs released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”

The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling” – none of which Republicans have proved yet.

The memo included four questions the Republicans are seeking to answer related to whether Biden took any action related to payments his family received or if the president obstructed the investigations into Hunter Biden.

At the close of the hearing Thursday, Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.

The subpoenas will be for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.

The subpoenas are not a surprise, as Comer has been signaling his intention to issue the subpoenas for the personal bank records. They show where Republicans will head next in their investigation as they continue to seek evidence to substantiate their unproven allegations about the president.

Some inside the GOP expressed frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.

“You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing,” one senior GOP aide told CNN. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”

One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”

The bar for Thursday’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.

But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.

“I haven’t watched or listened to a moment of it,” said another GOP lawmaker. There’s a shutdown looming.”

Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president.

“The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.

Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.”

Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. The Democrats passed the laptop around to each lawmaker as they had their five minutes to question the witnesses.

Their arguments also previewed how Democrats intend to play defense for the White House as Republicans move forward on their impeachment inquiry.

The Democrats needled Republicans for not holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry – one Democrat asked Turley whether he would recommend a vote, which Turley said he would.

House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump was sparked by Trump’s attempts to push Ukraine to investigate allegations involving Biden and his son’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company – some of the same allegations now being probed by the House GOP.

That led Democrats Thursday to push for testimony from Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s personal lawyer sought to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine in 2019.

Twice, the Democrats forced the Oversight Committee to vote on Democratic motions to subpoena Giuliani, votes that served as stunts to try to hammer home their argument that Giuliani tried and failed to corroborate the same allegations at the heart of the Biden impeachment inquiry.

“I ask the question: Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, one of the Democrats who forced the procedural vote. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. And this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame! And the question was raised. What does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it.”

In addition to Giuliani, Raskin sought testimony from Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who was indicted in 2019. Parnas subsequently cooperated with the Democratic impeachment inquiry, including providing a statement from a top official at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company, stating, “No one from Burisma had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him.”

Several Democrats also raised Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who worked in the White House, receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia through a company he formed after leaving the White House.

The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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September 28, 2023
Why some of Biden’s problems may be overblown at this time | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. He’s under an impeachment inquiry, his son was indicted in Delaware, inflation seems to be tilting back up, the United Auto Workers went on strike after Biden said they wouldn’t, and the chattering class is talking about him not running for reelection.

Some of these factors explain why my colleague Zach Wolf wrote that “Biden’s two worst weaknesses were exposed” this past week, and it’s also why I’ve written about the president’s difficulties heading into next year.

But while Biden clearly has problems – no president with an approval rating hovering around 40% is in good shape – some of his issues appear to be overblown at this time. Here are three reasons why:

A Washington Post op-ed by columnist David Ignatius that called on Biden not to run for reelection got a lot of play this past week.

Putting aside whether Biden should or shouldn’t run, the fact is that he is running. A lot of people will point to polls (like those from CNN) showing that a majority of Democrats don’t think the party should renominate him.

But these surveys only tell you so much. They’re matching Biden against himself and not anyone else. When asked in the CNN poll to name a preferred alternative to Biden, only a little more than 10% wanted someone else and could name a specific person.

When matched up against the announced Democratic opposition (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson), Biden is crushing it. He’s over 70%, on average, in recent polling.

Moreover, Biden’s job approval rating with Democrats hovers around 80%. That is well above the level at which past incumbents have faced strong primary challenges. Those challenges (such as when Ted Kennedy challenged incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980) came at a time when the president had an approval rating in the 50s or 60s among his own party members.

It is worth analyzing whether the fact that a lot of Democrats don’t think Biden should be renominated masks a larger problem he could face in a general election.

But Biden’s pulling in more than 90% of Democrats in Fox News and Quinnipiac University general election polling released this past week. In both polls, his share slightly exceeded former President Donald Trump’s among Republicans (though within the margin of error).

The fact is Biden’s got problems, but worrying about renomination is not one of them.

From a political point of view, Biden’s connections to his son Hunter have caused the president nothing but heartache. Most voters think Biden did something inappropriate related to his son’s business dealings.

So, it might naturally follow that House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president’s ties to his son’s foreign business deals would be harmful to his political future.

About 40% of voters, on average, think Joe Biden did something illegal. Most voters don’t.

Some Republicans are no doubt hoping that Biden’s own troubles will make their likely nominee (Trump), who is under four indictments, look less bad by comparison. A majority of voters, however, think that Trump committed a crime.

The public doesn’t see the Biden and Trump cases the same way.

A Wall Street Journal poll from the end of August found that a majority of Americans (52%) did not want Biden to be impeached.

Republicans will have to prove their case in the court of public opinion.

It’s conceivable that Republicans will overshoot the mark like they have in the past. The impeachment inquiry into Bill Clinton in 1998 preceded one of the best performances by a president’s party in a midterm election. Clinton’s Democratic Party picked up seats in the House, which has happened three times for the president’s party in midterms over the last century.

To see how impeachment could turn things upside down for the GOP this cycle, consider independent voters. While the vast majority of independents disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president (64%) in our latest CNN poll, only 39% think he did something illegal.

An election about a potentially unpopular impeachment would be better for Biden than one about an issue that really hurts him (such as voters seeing him as too old).

Stop me if you heard this one before: Biden is the president heading into an election, voters are unhappy with the state of the economy, and his party does much better in the elections than a lot of people thought.

That’s what happened in the 2022 midterms.

The inflation rate is lower now than it was then, but it’s on the uptick. Voters, both now and then, overwhelmingly disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy. They even say the economy matters more than any other issue, like they did in 2022.

What none of this data takes into account is that Americans almost always call the economy the top issue, according to Gallup.

Believe it or not, fewer Americans say the economy is the top problem facing the country now (31%) than they have in either the median (40%) or average (45%) presidential election since 1988.

If you think about recent presidential elections in which the economy was the big issue (1992, 2008 and 2012), the state of the economy dominated the headlines.

But as mentioned above, right now, there are a lot of other things going on in the country, as was also the case during the 2022 midterms.

It’s not as if the economy is helping Biden. I’m just not sure it’s hurting him.

After all, there’s a reason why Democrats have consistently outperformed the 2020 presidential baseline in special elections this year.

If things were really that bad for Biden and the Democrats, they’d most likely be losing elections all over the country. That simply isn’t happening at this point.

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September 17, 2023
White House to send letter to news execs urging outlets to ‘ramp up’ scrutiny of GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry ‘based on lies’ | CNN Business

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The White House plans to send a letter to top US news executives on Wednesday, urging them to intensify their scrutiny of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite having found no evidence of a crime.

“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, according to a draft copy obtained by CNN.

The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” will be sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.

The correspondence comes one day after McCarthy announced that he had directed three House committees to begin an impeachment inquiry into Biden. House Republicans, most of whom have denied that disgraced former President Donald Trump committed any wrongdoing, have long sought to baselessly portray Biden as a corrupt, crime-ridden politician engaged in sinister activities.

While news organizations have published innumerable fact checks on the matter, they have also often failed to robustly call out the mis- and disinformation peddled by Republicans in their coverage, frustrating officials in the Biden White House who believe that the news media should be doing more to dispel lies that saturate the public discourse.

In its letter Wednesday, the White House will ask news organizations to be more clear-eyed in their coverage of the impeachment inquiry, and not to fall prey to the traps of false equivalency in reporting.

“Covering impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” Sams wrote.

“And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth,” Sams added.

McCarthy launched the impeachment inquiry Tuesday without a formal House vote in a bid to appease Republicans on his far-right, including those who have threatened to oust the California Republican from his speakership if he does not move swiftly enough on such an investigation.

The Republican House-led investigations into Biden have yet to provide any direct evidence that the president financially benefited from Hunter Biden’s career overseas.

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September 12, 2023
Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

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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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August 2, 2023
House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics

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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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August 2, 2023
House GOP push to launch Biden impeachment probe runs into Senate Republican skepticism | CNN Politics

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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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August 2, 2023
Biden advisers plotted impeachment response plan ahead of McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement | CNN Politics

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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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August 2, 2023
Kevin McCarthy opens impeachment inquiry without passing budget despite once criticizing Democrats for the same | CNN Politics

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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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August 2, 2023
Hunter Biden’s former business partner testifying behind closed doors for GOP-led committee | CNN Politics

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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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July 31, 2023
Inside McCarthy’s sudden warming to a Biden impeachment inquiry | CNN Politics

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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.”

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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July 25, 2023
Pelosi says McCarthy is ‘playing politics’ with impeachment expungement | CNN Politics

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CNN
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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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July 23, 2023
Opinion: Why isn’t the House Judiciary Committee looking into red flags about Clarence Thomas? | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
—

On Monday, the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee — chaired by Donald Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan — is set to hold a field hearing in New York City called “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan.” A statement bills the hearing as an examination of how, the Judiciary Committee says, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s policies have “led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents.”

In response, Bragg’s office slammed Jordan’s hearing as “a political stunt” while noting that data released by the New York Police Department shows crime is down in Manhattan with respect to murders, burglaries, robberies and more through April 2, compared with the same period last year.

In reality, this Jordan-led hearing isn’t about stopping crime but about defending Trump — who was recently charged by a Manhattan grand jury with 34 felonies. Trump pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges stemming from an investigation into a hush-money payment to an adult film actress. The former president also is facing criminal probes in other jurisdictions over efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Bragg sued Jordan and his committee last week in federal court, accusing the Judiciary Committee chairman of a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” his office for its investigation and prosecution of Trump by making demands for confidential documents and testimony.

While Jordan and his committee appear focused on discrediting the investigation into Trump, why aren’t they looking into two recent bombshell reports by ProPublica that raised red flags about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ financial relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow? After all, the House Judiciary Committee’s website explains that it has jurisdiction over “matters relating to the administration of justice in federal courts” – for which the revelations concerning Thomas fit perfectly.

First, we learned in early April that Crow had provided Thomas and his wife, Ginni, for decades with luxurious vacations including on the donor’s yacht and private jet to faraway places such as Indonesia and New Zealand. That information was never revealed to the public. (In a rare public statement, Thomas responded he was advised at the time that he did not have to report the trips. The justice said the guidelines for reporting personal hospitality have changed recently. “And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” he said.)

Then on Thursday, ProPublica reported that Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal involving the sale of three properties he and his family owned in Savannah, Georgia, to that same GOP megadonor, Crow. One of Crow’s companies made the purchases for $133,363, according to ProPublica. A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires Supreme Court justices and other officials to make public the details of most real estate sales over $1,000.

As ProPublica detailed, the federal disclosure form Thomas filed for that year included a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, but Thomas left that space blank. Four ethics law experts told ProPublica that Thomas’ failure to report it appears to be a violation of the law. (Thomas did not respond to questions from ProPublica on its report; CNN reached out to the Supreme Court and Thomas for comment.)

The House Judiciary Committee has long addressed issues such as those surrounding Thomas. In fact, the committee is where investigations and the impeachment of federal judges often commence.

One recent example came in 2010 with Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr., whom the committee investigated and recommended for impeachment.

The committee’s Task Force on Judicial Impeachment said evidence showed Porteous “intentionally made material false statements and representations under penalty of perjury, engaged in a corrupt kickback scheme, solicited and accepted unlawful gifts, and intentionally misled the Senate during his confirmation proceedings.” The Senate later found Porteous guilty of four articles of impeachment and removed him from the bench.

Yet the Judiciary Committee has neither released statements nor tweets raising alarm bells about Thomas. Instead, its Twitter feed is filled with repeated tweets whining that C-SPAN won’t cover Monday’s New York field hearing. Worse, the committee retweeted GOP Rep. Mary Miller’s tweet defending Thomas as being attacked “because he is a man of deep faith, who loves our country and believes in our Constitution.”

Jordan’s use of his committee to assist Trump should surprise no one. The House January 6 committee’s report called the Ohio Republican “a significant player in President Trump’s efforts” to overturn the election. The report detailed the lawmaker’s efforts to assist Trump including on “January 2, 2021, Representative Jordan led a conference call in which he, President Trump, and other Members of Congress discussed strategies for delaying the January 6th joint session.” As a result, the January 6 committee subpoenaed Jordan to testify — but he refused to cooperate.

In contrast with the House panel, the Senate Judiciary Committee — headed by Democrats — announced in the wake of the reporting on Thomas that it plans to hold a hearing “on the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.” Beyond that, Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia sent a letter Friday calling for a referral of Thomas to the US attorney general over “potential violations of the Ethics in Government Act 1978.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s website notes, “The Committee on the Judiciary has been called the lawyer for the House of Representatives.” Under Jordan that description needs to be updated to state that the Committee on the Judiciary is now “the lawyer for Donald J. Trump.” And the worst part is that the taxpayers are the ones paying for Jordan’s work on Trump’s behalf.

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April 17, 2023
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reiterates call to impeach Justice Clarence Thomas over trips with GOP donor | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York reiterated on Sunday her call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas following revelations that he didn’t disclose several luxury trips subsidized by a Republican megadonor.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Ocasio-Cortez called for an inquiry into the matter, saying it was “the House’s responsibility to pursue that investigation in the form of impeachment.”

“I believe that we should pursue the course. And if it is Republicans that decide to protect those who are breaking the law, then they are the ones who then are responsible for that decision,” she said of the House GOP majority, which would be unlikely to pursue such an investigation. “But we should not be complicit in that.”

Ocasio-Cortez first called for Thomas’ impeachment on Twitter on Thursday following a bombshell ProPublica report that detailed his travel paid for by Republican donor Harlan Crow, which included trips on the donor’s yacht and private jet.

Thomas said Friday that he did not disclose the luxury travel because he was advised at the time that he did not have to report it.

In a rare statement sent via the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas said that the trips he and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, took with the Crows were the “sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” that he was advised did not require disclosure.

Two dozen Democratic lawmakers from both chambers sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday, calling for a “swift, thorough, independent and transparent investigation” into whether ethics rules and laws were violated by Thomas’ trips.

But Ocasio-Cortez said she did not have faith in the Supreme Court to conduct an internal investigation, saying, “what we are seeing right now is a breaking of the law.”

The ProPublica report describes Thomas accepting travel hospitality from Crow that included lavish trips to Indonesia, New Zealand, California, Texas and Georgia. Some of the trips reportedly included travel on Crow’s super yacht or stays at properties owned by Crow or his company.

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April 9, 2023
Mayorkas goes on the offensive as GOP scrutiny builds, says it’s up to Congress to fix immigration system | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pointed the finger back at Congress to fix the country’s broken immigration system and maintained that he will not resign from his post in an new interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.

House Republicans, who have been fierce critics of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, have been moving to build a case against Mayorkas as they consider launching rare impeachment proceedings against a Cabinet secretary.

“I’m not going to resign,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Chris Wallace on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which is now streaming on HBOMax and airs Sunday night at 7 p.m. ET on CNN.

“I call upon Congress – as the president has done, as this nation has done – to actually fix an immigration system that has been broken for decades,” he added.

Republican lawmakers have argued that Mayorkas’ claims of having operational control of the border are unfounded and that the record arrests mark a dereliction of duty – two themes that have come up repeatedly in congressional hearings and have been cited as reason to impeach the secretary.

Ahead of potential proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security is bringing on a private law firm to help with potential impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas.

“I don’t have any intention of being uncooperative. I have complete confidence in the integrity of our decision making,” Mayorkas told Wallace.

Over recent weeks, key committee chairman already held two congressional hearings over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border. Earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee, which would have jurisdiction over an impeachment resolution, held its first border-related hearing.

“These numbers make clear that the Biden administration does not have operational control of the border,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said during a February hearing. “Month after month after month, we have set records for migrants coming into the country and frankly, I think it’s intentional.”

Pressed by Wallace on what it means for the border to be secure and if it means people aren’t illegally crossing the border, Mayorkas said: “Of course not. By that measure, the border has never been secure, right?”

Asked again by what measure the border is secure, he said: “There is not a common definition of that. If one looks at the statutory definition, the literal interpretation of the statutory language, if one person successfully evades law enforcement at the border, then we have breached the security of the border.”

He added: “What our goal is – to achieve operational control of the border, to do everything that we can to support our personnel with the resources, the technology, the policies that really advance the security of the border, and do not come at the cost of the values of our country. And I say that, I say that, because in the prior administration, policies were promulgated, were passed, that did not hew to the values that we hold dear.”

The Biden administration faces unprecedented movement across the Western Hemisphere that has contributed to a surge of migrants at the border, including more people from different countries, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The US is largely barred from deporting migrants to Cuba and Venezuela, presenting a unique set of challenges for DHS.

“The level of migration that has gripped our hemisphere is extraordinary,” Mayorkas said, stressing that Congress needs to pass reform to fix the immigration system, which Republicans and Democrats agree is broken.

US border authorities encountered migrants more than 2.3 million times along the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million migrants were turned away at the border.

In early January, the Biden administration expanded a humanitarian parole program to include Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and Cubans to provide a legal pathway for them to enter the US instead of crossing the border. The administration also made those nationalities eligible for Title 42, meaning they can now be turned away by authorities if they don’t apply for the program.

Since then, there has been a significant decline in migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela crossing the US-Mexico border unlawfully, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which attributed the drop to new border measures.

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February 17, 2023
Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Since winning a difficult battle to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy has made public claims that are misleading, lacking any evidence or plain wrong.

Here is a fact check of recent McCarthy comments about the debt ceiling, funding for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort and residence in Florida, President Joe Biden’s stance on stoves and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

McCarthy has cited the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, his Democratic predecessor as House speaker, while defending conservative Republicans’ insistence that any agreement to lift the federal debt ceiling must be paired with cuts to government spending – a trade-off McCarthy agreed to when he was trying to persuade conservatives to support his bid for speaker. Specifically, McCarthy has claimed that even Pelosi agreed to a spending cap as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling under Trump.

“When Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s what transpired. To get a debt ceiling, they also got a cap on spending for the next two years,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference on January 12. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo told McCarthy in a January 15 interview that “they” would not agree to a spending cap, he responded, “Well Maria, I don’t believe that’s the case, because when Donald Trump was president and when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s exactly what happened for them to get a debt ceiling lifted last time. They agreed to a spending cap.”

Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are highly misleading. The deal Pelosi agreed to with the Trump administration in 2019 actually loosened spending caps that were already in place at the time because of a 2011 law. In other words, while congressional conservatives today want to use a debt ceiling deal to reduce government spending, the Pelosi deal allowed for billions in additional government spending above the pre-existing maximum. The two situations are nothing alike.

Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said when asked about the accuracy of McCarthy’s claims: “I’m going to steer clear of characterizing the Speaker’s remarks, but as an objective matter, the deal reached in 2019 increased the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011.”

The 2019 deal, which was criticized by many congressional conservatives, also ensured that Budget Control Act’s caps on discretionary spending – which were created as a result of a 2011 debt ceiling deal between a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House – would not be extended past 2021. Spending caps vanishing is the opposite of McCarthy’s suggestion that the deal “got” a spending cap.

Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email that McCarthy is “trying to rewrite history.” Bennett said, “As Republicans in Congress and in the Administration noted at the time, in 2019, Speaker Pelosi and Democrats were eager to reach bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and, as part of the agreement, avert damaging funding cuts for defense and domestic programs.”

In various statements since becoming speaker, McCarthy has boasted of how the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House “repealed 87,000 IRS agents” or “repealed funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.”

Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are false. House Republicans did pass a bill that seeks to eliminate about $71 billion of the approximately $80 billion in additional Internal Revenue Service funding that Biden signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act – but that funding is not going to hire 87,000 “agents.” In addition, Biden has already made clear he would veto this new Republican bill even if the bill somehow made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, so no funding has actually been “repealed.” It would be accurate for McCarthy to say House Republicans “voted to repeal” the funding, but the boast that they actually “repealed” something is inaccurate.

CNN’s Katie Lobosco explains in detail here why the claim about “87,000 new IRS agents” is an exaggeration. The claim, which has become a common Republican talking point, has been fact-checked by numerous media outlets over more than five months, including The Washington Post in response to McCarthy remarks earlier this January.

Here’s a summary. While Inflation Reduction Act funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations. Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up the vast majority of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

The IRS has not yet released a detailed breakdown of how it plans to use the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, so it’s impossible to say precisely how many new “agents” will be hired. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000.

In his interview with Fox’s Bartiromo on January 15, McCarthy criticized federal law enforcement for executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, which the FBI says resulted in the recovery of more than 100 government documents marked as classified and hundreds of other government documents. Echoing a claim Trump has made, McCarthy said of the documents: “They knew it was there. They could have come and taken it any time they wanted.”

Facts First: It is clearly not true that the authorities could somehow have come to Mar-a-Lago at any time, without conducting a formal search, and taken all of the presidential records they were seeking from Trump. By the time of the search, the federal government – first the National Archives and Records Administration and then the Justice Department – had been asking Trump for more than a year to return government records. Even when the Justice Department went beyond asking in May and served Trump’s team with a subpoena for the return of all documents with classification markings, Trump’s team returned only some of these documents. In June, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying on behalf of Trump’s office that all of the documents had been returned, though that was not true.

When FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago without a search warrant on that June day to accept documents the Trump team was returning in response to the subpoena, a Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room,” the department said in a court filing after the August search. In other words, according to the department, the government was not even allowed to poke around to see if there were government records still at Mar-a-Lago, let alone take those records.

In the August court filing, the department pointedly called into question the extent to which the Trump team had cooperated: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

McCarthy wrote in a New York Post article published on January 12: “While President Joe Biden wants to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on, House Republicans are certainly cooking with gas.” He repeated the claim on Twitter the next morning.

Facts First: There is no evidence for this claim; Biden has not expressed a desire to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on. McCarthy was baselessly attributing the comments of a single Biden appointee to Biden himself.

It is true that a Biden appointee on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg earlier this month that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and said, “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the day before McCarthy’s article was published by the New York Post, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

To date, even the commission itself has not shown support for a ban on gas stoves or for any particular new regulations on gas stoves. Commission Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement the day before McCarthy’s article was published: “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” Rather, he said, the commission is researching gas emissions in stoves, “exploring new ways to address health risks,” and strengthening voluntary safety standards – and will this spring ask the public “to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.”

Trumka told CNN’s Matt Egan that while every option remains on the table, any ban would apply only to new gas stoves, not the gas stoves already in people’s homes. And he noted that the Inflation Reduction Act makes people eligible for a rebate of up to $840 to voluntarily switch to an electric stove.

Defending his plan to bar Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, a committee Schiff chaired during the Democratic majority from early 2019 to the beginning of this year, McCarthy criticized Schiff on January 12 over his handling of the first impeachment of Trump. Among other things, McCarthy said: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.”

Facts First: There is no evidence for McCarthy’s insinuation that Schiff lied when he said he didn’t know the anonymous whistleblower who came forward in 2019 with allegations – which were subsequently corroborated – about how Trump had attempted to use the power of his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, his looming rival in the 2020 election.

Schiff said last week in a statement to CNN: “Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower. Let me be clear – I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff also made this comment to The Washington Post, which fact-checked the McCarthy claim last week, and has consistently said the same since late 2019.

The New York Times reported in 2019 that, according to an unnamed official, a House Intelligence Committee aide who had been contacted by the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed a formal complaint did not inform Schiff of the person’s identity when conveying to Schiff “some” information about what the person had said. And Reuters reported in 2019 that a person familiar with the whistleblower’s contacts said the whistleblower hadn’t met or spoken with Schiff.

McCarthy could have fairly repeated Republican criticism of a claim Schiff made in a 2019 television appearance about the committee’s communication with the whistleblower; Schiff said at the time “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” even though it soon emerged that the whistleblower had contacted the committee aide before filing the complaint. (A committee spokesperson said at the time that Schiff had been merely trying to say that the committee hadn’t heard actual testimony from the whistleblower, but that Schiff acknowledged his words “should have been more carefully phrased to make that distinction clear.”)

Regardless, McCarthy didn’t argue here that Schiff had been misleading about the committee’s dealings with the whistleblower; he strongly suggested that Schiff lied in saying he didn’t know the whistleblower. That’s baseless. There has never been any indication that Schiff had a relationship with the whistleblower when he said he didn’t, nor that Schiff knew the whistleblower’s identity when he said he didn’t.

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January 24, 2023
South African President Ramaphosa will not be impeached over cash-in sofa scandal | CNN

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Johannesburg
CNN
—

South African President Ramaphosa survived a move to start impeachment proceedings against him in a vote in parliament on Tuesday.

The move was widely expected, after the top leadership ruling African National Congress (ANC) called on their parliamentary caucus to block the investigation.

One by one, MPs were asked to articulate their vote in person after requests to hold the vote in secret will ruled out by the Speaker of Parliament.

There were a few ‘yes’ votes from ANC members, and a couple of no-shows, but their caucus largely held together. Opposition parties were mostly unified on calling for an impeachment enquiry. The vote required a simple majority.

The vote came after an independent panel independent panel found there is initial evidence that he could have violated his oath of office.

The findings relate to an ongoing scandal linked to the theft of more than $500,000 in cash from his private game farm in 2020. The cash was stuffed inside a leather sofa according to the panel investigation.

The panel, led by a former chief justice, found that the crime was not reported to the police and that there was a ‘deliberate decision to keep the investigation secret.’

After initial speculation that he would resign, Ramaphosa’s lawyers have sought to challenge the panel’s findings in court. The president has repeatedly denied the allegations saying the money was from the sale of wildlife at his Phala Phala farm.

Later this week, the president will contest an ANC elective conference, where he is widely expected to win.

The vote was preceded by a spirited debate where opposition party leaders lambasted both the president for not providing a fuller explanation for the cash and the ANC caucus for backing him.

“You are so desperate to avoid any type of investigation into the crimes that have occurred in and in relation to the Phala Phala farm that you have decided to spit in the face of the freedoms and institutions so many people fought and died for,” said Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

“As long as you have the numbers in parliament, you can make any scandal go away and if that is how you intend to vote today, in one unified shield against accountability and oversight, just like you did in the Zuma days then shame on you,” said John Steenhuisen, the leader of the official opposition Democratic Alliance, referring to Ramaphosa’s predecessor Jacob Zuma who was never censured by parliament, but was eventually forced to resign after a corruption scandal.

ANC members said that the report did not provide enough evidence to move towards an impeachment proceeding. The president still could face multiple investigations outside of parliament.

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December 13, 2022
Donald Trump Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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Here’s a look at the life of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

Birth date: June 14, 1946

Birth place: New York, New York

Birth name: Donald John Trump

Father: Fred Trump, real estate developer

Mother: Mary (Macleod) Trump

Marriages: Melania (Knauss) Trump (January 22, 2005-present); Marla (Maples) Trump (December 1993-June 1999, divorced); Ivana (Zelnicek) Trump (1977-1990, divorced)

Children: with Melania Trump: Barron, March 20, 2006; with Marla Maples: Tiffany, October 13, 1993; with Ivana Trump: Eric, 1984; Ivanka, October 30, 1981; Donald Jr., December 31, 1977

Education: Attended Fordham University; University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance, B.S. in Economics, 1968

As Trump evolved from real estate developer to reality television star, he turned his name into a brand. Licensed Trump products have included board games, steaks, cologne, vodka, furniture and menswear.

He has portrayed himself in cameo appearances in movies and on television, including “Zoolander,” “Sex and the City” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was first used by Ronald Reagan while he was running against President Jimmy Carter.

For details on investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, visit 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.

1970s – After college, works with his father on apartment complexes in Queens and Brooklyn.

1973 – Trump and his father are named in a Justice Department lawsuit alleging Trump property managers violated the Fair Housing Act by turning away potential African American tenants. The Trumps deny the company discriminates and file a $100 million countersuit, which is later dismissed. The case is settled in 1975, and the Trumps agree to provide weekly lists of vacancies to Black community organizations.

1976 – Trump and his father partner with the Hyatt Corporation, purchasing the Commodore Hotel, an aging midtown Manhattan property. The building is revamped and opens four years later as the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The project kickstarts Trump’s career as a Manhattan developer.

1983-1990 – He builds/purchases multiple properties in New York City, including Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel, and also opens casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, including the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza. Trump buys the New Jersey Generals football team, part of the United States Football League, which folds after three seasons.

1985 – Purchases Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. It is renovated and opens as a private club in 1995.

1987 – Trump’s first book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” is published, and becomes a bestseller. The Donald J. Trump Foundation is established in order to donate a portion of profits from book sales to charities.

1990 – Nearly $1 billion in personal debt, Trump reaches an agreement with bankers allowing him to avoid declaring personal bankruptcy.

1991 – The Trump Taj Mahal files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

1992 – The Trump Plaza and the Trump Castle casinos file for bankruptcy.

1996 – Buys out and becomes executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.

October 7, 1999 – Tells CNN’s Larry King that he is going to form a presidential exploratory committee and wants to challenge Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination.

February 14, 2000 – Says that he is abandoning his bid for the presidency, blaming discord within the Reform Party.

January 2004 – “The Apprentice,” a reality show featuring aspiring entrepreneurs competing for Trump’s approval, premieres on NBC.

November 21, 2004 – Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

2005 – Establishes Trump University, which offers seminars in real estate investment.

February 13, 2009 – Announces his resignation from his position as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Days later, the company files for bankruptcy protection.

March 17, 2011 – During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trump questions whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

June 16, 2015 – Announces that he is running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledges to implement policies that will boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”

June 28, 2015 – Says he’s giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.

June 29, 2015 – NBCUniversal says it is cutting its business ties to Trump and won’t air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.”

July 8, 2015 – In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump says he “can’t guarantee” all of his employees have legal status in the United States. This is in response to questions about a Washington Post report about undocumented immigrants working at the Old Post Office construction site in Washington, DC, which Trump is converting into a hotel.

July 22, 2015 – Trump’s financial disclosure report is made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

August 6, 2015 – During the first 2016 Republican debate, Trump is questioned about a third party candidacy, his attitude towards women and his history of donating money to Democratic politicians. He tells moderator Megyn Kelly of Fox News he feels he is being mistreated. The following day, Trump tells CNN’s Don Lemon that Kelly was singling him out for attack, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

September 11, 2015 – Trump announces he has purchased NBC’s half of the Miss Universe Organization, which organizes the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants.

December 7, 2015 – Trump’s campaign puts out a press release calling for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

May 26, 2016 – Secures enough delegates to clinch the Republican Party nomination.

July 16, 2016 – Introduces Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

July 19, 2016 – Becomes the Republican Party nominee for president.

September 13, 2016 – During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is investigating Trump’s charitable foundation “to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

October 1, 2016 – The New York Times reports Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 which could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years. The report is based on a financial document mailed to the newspaper by an anonymous source.

October 7, 2016 – Unaired footage from 2005 surfaces of Trump talking about trying to have sex with a married woman and being able to grope women. In footage obtained by The Washington Post, Trump is heard off-camera discussing women in vulgar terms during the taping of a segment for “Access Hollywood.” In a taped response, Trump declares, “I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.”

October 9, 2016 – During the second presidential debate, CNN’s Cooper asks Trump about his descriptions of groping and kissing women without their consent in the “Access Hollywood” footage. Trump denies that he has ever engaged in such behavior and declares the comments were “locker room talk.” After the debate, 11 women step forward to claim that they were sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by the real estate developer. Trump says the stories aren’t true.

November 8, 2016 – Elected president of the United States. Trump will be the first president who has never held elected office, a top government post or a military rank.

November 18, 2016 – Trump agrees to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement.

December 24, 2016 – Trump says he will dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation “to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President.” A spokeswoman for the New York Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation cannot legally close until investigators conclude their probe of the charity.

January 10, 2017 – CNN reports that intelligence officials briefed Trump on a dossier that contains allegations about his campaign’s ties to Russia and unverified claims about his personal life. The author of the dossier is a former British spy who was hired by a research firm that had been funded by both political parties to conduct opposition research on Trump.

January 20, 2017 – Takes the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts during an inauguration ceremony at the Capitol.

January 23, 2017 – Trump signs an executive action withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration and awaiting congressional approval.

January 27, 2017 – Trump signs an executive order halting all refugee arrivals for 120 days and banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. Additionally, refugees from Syria are barred indefinitely from entering the United States. The order is challenged in court.

February 13, 2017 – Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigns amid accusations he lied about his communications with Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn later pleads guilty to lying to the FBI.

May 3, 2017 – FBI Director James Comey confirms that there is an ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Less than a week later, Trump fires Comey, citing a DOJ memo critical of the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails.

May 2017 – Shortly after Trump fires Comey, the FBI opens an investigation into whether Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests,” citing former law enforcement officials and others the paper said were familiar with the probe.

May 17, 2017 – Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations into Trump’s campaign.

May 19, 2017 – Departs on his first foreign trip as president. The nine-day, five-country trip includes stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a NATO summit in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.

June 1, 2017 – Trump proclaims that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord but adds that he is open to renegotiating aspects of the environmental agreement, which was signed by 175 countries in 2016.

July 7, 2017 – Meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in person for the first time, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

August 8, 2017 – In response to nuclear threats from North Korea, Trump warns that Pyongyang will “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Soon after Trump’s comments, North Korea issues a statement saying it is “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam.

August 15, 2017 – After a violent clash between neo-Nazi activists and counterprotesters leaves one dead in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump holds an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower and declares that there were “fine people” on both sides.

August 25, 2017 – Trump’s first pardon is granted to former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for disregarding a court order in a racial-profiling case. Trump did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department before announcing his decision.

September 5, 2017 – The Trump administration announces that it is ending the DACA program, introduced by Obama to protect nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Trump calls on Congress to introduce legislation that will prevent DACA recipients from being deported. Multiple lawsuits are filed opposing the policy in federal courts and judges delay the end of the program, asking the government to submit filings justifying the cancellation of DACA.

September 19, 2017 – In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and warns that the United States will “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.

September 24, 2017 – The Trump administration unveils a third version of the travel ban, placing restrictions on travel by certain foreigners from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad is later removed after meeting security requirements.) One day before the revised ban is set to take effect, it is blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Hawaii. A judge in Maryland issues a similar ruling.

December 4, 2017 – The Supreme Court rules that the revised travel ban can take effect pending appeals.

December 6, 2017 – Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announces plans to relocate the US Embassy there.

January 11, 2018 – During a White House meeting on immigration reform, Trump reportedly refers to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries.”

January 12, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump allegedly had an affair with a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels. The newspaper states that Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment for a nondisclosure agreement weeks before Election Day in 2016. Trump denies the affair occurred. In March, Clifford sues Trump seeking to be released from the NDA. In response, Trump and his legal team agree outside of court not to sue or otherwise enforce the NDA. The suit is dismissed. A California Superior Court judge orders Trump to pay $44,100 to Clifford, to reimburse her attorneys’ fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.

March 13, 2018 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and will nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson’s replacement.

March 20, 2018 – A New York Supreme Court judge rules that a defamation lawsuit against Trump can move forward, ruling against a July 2017 motion to dismiss filed by Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant, is related to sexual assault allegations. In November 2021, attorneys for Zervos announce she is dropping the lawsuit.

March 23, 2018 – The White House announces that it is adopting a policy, first proposed by Trump via tweet in July 2017, banning most transgender individuals from serving in the military.

April 9, 2018 – The FBI raids Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he’d been staying while his house was renovated. The raid is related to a federal investigation of possible fraud and campaign finance violations.

April 13, 2018 – Trump authorizes joint military strikes in Syria with the UK and France after reports the government used chemical weapons on civilians in Douma.

May 7, 2018 – The Trump administration announces a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings. Sessions says that individuals who violate immigration law will be criminally prosecuted and warns that parents could be separated from children.

May 8, 2018 – Trump announces that the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

May 31, 2018 – The Trump administration announces it is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

June 8-9, 2018 – Before leaving for the G7 summit in Quebec City, Trump tells reporters that Russia should be reinstated in the group. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to Russia’s suspension. After leaving the summit, Trump tweets that he will not endorse the traditional G7 communique issued at the end of the meeting. The President singles out Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for making “false statements” at a news conference.

June 12, 2018 – Trump meets Kim in person for the first time during a summit in Singapore. They sign a four-point statement that broadly outlines the countries’ commitment to a peace process. The statement contains a pledge by North Korea to “work towards” complete denuclearization but the agreement does not detail how the international community will verify that Kim is ending his nuclear program.

June 14, 2018 – The New York attorney general sues the Trump Foundation, alleging that the nonprofit run by Trump and his three eldest children violated state and federal charity law.

June 26, 2018 – The Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s travel ban in a 5-4 ruling along party lines.

July 16, 2018 – During a joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Trump declines to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. The next day, Trump clarifies his remark, “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.” He says he accepts the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election but adds, “It could be other people also.”

August 21, 2018 – Cohen pleads guilty to eight federal charges, including two campaign finance violations. In court, he says that he orchestrated payments to silence women “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort is convicted on eight counts of federal financial crimes. On December 12, Cohen is sentenced to three years in prison.

October 2, 2018 – The New York Times details numerous tax avoidance schemes allegedly carried out by Trump and his siblings. In a tweet, Trump dismisses the article as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

November 20, 2018 – Releases a statement backing Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Virginia resident, killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi regime. The Saudis initially denied any knowledge of his death, but then later said a group of rogue operators were responsible for his killing. US officials have speculated that such a mission, including the 15 men sent from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to murder him, could not have been carried out without the authorization of Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the statement, Trump writes, “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

December 18, 2018 – The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve according to a document filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The agreement allows the New York attorney general’s office to review the recipients of the charity’s assets.

December 22, 2018 – The longest partial government shutdown in US history begins after Trump demands lawmakers allocate $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall before agreeing to sign a federal funding package.

January 16, 2019 – After nearly two years of Trump administration officials denying that anyone involved in his campaign colluded with the Russians to help his candidacy, Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani, says “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign. I said the President of the United States.”

January 25, 2019 – The government shutdown ends when Trump signs a short-term spending measure, providing three weeks of stopgap funding while lawmakers work on a border security compromise. The bill does not include any wall funding.

February 15, 2019 – Trump declares a national emergency to allocate funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico. During the announcement, the President says he expects the declaration to be challenged in court. The same day, Trump signs a border security measure negotiated by Congress, with $1.375 billion set aside for barriers, averting another government shutdown.

February 18, 2019 – Attorneys general from 16 states file a lawsuit in federal court challenging Trump’s emergency declaration.

March 22, 2019 – Mueller ends his investigation and delivers his report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official tells CNN that there will be no further indictments.

March 24, 2019 – Barr releases a letter summarizing the principal conclusions from Mueller’s investigation. According to Barr’s four-page letter, the evidence was not sufficient to establish that members Trump’s campaign tacitly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the election.

April 18, 2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released. The first part of the 448-page document details the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team on potential conspiracy crimes and explains their decisions not to charge individuals associated with the campaign. The second part of the report outlines ten episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the President. According to the report, Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump was rooted in Justice Department guidelines prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. Mueller writes that he would have cleared Trump if the evidence warranted exoneration.

May 1, 2019 – The New York Times publishes a report that details how Giuliani, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, is investigating allegations related to former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. In 2016, the elder Biden pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who had investigated Burisma for corruption. Giuliani suggests that Biden’s move was motivated by a desire to protect his son from criminal charges. Giuliani’s claims are undermined after Bloomberg reports that the Burisma investigation was “dormant” when Biden pressed the prosecutor to resign.

June 12, 2019 – Trump says he may be willing to accept information about political rivals from a foreign government during an interview on ABC News, declaring that he’s willing to listen and wouldn’t necessarily call the FBI.

June 16, 2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils a sign at the proposed site of a Golan Heights settlement to be named Trump Heights.

June 18, 2019 – Trump holds a rally in Orlando to publicize the formal launch of his reelection campaign.

June 28, 2019 – During a breakfast meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reportedly discuss tensions with Iran, trade and human rights.

June 30, 2019 – Trump becomes the first sitting US president to enter North Korea. He takes 20 steps beyond the border and shakes hands with Kim.

July 14, 2019 – Via Twitter, Trump tells Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley to “go back” to their home countries. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens; Omar was born in Somalia, immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.

July 16, 2019 – The House votes, 240-187, to condemn the racist language Trump used in his tweets about Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley.

July 24, 2019 – Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

July 25, 2019 – Trump speaks on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” encouraging him to speak with Giuliani about investigating Biden. In the days before the call, Trump blocked nearly $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine.

August 12, 2019 – A whistleblower files a complaint pertaining to Trump’s conduct on the Zelensky call.

September 11, 2019 – The Trump administration lifts its hold on military aid for Ukraine.

September 24, 2019 – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the beginning of an impeachment inquiry related to the whistleblower complaint.

September 25, 2019 – The White House releases notes from the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky. The readout contains multiple references to Giuliani and Barr. In response, the Justice Department issues a statement that says Barr didn’t know about Trump’s conversation until weeks after the call. Further, the attorney general didn’t talk to the President about having Ukraine investigate the Bidens, according to the Justice Department. On the same day as the notes are released, Trump and Zelensky meet in person for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. During a joint press conference after the meeting, both men deny that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden in exchange for aid.

September 26, 2019 – The House releases a declassified version of the whistleblower complaint. According to the complaint, officials at the White House tried to “lock down” records of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky. The complaint also alleges that Barr played a role in the campaign to convince Zelensky that Biden should be investigated. Trump describes the complaint as “fake news” and “a witch hunt” on Twitter.

September 27, 2019 – Pompeo is subpoenaed by House committees over his failure to provide documents related to Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US special envoy to Ukraine, resigns. He was named in the whistleblower complaint as one of the State Department officials who helped Giuliani connect with sources in Ukraine.

October 3, 2019 – Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump says both Ukraine and China should investigate alleged corruption involving Biden and his son. CNN reports that the President had brought up Biden and his family during a June phone call with Xi Jinping. In that call, Trump discussed the political prospects of Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren. He also told Xi that he would remain quiet on the matter of Hong Kong protests. Notes documenting the conversation were placed on a highly secured server where the transcript from the Ukraine call was also stored.

October 6, 2019 – After Trump speaks on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House announces that US troops will move out of northern Syria to make way for a planned Turkish military operation. The move marks a major shift in American foreign policy and effectively gives Turkey the green light to attack US-backed Kurdish forces, a partner in the fight against ISIS.

October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive in northern Syria.

October 31, 2019 – Trump says via Twitter that he is changing his legal residency from New York to Florida, explaining that he feels he is treated badly by political leaders from the city and state.

November 7, 2019 – A judge orders Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit against his charity filed by the New York state attorney general. According to the suit, Trump breached his fiduciary duty by allowing his presidential campaign to direct the distribution of donations. In a statement, Trump accuses the attorney general of mischaracterizing the settlement for political purposes.

November 13, 2019 – Public impeachment hearings begin and Trump meets Erdogan at the White House.

November 20, 2019 – During a public hearing, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland says he worked with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine at the “express direction of the President of the United States” and he says “everyone was in the loop.” Sondland recounts several conversations between himself and Trump about Ukraine opening two investigations: one into Burisma and another into conspiracies about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 US election.

December 10, 2019 – House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.

December 11, 2019 – Trump signs an executive order to include discrimination against Jewish people as a violation of law in certain cases, with an eye toward fighting antisemitism on college campuses.

December 13, 2019 – The House Judiciary Committee approves the two articles of impeachment in a party line vote.

December 18, 2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump, charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for just the third time in American history.

January 3, 2020 – Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump announces that a US airstrike in Iraq has killed Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force.

January 8, 2020 – Iran fires a number of missiles at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in retaliation for the American strike that killed Soleimani. No US or Iraqi lives are reported lost, but the Pentagon later releases a statement confirming that 109 US service members had been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the attack.

January 24, 2020 – Makes history as the first President to attend the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC, since it began nearly a half-century ago. Trump reiterates his support for tighter abortion restrictions.

January 29, 2020 – Trump signs the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement into law, which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.

January 31, 2020 – The Trump administration announces an expansion of the travel ban to include six new countries. Immigration restrictions will be imposed on: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar (known as Burma), with exceptions for immigrants who have helped the United States.

February 5, 2020 – The Senate votes to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney is the sole Republican to vote to convict on the charge of abuse of power, joining with all Senate Democrats in a 52-48 not guilty vote. On the obstruction of Congress charge, the vote falls along straight party lines, 53-47 for acquittal.

May 29, 2020 – Trump announces that the United States will terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization.

July 10, 2020 – Trump commutes the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress in part, prosecutors said, to protect the President. The announcement came just days before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.

October 2, 2020 – Trump announces that he has tested positive for coronavirus. Later in the day, Trump is transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and returns to the White House on October 5.

November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump loses his bid for reelection to Biden.

November 25, 2020 – Trump announces in a tweet that he has granted Michael Flynn a “full pardon,” wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official for lying to the FBI.

December 23, 2020 – Announces 26 new pardons, including for Stone, Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

January 6, 2021 – Following Trump’s rally and speech at the White House Ellipse, pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol as members of Congress meet to certify the Electoral College results of the 2020 presidential election. A total of five people die, including a Capitol Police officer the next day.

January 7-8, 2021 – Instagram and Facebook place a ban on Trump’s account from posting through the remainder of his presidency and perhaps “indefinitely.” Twitter permanently bans Trump from the platform, explaining that “after close review of recent Tweets…and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

January 13, 2021 – The House votes to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” He is the only president to be impeached twice.

January 20, 2021 – Trump issues a total of 143 pardons and commutations that include his onetime political strategist, Steve Bannon, a former top fundraiser and two well-known rappers but not himself or his family. He then receives a military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning, before heading home to Florida.

February 13, 2021 – The US Senate acquits Trump in his second impeachment trial, voting that Trump is not guilty of inciting the deadly January 6 riots at the US Capitol. The vote is 43 not guilty to 57 guilty, short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict.

May 5, 2021 – Facebook’s Oversight Board upholds Trump’s suspension from using its platform. The decision also applies to Facebook-owned Instagram.

June 4, 2021 – Facebook announces Trump will be suspended from its platform until at least January 7th, 2023 – two years from when he was initially suspended.

July 1, 2021 – New York prosecutors charge the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corporation with 10 felony counts and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg with 15 felony counts in connection with an alleged tax scheme stretching back to 2005. Trump himself is not charged. On December 6, 2022, both companies are found guilty on all charges.

February 14, 2022 – Accounting firm Mazars announces it will no longer act as Trump’s accountant, citing a conflict of interest. In a letter to the Trump Organization chief legal officer, the firm informs the Trump Organization to no longer rely on financial statements ending June 2011 through June 2020.

May 3, 2022 – The Trump Organization and the Presidential Inaugural Committee agree to pay a total of $750,000 to settle with the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office over allegations they misspent money raised for former President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

June 9-July 21, 2022 – The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds eight hearings, where it hears from witnesses including top ex-Trump officials, election workers, those who took part in the attack and many others. Through live testimony, video depositions, and never-before-seen material, the committee attempts to paint the picture of the former president’s plan to stay in power and the role he played on January 6.

August 8, 2022 – The FBI executes a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.

August 12, 2022 – A federal judge unseals the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The unsealed documents indicate the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from its search, including some materials marked as “top secret/SCI” – one of the highest levels of classification, and identify three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.

September 21, 2022 – The New York state attorney general files a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging they were involved in an expansive fraud lasting over a decade that the former President used to enrich himself. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals.

October 3, 2022 – Trump files a lawsuit against CNN for defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

November 15, 2022 – Announces that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

November 19, 2022 – Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is reinstated after users respond to an online poll posted by Twitter CEO and new owner Elon Musk.

December 19, 2022 – The Jan. 6 insurrection committee votes to refer Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges. Four days later the panel releases its final report recommending Trump be barred from holding office again.

February 9, 2023 – Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts are restored following a two-year ban in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, a Meta spokesperson confirms to CNN. On March 17, 2023, YouTube restores Trump’s channel.

March 30, 2023 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

April 4, 2023 – Surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan criminal court. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs. Hours after his arraignment, Trump rails against the Manhattan district attorney and the indictment during a speech at his Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago.

May 9, 2023 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

May 15, 2023 – A report by special counsel John Durham is released. In it he concludes that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The report does not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

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April 12, 2021
On Trump indictment, Senate GOP leaders silent while top House Republicans vow payback | CNN Politics

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The top two Republican leaders in the Senate remain silent a day after former President Donald Trump, the current GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner, was indicted by the federal government.

While the charges have yet to be unsealed, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Whip John Thune have not put out statements, a stark contrast to the swift reaction among House GOP leaders who quickly rushed to Trump’s defense.

“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted Thursday night. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

The third ranking GOP senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, put out a statement Friday, saying, “This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice.”

“Nobody is above the law,” Barrasso tweeted. “Yet it seems like some are.”

House and Senate Republican leaders have diverged for years on how and whether to even respond to Donald Trump’s legal woes. During Trump’s first indictment this spring, McConnell didn’t jump in to defend Trump and when he returned in April after a fall and was asked at a news conference by CNN’s Manu Raju about the indictment, he dodged.

“I may have hit my head, but I didn’t hit it that hard,” McConnell said at the time. “Good try.”

For McConnell, who has not maintained a relationship with Trump since January 6, 2021, the former president could be viewed as a distraction from his ultimate goals of recapturing the Senate. But for McCarthy, an alliance to Trump is an important factor for assuaging those in his right flank, especially at a moment when the House speaker has come under fire for a deal he cut with President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling.

There are still a number of Senate Republicans who have come out backing Trump including Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and who is backing the former president. Daines has stayed in touch with Trump, as he’s sought to recruit candidates in primaries across the country. He tweeted Friday, “The two standards of justice under Biden’s DOJ is appalling. When will Hunter Biden be charged?”

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, was asked multiple times during an interview on Fox News on Thursday night about the lack of response from Senate leadership. Hawley’s only response was he did not know why leadership had not weighed in yet, and, “I can’t speak for anyone else.”

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also a member of the GOP Senate leadership team, tweeted Friday that the presumption of innocence in America should also apply to Trump and attacked Democrats who cheered the news.

“It is sad to see some Democratic politicians cheering this indictment and presuming guilt for sheer political gain, despite the fact that President Biden himself is under federal investigation for mishandling classified documents,” Tillis said in his statement.

Several Republican senators, many of whom have already endorsed Trump in the upcoming presidential election, were quick to jump to Trump’s defense and attacked the Department of Justice.

But in stark contrast to the silence from Senate Republican leadership and staunch support from House GOP members, Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski stressed the severity of the charges Friday.

Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, said, “By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others.”

In a statement, Romney added, “These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection.”

Murkowski, who also voted to convict Trump in an impeachment trial after the insurrection, said Friday evening that the charges against the former president are “quite serious.”

“Mishandling classified documents is a federal crime because it can expose national secrets, as well as the sources and methods they were obtained through. The unlawful retention and obstruction of justice related to classified documents are also criminal matters,” she said on Twitter.

“Anyone found guilty – whether an analyst, a former president, or another elected or appointed official – should face the same set of consequences,” she added.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, meanwhile, called the obstruction allegations against Trump “inexcusable.”

“As a retired brigadier general who worked with classified materials my entire career, I am shocked at the callousness of how these documents were handled,” Bacon told CNN on Friday. The congressman has long been critical of Trump and represents a swing state in Nebraska.

“The alleged obstruction to the requests of the National Archives and FBI, if true, is inexcusable,” he said in the statement, adding: “No one is above the law, and we demand due process and expect equality under the law.”

Meanwhile, top House Republicans took swift aim at the Department of Justice, special counsel Jack Smith, the FBI and Attorney General Merrick Garland in the wake of the indictment.

“We ought to defund and dismantle the DOJ,” ultra-conservative Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted shortly after Trump announced the news on Truth Social.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise immediately rushed to Trump’s defense, attacking the Justice Department over his indictment and vowing to hold the administration accountable.

“Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Joe Biden is weaponizing his Department of Justice against his own political rival. This sham indictment is the continuation of the endless political persecution of Donald Trump,” Scalise tweeted.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer echoed that sentiment Friday morning, tweeting, “This is the ultimate abuse of power, and they will be held accountable.”

Some House Republicans, going much further than the speaker, called for the impeachment of Biden, Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray before seeing the details of the indictment.

“It is time for Congress to rein in the FBI and DOJ, and impeach President Biden, Attorney General Garland, and Director Wray,” Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins said in a statement.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
McCarthy floats potential impeachment inquiry into Garland over IRS whistleblower claims | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Speaker Kevin McCarthy is floating the possibility that the House could open an impeachment inquiry into Attorney General Merrick Garland over Internal Revenue Service whistleblower allegations that Justice Department leadership improperly interfered in the Hunter Biden probe, which Garland has denied.

“If it comes true what the IRS whistleblower is saying, we’re going to start impeachment inquiries on the attorney general,” McCarthy said Monday on Fox News.

In congressional testimony publicly released on Thursday, two IRS whistleblowers alleged to lawmakers that the president’s son had been given preferential treatment by the Justice Department.

McCarthy said on Fox News that the IRS agents who came forward “watched the abuse of power in how Hunter Biden was treated.”

The allegation that the DOJ has been politicized against conservatives has been central to how House Republicans approach their congressional investigations, though there is scant evidence backing up most of their claims.

Garland rejected those claim during a Friday news conference.

“Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department … by claiming that we do not treat like cases alike,” Garland said. “This constitutes an attack on an instutiton that is essential to American democracy … nothing could be further from the truth.”

Regarding the Hunter Biden probe, the whistleblowers made several explosive allegations, including that the IRS had recommended far more serious charges for the president’s son and that US Attorney in Delaware David Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in other states.

Garland said Friday that Weiss was “permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.”

“I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority,” Garland said.

Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a felony gun charge, the Justice Department said Tuesday in court filings.

As part of the plea agreement, the Justice Department has agreed to recommend a sentence of probation for the two counts of failing to pay taxes in a timely matter for the years 2017 and 2018, according to sources. Hunter Biden owed at least $100,000 in federal taxes for 2017, and at least $100,000 in 2018, but did not pay what was due to the IRS by the deadlines.

A judge will have the final say on any sentence.

Garland said Friday he would “support Mr. Weiss explaining or testifying” about the allegations raised by the whistleblowers “when he deems it appropriate.”

McCarthy said on Fox News Monday, “We have requested by July 6, Weiss to come in and answer these questions because the IRS whistleblowers took copious notes.”

The federal prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation sent a letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan in early June saying that he had “ultimate authority” over the probe.

Weiss, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, makes clear in a letter obtained by CNN that he was granted this authority, cutting against Republican claims that Garland and the DOJ are “weaponized” against conservatives and politicizing the Hunter Biden case.

“I want to make clear that, as the attorney general has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations” Weiss wrote to Jordan on June 7.

In response, Jordan has asked Weiss to explain and provide further information about the letter stating he had “ultimate authority” over the probe.

Jordan asked in a letter to Weiss why he was the one to respond to Congress on June 7, when the initial letter from Jordan about alleged retaliation against the IRS whistleblowers was addressed to Garland. “Who instructed you to sign and send your June 7 letter to the committee?,” Jordan asked.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer pushed back in a statement on Friday against the whistleblowers’ claims, saying it was “preposterous and deeply irresponsible” to suggest that federal investigators “cut my client any slack” during their “extensive” five-year probe.

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April 12, 2021