From 3h ago
A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign released a statement in response to House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement backing a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”, the statement by Ammar Moussa reads.
11 days ago, McCarthy unequivocally said he would not move forward with an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote on the House floor. What has changed since then?
The Biden-Harris campaign added:
Several members of the Speaker’s own conference have come out and publicly panned impeachment as a political stunt, pointing out there is no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden as Republicans litigate the same debunked conspiracy theories they’ve investigated for over four years.
The speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, announced that Republicans would open an impeachment investigation into Joe Biden over unproven allegations of corruption in his family’s business dealings. House Republicans have so far have not produced hard evidence linking the business dealings of Hunter Biden and his father.
The announcement by McCarthy kicks off what are expected to be weeks of Republican-led hearings intended to convince Americans that the president profited from the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and other family members. While impeachment can be the first step to removing a president from office, that appears unlikely to happen.
A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign said McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”. Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach his successor, according to a report.
Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, described McCarthy’s announcement as “extreme politics at its worst”, adding that House GOP members had uncovered “no evidence of wrongdoing” in the months-long investigation into Joe Biden.
It is unclear if the GOP has the evidence to substantiate the long-running claims, or even the votes for impeachment. McCarthy plans to convene House GOP members behind closed doors this week to discuss the Biden impeachment.
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee leading the impeachment inquiry into Biden, spent “eight months of abject failure” in trying to prove the president guilty of wrongdoing, a watchdog released earlier this week said. The report by the Congressional Integrity Project offers an anatomy of a fake scandal, detailing a series of exaggerated assertions that have shriveled under scrutiny.
Vladimir Putin described the recent indictments of Donald Trump as “political persecution” as the Russian leader waded back into a US presidential campaign for the third consecutive election cycle. “I believe that everything happening at the moment is good. Because it demonstrates the rottenness of the American political system,” Putin remarked during an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.
The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has “had conversations” with No Labels, a group considering launching a third-party candidate in the 2024 election. Names linked to a No Labels candidacy have included Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland.
You can read the full report on the impeachment inquiry here:
Almost all the Republicans running for the presidential nomination have endorsed the impeachment inquiry.
Donald Trump is notably the only one who’s called impeachment outright. Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have all expressed support for the inquiry.
Meanwhile, Chris Christie said he supports investigations, but noted, “I think we’re cheapening impeachment by doing that kind of thing.”
Will Hurd, meanwhile said an investigation was warranted, but warned that if no evidence is found “I worry Republicans are walking into a political trap.”
Women who say they were denied abortions in medical emergencies have taken legal action in Idaho, Oklahoma and Tennessee, in the latest attempt to challenge abortion bans that, abortion patients and doctors say, prevent people from getting care even when their health is in danger.
The lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee, along with a federal complaint against a hospital in Oklahoma, were filed on Tuesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of women in Texas earlier this year. Tuesday’s filings were first reported by the Washington Post.
“I can’t stop bad things from happening to people’s pregnancies,” Jennifer Adkins, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in Idaho, told the Post. “But I want other Idahoans to feel safe and cared for.”
After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, states across the south and midwest enacted near-total abortion bans, many of which only allow abortions in cases of medical emergencies. However, doctors have repeatedly said that these bans, which contain non-medical language drafted by politicians, are too vague for medical providers to interpret. Instead, they are forced to wait until their patients get sick enough for them to intervene.
Read more:
It’s been a busy Tuesday so far. Here’s where things stand:
The speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, announced that Republicans would open an impeachment investigation into Joe Biden over unproven allegations of corruption in his family’s business dealings. House Republicans have so far have not produced hard evidence linking the business dealings of Hunter Biden and his father.
The announcement by McCarthy kicks off what are expected to be weeks of Republican-led hearings intended to convince Americans that the president profited from the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and other family members. While impeachment can be the first step to removing a president from office, that appears unlikely to happen.
A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign said McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”. Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach his successor, according to a report.
Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, described McCarthy’s announcement as “extreme politics at its worst”, adding that House GOP members had uncovered “no evidence of wrongdoing” in the months-long investigation into Joe Biden.
It is unclear if the GOP has the evidence to substantiate the long-running claims, or even the votes for impeachment. McCarthy plans to convene House GOP members behind closed doors this week to discuss the Biden impeachment.
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee leading the impeachment inquiry into Biden, spent “eight months of abject failure” in trying to prove the president guilty of wrongdoing, a watchdog released earlier this week said. The report by the Congressional Integrity Project offers an anatomy of a fake scandal, detailing a series of exaggerated assertions that have shriveled under scrutiny.
Vladimir Putin described the recent indictments of Donald Trump as “political persecution” as the Russian leader waded back into a US presidential campaign for the third consecutive election cycle. “I believe that everything happening at the moment is good. Because it demonstrates the rottenness of the American political system,” Putin remarked during an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.
The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has “had conversations” with No Labels, a group considering launching a third-party candidate in the 2024 election. Names linked to a No Labels candidacy have included Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland.
Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach Joe Biden, including regularly speaking with a member of leadership in the lead up to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement on Tuesday, according to a Politico report.
Trump has been speaking on a weekly basis with House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik, who was the first member of Republican leadership to come out in support of impeachment, the report says.
The former president had dinner on Sunday night with the far-right congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the topic of impeachment was discussed, the report says.
Two Ron DeSantis hats put up for auction at a Republican dinner in Florida at the weekend received precisely no bids, according to local party officials, suggesting his presidential campaign in his home state is going as badly as it is nationwide.
Details come in this story by Newsweek, which says nobody signed up to bid on either of the red and white caps at the St Johns county GOP founders dinner in Ponte Vedra Beach on Saturday. St Johns is where the Florida governor was born.
A photo of the barren sign-up sheets was posted to X, formerly Twitter, by Republican fundraiser Caroline Wren, the image taken two and a half hours after the event began.
Blake Paterson, chair of the county’s Republican party, confirmed to Newsweek that the hats had attracted no bidders, though he characterized the event as a giveaway in exchange for donations rather than an auction.
Those in attendance at the dinner appeared to be overwhelmingly supporters of Donald Trump, DeSantis’s rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. They included Florida congressman Byron Donalds, a vocal Trump acolyte, and extremist conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, failed candidate for governor of Arizona in last year’s election.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to convene House GOP members behind closed doors this week to discuss the Biden impeachment, amid uncertainty over whether he even has the support of rank-and-file Republicans behind him.
McCarthy is launching the impeachment inquiry on his own and without a House floor vote, as he may not have enough support from his slim GOP majority, AP reported.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has warned House Republicans off the effort, but on Tuesday he said:
I don’t think Speaker McCarthy needs advice from the Senate.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer called the impeachment inquiry “absurd”. He told reporters:
The American people want us to do something that will make their lives better, not go off on these chases and witch hunts.
House GOP members have found an “overwhelming” amount of evidence showing Joe Biden “lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s influence peddling schemes”, according to a joint statement by James Comer, Jim Jordan and Jason Smith.
Comer, Jordan and Smith chair the three committees expected to take the lead in the impeachment inquiry into the president. They are: the House committee on oversight and accountability, committee on the judiciary, and the committee on ways and means.
The statement says the investigation into Biden uncovered “bank records, suspicious activity reports, emails, texts, and witness testimony” that showed the president “allowed his family to sell him as ‘the brand’ around the world”.
Based on the evidence, we support the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The House Committees on Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary, and Ways and Means, will continue to work to follow the facts to ensure President Biden is held accountable for abusing public office for his family’s financial gain. The American people demand and deserve answers, transparency, and accountability for this blatant abuse of public office.
House Republicans have so far have not produced hard evidence linking the business dealings of Hunter Biden and the president.
Senate Republicans are unhappy with House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and concerned that it will backfire on the party, according to the Hill.
A Senate Republican, speaking on condition on anonymity, told the newspaper that even if the House did vote to impeach Biden after an inquiry, there is no way the Democrat-controlled Senate would vote to convict. Reports indicate McCarthy does not yet have enough votes in support of impeaching Biden.
“It’s a waste of time. It’s a fool’s errand,” the GOP senator was quoted as saying.
We know how this is going to end. It just creates tumult within the conference. I can see it already how people are going to react when they send a message over if they go that far.
They noted that all the internal polling they had seen suggested GOP primary voters do not see impeachment as a priority. The senator added:
It seems like we’re spending a lot of time on things that matter to them that don’t matter to the people I want to have a positive opinion of Republicans next November … This is not driving [general election] turnout.
“They’re all acting like children,” the GOP senator added.
Here’s a statement from Jamaal Bowman, a Democratic congressman from New York, who accused House speaker Kevin McCarthy of announcing a “sham” impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in order to “bring attention away from the failures of House Republicans to be able to pass a budget and avoid a government shutdown”.
The statement reads:
Speaker McCarthy and the dysfunctional Republican party are wasting time with their comical impeachment inquiry into President Biden instead of focusing on passing appropriations bills. We’re just 3 weeks away from a government shutdown where millions of government employees won’t get paid, small businesses won’t be able to apply for federal loans, the NIH has to shut down most medical research, and more. We should be focused on doing our job by helping the American people & funding critical services, not forcing a shutdown & plotting baseless impeachment inquiries.
It goes on:
This is yet another example of Republican dysfunction and continues to show why many across the country do not want to trust or participate in our government.
Ken Buck, a Republican congressman for Colorado and House Freedom caucus member, has previously expressed skepticism about an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
On Sunday, Buck said any evidence linking the president to any high crime or misdemeanor “doesn’t exist right now”. His recent comments against the House GOP’s investigative efforts and track record of bucking his own party have put a target on his back, according to a CNN report.
A serious effort is now under way to find a candidate to mount a primary challenge against Buck in his eastern Colorado seat, the news channel reported, citing sources.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman from Georgia and ally of House speaker Kevin McCarthy, told the channel there is an “unbelievable” level of frustration with Buck inside the House GOP. Greene added that she didn’t think he should remain in his role on the House judiciary committee or the GOP whip’s team.
“This is the same guy that wrote a book called ‘Drain the Swamp’, who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry,” Greene said.
I really don’t see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach … It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?
A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign released a statement in response to House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement backing a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
McCarthy has “cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign”, the statement by Ammar Moussa reads.
11 days ago, McCarthy unequivocally said he would not move forward with an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote on the House floor. What has changed since then?
The Biden-Harris campaign added:
Several members of the Speaker’s own conference have come out and publicly panned impeachment as a political stunt, pointing out there is no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden as Republicans litigate the same debunked conspiracy theories they’ve investigated for over four years.
A Virginia Democrat running in a closely contested legislative election has denounced reports that she and her husband engaged in sex acts livestreamed on an online platform in exchange for “tips”.
Susanna Gibson, a nurse practitioner and a first-time candidate seeking a seat in Virginia’s house of delegates, shared the videos on a platform called Chaturbate.
The videos, which were first reported by the Washington Post and then confirmed by the Associated Press, show Gibson urging viewers to provide tips in the form of Chaturbate tokens in exchange for her performance of specific sex acts with her husband. The videos were archived in 2022, though it is unclear when the live streams occurred.
According to the Post’s report, a Republican operative first alerted the newspaper to the existence of the videos, which had been archived on another site. In a statement, Gibson denounced the report as a form of “gutter politics” and “an illegal invasion of my privacy designed to humiliate me and my family”.
“It won’t intimidate me and it won’t silence me,” Gibson said.
My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.
A lawyer representing Gibson, Daniel P Watkins, told the Post that the videos may have violated Virginia’s revenge porn law, adding: “We are working closely with state and federal law enforcement.”
Gibson’s district, located just north-west of Richmond, is considered one of just a handful of competitive seats in the race to control Virginia’s house of delegates. In the last legislative session, Republicans narrowly controlled the chamber, while Democrats maintained a slim majority in the state senate.
Peter Navarro’s contempt of Congress conviction has “everybody in that frigging White House” feeling as if they are grappling with “massive legal bills and … prison time”, the ex-Donald Trump administration official said on Monday.
Navarro’s remarks came in an interview with the far-right media outlet Newsmax in which he used the term “SOBs” – short for sons of bitches – to refer to the US justice department prosecutors who secured a guilty verdict against him last week.
Lamenting that prosecutors had pushed to “stick me in leg irons … [and] with half a million dollars of legal bills”, Navarro pledged to seek a reversal of his conviction from an appellate court. Navarro told the host Eric Bolling:
We’re gonna win this fight – that’s why God created the appeals court.
Navarro served as a senior trade adviser during Trump’s presidency, which ended in the Republican’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Congress subpoenaed him in February 2022 to answer questions about why Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, temporarily delaying certification of Biden’s electoral victory.
A House committee convened to investigate the attack suspected Navarro had more information about any connection between false claims of voter fraud in that election which Trump allies had pushed and the assault on the Capitol. But Navarro refused to testify while also declining to turn over any emails, reports or notes.
Navarro’s attorney argued that the defendant asked the committee to talk to Trump to see what information he wanted protected under executive privilege, which never happened. Prosecutors countered that Navarro should have handed over the materials he had while labeling those he believed were privileged.
On Thursday, a jury convicted Navarro of two misdemeanor charges of contempt of Congress, each of which is punishable by between 30 days and a year in prison. His sentencing has tentatively been scheduled for 12 January.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
