Classified documents not found at Biden’s beach home after DoJ concludes search – as it happened

Federal agents have come and gone from Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home in their search for classified materials, after previously paying a visit to his residence in Wilmington and former office in Washington DC. There were no government secrets found at Biden’s beachfront property, but the search means the investigation will stay in the news for the time being. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmaker Jared Huffman is circulating a letter worrying over security in the House ahead of next week’s State of the Union address, which he says has grown worse since the GOP took control of the chamber at the start of the year.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Nikki Haley and Tim Scott sure seem to be preparing to campaign for president, which would put them up against fellow Republican Donald Trump.

• Socialism is set to be formally denounced with a Republican-backed House resolution that has received surprising Democratic support.

• Biden is having his first meeting with Kevin McCarthy since the Republican was elected House speaker, but the press is not invited.

• It’s the usual partisan split when it comes to the public’s views of the unfolding classified document scandal, new polling has found.

• Just about anything can spark an argument in Congress these days, including the pledge of allegiance.

Kevin McCarthy is heading to his first meeting with Joe Biden since becoming House speaker.

Increasing the debt ceiling is the main item on their agenda, and as he left the Capitol, Fox News caught McCarthy again laying out his demands for spending cuts:

You might not hear much more than that about the meeting, at least not for a while. According to the White House, the encounter is “Closed Press”, meaning reporters are not invited to attend. That has sparked objections from Kelly O’Donnell, vice-president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who said prior presidents have invited journalists to observe parts of such meetings:

Republicans are moving forward with a plan to boot Democrat Ilhan Omar off the House foreign affairs committee, saying she used antisemitic rhetoric. But a Democratic colleague said the effort is about nothing more than revenge, the Associated Press reports. A vote on her ouster is expected Thursday:

A House Republican attempt to remove Ilhan Omar from the foreign affairs committee, expected as soon as Wednesday, is about “vengeance” and “spite”, one of the Minnesotan’s fellow Democrats said.

“This is about vengeance. This is about spite. This is about politics,” said James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the rules committee, as Republicans called a hurried meeting late on Tuesday to consider the matter.

Republicans are targeting Omar, an African-born Black lawmaker, over comments she has made about Israel and as payback after Democrats kicked far-right Republicans off committees for incendiary and violent remarks. On Wednesday, the House voted 218-209 along party lines to move forward with a resolution to remove Omar from the committee. A final vote was expected later this week.

The new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has been eager to remove Omar after blocking two other Democrats, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, from the intelligence committee.

Omar, a Somali immigrant and one of the first female Muslims in Congress, has apologized for comments she has said she has come to understand were viewed as antisemitic.

Nikki Haley, the Republican former governor of South Carolina who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump, has a “big announcement” planned for later this month.

What could it be?

A run for president, is the most likely answer. Trump may already have announced a second campaign for the White House, but that isn’t scaring off other Republicans from throwing their hat in the ring.

Case in point: Tim Scott, a GOP senator who is also from South Carolina, will launch “a listening tour focused on Faith in America” later this month, with stops in Iowa and South Carolina. Both states happen to be on the early primary calendar for Republicans, and often play a major role in winnowing the field of presidential nominees.

The biggest name waiting in the wings is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has repeatedly come in second in polls of Republicans over their preferences for president.

In Memphis, mourners are gathering for the funeral of Tyre Nichols, whose death at the hands of law enforcement sparked outrage and renewed calls for Congress to act on long-stalled police reform legislation.

Vice-President Kamala Harris is among the attendees, and the Guardian has a blog dedicated to covering the event live:

Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, told CNN earlier he has handed his cellphones to prosecutors in Manhattan as they look again at a 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star with whom Donald Trump denies having an affair.

A grand jury has been convened in New York to hear evidence related to the payment, a potential campaign finance crime.

Cohen said: “Most recently, they asked for my cellphones because they want to be able to extract from it the voice recordings that I had had with Keith Davidson, former attorney to Stormy Daniels before Michael Avenatti, as well as a bunch of emails, text messages and so on.”

Cohen’s phones have been seized before, by federal investigators in 2018.

Cohen has previously pleaded guilty to paying Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 to be quiet about her alleged affair with Trump, which she says happened in 2006. Cohen says Trump directed him to make the payment. Cohen’s recompense for doing so has been detailed by federal prosecutors.

As CNN put it, “Manhattan prosecutors are [now] looking into whether Trump and his business falsified business records by improperly treating the reimbursement as a legal expense. That charge is a misdemeanor in New York unless it can be tied to another crime, such as campaign finance laws.”

There follows more on what Stormy Daniels is up to now, containing a quote for the ages, about her experience as a stand-up comic, thus: “It was the most terrifying experience of my life, and that’s saying something because I’ve seen Trump naked.”

Speaking of the debt ceiling, the meeting at the White House later, Republican messaging as practised by Senate minority leader Addison Mitchell McConnell III – you know and love him as Mitch – and our columnist Robert Reich, here’s Robert with some pertinent preparatory reading…

The dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.

They’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

It’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!

When they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).

Then when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.

Not only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.

This backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.

More:

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has issued a statement about the meeting scheduled for this afternoon between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker.

True to Republican messaging about spending and debt – see Reich, Robert, former US labor secretary and Guardian US columnist, passim but also here, today – McConnell says “it is right, appropriate and entirely normal that our need to raise the debt limit would be paired with negotiations regarding Democrats’ runaway printing and spending”.

McConnell cites previous remarks by his opposite number, Chuck Schumer, about the debt ceiling being something that should be negotiated over, and says: “The president of the United States does not get to walk away from the table.

“The same president who happily signed off on [further messaging alert] trillions of dollars of reckless party-line spending needs to begin good-faith negotiations on spending reform with Speaker McCarthy today.”

Schumer spoke on the Senate floor. He said Republicans had to show the American people their plan to avoid a catastrophic default.

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Later this afternoon President Biden will meet with Speaker McCarthy for their first one-on-one meeting of the year, and everyone is asking the same question of Speaker McCarthy: show us your plan. Where is your plan, Republicans? Where is your plan, Speaker McCarthy?

McCarthy “showing up at the White House without a plan is like sitting down at the table without cards in your hand”, Schumer said, adding: “We know why the speaker has struggled and is unable to produce a plan – delaying it or avoiding it – he doesn’t have the votes for one, in all likelihood.”

He concluded: “We Democrats have a plan – raise the debt ceiling without brinksmanship or hostage-taking as it’s been done before. Speaker McCarthy doesn’t have a plan. So, he is not really negotiating. And the clock is ticking.”

Whatever else one might say about Lauren Boebert, the extremist Republican from Colorado, she knows how to get herself in the news.

We mentioned her just a few posts ago, regarding a contretemps earlier today about security matters at the Capitol.

On the House floor yesterday, the eve of Black History Month, Boebert claimed to be afraid the History Channel and even the Weather Channel could be “canceled” by the forces of wokeness – and/or DirectTV.

In her remarks, Boebert bemoaned the recent decision by the cable provider to drop Newsmax, a rightwing, pro-Trump channel.

Boebert said: “Will the Weather Channel be canceled next if they refuse to bow to the left’s altar of climate change? What about the History Channel? We see on a regular basis the left wants to erase history and deny truth. How about [the rightwing Christian channel] TBN?”

DirecTV says it dropped Newsmax for commercial reasons, because the channel’s “demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs” for customers. It replaced Newsmax with The First, another rightwing operation.

But the decision has stoked rightwing anger. In Florida on Tuesday the governor, Ron DeSantis, said DirecTV’s move “does warrant investigation”.

Boebert insisted it was a political decision.

“This is not the first time that we’ve seen this,” the Coloradan said, “and I’m afraid that it won’t be the last time that we are seeing this here in our great country.

“OAN [One America News, also pro-Trump] was de-platformed by DirecTV in April of 2022. So what’s next? Fox News?”

After DirecTV dropped OAN, Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog, told the Guardian: “No company should profit from spreading content that endangers our democracy.”

But cancel culture is a profitable rightwing talking point, holding that people with views deemed unacceptable by the left are barred from public life.

Insisting “conservatives are not being treated fairly”, Boebert said: “There has definitely been an increase in disdain and intolerance by many liberals for Christian beliefs simply by saying we love Jesus. So is TBN next? Americans are tired of cancel culture.”

Federal agents have come and gone from Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home in their search for classified materials, after previously paying a visit to his former office in Washington DC and residence elsewhere in the state. There were no government secrets found at Biden’s beachfront property, but the search means the investigation will stay in the news for the time being. Meanwhile, in Congress, Democratic lawmaker Jared Huffman is circulating a letter worrying over security in the House ahead of next week’s State of the Union address, which he says has grown worse since the GOP took control of the chamber at the start of the year.

Here’s what else has happened today:

• Socialism is set to be formally denounced with a Republican-backed House resolution that has received surprising Democratic support.

• It’s the usual partisan split when it comes to the public’s views of the unfolding classified document scandal, new polling has found.

• Just about anything can spark an argument in Congress these days, including the pledge of allegiance.

The House will today begin considering a resolution proposed by Republicans to denounce “the horrors of socialism” – a non-binding statement that has received a surprising amount of support from Democrats.

Florida Republican María Elvira Salazar first introduced the resolution in 2021 when Democrats controlled the chamber, and has proposed it again this year with the House under GOP control. “Through this resolution, the House of Representatives denounces socialism in all its forms and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America,” Salazar’s office said in 2021, noting it specifically singles out left-wing one-party states such as Cuba, China and the USSR, which broke up more than three decades ago.

Ahead of the vote today, the second-largest Democratic caucus in the House, the New Democrat Coalition, announced their 96 members would back the measure. “New Dems strongly reject socialism – period. House Republican Leaders should set aside political games and join us as we work to grow our economy for all Americans,” the center-left group said in a statement.

With support like that, the resolution seems sure to pass. But why bother with a statement condemning a governing philosophy that has few open adherents in Washington and is practiced by several of America’s best-known foes? According to Fox News, it’s an attempt to put progressive lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib on the spot, both of whom are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.

The justice department has concluded its search of Joe Biden’s home on Delaware’s coast, and while it found no classified material, agents did take away some documents for further review, an attorney for the president said.

“The DOJ’s planned search of the President’s Rehoboth residences, conducted in coordination and cooperation with the President’s attorneys, has concluded. The search was conducted from 8:30 AM to noon. No documents with classified markings were found,” Bob Bauer, who is acting as a personal lawyer for Biden, said in a statement.

“Consistent with the process in Wilmington, the DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President.”

Democrats are expressing safety concerns in the House natural resources committee after Republicans proposed rules that exclude a ban on firearms in hearing rooms, which existed in the previous Congress.

Here’s how the debate started, according to NBC News:

Jared Huffman, the Democratic lawmaker who is also circulating a letter questioning security in the House ahead of next week’s State of the Union speech, has proposed an amendment to reinstate the ban:

Several far-right lawmakers serve on the committee, including Lauren Boebert. In the hearing, she harkens back to a time when Huffman donned a tinfoil hat to mock her:

She then gets into her reasoning for wanting to carry a gun in the Capitol, a building where access is controlled at all hours by a large police force:

A Democratic representative is circulating a letter to congressional leadership warning that the security of the House is “precarious”, and asking what steps they will take to protect the chamber during the 7 February State of the Union address.

California’s Jared Huffman blamed new rules passed under the House’s Republican leaders for worsening the security situation, and in his letter cited as evidence “the violent insurrection of January 6, an attempt by a Member of Congress to bring a concealed weapon on to the House Floor, other Members vowing to do so in contravention of House rules, and most recently a colleague distributing what appeared to be legitimate, and later revealed to be inert hand grenades on the House Floor.

“We know from experience that the House is vulnerable to multiple fronts of attacks both from inside and outside Congress,” wrote Huffman. “Considering the ability of Members of Congress to carry firearms in the Capitol complex outside the House Floor, removal of magnetometers from the entrances to the House Floor, and with record threats against the lives of Members of Congress, the security of the House complex is today precarious.”

Addressed to the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, Huffman’s letter requests “information on what steps you are taking, in coordination with the House and Senate sergeant at arms, Secret Service, and other federal agencies to protect the president, vice-president, the diplomatic corps, cabinet secretaries, supreme court justices, senators, representatives, and their guests ahead of the State of the Union address on 7 February 2023. Any attack on this gathering would threaten our democracy and undermine the functionality of the entire federal government.”

Huffman is circulating the letter to lawmakers interested in signing it, and plans to send it to leadership this evening, his office said.