Tag: us house of representatives

Scalise faces a key math problem as he struggles to collect 217 votes for speaker | CNN Politics

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Majority Leader Steve Scalise is scrambling to lock down the votes to become the next House speaker, but protracted opposition to the Louisiana Republican inside the GOP conference and the numerical realities of the narrowly divided chamber could ultimately derail his bid.

Several senior Republicans see little path to 217 votes, after Scalise won just 113 votes in the GOP conference, which includes three delegates who don’t have a vote on the House floor. Making up that deficit in just a matter of days is an extremely tall order – plus a number of hard-right Republicans say they are dead-set against Scalise, when he can only afford to lose four GOP votes on the floor. At least 12 GOP lawmakers have said publicly they’ll oppose Scalise’s nomination and more have expressed frustration or skepticism about his leadership, more than enough to sink his bid.

House GOP members will huddle behind closed doors Thursday afternoon, according to two sources familiar. No phones will be allowed in the meeting.

Republicans are worried that Scalise is facing grim prospects of becoming speaker, an impasse that threatens to prolong the GOP’s leadership crisis that has left the House paralyzed and unable to move on any legislation.

Late Wednesday, members of the conference were beginning to weigh how they would handle the potential collapse of his bid, with several GOP sources saying they believe they’d have to consider a new candidate who has yet to run for the speakership.

Scalise spent Wednesday after the vote meeting individually with GOP members as he and his whip operation tried to convince the holdouts to come around, the sources said. He found some success in the outreach, but it’s not yet clear whether he can win over enough Republicans to overcome the razor-thin GOP House majority.

Scalise or any other Republican candidate for speaker needs 217 votes to win the speaker’s gavel, a majority of the entire House, meaning they can only afford to lose four Republicans if every member is voting.

Rep. Jim Jordan, who lost the vote for speaker to Scalise on Wednesday, 113-99, said Thursday he wants Republicans to unite around Scalise. “I do and I’ve been clear about that since yesterday,” Jordan said.

But pressed on if he would rule out taking the job if Scalise can’t get there, Jordan didn’t give a clear answer. “I will nominate Steve on the floor and I hope we can unite around a speaker,” the Ohio Republican said.

The opposition to Scalise inside his party has thrown into doubt how Republicans will get out of their speaker conundrum that’s left them simply unable to govern.

While there was some belief on Capitol Hill that the brutal assault on Israel over the weekend might prompt Republicans to quickly select a leader – House lawmakers were given a classified briefing on Israel Wednesday before the conference vote for speaker – the deep divisions in the conference that led to Kevin McCarthy’s removal last week have now left the quest for a new speaker at a standstill.

Anger inside the conference is rising.

“These folks are destroying our conference and apparently want to be in the minority,” said Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a swing Nebraska district. “They don’t respect the customs of the House that have gone on for over two centuries.”

The House gavels back in at noon Thursday, but there’s no indication Republicans will be ready to vote on a speaker.

Scalise is facing broad skepticism inside the far-right House Freedom Caucus, a key bloc of Republicans who mostly supported the Trump-backed Jordan for speaker, multiple sources told CNN, citing a general lack of trust with Republican leadership. Scalise has been in leadership years, although he is more conservative than McCarthy.

Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, threw his weight behind Scalise following Wednesday’s vote, saying he was encouraging his supporters to do the same. “We need a speaker and Steve is the guy for that. Like I said, I have offered to give a nominating speech for him,” the Ohio Republican told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

But there was a cohort of lawmakers who expressed staunch opposition to voting for Scalise on the House floor.

“Well, Leader Scalise won, and it’s not over. I’m still throwing my support behind Jim Jordan for speaker. I’m not going to change my vote now or any time soon on the House floor,” said GOP Rep. Max Miller of Ohio.

Scalise’s individual outreach did peel off at least one holdout. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who initially said Wednesday that she would vote for Jordan on the floor, met with Scalise and said afterward she felt “comfortable” enough to support his speaker nomination.

While she said he did not make specific commitments, he did assure her that he’ll allow her to “aggressively” do her job on the Oversight Committee, which is part of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

But Luna said she would only back Scalise for the speakership on the first ballot. If it went to multiple ballots, she said, “we must find a candidate” the conference can unite behind.

Still, a number of Republicans don’t think that Jordan could be a viable alternative given that he lost to Scalise in the nominating contest, and some Republicans were irritated when he didn’t immediately close ranks behind Scalise.

“If Scalise were not to make it, the next person got less votes,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida said of Jordan. “And by the way, I think, more controversial. So that would not be a good thing for this place.”

Rep. Erin Houchin of Indiana said she doesn’t know if “it will be Jordan or Scalise or even someone else at this point. … I think we’re in uncharted territory, and it’s gonna be very hard to predict.”

Another GOP member said that it would have to be a new candidate altogether, something that would take longer to sort out.

“Steve is nowhere near 217,” said the Republican member.

Leaving the floor without a vote Wednesday, interim Speaker Patrick McHenry tried to be optimistic the House GOP conference would solve the impasse soon.

Asked if there could be a floor vote Thursday, the North Carolina Republican said, “That’s the hope.”

Could anyone get the 217 votes required? He had the same response: “That’s the hope.”

This story and headline have been updated to include additional developments.

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October 12, 2023
House GOP gears up to pick speaker nominee, but it’s unclear if any candidate can get the votes | CNN Politics
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House Republicans are set to meet behind closed doors Wednesday to pick a nominee to be the next speaker – but it remains unclear whether any candidate will have enough the support to win the gavel following Kevin McCarthy’s abrupt ouster.

As of now, neither House Majority Leader Steve Scalise nor Rep. Jim Jordan – the two declared GOP candidates in the race – have locked down 217 votes, the necessary number to be elected speaker by a majority vote of the full chamber. The uncertain vote math has raised questions over how and when the GOP majority will be able to elect a new speaker, particularly as infighting continues to roil House Republican ranks.

Until a speaker is elected, the House remains effectively paralyzed following McCarthy’s ouster, an unprecedented situation that has taken on new urgency amid Israel’s war against Hamas. Raising the stakes further, the longer it takes Republicans to elect a new speaker, the less time lawmakers will have to try to avert a government shutdown with a funding deadline looming in mid-November.

Following a candidate forum Tuesday evening, Rep. Mike Garcia, a California Republican, said he thinks it’s “50/50” on whether the GOP will be able to elect a speaker Wednesday.

Asked whether anyone could get 217 votes, he said: “I think that’s a great question right now.”

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky rated the odds even lower. “I’d put it at 2%,” he said when asked by a reporter what the chances are there will be a new House speaker by Wednesday.

After his removal as speaker in a historic vote last week, McCarthy announced he would not run again for the post. But allies of the former speaker could still nominate him during Wednesday’s closed-door meeting, though McCarthy has said he has told members not to do so.

Currently, a candidate needs only a simple majority of the conference – or 111 votes – to win the GOP nomination for speaker, a much lower threshold than the 217 votes needed to win the gavel on the House floor.

A number of Republicans now say that threshold is too low because it does not ensure that the nominee will be able to win the floor vote for speaker.

As a result, there has been a push to raise the threshold to secure the GOP nomination from a majority of House Republicans to a majority of the full House in a bid to avoid a protracted floor fight like the one in January when it took 15 rounds of voting for McCarthy to win the gavel.

House Republicans are expected to vote on whether to raise that threshold during Wednesday’s meeting.

Here’s how the meeting is expected to unfold:
Republican members will gather behind closed doors Wednesday morning.

First, they will vote on whether to change conference rules to raise the threshold to nominate a speaker and any other changes.

Then, members will stand up to formally nominate a candidate and give a short speech.

There will be a secret ballot and members can write in candidates. Results are counted by hand.

If there are more than two candidates, the candidate with the lowest number of votes gets knocked out. Republicans would then vote on the top two.
It’s not clear when the House will hold a vote of the full chamber to elect a new speaker. It could happen as soon as Wednesday – though only if Republicans pick a nominee for their conference first.

The timing of the House floor vote is technically up to Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry, who is serving in the top leadership spot on an interim basis. However, he is expected to defer to whoever the GOP nominee is, and the timing of the vote will be their call.
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October 11, 2023
McCarthy will not run for speaker again after House votes to oust him | CNN Politics

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Kevin McCarthy will not run for speaker again after the House ousted him from the top leadership post in a historic vote on Tuesday, a move that threatens to plunge House Republicans into even further chaos and turmoil.

The House will now need to elect a new speaker. There is no clear alternative to McCarthy who would have the support needed to win the gavel, but the race for a potential successor is already underway.

The vote to oust McCarthy and his decision not to run for the speakership again marks a major escalation in tensions for a House GOP conference that has been mired in infighting – and it comes just days after McCarthy successfully engineered a last-minute bipartisan effort to avert a government shutdown. No House speaker has ever before been ousted through the passage of a resolution to remove them.

“I don’t regret standing up for choosing governing over grievance. It is my responsibility. It is my job. I do not regret negotiating. Our government is designed to find compromise,” McCarthy said at a wide-ranging press conference Tuesday evening.

Dozens of his staffers were in the room listening with many emotional and hugging each other.

McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju he “might” endorse a successor and did not say whether he would remain in Congress. “I’ll look at that,” he said when asked.

McCarthy also unloaded on his critics. Asked by Raju if there’s anything he would have done differently with regard to the eight House Republicans who voted to oust him, McCarthy joked, “Yeah, a lot of them I helped get elected so I probably should have picked someone else.”

A number of House Republicans are said to be considering jumping into the race for speaker. It’s a scramble as House Republicans do not have a plan nor are they unified behind a candidate.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who has been the No. 2 Republican, has started reaching out to members about a potential speakership bid, according to a source familiar.

Immediately following the vote, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry, a top McCarthy ally, was named interim speaker and the House went into recess as Republicans scrambled to find a path forward. The House is expected to stay out of session for the rest of the week, and Republicans are expected to hold a speaker candidate forum in a week.

The effort to oust the speaker was led by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz and comes as a bloc of hardline conservatives continued to rebel against McCarthy, voting against key priorities of GOP leadership and repeatedly throwing up roadblocks to the speaker’s agenda.

The vote was 216 to 210 with eight Republicans voting to remove McCarthy from the speakership. The Republicans voting to oust McCarthy as speaker were: Gaetz, Eli Crane and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

A number of House Republicans reacted with shock and frustration following the vote.

McCarthy ally and House Rules Chairman Tom Cole said, “Nobody knows what’s going happen next, including all the people that voted to vacate (they) have no earthly idea what, they have no plan. They have no alternative at this point. So it’s just simply a vote for chaos.”

House Democrats signaled ahead of the vote that they would not bail out McCarthy.

There is a significant amount of distrust and anger from House Democrats toward McCarthy, however, over his actions as speaker and the House GOP agenda.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a letter to his caucus that leadership planned to vote in support of removing McCarthy ahead of the final vote.

“It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican Civil War. Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,” he wrote.

Prior to the final vote, the House failed to table – or block – the effort to oust McCarthy by a vote of 208 to 218 with 11 Republicans voting against the motion to table. The GOP no votes were Gaetz, Crane, Biggs, Buck, Rosendale, Good, Mace, Burchett, Cory Mills of Florida, Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Warren Davidson of Ohio.

McCarthy also told his members he will not cut a deal with Democrats, sources said.

Gaetz was directly pressed by his colleagues during a Tuesday party meeting for his grand plan, and who would replace McCarthy if he was ousted, sources said. Gaetz stood up and responded that there would need to be a new speaker’s election that plays out but didn’t name anyone he had in mind for the job.

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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October 3, 2023
New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulls fire alarm in House office building but says it was an accident | CNN Politics

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Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building on Saturday morning, shortly before the House was scheduled to vote on a government funding bill, which the New York Democrat said was an accident.

The incident was first revealed by House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin.

“Rep (Jamaal) Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Cannon this morning. An investigation into why it was pulled is underway,” Steil said in a statement.

Bowman’s office said it was an accident, and the congressman told reporters later Saturday: “I was trying to get to a door. I thought the alarm would open the door and I pulled the fire alarm to open the door by accident.”

“I was just trying to get to my vote and the door that’s usually open wasn’t open, it was closed,” Bowman added.

Leadership in both parties was informed of the situation once Bowman was identified in security footage, a source familiar said.

Rep. Lisa McClain, a Michigan Republican and member of the GOP leadership team, told CNN she is circulating a resolution to censure Bowman over the incident. She said she already has co-sponsors.

Bowman, however, laughed off the GOP response to the incident on Saturday, telling reporters, “They’re gonna do what they do. This is what they do.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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September 30, 2023
Government on brink of shutdown ahead of midnight deadline as McCarthy slates last-minute vote | CNN Politics

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Federal agencies are making final preparations with the government on the brink of a shutdown and congressional lawmakers racing against Saturday’s critical midnight deadline – as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy mounts a last-minute push to avert the lapse in funding.

McCarthy announced that the House will vote on a 45-day short-term spending bill Saturday, and it will include the natural disaster aid that the White House requested.

The bill does not include $6 billion in funding to aid Ukraine, a key concession that many House Republicans demanded and a blow to allies of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who lobbied Congress earlier this month for additional assistance.

Asked if he is concerned that a member, including Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, could move to oust him over this bill, McCarthy replied, “If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that.”

Infighting among House Republicans has played a central role in bringing Congress to a standoff over spending – and it is not yet clear how the issue will be resolved, raising concerns on Capitol Hill that a shutdown, if triggered, may not be easy to end.

Democrats in the House have been trying to slow down passage of the GOP-led continuing resolution throughout the day Saturday, objecting to being forced to vote on a bill just introduced and wanting to keep Ukraine aid. It’s unclear how long Democrats will stall the House from voting.

House Republicans met throughout Saturday morning, seesawing between options for how to proceed. Republicans including veteran appropriators and those in swing districts pushed to bring a short-term resolution to keep the government funded for 45 days to the House floor for a vote Saturday.

McCarthy has faced threats to keeping his job throughout the month if he works with Democrats as he endures a consistent resistance from the hardline conservatives in his own party.

A shutdown is expected to have consequential impacts across the country, from air travel to clean drinking water, and many government operations would grind to a halt – though services deemed essential for public safety would continue.

Both chambers are scheduled to be in session Saturday, just hours before the deadline. The Senate was expected to take procedural steps to advance their own plan to keep the government funded – GOP Sen. Rand Paul had vowed all week to slow that process beyond the midnight deadline over objections to the bill’s funding for the war in Ukraine. The Senate is now waiting to see how the House developments shake out before proceeding.

But Paul told CNN on Saturday afternoon that he won’t slow down the Senate’s consideration of the House GOP’s 45-day spending bill, if it passes the House and the Senate takes it up, allowing the Senate the ability to move the bill quickly – though any one other senator could slow that down beyond the midnight deadline.

House Republicans have so far thrown cold water on a bipartisan Senate proposal to keep the government funded through November 17, but they have failed to coalesce around a plan of their own to avert a shutdown amid resistance from a bloc of hardline conservatives to any kind of short-term funding extension.

“After meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” McCarthy wrote on X. “The House will continue to work around the clock to keep government open and prioritize the needs of the American people.”

His late Friday night message came after a two-hour conference meeting in the Capitol, where McCarthy floated several different options – including putting the Senate bill on the floor or passing a short-term bill that excludes Ukraine money. But there is still no consensus on what – if anything – they will put on the House floor Saturday to avoid a government shutdown.

McCarthy suffered another high-profile defeat on Friday when the House failed to advance a last-ditch stopgap bill.

In the aftermath of Friday’s failed vote, McCarthy told reporters he had proposed putting up a “clean” stopgap bill, and said he was “working through maybe to be able to do that.”

“We’re continuing to work through – trying to find the way out of this,” McCarthy said.

The Senate’s bipartisan bill would provide additional funds for Ukraine aid, creating a point of contention with the House where many Republicans are opposed to further support to the war-torn country.

McCarthy argued on Friday that aid to Ukraine should be dropped from the Senate bill. “I think if we had a clean one without Ukraine on it, we could probably be able to move that through. I think if the Senate puts Ukraine on there and focuses on Ukraine over America, I think that could cause real problems,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.

The Senate, meanwhile, is working to advance its own bipartisan stopgap bill. The chamber is on track to take a procedural vote Saturday afternoon to move forward with the bill, particularly if the last-minute House bill falters. But it’s not yet clear when senators could take a final vote to pass the bill and it may not happen until Monday, after the government has already shut down.

Border security has also become a complicating factor for the Senate bill as many Republicans now want to see the bill amended to address the issue.

Senate Republicans said Friday that they were still discussing what kind of border amendment they would want to add to the bill, and were unsure if the chamber could even advance the bill in Saturday’s procedural vote without the addition of a border amendment.

“Nothing’s really coming together, too many moving parts at this stage,” said Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican. “I think what I understand is we’re going to have a vote tomorrow … and other than that, there’s nothing that’s really crystallized in anything that probably would be palatable with the House.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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September 30, 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
White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden and his top aides at the White House plan to hammer away at a blunt message as the US government inches closer to a shutdown this week: A handful of extremist Republicans are entirely to blame for the havoc that would be unleashed across the country.

For Biden, there’s a lot riding on that message getting through to Americans.

Biden’s advisers have been assessing for weeks how involved to get in lawmakers’ deliberations to fund the government ahead of the end-of-month deadline, and ultimately decided to take a hands-off approach. The expectation: Should the Republican-led House struggle to reach consensus, they would ultimately shoulder the blame for any disruption.

“Watch the GOP struggle and force them to govern or be blamed for shutdown,” a Biden administration official said, summing up the strategy.

The White House is planning to dispatch a number of Cabinet officials this week to help lay out the broad range of ramifications if the government were to shutdown – everything from flight delays to childcare centers shutting down.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will appear at Monday’s White House news briefing to discuss how a government shutdown could hit everything from food programs to loans for farmers, a White House official said.

“This would stop us in our tracks,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN on Sunday. “A shutdown that would mean service members wouldn’t get paid, coming back to transportation to air traffic controllers who would be working in the towers. They wouldn’t get paid.”

Over the weekend, White House officials continued to monitor for any signs of movement on Capitol Hill to extend funding for the federal government ahead of the deadline. How to handle a possible shutdown was a key agenda item when White House chief of staff Jeff Zients huddled with senior advisers in the West Wing on Saturday, according to people familiar. But heading into a new work week, Republican members had not put anything realistic on the table, officials said, leaving the White House bracing for what is to come.

In the days ahead, the president and his allies will repeatedly point to “who’s responsible” for the mess that could unfold, one senior administration official said simply.

The White House took a similar approach this spring during the debt ceiling negotiations, but not without a seeming hit to Biden. In a CNN poll conducted mid-May, 59% of respondents said the president was not acting responsibly as talks stalled and the government careened toward default. The difference then: Republicans had coalesced around a specific position, passing a bill in the House that reflected their priorities and catching the White House off guard. Negotiations escalated in the weeks that followed, resulting in a deal that set broad guardrails around federal spending for the 2024 fiscal year.

That deal was supposed to usher in months of in-depth appropriations work that would yield a full-year spending package and avert a government shutdown. Now, the White House says Republicans dropped the ball.

Speaking over the weekend at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner, Biden said it was “small group of extreme Republicans” that was refusing to “live up to the deal” that he had struck months ago with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“The president did his job,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked whether the White House would do anything to stave off a shutdown. “This is not something we can fix. The best plan is for House Republicans to stop their partisan political play and not do this to hurt Americans across the country. That’s the plan.”

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September 25, 2023
GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

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The House on Thursday has voted down a rule that would have advanced a Defense Department bill, another stumbling block for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership ahead of a looming government shutdown deadline.

The final vote was 216-212.

While the specific legislation is separate from a proposal to keep the government funded beyond the present September 30 deadline, the defeat is another sign of divisions within the House Republican Conference, which has been negotiating for days to come up with a plan that can unify GOP House members. This is the third time House Republicans have bucked McCarthy and GOP leadership in a vote on a rule, a traditionally pro forma step that is taken to advance legislation.

McCarthy emerged visibly frustrated from the House floor while it was in total paralysis as House hardliners tanked another rule, slamming the group for just wanting to “burn the place down.”

“It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters.

Opposition from hardliners has plagued efforts by Republican leadership to unify behind a plan to fund the government. Days of negotiations have yielded a few apparent breakthroughs, but McCarthy’s Republican opponents have been quick to throw cold water on progress and openly defy the speaker’s calls for unity. McCarthy’s thin margin in the chamber means that in most votes he can only lose four members without any support from Democrats – and absences can raise and lower the majority threshold.

Late Thursday evening, McCarthy briefed his conference behind closed doors on a new plan to keep the government open – paired with deeper spending cuts and new border security measures – all in an attempt to win over wary members on his right flank. The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at a $1.471 trillion spending level, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

As part of the deal, Republicans told CNN on Thursday night that they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong Pentagon spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday, with Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicating they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

But Thursday’s vote had five Republican opponents as well – as six Republicans total ended up voting against the rule. Reps. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Eli Crane of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia voted against the bill. House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma also eventually changed his vote, casting his vote against the Rule so he could bring it back up for reconsideration. It’s unclear when Republicans may try the vote again.

Republican leadership has alerted House members they plan to stay in session Friday and Saturday amid the standoff.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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September 21, 2023
McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy privately outlined to members a new GOP plan to keep the government open on Wednesday after a marathon two-and-a-half-hour GOP conference meeting.

The California Republican later told reporters that Republican negotiators made “tremendous progress as an entire conference,” following days of GOP infighting and less than two weeks before a government funding deadline.

“We are very close,” McCarthy said Wednesday evening when asked specifically what progress had been made on the GOP short-term bill. “I feel like just got a little more movement to go there,” he added of the new GOP plan. When asked specifically about the topline numbers, he wouldn’t get into details but said: “We’re in a good place.”

The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at $1.471 trillion spending levels, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

The levels are also far lower than what senators from both parties and the White House are willing to accept, meaning it’s unclear how such a deal would avert a government shutdown. With just 10 days left to fund the government, the new plan sets up a standoff with the Senate over how to keep the government open.

As part of the deal, Republicans now believe they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday.

GOP Rep. Mike Garcia of California said after Wednesday evening’s conference meeting there is now “a little more clarity” on the path forward.

“We have a little more clarity as to a potential plan moving forward,” Garcia said, adding, “We are still negotiating that final number and trying to figure out exactly what we can do.”

Some of the people that were previously opposed now signaled they are supportive. Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicated they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

“Sounds like we’ve got the votes for the rule,” Garcia said, pointing to Buck and Norman as having committed to changing to a “Yes.”

With McCarthy’s extremely thin margin in the chamber – and Democrats so far united against the GOP proposal – Republican leadership has been negotiating for days to try to win over enough GOP support to pass their legislation.

When asked about struggling to make progress earlier Wednesday, McCarthy repeated his favorite line, insisting he will never back down from a challenge no matter how messy.

“I wouldn’t quit the first time I went for the vote for speaker,” McCarthy said, a reference to how he was voted speaker only after 15 rounds and days of voting in January. “The one thing if you haven’t learned anything about me yet, I will never quit.”

However, an additional potential complicating factor emerged Wednesday night with former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, coming out in opposition to a short-term funding bill as he called on lawmakers to defund the DOJ and the investigations into him.

McCarthy and his GOP leadership team have been trying to sell the House Republican Conference on unifying behind a plan to fund the government, brokered between the House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Main Street Caucus over the weekend. But that proposed legislation encountered immediate opposition from more than a dozen far-right Republican lawmakers who wanted deeper spending cuts attached.

Amid that impasse with conservatives, moderates in the bipartisan House Problem Solver’s Caucus are close to finalizing their own framework on a short-term spending bill that would fund the government for several months at current levels and include Ukraine aid and disaster assistance, according to two sources. Even with Democratic support, that plan would still likely face major challenges – not the least of which is how it would get to the floor before the government runs out of money.

There are already signs that this alternative plan could face its own strong headwinds – not just with Republicans but with Democrats. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, told CNN on “Inside Politics” that she wants a “clean” continuing resolution of funds, a sign that progressives may not back some of the border security provisions that the Problem Solvers Caucus members are eyeing.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the House Problem Solvers Caucus earlier Wednesday, and said afterward that they need a bipartisan agreement in line with what was already negotiated in the debt ceiling package.

“We need to find a bipartisan agreement consistent with what was previously reached,” he said.

House GOP leadership announced Wednesday night that the House will be in and voting on Friday and Saturday, making official what was expected as the majority struggled to reach an agreement all week.

The House is expected to pass a rule for the defense appropriations bill Thursday. Assuming the rule passes, the House will then start consideration of the defense bill with final passage expected Friday.

The thinking would then be to pass the new GOP stopgap plan on Saturday, which is expected to be a full day.

Members were advised on Tuesday to keep their schedules flexible as weekend votes were possible. Members filtering in and out of Whip Emmer’s office the past two days are insistent that they are making progress, but Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told CNN earlier Wednesday that while they are getting closer, they are not close yet.

Rep. Garrett Graves from Louisiana, who has been in the room for negotiations, had echoed that schedule change and projected Friday and Saturday work.

“I think we’re going to be here this weekend,” he said.

When pressed on what exactly they’d be up to and if they’d be able to vote by Saturday, Graves said, “Well, we won’t be having Mardi Gras parties,” indicating they’d be voting.

Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, lambasted the hardliners, calling it a “breach of duty.”

“We’ve got a handful of people that are holding the rest of the conference, the majority of our conference kind of held hostage right now and in turn, holding up America,” he told CNN.

Womack also said this will likely extend into the weekend and that “either it’s gonna be good or it’s gonna be bad.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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September 20, 2023
Husband of Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola dies in plane crash | CNN Politics

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Eugene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr., the husband of Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, has died in a plane crash in Alaska, according to a statement from the congresswoman’s office.

“He was one of those people that was obnoxiously good at everything. He had a delightful sense of humor that lightened the darkest moments. He was definitely the cook in the family. And family was most important to him. He was completely devoted to his parents, kids, siblings, extended family, and friends – and he simply adored Mary. We are heartbroken for the family’s loss,” the statement, which was shared to Peltola’s X account Wednesday morning, said.

The statement asked for privacy for the Peltola family and said the congresswoman will be heading home to Alaska.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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September 13, 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
Rhode Island and Utah hold special election primaries for House seats | CNN Politics

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Rhode Island and Utah voters are choosing party nominees for US House seats on Tuesday with the two states each holding a special primary election.

In Rhode Island, a crowded Democratic field will be narrowed down to one in the race to succeed Democrat David Cicilline in the state’s 1st Congressional District. Cicilline resigned in May to lead the Rhode Island Foundation.

In Utah, Republicans will decide their nominee in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which GOP Rep. Chris Stewart is expected to vacate on September 15. Stewart announced in June that he would be departing Congress, citing his wife’s health concerns.

Both seats are not expected to change party hands in November, given the partisan leans of each district, so the outcome of Tuesday’s primaries will be critical to determining who their next members of Congress will be.

Rhode Island’s general election is set for November 7, while the general election in Utah will take place on November 21.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island’s 1st District covers the eastern part of the state, including East and North Providence, Pawtucket and Portsmouth. Eleven Democrats are vying for the chance to succeed Cicilline.

The district is a Democratic stronghold – Cicilline won a seventh term by 28 points last fall, and President Joe Biden would have carried the district by a similar margin in 2020 under its present lines. A Republican hasn’t held the seat since 1995.

Former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg has raised the most funds of the Democrats currently in the race, bringing in $630,000 through August 16. Former White House official Gabe Amo and Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos trailed with $604,000 and $579,000, respectively.

Regunberg is running on a progressive platform, focused on issues such as fighting climate change and housing insecurity. He has the backing of multiple prominent progressives, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, and the endorsement of the campaign arm of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He has faced criticism over support he’s received from a super PAC primarily funded by his father-in-law. After an unsuccessful bid for Rhode Island lieutenant governor in 2018, he earned a law degree from Harvard and worked as a judicial law clerk.

Amo, the son of Ghanaian and Liberian immigrants, has worked in both the Obama and Biden administrations. He has received endorsements from high-profile Democrats such as former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who represented the 1st District for eight terms before Cicilline, and former White House chief of staff Ron Klain. He also has the backing of the campaign arm of the Congressional Black Caucus and Democrats Serve, which supports candidates with public service backgrounds.

Amo, a former deputy director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, has made preventing gun violence a top priority, noting that during his White House tenure, he “was often the first call to a mayor following a mass shooting.”

Matos, who emigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic at the age of 20, could make history as the first Afro-Latina in Congress. She has the backing of the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and EMILY’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights.

Matos’ campaign endured controversy this summer following allegations her campaign had submitted falsified nominating signatures. Hundreds of signatures were thrown out, but her campaign submitted enough valid signatures to make the ballot. The incident is being investigated by the state attorney general. Matos has blamed an outside vendor for submitting the alleged false signatures.

In another controversy leading up to the primary, businessman Don Carlson, who had loaned his campaign $600,000, ended his bid a little over a week ago following allegations of an inappropriate interaction he had with a college student in 2019. While his name remains on the ballot, the state Board of Elections ordered local boards to post a notice that he’d withdrawn, Chris Hunter, a spokesman for the state board told CNN. Carlson has endorsed state Sen. Sandra Cano, a Colombian immigrant who has made education a top priority in her campaign and has labor support.

Marine veteran Gerry Leonard Jr., who had the endorsement of the state GOP, will win the party nomination, CNN projected Tuesday evening.

Utah’s 2nd District covers the western portion of the state, stretching from the Salt Lake City area to St. George. Republicans are heavily favored to hold the seat – Stewart won a sixth term last fall by 26 points, while former President Donald Trump would have carried it under its current lines by 17 points in 2020.

Three Republicans are looking to succeed Stewart: Former Utah GOP Chairman Bruce Hough, former Stewart aide Celeste Maloy and former state Rep. Becky Edwards.

Maloy, who has Stewart’s backing, earned her spot on the ballot by winning a nominating convention in July, while Hough and Edwards qualified by collecting sufficient signatures.

Edwards and Hough, boosted by significant self-funding, both outraised Maloy through August 16.

Edwards raised $679,000 – $300,000 of which she loaned to her campaign – while Hough raised nearly $539,000, including $334,000 of his own money. Maloy had brought in $307,000 through August 16.

Maloy, who worked as a counsel in Stewart’s Washington office, has faced questions over her eligibility for the special election primary ballot over voter registration issues. She was marked inactive in the state’s voter database because she did not cast a ballot in 2020 and 2022, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, after she relocated to Virginia to work for Stewart. But the state GOP submitted her name for the ballot, noting that no objections to her candidacy were filed before the convention.

On the campaign trail, Maloy said she’s been focusing on government overreach. She has proposed defunding federal agencies to eliminate “anything they’re doing that Congress hasn’t authorized.”

Voters are “worried that these executive branch agencies have too much power, they’re not checked and they’re too involved in our lives,” Maloy told CNN affiliate KUTV in an interview. “And I happen to agree.”

Maloy’s campaign has received financial support from VIEW PAC, which is dedicated to recruiting and electing Republican women to Congress.

Hough – the father of professional dancers Julianne and Derek Hough, who rose to fame on “Dancing with the Stars” – is focusing on debt reduction and deficit control, citing his family as one of the reasons why he’s running.

“With 22 grandkids, 10 kids and a $32 trillion (US) debt, I’m very anxious about their future and about the future of all Americans and all Utahns,” Hough told ABC4 in a video posted in June. “It’s time that we actually do something about it.”

Hough, who until recently had been Utah’s Republican national committeeman, has positioned himself as the candidate most supportive of Trump.

Edwards, meanwhile, challenged GOP Sen. Mike Lee in a primary last year as a moderate opposed to Trump and took 30% of the vote. On the trail, she has touted her experience as a state lawmaker, focusing on priorities such as health care, education and fiscal responsibility.

Edwards, who backed Biden in 2020, expressed “regret” for that support at a debate in June, saying she had been “extremely disappointed” with his administration, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The winner of Tuesday’s GOP primary will face Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe in November. Riebe won her party’s nomination at a June convention.

This story has been updated with a CNN projection.

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September 5, 2023
21 Donald Trump election lies listed in his new indictment | CNN Politics

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Special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday that the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol was “fueled by lies” told by former President Donald Trump. The indictment of Trump on four new federal criminal charges, all related to the former president’s effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, lays out some of those lies one by one.

Even in listing 21 lies, the 45-page indictment does not come close to capturing the entirety of Trump’s massive catalogue of false claims about the election. But the list is illustrative nonetheless – highlighting the breadth of election-related topics Trump was dishonest about, the large number of states his election dishonesty spanned, and, critically, his willingness to persist in privately and publicly making dishonest assertions even after they had been debunked to him directly.

Here is the list of 21.

1. The lie that fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election, that Trump “had actually won,” and that the election was “stolen.” (Pages 1 and 40-41 of the indictment)

Trump’s claim of a stolen election whose winner was determined by massive fraud was (and continues to be) his overarching lie about the election. The indictment asserts that Trump knew as early as 2020 that his narrative was false – and had been told as such by numerous senior officials in his administration and allies outside the federal government – but persisted in deploying it anyway, including on January 6 itself.

2. The lie that fake pro-Trump Electoral College electors in seven states were legitimate electors. (Pages 5 and 26)

The indictment alleges that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators “organized” the phony slates of electors and then “caused” the slates to be transmitted to Vice President Mike Pence and other government officials to try to get them counted on January 6, the day Congress met to count the electoral votes.

3. The lie that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the election. (Pages 6 and 27)

Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials had told Trump that his claims of major fraud had proved to be untrue. But the indictment alleges that Trump still sought to have the Justice Department “make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states through a formal letter under the Acting Attorney General’s signature, thus giving the Defendant’s lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with the Defendant’s.”

4. The lie that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral votes. (Pages 6, 32-38)

Pence had repeatedly and correctly told Trump that he did not have the constitutional or legal right to send electoral votes back to the states as Trump wanted. The indictment notes that Trump nonetheless repeatedly declared that Pence could do so – first in private conversations and White House meetings, then in tweets on January 5 and January 6, then in Trump’s January 6 speech in Washington at a rally before the riot – in which Trump, angry at Pence, allegedly inserted the false claim into his prepared text even after advisors had managed to temporarily get it removed.

5. The lie that “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” (Page 36)

The indictment alleges that the day before the riot, Trump “approved and caused” his campaign to issue a false statement saying Pence agreed with him about having the power to reject electoral votes – even though Trump knew, from a one-on-one meeting with Pence hours prior, that Pence continued to firmly disagree.

6. The lie that Georgia had thousands of ballots cast in the names of dead people. (Pages 8 and 16)

The indictment notes that Georgia’s top elections official – Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – a republican – explained to Trump in a phone call on January 2, 2021 that this claim was false, but that Trump repeated it in his January 6 rally speech anyway. Raffensperger said in the phone call and then in a January 6 letter to Congress that just two potential dead-voter cases had been discovered in the state; Raffensperger said in late 2021 that the total had been updated and stood at four.

7. The lie that Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than voters. (Pages 8 and 20)

The indictment notes that Trump’s acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue had both told him that this claim was false, but he kept making it anyway – including in the January 6 rally speech.

8. The lie that there had been a suspicious “dump” of votes in Detroit, Michigan. (Pages 9 and 17)

The indictment notes that Barr, the attorney general, told Trump on December 1, 2020 that this was false – as CNN and others had noted, supposedly nefarious “dumps” Trump kept talking about were merely ballots being counted and added to the public totals as normal – but that Trump still repeated the false claim in public remarks the next day. And Barr wasn’t the only one to try to dissuade Trump from this claim. The indictment also notes that Michigan’s Republican Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, had told Trump in an Oval Office meeting on November 20, 2020 that Trump had lost the state “not because of fraud” but because Trump had “underperformed with certain voter populations.”

9. The lie that Nevada had tens of thousands of double votes and other fraud. (Page 9)

The indictment notes that Nevada’s top elections official – Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, also a Republican – had publicly posted a “Facts vs. Myths” document explaining that Nevada judges had rejected such claims.

10. The lie that more than 30,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona. (Pages 9 and 11)

The indictment notes that Trump put the number at “over 36,000” in his January 6 speech – even though, the indictment says, his own campaign manager “had explained to him that such claims were false” and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who had supported Trump in the election, “had issued a public statement that there was no evidence of substantial fraud in Arizona.”

11. The lie that voting machines in swing states had switched votes from Trump to Biden. (Page 9)

This is a reference to false conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which Trump kept repeating long after it was thoroughly debunked by his own administration’s election cybersecurity security arm and many others. The indictment says, “The Defendant’s Attorney General, Acting Attorney General, and Acting Deputy Attorney General all had explained to him that this was false, and numerous recounts and audits had confirmed the accuracy of voting machines.”

12. The lie that Dominion machines had been involved in “massive election fraud.” (Page 12)

The indictment notes that Trump, on Twitter, promoted a lawsuit filed by an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as lawyer Sidney Powell, that alleged “massive election fraud” involving Dominion – even though, the indictment says, Trump privately acknowledged to advisors that the claims were “unsupported” and told them Powell sounded “crazy.”

13. The lie that “a substantial number of non-citizens, non-residents, and dead people had voted fraudulently in Arizona.” (Page 10)

The indictment alleges that Trump and an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, made these baseless claims on a November 22, 2020 phone call with Bowers; the indictment says Giuliani never provided evidence and eventually said, at a December 1, 2020 meeting with Bowers, “words to the effect of, ‘We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.”

14. The lie that Fulton County, Georgia elections workers had engaged in “ballot stuffing.” (Pages 13 and 14)

This is the long-debunked lie – which Trump has continued to repeat in 2023 – that a video had caught two elections workers in Atlanta breaking the law. The workers were simply doing their jobs, and, as the indictment notes, they were cleared of wrongdoing by state officials in 2020 – but Trump continued to make the claims even after Raffensperger and Justice Department officials directly and repeatedly told him they were unfounded.

15. The lie that thousands of out-of-state voters cast ballots in Georgia. (Page 16)

The indictment notes that Trump made this claim on his infamous January 2, 2021 call with Raffensperger, whose staff responded that the claim was inaccurate. An official in Raffensberger’s office explained to Trump that the voters in question had authentically moved back to Georgia and legitimately cast ballots.

16. The lie that Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable,” to address Trump’s claims about a “‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more.” (Page 16)

In fact, contrary to this Trump tweet the day after the call, Raffensperger and his staff had addressed and debunked all of these false Trump claims.

17. The lie that there was substantial fraud in Wisconsin and that the state had tens of thousands of unlawful votes. (Page 21)

False and false. But the indictment notes that Trump made the vague fraud claim in a tweet on December 21, 2020, after the state Supreme Court upheld Biden’s win, and repeated the more specific claim about tens of thousands of unlawful votes in the January 6 speech.

18. The lie that Wisconsin had more votes counted than it had actual voters. (Page 21)

This, like Trump’s similar claim about Pennsylvania, is not true. But the indictment alleges that Trump raised the claim in a December 27, 2020 conversation with acting attorney general Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Donoghue, who informed him that it was false.

19. The lie that the election was “corrupt.” (Page 28)

The indictment alleges that when acting attorney general Rosen told Trump on the December 27, 2020 call that the Justice Department couldn’t and wouldn’t change the outcome of the election, Trump responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” (Deputy attorney general Donoghue memorialized the reported Trump remark in his handwritten notes, which CNN reported on in 2021 and which were subsequently published by the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot.)

20. The lie that Trump won every state by hundreds of thousands of votes. (Page 34)

The indictment says that, at a January 4, 2021 meeting intended to convince Pence to unlawfully reject Biden’s electoral votes and send them back to swing-state legislatures, Pence took notes describing Trump as saying, “Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes.” This was, obviously, false even if Trump was specifically talking about swing states won by Biden rather than every state in the nation.

21. The lie that Pennsylvania “want[s] to recertify.” (Page 38)

Trump made this false claim in his January 6 speech. In reality, some Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania had expressed a desire to at least delay the congressional affirmation of Biden’s victory – but the state’s Democratic governor and top elections official, who actually had election certification power in the state, had no desire to recertify Biden’s legitimate win.

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August 2, 2023
Republican congressman says Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is ‘paralyzing’ and a ‘national security problem’ | CNN Politics

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House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, a Republican, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is “paralyzing” and a “national security problem.”

“The idea that one man in the Senate can hold this up for months … is paralyzing the Department of Defense,” McCaul said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I think that is a national security problem and a national security issue,” the Texas congressman said.

Tuberville, of Alabama, has delayed the confirmations of more than 300 top military nominees over his opposition to the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing service members and their families who have to travel to receive abortion care. Tuberville says the Pentagon’s reproductive health policies violate the law, but Pentagon officials have pointed to a Justice Department memo that says the policies are lawful.

A spokesperson for Tuberville said McCaul’s view “just isn’t accurate.”

“No one can stop (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer from holding votes on these nominations. He just doesn’t want to,” spokesperson Steven Stafford wrote in an email to CNN. “It’s also inaccurate because acting officials are in all of these roles. In some cases these acting officials are the nominees for permanent roles. No jobs are open or going undone right now.”

One senator can hold up nominations or legislation in the chamber, and Tuberville’s stance has left three military services to operate without a Senate-confirmed leader for the first time in history.

It’s possible to confirm each nominee one by one, but Senate Democrats have argued that would take up valuable floor time – despite a five-week recess in August.

McCaul said on Sunday that he wishes Tuberville would reconsider his stance and that the Republican Party is working on the abortion travel policy issue through the National Defense Authorization Act.

“But to hold up the top brass from being promoted … I think is paralyzing our Department of Defense,” he said.

The hold on promotions, which began in March, has been a growing source of public scrutiny. The three US military service secretaries told CNN last week that Tuberville’s blockage is aiding communist and autocratic regimes, and is being used against the US by adversaries such as China.

In July, active-duty military spouses hand-delivered a petition to Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Tuberville signed by hundreds of military family members who were “deeply concerned and personally impacted by Senator Tuberville blocking confirmation of senior military leaders.”

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told CNN’s Tapper on Sunday that if elected president, she would put an end to the reimbursement policy for travel for abortion care. Haley, whose husband is in the South Carolina Army National Guard, said military families should not be used as political pawns.

“I’m not saying that Sen. Tuberville is right in doing this, because I don’t want to use them as pawns. But if you love our military and are so adamant about it, then go and make Congress, Republicans and Democrats, have to go through person by person,” the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador said.

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August 2, 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 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
House enters third week without speaker as nine Republicans vie for gavel | CNN Politics
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As the House enters its third week without a speaker, nearly a dozen Republicans are vying to earn the support of their conference to wield the gavel, throwing the chamber into even more uncertainty.

The conference is searching for a new speaker nominee after Rep. Jim Jordan on Friday became the latest to exit the race. The chamber has been without a speaker since House Republicans ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy earlier this month.

Nine House Republicans are running for the position, announced House GOP conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, including GOP Whip Tom Emmer, who is endorsed by McCarthy. Emmer has moved to lock in support across the ideological and geographic spectrum in the conference, giving him what many House Republicans believe is an advantage, according to GOP sources. He could face an uphill battle, however, against allies of former President Donald Trump who have been quick to criticize Emmer for voting to certify the 2020 election.

The speaker hopefuls spent the weekend working the phones to win their conference’s support ahead of an expected candidate forum Monday evening and secret-ballot election Tuesday.

Emmer spoke with Trump by phone over the weekend, a source familiar with the matter told CNN, and Emmer touted his “strong working relationship” with the former president on social media Monday.

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Emmer posted on X, alongside a video clip of Trump saying he’s “always” gotten along with Emmer. “If my colleagues elect me Speaker of the House, I look forward to continuing our strong working relationship.”

Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, another candidate for speaker, said Monday that he also spoke with Trump about his bid.

“He called me and we had a polite conversation. I believe that the president is interested in having somebody he can work with, and I think I’m one of those people,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju, adding that he did not ask for Trump’s endorsement.

These are the other GOP representatives running for speaker:
Jack Bergman of Michigan, a retired 40-year veteran of the US Marines.

Byron Donalds of Florida, a second-term member of the far-right Freedom Caucus.

Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, chair of the conservative group known as the Republican Study Committee – which wields a large bloc of GOP members.

Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the vice chairman for the House Republican Conference.

Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

Gary Palmer of Alabama, the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee.

Austin Scott of Georgia, the seven-term ally of McCarthy who quickly dropped out of a last-minute challenge to Jordan last week.
Frustrations and divisions have only intensified within the conference as Republicans search for a way to resolve the impasse. That, along with the GOP’s narrow majority, has made it increasingly unclear whether any candidate will be able to secure the 217 floor votes needed to win the gavel.

The House, meanwhile, remains in a state of paralysis amid the threat of a government shutdown next month and the Israel-Hamas war.

The government runs out of funding in less than a month, after narrowly avoiding a shutdown with a stopgap funding bill last month. A speaker will need to be involved in negotiations with the White House and the Senate, both of which are controlled by Democrats.

And there is momentum for a bill to give further aid to Israel’s war against Hamas. President Joe Biden has asked Congress for a $105 billion package that will include aid for Israel and Ukraine, which is said to be running out of munitions in its fight against Russia’s invasion.

The showdown over the speakership kicked off earlier this month when a bloc of hardline conservatives voted to oust McCarthy, a historic move that plunged the House into unprecedented territory. Then, in the aftermath of McCarthy’s ouster, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s speakership nomination met a swift downfall when the conference failed to come together on his bid.

On Friday, Republicans pushed Jordan out of the race after he failed to win the gavel for the third time in a floor vote earlier in the day.

This story has been updated with additional developments.
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August 2, 2023
The government remains open — for now. Here’s what happens next | CNN Politics

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After days of stalemate, Congress passed a stopgap funding bill Saturday to keep the government open through mid-November, narrowly avoiding a shutdown which could have had devastating effects.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy secured broad Democratic support for the short-term bill while hardline members of his own party remained defiant. In the Senate, members of both parties also came together to move the bill to the desk of President Joe Biden, who signed the measure late Saturday.

The government will now continue operating until November 17. Lawmakers must pass another spending bill before then to avoid a shutdown. Here’s what you should know.

Nearly 2.2 million federal workers and 1.3 million active-duty troops will be spared an immediate impact on their finances after the possibility of a shutdown had threatened to leave them without pay.

The bill’s passage also at least temporarily avoids massive disruptions to air travel, as a shutdown could have led to significant delays. During the 2019 shutdown, hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers – who had to work without pay – called out sick.

The bill also includes a special measure to keep the Federal Aviation Administration operational. A shutdown, paired with the looming expiration of a key aviation law, would have resulted in millions of dollars in losses daily and left the agency scrambling to rebuild the air traffic control system.

The White House was able to get natural disaster funding into the stopgap bill, allowing relief efforts to continue in the wake of a recent brutal stretch of natural disasters.

Border policies will continue to be enforced as hardline Republicans were unable to get a border security amendment into the final bill.

The stopgap measure passed by Congress did not include additional funding for Ukraine after McCarthy put forward a bill without additional aid to the war-torn country – a key concession many House Republicans demanded but left Democrats disappointed.

So far, Congress has approved about $113 billion in aid to Ukraine, according to calculations by the US State Department Office of Inspector General and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. In August, the White House asked Congress to approve another $24 billion in aid, and last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a trip to the Capitol to ask for more relief.

Some Republicans argue the Biden administration should divert funding to border security and other domestic priorities instead of giving more financial assistance to Ukraine.

The House and Senate are adjourned until Monday, and lawmakers are likely to resume negotiations once they’re back at the Capitol. They must now pass another spending bill before they head home for Thanksgiving.

They have over a month to reach an agreement on which provisions to include in a long-term spending bill. The fierce debate leading up to Saturday’s resolution revealed a deep divide within the Republican Party, which is expected to make the second round of talks just as difficult before the GOP even attempts to secure Democratic support.

Progress could be stalled if a vote to oust McCarthy as speaker is brought to the floor, a motion hardline Republicans are expected to bring forth, though timing remains unclear.

Border security and Ukraine aid were the two sticking points delaying an agreement and nearly leading to a government shutdown.

When lawmakers resume negotiations to pass a long-term spending bill, Democrats, with bipartisan support, are expected to push to renew assistance to Ukraine, while some Republicans will likely seek a border amendment. However, as of Friday, Republicans had not reached a consensus on what kind of amendment they would want to add.

The House Democratic leadership said in a statement Saturday evening McCarthy is expected to advance a vote on Ukraine aid once the House is back in session.

Bipartisan members of Senate leadership issued a statement late Saturday, committing to vote on further funding for Ukraine aid “in the coming weeks.”

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August 2, 2023
FBI agent contests whistleblower claims in Hunter Biden case, transcript shows | CNN Politics

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The FBI agent managing the team on the Hunter Biden criminal case testified to the House Judiciary Committee that US Attorney David Weiss had ultimate authority over the case, contesting testimony brought forward by whistleblowers.

Thomas Sobocinski, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office, told committee investigators in a closed-door interview last week that from his perspective, Weiss had the authority to bring forward whatever charges he wanted in whatever venue he preferred.

“It was my understanding that David Weiss had the authority, and at no point did I ever differ from that,” Sobociniski said, according to a copy of his interview transcript obtained by CNN. “There’s never been anything in my view that changed that.”

Sobocinski’s transcript, which was first reported by The Washington Post, comes as House Republicans continue to investigate allegations that the criminal case of President Joe Biden’s son was mishandled. It’s all part of the House GOP impeachment inquiry into the president, even though Republicans have yet to find evidence that the president did anything illegal.

Sobocinski’s testimony disputes a number of claims from an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower about a key October 2022 meeting including FBI and IRS agents, Weiss, and other Justice Department prosecutors that occurred at a critical point in the criminal probe. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who was in the meeting and worked on this case, said Weiss revealed in that meeting that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed. Shapley provided his notes on that meeting and email exchanges about it to Congress to support his claim. The notes say, “Weiss stated – He is not the deciding person.”

But Sobocinski was also in that October 2022 meeting and said Weiss never said that.

“I went into that meeting believing he had the authority, and I have left that meeting believing he had the authority to bring charges,” Sobocinski testified.

Reflecting on Shapley’s accusation of Weiss, Sobocinski said, “In my recollection, if he would have said that, I would have remembered it.”

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee responding to Sobocinski’s testimony, Shapley’s legal team contested Sobocinski’s testimony, noting that Shapley took notes of the October 2022 meeting while Sobocinski did not.

“Mr. Sobocinski apparently acknowledged that he took no notes in the meeting, nor did he document it in any contemporaneous fashion afterwards,” wrote Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt and attorney Mark Lytle, according to the letter obtained by CNN. “By contrast, SSA Shapley took notes during the meeting. These notes, combined with his fresh memory of the meeting, formed the basis for the email he sent later that day and corroborate his current recollection.”

House Republicans responded to the comments saying that the whistleblowers, Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, a 13-year IRS special agent with the Criminal Investigation Division, were “wholly consistent.”

“Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler have been wholly consistent throughout their disclosures to Congress, and the only people who haven’t are people like David Weiss, Merrick Garland, and their liberal cronies,” said Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican.

Sobocinski also disputed Shapley’s claim that Weiss said in the October 2022 meeting he was denied special counsel status and denied venues to bring forward charges.

Sobocinski told the House Judiciary panel he was informed of Weiss’ special counsel status the day Attorney General Merrick Garland announced it last month, and that Weiss was not previously denied special counsel status as Shapley has claimed.

“I don’t have a recollection with him saying that there or at any point in my communication with Mr. Weiss,” Sobocinski said. “That would have been a total 180 from all our previous conversations about authorities.”

When asked if anybody at FBI headquarters ever prevented Weiss from taking any steps or accessing any necessary resources, Sobocinski replied, “Not that I’m aware of.”

Sobocinski told congressional investigators that he did raise concerns repeatedly about the pace of the investigation into Hunter Biden.

“I would have liked for it to move faster,” he said.

Republicans on the committee raised the question of why Weiss was eventually given special counsel status if Weiss had the ultimate authority as Sobocinski has argued. Sobocinski acknowledged that Weiss would be the best person to answer these questions, and more specifics about how special counsel status was granted.

On whether Weiss was denied venues to bring forward charges against the president’s son, Sobocinski said he only had “high-level conversations” about the specific charges, but from his understanding “there was a process” within the Justice Department for US attorneys to bring forward charges outside of their district that involved a lot of “bureaucracy” but was “not a permission issue.”

“Without going into specifics, there were discussion about taxes and venue,” Sobocinski said. “And, once again, Mr. Weiss had the authority to bring it.”

Shapley’s notes on the October 2022 meeting included that an FBI agent asked the group if they were concerned about the investigation being politicized. Sobocinski noted that part of why the meeting was called was in response to a media leak about the status of the criminal investigation. He told congressional investigators that he wanted to ask anyone in the room if they felt the investigation into the president’s son had been politicized, and he said no one in the room, not even Shapley, raised any concerns.

“I wanted to go on record in the room of the leaders who were involved in this investigation,” Sobocinski said. “Thought that it was no, and nobody in that room raised their voice to say anything other.”

Sobocinski also addressed broader claims made about how the Hunter Biden criminal investigation has been handled. To discredit GOP claims that prosecutors colluded with Hunter Biden’s Secret Service by informing them they wanted to interview Hunter, Sobocinski said that as a former Secret Service agent, he said it was “expected” for an investigative entity to speak with him ahead of interviewing a protectee of his. Sobocinski also said he is not aware of any evidence that the Department of Justice has retaliated against the IRS whistleblowers who have come forward.

The Department of Justice sent Sobocinski a letter the day before his interview giving him permission to discuss the details of the October 7, 2022, meeting and Weiss’ authority on the case. But Sobocinski was not permitted to discuss the ongoing criminal investigation.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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August 2, 2023
McCarthy faces a threat to oust him as speaker. Here’s how that could work | CNN Politics

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Following a showdown on Capitol Hill over government funding, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is heading toward a significant leadership test.

The California Republican faces tough vote math, major challenges and the potential threat of a conservative revolt against his speakership.

House Republicans control only a narrow majority, a dynamic that has left McCarthy with little room to maneuver and has given hardline conservatives outsized influence to exert pressure over the speaker.

To win over critics and secure the speaker’s gavel in January, McCarthy and his allies made a series of concessions to conservatives. One major concession was to restore the ability of any one member to offer what’s known as a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair – a move that can trigger a House floor vote to oust the speaker.

Firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, moved ahead in his attempt to oust McCarthy from the top leadership post Monday, offering a motion to vacate the chair on the House floor. Here’s what that means:

In practical terms, a motion to vacate the chair takes the form of a resolution to remove the speaker by declaring the speakership to be vacant. It is a rarely used procedural tool – and no House speaker has ever been ousted through the passage of a resolution to remove them. But threats over its use can be a powerful way to apply pressure to a speaker.

Any member can file a House resolution to remove the speaker. According to House precedent, a resolution to remove the speaker would be considered privileged, a designation that gives it priority over other issues. But simply filing the resolution does not force a vote on its own, though it would be sure to ignite a political firestorm and a debate over the speaker’s future.

To force a vote, a member would need to come to the House floor and announce their intent to offer the resolution to remove the speaker. Doing that would then require the speaker to put the resolution on the legislative schedule within two legislative days – setting up a showdown on the floor over the issue.

If a member introduces a resolution, but does not announce it from the floor, that would not force a vote or have any immediate impact – making it more of a symbolic threat or warning shot to the speaker.

A vote on the resolution to remove the speaker would require a majority vote to succeed and oust the speaker from their leadership post.

A vote on a resolution to remove the speaker could still be preempted, however, even once it is on track to come to the floor for consideration.

For example, when the resolution is called up on the floor, a motion to table – or kill – the resolution could be offered and would be voted on first. That vote would also only require a simple majority to succeed – and if it did succeed then there would not be a vote directly on the resolution to remove the speaker because the resolution would instead be tabled.

According to the reference guide “House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House,” the speaker is required to submit a confidential list to the Clerk of people “in the order in which each shall act as Speaker pro tempore in the case of a vacancy.”

Should McCarthy suddenly find himself out of his job as speaker, the Clerk will then pull out that list, and the number one name on that list becomes the interim speaker. His or her first order of business: The election of a new speaker – and once again, the House will have to vote as many times as it takes to get someone to 218 votes, or a majority of those present and voting for a speaker.

The last time a high-profile showdown played out on Capitol Hill over a motion to vacate was in 2015 when then-GOP Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina filed a resolution to declare the office of speaker vacant while John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, was serving as speaker. It was not brought to a floor vote, however.

Not long after the resolution was filed, Boehner downplayed its significance, calling it “no big deal.” But a few months later, he announced that he had decided to resign, saying that he had planned to step down at the end of the year but that turmoil within his caucus prompted him to resign earlier than planned.

Another notable incident took place in 1910, when then-House Speaker Joseph Cannon, an Illinois Republican, held onto the speakership after a resolution to remove the speaker came to a vote on the House floor and failed – 155 to 192.

While Gaetz’s push to oust McCarthy poses a major political threat, there are a number of factors that would make it challenging for such an effort to ultimately succeed in removing the speaker.

“It’s probably harder to remove a speaker using a privileged resolution than people think,” said Matthew Green, a professor of politics at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and author of the book “The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership.”

“It requires a pivotal bloc of members of the majority willing to withstand criticism and peer pressure from their partisan colleagues for introducing the resolution, bipartisan agreement that the incumbent speaker should be ousted, and a majority willing to select someone else to replace the speaker.”

“It remains a potent threat as long as people believe it is a viable tool to remove a speaker. If it is actually brought to the floor and fails, it will lose its potency,” Green said.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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August 2, 2023