Democrats plan defense as Republicans ramp up investigations into president and Hunter Biden – as it happened

Donald Trump’s organization was fined $1.6m by a judge after being convicted of tax fraud charges, but the Manhattan district attorney hinted that’s not the end of his investigation into the former president’s businesses. Meanwhile in Washington, House Republicans demanded more information about the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, while the top Senate Democrat said special counsel Robert Hur should be allowed to look into the matter without interference.

Here’s what happened today:

• Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, according to a new book about his presidency.

• Treasury secretary Janet Yellen warned the US government will soon hit its debt limit, and could run out of money by June.

• Special counsel Jack Smith wants to talk to two people hired by Trump’s attorneys to look for any secret materials in his possession.

• Congress will convene for the annual State of the Union address on 7 February.

• Who is George Santos really? Two Daily Beast reporters try to get to the bottom of the fabulist congressman’s saga in an interview with the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast.

Last week, the much-talked-about George Santos of New York was sworn into the House. The Democrats and even some Republicans think he should have resigned after he admitted to lying about a lot of things during his campaign.

So who is the real George Santos? How likely is it that he’ll see out his full term in office? And does his success tell us more about the state of US politics than it does an individual’s misgivings? Jonathan Freedland and Will Bredderman of the Daily Beast discuss the man behind the lies on the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast:

Attorney general Merrick Garland has asked Robert Hur to handle the investigation into Biden’s classified documents, putting a justice department veteran whose most recent government service was as a Donald Trump-appointed US attorney in a role that could upend his presidency.

Semafor reports that Democrats remember his work as US attorney for Maryland fondly. “He handled himself with real professionalism when he was U.S. attorney in Maryland,” the state’s Democratic senator Ben Cardin said, while Jamie Raskin, a House Democrat from the state and noted Trump foe, said Hur had a “good reputation.”

Rod Rosenstein, who was deputy attorney general under Trump, said Hur was his “point person” for dealing with one of the men the former president liked least: Robert Mueller, the special counsel who led the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.

The House armed services committee is also requesting details about the classified documents found in Joe Biden’s possession.

The committee’s Republican chair Mike Rogers earlier this week wrote to two defense officials requesting details on what the documents contained, and how they had been handled.

You can read the letter below:

Needless to say, this is turning into a headache for Democrats in Congress.

The party has been on a roll lately, doing much better in the November midterms than expected and then being gifted with Republican disarray in the House and a surprisingly quiet presidential campaign from Donald Trump.

Now, they’re back to playing defense after Joe Biden was found to be doing something similar to what has gotten Trump into so much trouble: possessing classified documents. There are substantial differences to the two cases, but party leaders nonetheless are being called upon to answer for their president.

“It’s much too early to tell,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer today replied on CNN, when asked if he believes Biden broke the law. “I think president Biden has handled this correctly. He’s fully cooperated with the prosecutors … it’s total contrast to president Trump, who stonewalled for a whole year.”

With special prosecutors looking into both men’s cases, Schumer called for patience. “We should let it play out, we don’t have to push them in any direction or try to influence them,” he said.

“Let the special prosecutors do their job,” Schumer said, adding that he supports the appointment of Robert Hur to that role in the Biden case.

You can watch the full interview here:

Republicans on the House judiciary committee have announced their own investigation of the classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and former office, sending a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding details of the inquiry.

“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s actions with respect to former Vice President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence. On January 12, 2023, you appointed Robert Hur as Special Counsel to investigate these matters. The circumstances of this appointment raise fundamental oversight questions that the Committee routinely examines. We expect your complete cooperation with our inquiry,” the committee’s chair Jim Jordan along with congressman Mike Johnson said in a letter.

The letter notes that the documents were first discovered just before the midterm elections in November, and accuses the justice department of departing “from how it acted in similar circumstances,” notable the inquiry into government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The committee members demand Garland turn over an array of documents related to the Biden investigation by 27 January.

The investigation is the second to be announced by the House GOP since reports of the documents’ discovery first emerged this week. The other is being pursued by James Comer of the oversight committee, who is playing a major role in the Republicans’ campaign of investigations against the White House.

Joe Biden will make the annual State of the Union speech on 7 February, after the president accepted a formal invitation from House speaker Kevin McCarthy:

In a statement confirming his attendance, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struck a bipartisan tone.

“The President is grateful for and accepts Speaker McCarthy’s prompt invitation to address the peoples’ representatives in Congress,” she said. “He looks forward to speaking with Republicans, Democrats, and the country about how we can work together to continue building an economy that works from the bottom up and the middle out, keep boosting our competitiveness in the world, keep the American people safe, and bring the country together.”

Looping back to Donald Trump’s legal troubles, here’s a little more about the situation in New York and beyond.

The Trump Organization’s sentencing doesn’t end Trump’s battle with Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who said the sentencing “closes this important chapter of our ongoing investigation into the former president and his businesses. We now move on to the next chapter,” the Associated Press writes.

Bragg, in office for little more than a year, inherited the Trump Organization case and the investigation into the former president from his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.

At the same time, New York attorney general Letitia James is suing Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging they misled banks and others about the value of its many assets, including golf courses and skyscrapers – a practice she dubbed the “art of the steal” – a parody of Trump’s long-ago bestselling ghostwritten book about getting rich The Art of the Deal.

James, a Democrat, is asking a court to ban Trump and his three eldest children from running any New York-based company and is seeking to fine them at least $250 million. A judge has set an October trial date and appointed a monitor for the company while the case is pending.

Trump faces several other legal challenges as he ramps up his presidential campaign.

A special grand jury in Atlanta has investigated whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Last month, the House January 6 committee voted to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump’s role in sparking the violent insurrection at the US Capitol. The FBI is also investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents.

During last year’s Trump Org trial, assistant district attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors that Trump himself had a role in the fraud scheme, showing them a lease that the Republican signed himself for now-convicted finance chief Allen Weisselberg’s perk apartment that was kept off the tax books.

“Mr Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud,” Steinglass argued.

Joe Biden this weekend will become the first sitting US president to speak at a Sunday service at Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was a pastor.

Biden is expected to address the ongoing struggle to protect voting rights in the US, despite his failure a year ago to persuade Congress to pass key related legislation, to the exasperation of activists and organizers, especially in Georgia and the south.

At the White House press briefing ongoing now, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, now senior adviser for public engagement at the White House, talked of the importance of the president’s visit this Sunday, ahead of Martin Luther King Day, the federal holiday that marks the birthday of the assassinated icon.

She said that there was “more work to do” to protect democracy and acknowledged that the Biden administration’s two pieces of voting rights legislation have not made it through Congress.

She noted that Biden has been invited to the church by Georgia’s recently re-elected Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, who is a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist church. The church was also regularly attended by the late congressman and lifelong civil rights activist John Lewis.

Biden will meet members of King’s family and leaders of the civil rights movement in Atlanta during his visit on Sunday and Monday.

Lance Bottoms joined White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who pointed out that she and the former mayor are examples of “Black women who have broken barriers” on the shoulders of the civil rights movement.

Donald Trump’s organization was fined $1.6m by a judge after being convicted of tax fraud charges, but the Manhattan district attorney hinted that’s not the end of his investigation into the former president’s businesses. Meanwhile in Washington, the Treasury secretary warned the US government will hit its legal borrowing limit on Thursday and could default in the summer, unless Congress acts to increase it. Republicans controlling the House have said they won’t cooperate unless government spending is cut, ensuring this is going to turn into a big fight at some point.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Joe Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, according to a new book about his presidency.

• The top House Republican government watchdog is trying to link his investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings with the inquiry into classified documents found at the president’s properties.

• Special counsel Jack Smith wants to talk to two people hired by Trump’s attorneys to look for any secret materials in his possession.

The US government will hit the legal limit on how much debt it can carry on 19 January, but it should have enough money to operate until at least early June, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said Friday.

“I am writing to inform you that beginning on Thursday, January 19, 2023, the outstanding debt of the United States is projected to reach the statutory limit. Once the limit is reached, Treasury will need to start taking certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations,” the secretary wrote in a letter to Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“While Treasury is not currently able to provide an estimate of how long extraordinary measures will enable us to continue to pay the government’s obligations, it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June.”

Republicans in the House have signaled they won’t agree to increase the debt ceiling unless the Biden administration and its Democratic allies in Congress agree to reduce spending, though it remains unclear what areas of the budget the GOP wants to cut. Raising the borrowing limit is one of the few pieces of leverage House Republicans have over the Democrats, but the strategy is not without risks. A failure to increase the ceiling could lead to the United States defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history, likely with serious consequences for the economy.

The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee is attempting to make two alleged scandals into one: the investigation of classified materials found at Joe Biden’s properties, and their inquiry into his son Hunter Biden’s business activities.

The committee’s chair James Comer has sent the White House a new demand for information about whether Hunter had access to the garage at Joe Biden’s Delaware residence where it was revealed yesterday some classified material was found:

Even before Biden took office, Republicans have been trying to find evidence of corruption in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and of his father’s involvement. They have had mixed results in doing that, but this week’s revelations that classified materials were found at Biden’s residence and an office he once used in Washington DC have given them new material to attack his administration. Yesterday, the justice department appointed a special counsel to look into the matter.

The trial of members of the Proud Boys militia group over their involvement in the January 6 insurrection is continuing in Washington DC, today with testimony from a Capitol police officer.

Thomas Loyd’s testimony contains fresh reminders of the violence that day, as Politico reports:

Joe Biden doesn’t trust his Secret Service detail, fearing that some of them remain loyal to Donald Trump, Vox reports, citing a new book about his presidency.

“The Fight of His Life” by Chris Whipple chronicles the past two years of Biden’s presidency from a positive perspective, according to Vox, and in particular shows the degree to which he loathes his predecessor. Biden, for instance, believes the White House’s Resolute desk was “tainted” by Trump’s use and unsuccessfully asked to swap it out for one used by Democratic icon Franklin D Roosevelt.

When it comes to the Secret Service, he minds what he says around them, believing that agents harbor sympathies for the former president. He also thinks they lied about an incident where his dog Major bit an agent.

Reached by Vox, the White House wouldn’t comment directly on the book’s content.