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      US House votes to hold Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress

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      The House voted on Wednesday to hold the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview in his classified-documents case, Republicans’ latest and strongest rebuke of the justice department as partisan conflict over the rule of law animates the 2024 presidential campaign.The 216-207 vote fell along party lines, with Republicans coalescing behind the contempt effort despite reservations among some of the party’s more centrist members.“We have to defend the constitution. We have to defend the authority of Congress,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said at a press conference before the vote. “We can’t allow the Department of Justice and executive branch to hide information from Congress.”Garland is now the third attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress. Yet it is unlikely that the justice department – which Garland oversees – will prosecute him. The White House’s decision to exert executive privilege over the audio recording, shielding it from Congress, would make it exceedingly difficult to make a criminal case against Garland.The White House and congressional Democrats have slammed Republicans’ motives for pursuing contempt and dismissed their efforts to obtain the audio as purely political. They also pointed out that Jim Jordan, the GOP chair of the House judiciary committee, defied his own congressional subpoena last session.“This contempt resolution will do very little, other than smear the reputation of Merrick Garland, who will remain a good and decent public servant no matter what Republicans say about him today,” Jerry Nadler, a New York representative and the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, said during floor debate.Garland has defended the justice department, saying officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide information to the committees about the special counsel Robert Hur’s classified-documents investigation, including a transcript of Biden’s interview with him.“There have been a series of unprecedented and frankly unfounded attacks on the justice department,” Garland said in a press conference last month. “This request, this effort to use contempt as a method of obtaining our sensitive law-enforcement files, is just the most recent.”Republicans were incensed when Hur declined to prosecute Biden over his handling of classified documents and quickly opened an investigation. GOP lawmakers – led by Jordan and Representative James Comer – sent a subpoena for audio of Hur’s interviews with Biden during the spring. But the justice department only turned over some of the records, leaving out audio of the interview with the president.On the last day to comply with the Republicans’ subpoena for the audio, the White House blocked the release by invoking executive privilege. It said that Republicans in Congress only wanted the recordings “to chop them up” and use them for political purposes.Executive privilege gives presidents the right to keep information from the courts, Congress and the public to protect the confidentiality of decision-making, though it can be challenged in court.Administrations of both political parties have long held the position that officials who assert a president’s claim of executive privilege cannot be prosecuted for contempt of Congress, a justice department official told Republicans last month.An assistant attorney general, Carlos Felipe Uriarte, cited a committee’s decision in 2008 to back down from a contempt effort after then President George W Bush asserted executive privilege to keep Congress from getting records involving Vice-President Dick Cheney.Before Garland, the last attorney general held in contempt was Bill Barr in 2019. That was when the Democratic-controlled House voted to issue a referral against Barr after he refused to turn over documents related to a special counsel investigation into Trump.Years before that, the then attorney general, Eric Holder, was held in contempt related to the gun-running operation known as Operation Fast and Furious. In each of those instances, the justice department took no action against the attorney general.The special counsel in Biden’s case, Hur, spent a year investigating the president’s improper retention of classified documents, from his time as a senator and as vice-president. The result was a 345-page report that questioned Biden’s mental competence but recommended no criminal charges for the 81-year-old. Hur said he found insufficient evidence to successfully prosecute a case in court.In March, Hur stood by his no-prosecution assessment in testimony before the judiciary committee, where he was grilled for more than four hours by Democratic and Republican lawmakers.His defense did not satisfy Republicans, who insist that there was a politically motivated double standard at the justice department, which is prosecuting former President Donald Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Florida club after he left the White House.But there are major differences between the two investigations. Biden’s team returned the documents after they were discovered, and the president cooperated with the investigation by voluntarily sitting for an interview and consenting to searches of his homes.Trump, by contrast, is accused of enlisting the help of aides and lawyers to conceal the documents from the government and of seeking to have potentially incriminating evidence destroyed. More

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      in Elections

      Nancy Mace Defeats G.O.P. Challenger, Dealing Blow to McCarthy’s Revenge Tour

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      Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, on Tuesday defeated a well-funded primary challenger, putting her on track to win a third term. Her resounding victory also dealt a major blow to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to exact political retribution against those who voted to oust him.Ms. Mace, 46, who once leaned center on social issues, won a Democratic seat in 2020 and claimed that all of former President Donald J. Trump’s accomplishments had been “wiped out” by his behavior on Jan. 6, 2021. But she has made a hard tack to the right over the past year as she has tried to game out her political future. The Associated Press declared her victory about two hours after polls closed on Tuesday.She was the unlikeliest of the eight rebel Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy last year, which transformed her from an ally into one of his top targets for revenge. Outside groups with ties to Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, have poured more than $4 million into backing her opponent, Catherine Templeton, and attacking Ms. Mace.Ms. Mace said that effort motivated her to work harder.“I hope to embarrass him tonight,” she said earlier Tuesday over lunch at a Waffle House in Beaufort, between stops at polling locations. “I want to send him back to the rock he’s living under right now. He’s not part of America. He doesn’t know what hard-working Americans go through every single day. I hope I drive Kevin McCarthy crazy.”A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy declined to comment, and Ms. Mace did not mention his name in her victory speech on Tuesday night.Ms. Mace, whose back story as a former Waffle House waitress is a major part of her political biography, ordered her hash browns with confidence: scattered, diced, capped and peppered. Then she barely touched them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      US supreme court in ‘crisis of legitimacy’ says AOC at House oversight round table

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      The US supreme court has been “captured and corrupted by money and extremism”, provoking a “crisis of legitimacy” that threatens the stability of American democracy, warned the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Speaking during a round table on Capitol Hill, the New York Democrat accused the court of “delegitimizing itself through its conduct”.“A group of anti-democratic billionaires with their own ideological and economic agenda has been working one of the three co-equal branches of government,” she said.Sustained scrutiny of the justices prompted the court to adopt its first code of ethics last year, but it lacks any form of enforcement. Meanwhile, public confidence in the court has plummeted to near historic lows.In the two years since it overturned Roe v Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, a decision that sparked fierce political backlash from voters across the ideological spectrum, the court has been rocked by ethics scandals involving two of the bench’s most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.“The highest court in the land today has the lowest ethical standards,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, and the ranking member of the House oversight committee, who joined Ocasio-Cortez in convening the discussion.Together they sought to “connect the dots” between what they described as a web of dark money and the events that led to a conservative super-majority, cemented by Donald Trump. Only Democrats attended.“Dark money is the rot in our democracy right now,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island senator and longtime crusader against secret spending in politics, who appeared as a witness.View image in fullscreenLast week, Thomas officially disclosed that he took luxury vacations paid for by the conservative billionaire, Harlan Crow. The Republican mega-donor also paid private school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, ProPublica reported as part of a blockbuster series of revelations about the supreme court justices that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service.ProPublica also reported that Alito flew on a private jet and vacationed with a billionaire who later had business before the court.Alito is facing fresh scrutiny in the wake of reports in the New York Times that his wife flew an upside-down US flag outside his home in Virginia days after the attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters, as well as an Appeal to Heaven flag that flew outside a beach home in New Jersey. The upside down flag is associated with the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the latter with Christian nationalism.In response to the flag incidents, Democrats in Congress have called for Alito to recuse himself from cases involving Trump and January 6 defendants.He declined.Democrats have introduced a myriad of bills such as one to establish an independent ethics office and internal investigations counsel within the supreme court. Other ideas include limiting the justices to 18 year-terms rather than lifetime appointments and expanding the seats on the court. But reforms are unlikely to happen without Republicans, who have spent decades building the court’s conservative majority.Thomas has also declined calls to recuse himself from cases involving Trump because his wife, Ginni, a well-known conservative activist, supported the former president’s false claims of election fraud and helped lead the campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election.During Tuesday’s roundtable, Ocasio-Cortez questioned why justices aren’t subject to the same ethical standards as the branches of government. As an example, she said members of Congress are prohibited from accepting gifts valued at more than $50.“Americans are losing fundamental rights in the process, reproductive health care, civil liberties, voting rights, the right to organize clean air and water because the court has been captured and corrupted by money and extremism,” she said.Without a binding code of conduct, Raskin said, there was nothing to reign in the justices.“If you can decide presidential elections with five or four votes in Bush v Gore, if you can pack, stack and gerrymander, not just Congress, but the supreme court itself by denying the other party even a hearing, why can’t you have some friend of the court – some amicus curiae – fly you to Bali for vacation, or pay for your family member’s private school tuition or buy you a recreational vehicle or send you on a lavish, all-expense paid vacation, why the hell not?” More

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      in Elections

      House Ethics Panel Looks Into Nancy Mace’s Use of Reimbursement Program

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      The committee will decide whether to open a formal investigation into expense reports filed by the South Carolina Republican.The House Ethics Committee has begun reviewing Representative Nancy Mace’s use of a reimbursement program for lodging and other expenses of Congress members working in Washington, according to a committee member familiar with the preliminary inquiry.Following a complaint, lawmakers are being asked to look into whether Ms. Mace, Republican of South Carolina, overcharged the program thousands of dollars for expenses related to her Washington townhouse. According to the lawmaker familiar with the preliminary inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it, the full committee will consider the details of the complaint over the coming days.The committee has not taken a vote to authorize an investigation.A change to House rules that went into effect last year allows members to be repaid for costs of lodging and food while they are on official business in Washington, up to $34,000 a year. Lawmakers are not required to submit receipts to be reimbursed, but they are strongly encouraged to keep them for their records.According to the latest report by the Committee on House Administration, Ms. Mace was repaid more than $23,000 in lodging costs in 2023. Documents reviewed by The New York Times showed that amount included expenses for insurance, taxes and other monthly bills related to her townhouse. Lawmakers who own homes in the Washington area — as is the case for Ms. Mace — may not seek reimbursement for mortgage payments.Under the program, lawmakers may only request reimbursement for their portion of housing costs incurred while in Washington. But according to the deed of her home and a person familiar with Ms. Mace’s personal expenses, she is a partial owner of the home with her former fiancé, and would not be permitted to seek repayment for the full costs associated with the shared home.The discrepancies in her filings were first reported by The Washington Post, which noted that Ms. Mace was among a number of lawmakers whose total reimbursements were near the program’s maximum.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House speaker appoints two Trump loyalists to intelligence committee

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      Two far-right Republicans have been appointed to the highly sensitive House of Representatives’ intelligence committee at the direction of Donald Trump, a move likely to antagonise the security establishment.Representatives Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Ronny Jackson of Texas, known for their fierce loyalty to Trump and vocal support of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, were installed by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, ahead of other qualified GOP members and apparently without consulting the body’s chair, Mike Turner.Turner has sought to restore the committee’s bipartisan character following years of bitter party infighting between Republicans and Democrats.The appointments of Perry and Jackson to a committee that helps to shape US foreign policy and oversees intelligence agencies such as the FBI and the CIA has caused consternation on Capitol Hill. It also signals Trump’s hostility to organisations that he has vowed to purge if he is re-elected.Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman who served on the House select committee that investigated the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, called the move “insane” on a social media post.The pair were appointed to slots opened up by the resignations from Congress of Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Chris Stewart of Utah.Perry, a former chairman of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, was at the forefront of Trump’s efforts to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. His endeavours led to his phone being confiscated by the FBI, an organisation he will now have a role in scrutinising.“I look forward to providing not only a fresh perspective, but conducting actual oversight – not blind obedience to some facets of our Intel Community that all too often abuse their powers, resources, and authority to spy on the American people,” Perry wrote in a pointed statement posted on X.Last December, a federal judge ordered him to hand over 1,600 text messages and emails to the FBI concerning his efforts to keep Trump in office after his election defeat.Jackson, a former White House physician to both Trump and Barack Obama, came to public notice in 2018 when the then Republican president tried to appoint him as secretary of veterans affairs.He withdrew his nomination after allegations of professional misconduct emerged, including accusations of drinking on the job and inappropriate behaviour towards female colleagues. It was also said that he took the prescription-strength sedative, Ambien, while on duty.Jackson denied the allegations and said they were politically motivated. But they were upheld by a scathing Pentagon inspector general’s report that said Jackson “disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated” subordinates. The report resulted in his demotion from the rank of rear-admiral to captain by the US navy, in which he served.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile serving as Trump’s White House doctor, he was renowned for his extravagant claims about his patient’s supposedly robust health.A spokesman for Johnson said the speaker “has the utmost confidence in Congressmen Perry and Jackson to capably serve the American people on the intelligence committee”.However, the appointments recall the committee’s stewardship under Devin Nunes, a Trump acolyte who helped to turn into a partisan battleground as he used his position to combat allegations that the former president had won the 2016 presidential election with the help of Russian interference.Nunes was rewarded for his efforts by being given a Medal of Freedom by Trump and is now chief executive of the ex-president’s social media company, Truth Social.Talking to AP, Ira Goldman – a former Republican congressional aide and counsel to the committee in the 1970s and 1980s – accused Johnson of “giving members seats on the committee when, based on the public record, they couldn’t get a security clearance if they came through any other door”. More

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      Andy Kim Wins New Jersey Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate

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      The victory makes Mr. Kim a favorite to replace Mr. Menendez’s father, Senator Robert Menendez, who is on trial, charged with corruption — a detail that became central to his son’s re-election race.Representative Andy Kim, a lawmaker who has turned New Jersey politics on its head since entering the race to unseat Senator Robert Menendez, won the Democratic nomination for Senate on Tuesday after a campaign marked by a watershed ballot-access ruling.The victory makes Mr. Kim, 41, a favorite to become New Jersey’s next senator. He would be the first Korean American to be elected to the U.S. Senate.“I’m humbled by the results,” Mr. Kim said at Terhune Orchards in Princeton, where his supporters had gathered to celebrate. “This has been a very challenging and difficult race, a very dramatic one at that, and one that frankly has changed New Jersey politics forever.”The results, announced by The Associated Press minutes after polls closed, capped a tumultuous campaign that began a day after Senator Menendez, a Democrat, was accused in September of being at the center of a sprawling international bribery scheme.The senator’s criminal case thrust his son, Representative Rob Menendez, 38, into a suddenly competitive race for re-election to a second term. But the younger Menendez managed to hold on, winning a Democratic primary over Ravi Bhalla, the mayor of Hoboken, N.J., by a decisive margin.“This is about showing that you’re resilient in the face of challenges,” an exuberant Mr. Menendez told supporters crowded into a beer hall in Jersey City, N.J.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      US House passes ICC sanctions bill over Netanyahu arrest warrant request

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      The House passed legislation on Tuesday that would sanction the international criminal court after its chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.The 247-155 vote amounts to Congress’s first legislative rebuke of the war-crimes court since prosecutor Karim Khan’s decision last month to seek arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel and Hamas. The move was widely denounced in Washington, creating a rare moment of unity on Israel even as partisan divisions over the war with Hamas intensified.While the House bill was expected to pass Tuesday, it was not likely to attract significant Democratic support, dulling its chances in the Senate. The White House opposes the legislation, calling it overreach.Both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House foreign affairs committee acknowledged the bill is unlikely to become law and left the door open to further negotiation with the White House. They said it would be better for Congress to be united against the Hague-based court.“We’re always strongest, particularly on this committee, when we speak with one voice as one nation, in this case to the ICC and to the judges,” GOP representative Mike McCaul, chair of the foreign affairs Committee, said during House debate. “A partisan messaging bill was not my intention here but that is where we are.”State department spokesperson Matt Miller reiterated the administration’s opposition to the sanctions bill.“We have made clear that while we oppose the decision taken by the prosecutor of the ICC, we don’t think it is appropriate, especially while there are ongoing investigations inside Israel looking at somebody’s very same questions, and we were willing to work with Congress on what a response might look like, but we don’t support sanctions,” Miller said.The House bill would apply sweeping economic sanctions and visa restrictions to individuals and judges associated with the ICC, including their family members. Democrats labeled the approach as “overly broad”, warning it could ensnare Americans and US companies that do important work with the court.“This bill would have a chilling effect on the ICC as an institution, which could hamper the court’s efforts to prosecute the dubious atrocities that have been perpetrated in many places around the world, from Ukraine to Uganda,” said representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the foreign affairs committee.The legislation reprimanding the ICC was just the latest show of support from House Republicans for Israel since Hamas killed around 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and abducted at least an additional 250 people. Republicans have held several votes related to Israel in recent months, highlighting divisions among Democrats over support for the US ally.Congressional leaders have invited Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress this summer, which is likely to further inflame tensions over Israel’s handling of the war. Many Democrats are expected to boycott the speech.Both the ICC and the United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice, have begun to investigate allegations that both Israel and Hamas have committed genocide during the seven-month war.Last month, prosecutor Khan accused Netanyahu; his defense minister, Yoav Gallant; and three Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders condemned the ICC’s move as disgraceful and antisemitic. President Joe Biden and members of Congress also lambasted the prosecutor and supported Israel’s right to defend itself.“Failing to act here in the Congress would make us complicit with the ICC’s illegitimate actions and we must not stay silent,” McCaul said. “We must stand with our allies.”Last week, an investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call revealed a covert Israeli campaign to derail the ICC’s inquiry into war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories.The investigation detailed how, for close to a decade, Israel deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil and pressure senior ICC staff in an effort to thwart the court’s work, going so far as to deploy the head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, to allegedly threaten the court’s former chief prosecutor. More

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      Merrick Garland hits back at Trump and Republicans: ‘I will not be intimidated’

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      US attorney general Merrick Garland has defended his stewardship of the justice department in a combative display on Capitol Hill that saw him accusing Republicans of attacking the rule of law while telling them he “will not be intimidated.”Testifying before the House judiciary committee, Garland accused GOP congressmen of engaging in conspiracy theories and peddling false narratives.“I will not be intimidated,” Garland told lawmakers. “And the justice department will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”Garland’s fiery speech pushed back hard on the claim that the prosecution of Donald Trump – in the hush-money case that last week resulted in the president being convicted of 34 felony charges – was “somehow controlled by the justice department”.He described Republican attacks on the justice department under his watch as “unprecedented and unfounded”, vowing not to allow them to influence his decision-making.Garland also upbraided Trump for claiming the FBI had been “authorized to shoot him” dead when they raided his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to retrieve classified documents in 2022.“This is dangerous,” Garland told the committee. “It raises the threats of violence against prosecutors and career agents. The allegation is false.”Garland, 71, is currently overseeing special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump, and a prosecution of Joe Biden’s son Hunter. He was summoned to testify amid Republican assertions that the justice department had been “weaponised” against the former president, a claim Trump has stoked.His appearance came as he faces the likelihood of being held in contempt of congress for declining to hand over audio recordings of an interview between another special prosecutor, Robert Hur. Hur was appointed by Garland to investigate Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, an offence similar to some of those for which Trump is being investigated.Hur concluded that Biden had committed no crime but raised questions about Biden’s age and allegedly poor memory.Referring to Republican threats to hold him in contempt, Garland said: “I view contempt as a serious matter. But I will not jeopardize the ability of our prosecutors and agents to do their jobs effectively in future investigations.”A full transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur was made public. But the White House rejected Republican demands for the audio to be released, arguing that it served no useful purpose other than to enable the president’s opponents to splice the recording to make him appear confused, perhaps by emphasizing his stammer.Garland said releasing the audio could have the effect of deterring future witnesses from cooperating in justice department investigations if they thought their words might be made public.In his opening statement, he said the Republicans were “seeking contempt as a means of obtaining – for no legitimate purpose – sensitive law enforcement information that could harm the integrity of future investigations”.“This effort is only the most recent in a long line of attacks on the justice department’s work,” he added.The committee chairman, Jim Jordan – a rightwinger Republican from Ohio – set the tone for the hearing, saying: “Justice is no longer blind in America. Today it’s driven by politics. Example number one is President Trump.”Matt Gaetz, another hard-right Republican from Florida, accused Garland of dispatching a former justice department official, Matthew Colangelo, to Manhattan, where he now serves as assistant district attorney and helped prepare the case against Trump.Garland replied: “That is false. I did not dispatch Colangelo.” More