House committee convenes to vote on releasing Trump’s tax returns – live

We don’t know what’s being said during this afternoon’s private session of the House ways and means committee discussing releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns. But we do know that Republican Kevin Brady, the ranking member from Texas, is not thrilled at the prospect.

He spoke with reporters shortly before the meeting convened, complaining that releasing the documents publicly would give politicians the “power to embarrass, harass, or destroy Americans through disclosure of their tax returns”.

“No party in Congress should have that power. No individuals in Congress should have that power,” Brady says.

The House January committee that on Monday referred Donald Trump for criminal charges has been “extensively cooperating” with the justice department’s own investigation, according to a new report.

Punchbowl said Tuesday afternoon that the bipartisan committee began sending documents and transcripts of witness testimony last week after receiving a request from the justice department’s special prosecutor Jack Smith.

Punchbowl says it has reviewed Smith’s letter, sent on 5 December, asking for the entirety of the panel’s materials from its 18-month probe. The committee held its final meeting on Monday, issuing four criminal referrals for Trump over his efforts to reverse his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and is expected to release its final report on Wednesday.

Representatives of the committee declined to comment, Punchbowl says, but the development would be a reversal of its previous position. Politico reported in June there was “tension” between the justice department and committee members after the panel refused to hand over its evidence.

Committee chair Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said at the time he thought the move would be “premature”.

Punchbowl says most of the evidence handed over in the last week “is in relation to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and John Eastman, the Trump lawyer at the center of the ‘fake electors’ scheme’.”

Eastman was also referred for criminal prosecution by the panel.

Additionally, Punchbowl says, the panel has transmitted all of Meadows’ text messages and related evidence, and transcripts of interviews with several witnesses related to the fake electors scheme, and “the efforts by Trump and his allies to pressure states to overturn their election results, specifically in Georgia”.

The House panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and reviewed over a million documents during its inquiry.

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A decision on the public release of Donald Trump’s tax returns is imminent after a key congressional panel came to order on Tuesday afternoon for a vote.

Richard Neal, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House ways and means committee, immediately ordered the hearing into “executive session”, which means the room was cleared for the hearing to proceed in private.

But the panel voted unanimously to approve a motion by Republican ranking member Kevin Brady of Texas for “the entirety of today’s executive transcript” later be made public, presumably subject to redactions of any sensitive information the panel feels shouldn’t be available.

Neal is updating members now on developments since the supreme court ruled last month to clear the delivery of the six years of Trump’s returns from the treasury department.

That decision ended a three-year fight by the former president to shield many of his closest financial secrets.

The committee’s vote is not expected until later this afternoon, but many analysts expect it to be a formality that the panel will release at least some of the information. What is unclear is what form that release might take.

Neal would not give details to reporters before today’s meeting, offering instead only a statement:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Nearly four years ago, the ways and means committee set out to fulfill our legislative and oversight responsibilities, and evaluate the Internal Revenue Service’s mandatory audit program.

As affirmed by the supreme court, the law was on our side, and on Tuesday, I will update the members of the Committee.

Given that Democrats have been fighting so hard to get it, and their majority in the House is in its final days, it’s reasonable to assume we’ll see something soon.

Some analysts expect to see an executive summary of the returns, while others say the full documents attached to a committee report are likely.

Of course, both could still happen. A vote this afternoon for any kind of public release would be another blow for the former president, who was referred to the justice department on Monday on four criminal charges relating to his insurrection over his 2020 election defeat.

As we reported earlier this month, the House committee first requested Trump’s returns in 2019. Trump, who on 15 November began his third consecutive run for the presidency, dragged the issue through the court system.

It was long customary, though not required, for major party presidential candidates to release their tax records. Trump was the first such candidate in four decades not to do so.

Here’s a look at the overhaul of the Electoral Count Act that’s incorporated within the bipartisan $1.7tn omnibus government spending bill, courtesy of the Associated Press, which says it’s the the most significant policy response so far to Donald Trump’s insurrection.

Led by Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, along with members of the House January 6 panel, the legislation was added to the massive year-end spending bill unveiled early Tuesday, and which will be voted on this week.

The bill would amend the 19th century law that governs, along with the Constitution, how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential election winners, ensuring that the popular vote from each state is protected from manipulation and that Congress does not arbitrarily decide presidential elections when it meets to count the votes every four years.

Here’s what it would do:

• Clarify the vice-president’s role. Trump and his supporters falsely insisted vice-president Mike Pence could intervene and refuse to certify Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election. The bill confirms the vice-president’s purely ceremonial role presiding over the certification every January 6 after a presidential election, and that the VP has no power to determine the results of the election.

• Make it more difficult to object. Under current law, just one member of the Senate and one member of the House need to lodge an objection to automatically trigger votes in both chambers on whether to overturn or discard a state’s presidential election results. The bill would significantly raise that threshold, requiring a fifth of each chamber to object before votes would be held.

• No fake electors. The bill would ensure that there is only one slate of electors, a response to Trump allies’ unsuccessful efforts to create alternate, illegitimate slates of Trump electors in states that Biden narrowly won in 2020. Each state’s governor would be required to submit the electors, which are sent under a formal process to Congress and opened at the rostrum during the joint session. Congress could not accept a slate submitted by a different official, so there could not be competing lists of electors from one state.

• Catastrophic events. The legislation would revise language in current law that wasn’t used during the 2020 election, but which lawmakers think could be abused. Presently, state legislatures can override the popular vote in their states by calling a “failed election,” but the term is not defined under the law. The bill says a state could only move its presidential election day if there are “extraordinary and catastrophic” events, such as natural disasters, that necessitate that.

There’s an interesting take on the bipartisan Senate agreement of a $1.7tn government spending bill from Politicus USA, which says the deal has taken away an opportunity for House Republicans to hold Joe Biden hostage.

The article suggests the House GOP was keen to provoke a crisis over the spending bill, hoping for a government shutdown that would allow them to flex their economic muscles when they take the majority next month.

But with a deal now, which would likely pass the House in the waning days of the Democratic majority, their next chance to cause mischief over spending will be at least a year away, Politicus says.

And that, it asserts, “means that any drama caused by House Republicans will spill into the 2024 election year”.

“House Republicans were targeting 2023 because they wanted to make a big publicity-getting splash with their new majority while having enough time for any potential government shutdown backlash to blow over,” Politicus reporter Jason Easley writes.

“If House Republicans try to shut down the government next year at this time, they will be doing so with the ticking 2024 election clock hanging over their heads.”

You can read the article here.

There appears to have been a falling out between Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert, two of the most obstreperous Republican extremists in the House of Representatives.

Once seemingly joined at the hip in their devotion to Donald Trump and the former president’s Maga (make America great again) movement, their split seems to be over House minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s quest for the Speaker’s gavel, which Greene has been warming to, and Boebert remains steadfastly against.

A tweet by Georgia congresswoman Greene on Monday accused Boebert, of Colorado, of engaging in petty feuding, while also taking a dig at her narrow margin of re-election last month, Business Insider reports.

“I’ve supported and donated to Lauren Boebert. President Trump has supported and donated to Lauren Boebert. Kevin McCarthy has supported and donated to Lauren Boebert. She just barely came through by 500 votes,” Greene wrote.

“She gladly takes our $$$ but when she’s been asked: Lauren refuses to endorse President Trump, she refuses to support Kevin McCarthy, and she childishly threw me under the bus for a cheap sound bite.”

Greene’s ire was stoked by a video showing Boebert with Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk at its AmericaFest event, according to the article.

Kirk asked Boebert and another “Never Kevin” antagonist Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman, what they thought of Greene’s endorsement of McCarthy.

Gaetz said he wasn’t a fan, while Boebert’s answer was directed at Greene: “I’ve been aligned with Marjorie and accused of believing a lot of the things that she believes in,” she said.

“I don’t believe in this, just like I don’t believe in Russian space lasers, Jewish space lasers and all of this.”

In 2021, Greene infamously declared a belief that space lasers controlled by Jewish politicians were responsible for wildfires in California.

So far, Boebert hasn’t responded to Green’s Twitter attack.

It’s lunchtime, and an opportunity to look at where we stand on a busy Tuesday in US politics. The House ways and means committee will meet shortly to discuss and vote on releasing Donald Trump’s tax returns to the public.

Here’s what else we’ve been looking at:

• The fallout continues from Monday’s bombshell criminal referral by the House January 6 panel of former President Trump on charges including insurrection. Some Republicans don’t seem to be happy.

• Long-serving Democratic senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont delivered an emotional farewell speech to the chamber, condemning the January 6 Capitol riot as an assault on democracy, and calling on colleagues to return to a more civil age of bipartisanship.

• Details have emerged of the $1.7tn omnibus government spending package agreed by congressional leaders in Tuesday’s early hours. The bill includes more financial aid for Ukraine, more visas for Afghans who helped the US, and banning the TikTok app on government devices.

Please stick with us for the afternoon session.

The long-serving Democratic senator Patrick Leahy has delivered an emotional farewell speech on the Senate floor, including an ill-disguised dig at Donald Trump and a call for a return to the bipartisan collaboration of another era.

Leahy, 82, the Senate president pro tempore, is standing down after 48 years in the chamber, a tenure than began with the Watergate scandal and concludes in a highly partisan era in which he said the scoring “of political points have reduced debate oratory to bumper sticker slogans”:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}When I arrived here, bipartisan cooperation was the norm, not the exception.

Make no mistake, the Senate of yesterday was far from perfect. [But] the Senate I entered had one remarkable, redeeming quality. The overwhelming majority of senators of both parties believed they were here to do a job.

Bills had nothing to do with whether a senator was a Democrat or a Republican. Each one of them understood that to do our jobs, the right way, we had to work together. And we did.

In a look back at his political career, Leahy did not mention Trump’s name. But it was clear that the January 6 Capitol riot incited by the former president was a defining moment.

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I began my time in the Senate in the aftermath of a constitutional crisis. We faced the nation broken by the Watergate scandal, the resignation of President Nixon and an endless war in Vietnam.

And as I leave in a few days, the nation is coping with strains and challenges of other kinds. Of very real threats to the whole concept of a working democracy, the sanctity of our Constitution, our elections and the strength of the rule of law.

Another thing I could never imagine as that young law student sitting up there in the gallery is that one day this chamber itself, and the Capitol, would be stormed by a lawless and violent mob.

Leahy spoke for 30 minutes and was given a standing ovation at the conclusion.

In his own tribute, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Leahy was “an institution all of his own”, and that this period of history in the chamber would come to be known as “the Leahy era”.

Another provision within the $1.7tn government spending package is one to grant 4,000 more visas for Afghans who worked with the US during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, along with an extension of the special immigrant visa (SIV) program until 2024, Reuters reports.

SIVs are available to many Afghans who aided US forces as interpreters and translators, as well as in other roles, and who fear reprisals by the Taliban, the Islamist militant group that swiftly seized the country following the US withdrawal in August 2021.

Thousands have come to the US under the program, but an estimated 60,000 remain in the country, delayed by a complicated vetting process.

The program’s inclusion in the omnibus means it will not expire next year, which was a risk after it was not extended in the annual National Defense Authorization Act passed this month.

“This is about upholding the vow we made to the brave individuals who risked their lives and the safety of their families for the US mission,” Democratic New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen, who advocated for the measure, said in a statement.

A measure to ban TikTok from most government devices is included in the $1.7tn spending package unveiled by congressional leaders on Tuesday.

The bill requires the Biden administration to prohibit most uses of the Chinese-owned social media app, or any other created by its owner, ByteDance Ltd, according to the Associated Press.

The requirements would apply to the executive branch with exemptions for national security, law enforcement and research purposes and don’t appear to cover Congress, where only a handful of lawmakers maintain TikTok accounts.

TikTok is the second-most popular domain in the world but there has been concern in Washington that Beijing would use legal and regulatory power to seize American user data, or try to push pro-China narratives or misinformation.

Separately, the Senate voted last week on a bill that would achieve the same goal. A number of states have already banned TikTok from official devices.

A rare “firehouse primary” is taking place in Virginia today to find a Democratic nominee fill a House seat vacated by the death last month of veteran congressman Donald McEachin.

The vote is unusual because it’s organized by a political party rather than the state’s office of elections. Party members will gather at a variety of locations, but no actual firehouses, to canvass and choose a candidate to run in February’s special election.

Republicans in Virginia’s 4th congressional district employed a similar method on Saturday to pick their nominee, Leon Benjamin.

The favorite for the Democratic nod is state senator Jennifer McClellan, who lost in a primary for Virginia governor earlier this year. McClellan, who is endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, would be the first Black congresswoman from Virginia.

McEachin won re-election easily in November, and the seat is a Democratic stronghold, so unlikely to have any effect on the narrow majority Republicans will hold when they assume control of the House next month.

It’s also worth a look at how events could unfold now that Donald Trump has been referred to the justice department over his insurrection. Hugo Lowell reports:

The House January 6 select committee outlined criminal referrals against Donald Trump for charges that experts believe the justice department could definitely pursue should it move forward with prosecuting the former US president over his efforts to stop the congressional certification of the 2020 election.

The panel voted at its final public session on Monday to recommend prosecution for Trump for four possible crimes: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to make a false statement and incitement of insurrection.

The criminal referrals are largely symbolic since Congress has no ability to compel the justice department to seek charges, and federal prosecutors for months have been running their own parallel investigation into the Capitol attack and Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat.

But the referrals, which provided an analysis of the possible criminal conduct and supporting evidence not dissimilar to internal prosecution memos produced by the department prior to indictments, included several statutes that the new special counsel is almost certain to consider, according to two former US attorneys.

The first referral for obstruction of an official proceeding, legal experts said, appeared to be the most likely charge that federal prosecutors might consider with respect to charging Trump over his attempts to delay the 6 January certification of Joe Biden’s election win.

The panel said that Trump appeared to meet the elements of the offense – “corruptly” seeking to “impede any official proceeding” – when he pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to refuse to count electoral college votes for Biden when he had been told that the plan was illegal.

While Trump’s efforts to get Pence to stop the certification alone was sufficient for a charge, the panel added, Trump could be prosecuted for trying to create fake electoral college slates since they were done ultimately as cover for Pence to decertify Biden votes.

The second referral for conspiracy to defraud was another possible charge that is likely to be considered by federal prosecutors, the experts said, since it does not need to be connected to an underlying crime besides impairing a lawful government function through dishonest means.

Partly overlapping with the first referral, the panel suggested Trump could be charged with conspiracy because his attempts to stop the 6 January certification were done “dishonestly” – as the plot to get Pence to decertify election wins for Biden were “manifestly (and admittedly) illegal”.

While the justice department has previously looked at the conspiracy to defraud statute, most recently by Robert Mueller, whether it would make a case against Trump is less clear given that the supreme court has interpreted the statute more narrowly to deal with money, rather than public corruption.

Read the full story:

The fallout from Monday’s historic referral of Donald Trump on criminal charges including insurrection continues. My colleague Kira Lerner takes a look at some of the reaction:

Democrats in Congress on Monday praised the House January 6 select committee for referring former president Donald Trump to the justice department for violating at least four criminal statutes, while Republicans called the committee’s work a “political stunt”.

In its last public meeting, the committee chose to refer Trump for charges on obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and assisting, aiding or comforting an insurrection.

Though the unprecedented criminal referrals are largely symbolic as the justice department will decide whether to prosecute Trump, they will give the justice department a road map should it choose to proceed.

The committee also referred four House Republicans – understood to be Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs – to the House ethics committee for failure to comply with subpoenas. And John Eastman, Trump’s attorney, was also referred for prosecution.

Republicans called the investigation a “witch hunt” and played down the criminal allegations concerning the riots that led to at least five deaths.

Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Representative Jim Jordan, a Trump ally from Ohio, called the referrals “just another partisan and political stunt”, in a statement to the Guardian, adding that the committee “failed to respond to Mr Jordan’s numerous letters and concerns surrounding the politicization and legitimacy of the committee’s work”.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and far-right conspiracy theorist, shared screenshots of polling of Republican primary voters, claiming the “real reason” for the criminal referrals is because committee members think Trump will be unbeatable in his run for president in 2024. She likened the United States to a communist country where people steal elections and then “weaponize the government against their political enemies and the people who support them”.

Representative Troy Nehls, a Republican from Texas, retweeted a Fox News contributor who said that the committee is illegitimate. He also called it a “partisan witch hunt”, and said that “the American people are sick of it”.

Read the full story:

It was a late night for congressional leaders negotiating a long-term government spending package, an agreement coming in the early hours Tuesday on a $1.7tn deal.

Senators are discussing the deal today. According to the Associated Press, the package includes another large round of aid to Ukraine, a nearly 10% boost in defense spending, and roughly $40bn to assist communities across the country recovering from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

The bill, which runs for 4,155 pages, includes about $772.5bn for non-defense discretionary programs, and $858bn in defense funding and would last through the end of the fiscal year in September.

Lawmakers are racing to complete passage before a midnight Friday deadline, or face the prospect of a partial government shutdown going into the Christmas holiday.

The package includes about $45bn emergency assistance to Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion, according to Democratic Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate appropriations committee. It would be the biggest US infusion of assistance yet. Previous rounds of military, economic and humanitarian assistance have totaled about $68bn.

The legislation also includes historic revisions to federal election law that aim to prevent any future presidents or presidential candidates from trying to overturn an election.

The bipartisan overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is in direct response to former president Donald Trump’s efforts to convince Republican lawmakers and then-vice president Mike Pence to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

Support from at least 10 Republican senators will be needed for the agreement to pass and head for consideration by the House. And that is not a guarantee.

“We still haven’t seen a single page of the bill… and they’re expecting us to pass it by the end of this week. It’s insane,” Florida Republican senator Rick Scott said in a tweet.

If Monday was a day of reckoning for Donald Trump in Congress, Tuesday is likely to be another when a House committee meets this afternoon to vote on whether to release six years of his tax returns to the public.

A Supreme Court ruling last month cleared the treasury department to hand the documents to the ways and means committee, ending a three-year fight by the former president to shield many of his closest financial secrets.

The committee is almost certain to vote later this afternoon to release at least some of the information, although when, and in what form, is still uncertain. But given that Democrats have been fighting so hard to get it, and their majority in the House is in its final days, it’s reasonable to assume we’ll see something soon.

A big question for panel chair Richard Neal, a Massachussetts Democrat, is how far to go with the documents. Some analysts expect to see an executive summary of the returns, while others say the full documents attached to a committee report are likely.

Of course, both could still happen. A vote this afternoon for any kind of public release would be another blow for the former president, who was referred to the justice department on Monday on four criminal charges relating to his insurrection over his 2020 election defeat.

As we reported earlier this month, the House committee first requested Trump’s returns in 2019. Trump, who on 15 November began his third consecutive run for the presidency, dragged the issue through the court system.

It was long customary, though not required, for major party presidential candidates to release their tax records. Trump was the first such candidate in four decades not to do so.

Read more:

Good morning US politics blog readers! It’s another day of peril for Donald Trump on Capitol Hill as a House committee meets this afternoon to vote on whether to release six years of the former president’s tax returns to the public.

It’s a reasonable bet Trump didn’t wake in good spirits anyway after Monday’s referral to the justice department on four criminal charges relating to his insurrection, and today’s meeting of the ways and means committee is unlikely to lighten his mood.

He’s spent years trying to shield his tax returns, and Democrats in Congress could blow that up in the waning days of their majority. But it’s unclear when, or in what form, we would see those returns in the event of a yes vote.

Here’s what else we’re watching today:

• The Senate will discuss funding to keep the government running, not quite a week after the last time. But today they’re talking about a $1.7tn spending package agreed in the early hours that will avert a shutdown for at least another year.

• Voters are at the polls in Virginia to elect a Democratic nominee to fill the unexpired term of congressman Donald McEachin, who died of cancer last month after winning re-election.

• Joe Biden has a quiet day planned, with no events on his public schedule. As things stand, no briefing from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is scheduled either, but things could change.

Please stick with us. We’ve a lot coming up today, including more analysis of the historic criminal referral for former President Trump.