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      Gary Hart: The “New Church Committee” Is an Outrage

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      To legitimize otherwise questionable investigations, Congress occasionally labels them after a previous successful effort. Thus, the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives’ proposed select committee, which plans to investigate the “weaponization of government,” is being described as “the new Church committee,” after the group of senators who investigated the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other groups from 1975-76.As the last surviving member of the original Church committee, named after its chairman, the late Senator Frank Church of Idaho, I have a particular interest in distinguishing what we accomplished then and what authoritarian Republicans seem to have in mind now.The outlines of the committee, which Rep. Jim Jordan will assemble, remain vague. Reading between the rhetorical lines, proponents appear to believe agencies of the national government have targeted, and perhaps are still targeting, right-of-center individuals and groups, possibly including individuals and right-wing militia groups that participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.That is almost completely at odds with the purpose of the original Church committee, which was founded in response to widespread abuses by government intelligence agencies. While we sought to protect the constitutional rights and freedoms of American citizens, we were also bound to protect the integrity of the intelligence and security agencies, which were founded to protect those freedoms, too.Our committee brought U.S. intelligence agencies under congressional scrutiny to prevent the violation of the privacy rights of American citizens, and to halt covert operations abroad that violated our constitutional principles. Rather than strengthening the oversight of federal agencies, the new committee seems designed to prevent law enforcement and intelligence agencies from enforcing the law — specifically, laws against insurrectionist activity in our own democracy.It is one thing to intercept phone calls from people organizing a peaceful civil rights march and quite another to intercept phone calls from people organizing an assault on the Capitol to impede the certification of a national election.Rather than weaken our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the Church committee sought to restore their original mandates and increase their focus away from partisan or political manipulation. Our committee was bipartisan, leaning neither right nor left, and the conservative senators, including the vice chair, John Tower, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and others, took pains to prevent liberal or progressive members, including chairman Church, Philip Hart, Walter Mondale and me, from weakening our national security.They needn’t have bothered. We all understood, including me, the youngest member, that attacks on federal law enforcement and national security would not go down well among our constituents. Unlike in the 1970s, today’s threat to domestic security is less from foreign sources and more from homeland groups seeking to replace the constitutional order with authoritarian practices that challenge historic institutions and democratic practices.Among a rather large number of reforms proposed by the Church committee were permanent congressional oversight committees for the intelligence community, an endorsement of the 1974 requirement that significant clandestine projects be approved by the president in a written “finding,” the notification of the chairs of the oversight committees of certain clandestine projects at the time they are undertaken and the elimination of assassination attempts against foreign leaders.Despite the concern of conservatives at the time, to my knowledge, no significant clandestine activity was compromised and no classified information leaked as a result of these reforms in the almost half-century since they were adopted. In fact, the oversight and notification requirements, by providing political cover, have operated as protection for the C.I.A.Evidence was provided of the effectiveness of these reforms in the so-called Iran-contra controversy in 1985-87. The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to finance covert operations in Nicaragua against its socialist government. Assigning accountability for this scheme proved difficult until a document authorizing it was located in the White House. President Reagan did not remember signing it; however, it bore his signature. This kind of accountability would not have been possible before our reforms were adopted.The rules of the Senate and the House establish what standing committees and what special committees each house may create. The House is clearly at liberty within those rules to create a committee to protect what it perceives to be an important element of its base. And if its purposes are ultimately to protect authoritarian interests, it is presumably free to do so and accept criticisms from the press and the public. It is outrageous to call it a new Church committee. Trying to disguise a highly partisan effort to legitimize undemocratic activities by cloaking it in the mantle of a successful bipartisan committee from decades ago is a mockery.Gary Hart is a former United States senator from Colorado and the author of, most recently, “The Republic of Conscience.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar restored to House panels

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      Far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar restored to House panelsGreene will sit on the House homeland security committee while Gosar will be on the natural resources panel Two far-right members of Congress whose threatening behavior prompted their removal from committees when Democrats controlled the US House were given assignments on Tuesday by the new Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy.George Santos will be seated on committees, House speaker says Read moreMarjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia will sit on the House homeland security committee. Paul Gosar of Arizona was named to the natural resources panel.Democrats removed Greene from committees in February 2021, citing incendiary behavior including advocating the assassination of opponents and voicing support for QAnon and other conspiracy theories, including bizarre claims about 9/11 and the Parkland school shooting.Eleven Republicans supported Greene’s removal but despite being condemned by party leaders for speaking at a white supremacist conference last February, the Georgia congresswoman has since become close to McCarthy.Earlier this month, Greene refused to join the far-right rebellion which dragged McCarthy through 15 rounds of voting before he was confirmed as speaker.Greene, who recently said the January 6 attack on the US Capitol would have succeeded had she organised it, will now sit on the homeland security committee.That panel is set to spearhead Republican attacks, possibly including impeachment, against Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, over immigration policy and border security.On Tuesday, Greene tweeted: “It is time to restore dignity to the people, Border Patrol, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and the families who have lost a loved one to the cartel’s fentanyl murders and illegal alien crime.“I serve the American people and no one else. As far as I’m concerned American dignity is the only one that matters.”Gosar, who attended the same white supremacist conference as Greene, was censured and removed from committees in November 2021, after tweeting an anime-style video which showed him striking the New York progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword and also menacing Biden. Two Republicans supported the move.Earlier this month, early in the run of votes by which McCarthy became speaker, Gosar and Ocasio-Cortez were filmed talking to each other in the House chamber.Ocasio-Cortez told MSNBC: “In chaos, anything is possible, especially in this era.”TopicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS politicsKevin McCarthynewsReuse this content More

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      White House says Republicans have ‘zero credibility’ over Biden documents case – as it happened

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      Republicans are continuing to pressure Joe Biden over the classified documents found at his residence and former office, while Democrats are telling anyone who will listen that there are significant differences between the president’s case and that of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the White House is demanding Kevin McCarthy release the details of agreements he made with conservative Republicans to win their support for his House speaker bid, arguing he has empowered extremists.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The White House attempted to explain why it didn’t announce the discovery of classified documents in Biden’s possession when it was first made in November.
      Trump may be the big winner of the kerfuffle over Biden’s classified documents, especially if it undermines the investigation into the government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago.
      Daniel Goldman, who served as the Democrats’ lead prosecutor of Trump during his 2019 impeachment, will play a major role in defending Biden from the GOP’s investigation campaign.
      State Democratic parties are revolting against Biden’s plan to shake up the primary calendar for presidential nominations.
      George Santos lied his way into office, but he will nonetheless serve on committees in the House, McCarthy said.
      It’s going to be a tough couple of months for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who has become the subject of near-daily criticism from Republicans for his handling of the surge of migrants at the country’s southern border.The GOP has already vowed to call him repeatedly before the House, and will probably use the hearings as another cudgel against the Biden administration. Today, CNN reports that several top Republicans are ready to impeach the secretary – something that hasn’t happened to a cabinet secretary since 1876:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The House Judiciary Committee, which would have jurisdiction over an impeachment resolution, is prepared to move ahead with formal proceedings if there appears to be a consensus within the GOP conference, according to a GOP source directly familiar with the matter. The first impeachment resolution introduced by House Republicans already has picked up support, including from a member of the GOP leadership team.
      A GOP source said the first Judiciary Committee hearing on the border could come later this month or early February.
      One top chairman is already sounding supportive of the move, a sign of how the idea of impeaching President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretary has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of the conference.
      ‘If anybody is a prime candidate for impeachment in this town, it’s Mayorkas,’ Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN.But not all Republicans are on board, with several lawmakers worrying the public won’t see the need for the effort, which is sure to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate anyway. Here’s Republican Dusty Johnson’s thoughts on the matter, to CNN:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Clearly, the management of the Southern border has been incompetent … That is not the threshold in the Constitution for impeachment – it’s high crimes and misdemeanors. … I would want to think about the legal standard the Constitution has set out – and whether or not that’s been met.Mario Diaz-Balart was of a similar mind:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Has he been totally dishonest to people? Yes. Has he failed in his job miserably? Yes … Are those grounds for impeachment? I don’t know.For all the bombast of Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans in the House, keep this fact in mind: their margin of control is only four seats. If the party wants to maintain its grip on the chamber for the next two years, the GOP simply cannot afford to have any of their lawmakers leave office.That said, not all Republicans were happy with the deals that McCarthy cut to win the House speakership, and Puck reports that one lawmaker is particularly aggrieved over the Californian’s bargaining. That would be Vern Buchanan, who was passed over as chair of the tax-writing ways and means committee in favor of Jason Smith, an ally of the speaker.With no committee to helm, Puck reports that the 71-year-old Buchanan could decide that now’s the time to retire. According to their story, he already told McCarthy what he thought of his decision to promote Smith rather than himself on the House floor:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Just how angry was he? Well, a source on the House floor during the vote told me that while McCarthy was gaveling down the votes, Buchanan walked up to McCarthy and said, ‘You fucked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me.’ He then proceeded to chew out McCarthy’s deputy chief of staff for floor operations, John Leganski. It was shocking to see such fury from Buchanan, who’s known for being mild mannered. Indeed, I heard that the tirade was so heated that the Speaker’s security detail stepped in with a light touch. (McCarthy’s spokesperson Matt Sparks disputed this detail saying, ‘at no point did anyone have to step in.’ A spokesperson for Buchanan declined to comment.)The House hasn’t convened its committees yet, and thus Democrats and Republicans have taken their squabble over the investigations into Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s possession of classified material to the next logical venue: Twitter.Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, fired the latest salvo by reiterating his latest talking points about the investigation into Biden’s documents:Why was President Trump’s home raided but not President Biden’s? Why did the FBI take pictures of President Trump’s so-called classified documents but not President Biden’s?Americans are tired of the double standard.— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) January 17, 2023
      To which Daniel Goldman, a Democrat who has lined up to be one of Biden’s chief defenders in the House and served as the lead counsel when Democrats impeached Trump in 2019, fired back:1) because Trump obstructed justice by failing to comply with a subpoena. Biden volunteered all docs. 2) It’s standard procedure for the FBI to photograph everything they find during a search warrant. In the future, feel free to reach out to me directly with your questions. https://t.co/05JVjbNCgI— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) January 17, 2023
      And before you “investigate the FBI” to obstruct their investigations into you and others, you might want to brush up on the FBI Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines (MIOG) so you don’t ask any more dumb questions.— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) January 17, 2023
      Arizona’s US senator Kyrsten Sinema, who recently left the Democratic party and declared herself an independent, drew political fire from critics Tuesday after defending her congressional chamber’s filibuster rule at Switzerland’s Davos World Economic Forum.Among other remarks Tuesday, Sinema reportedly said the Senate filibuster was the “basis of the productivity for some incredible achievements” in Congress during Joe Biden’s first two years in the White House.Both Democrats and Republicans have used the rule, which allows a relatively small group of senator to block action by the majority. Sinema outraged Democratic supporters before she left the party in December when she opposed filibuster reform to pave the way for the passage of voting rights legislation.A group named “Replace Sinema Because Arizona Deserves Better” on Tuesday issued a statement arguing that the first-term senator preferred to be at Davos rubbing elbows with “billionaires and Wall Street execs” as well as others belonging to the global elite rather than “doing her job” in her state or on Capitol Hill.Meanwhile, one journalist snapped and tweeted out a photograph of her appearing to speak warmly with former Donald Trump White House spokesperson Anthony Scaramucci and ex-US House speaker Paul Ryan, both figures in the Republican party. The tweet referred to both Ryan and Scaramucci – Republican figures and Democratic opponents – as “old pals”.Sinema, like centrist Democrat Joe Manchin (who was alongside her on stage at Davos), has often taken stands that undermined key Biden administration agenda items along with other left-leaning interests in the nation’s capital. Her defection from the party came shortly after Raphael Warnock’s victory over Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia left the Democrats thinking they had a clear one-seat majority in the Senate.There has been no indication that Sinema will caucus with Republicans, and she has said she doesn’t intend to. Either way, when the Senate was split 50-50 for two years beginning in 2021, Vice-President Kamala Harris broke ties in the Democrats’ favor.The White House on Tuesday defended its public handling of revelations that classified documents were discovered at Joe Biden’s home and the president’s private office. In a call with reporters, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said the decision not to immediately inform the public of the discovery of sensitive records in November was “consistent with safeguarding the integrity of the investigation”.“We understand that there’s a tension between the need to be cooperative with an ongoing DOJ investigation, and rightful demands for additional public information,” Sams said. “And so we’re trying to strike that balance.” He pointed reporters to a line in a statement released by the president’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, after the discovery of additional documents, which stated that “regular ongoing public disclosures also pose the risk that, as further information develops, answers provided on this periodic basis may be incomplete.”The explanation did little to satisfy Republicans – or reporters – who have repeatedly pressed the White House on why it was not transparent with the public when the documents were first found at the president’s private Washington office on 2 November. On 2o December, Biden’s personal lawyers found “a small number of potential records bearing classified markings” in the garage of the president’s Delaware home. Five more pages of materials were found at his home on Thursday. ‘Rampant hypocrisy’After the first discovery two months ago, the White House said it “immediately”notified the National Archives and Records Administration, which then informed the US justice department.Sams repeated that the White House was cooperating with the investigation and would continue to do so, drawing a sharp distinction with the way Biden’s presidential predecessor Donald Trump handled sensitive documents. Trump refused to turn over troves of government documents that he took with him to his Mar-a-lago estate, even after being subpoenaed. Agents dispatched to his home to retrieve the materials, which Trump said he had the right to keep, and even argued without evidence that he had declassified. Sams accused Republicans of fomenting “faking outrage about disclosure and transparency” and “rampant hypocrisy.” ‘Fake outrage’He seized on comments by the newly installed Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, who has promised to aggressively investigate Biden’s handling of the documents. In a CNN interview this weekend, the Republican said: “At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents, to be honest with you. My concern is there’s such a discrepancy between how President Trump was treated … versus Joe Biden.” Asked last year about Trump’s handling of the documents, Comer, Sams noted, said it “didn’t amount to a hill of beans.” “House Republicans lose credibility when they engage in fake outrage about an issue that they’re clearly pursuing only for partisan gain,” Sams said. Sams said the White House was reviewing “a few letters” from the House Oversight committee related to Biden’s retention of classified documents and will make a “determination about our response in due course.”Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has vowed to investigate both the classified documents found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and at Joe Biden’s properties.But his sympathies were clearly with Trump. The Republican leader argued that the former president had been treated more harshly than Biden, which “just does not seem fair.”“This is why the American people get so upset and distrust their government when they see that the law is not applied equally,” he continued, accusing Biden of “hypocrisy” for not making the document discovery public before the November midterms.Here’s C-SPAN with his full comments:.@SpeakerMcCarthy (R-CA) on Biden and Trump documents probes: “It’s not a fair process when you equalize this out, and that is what is wrong with the system.” https://t.co/wY8OFxGe89 pic.twitter.com/FZ8vlO1aDZ— CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2023
      George Santos will be seated on committees in the House, even though the New York Republican admitted to lying about his qualifications for office, House speaker Kevin McCarthy said.While he did not say on which committees the freshman lawmaker will serve, the comment underscores that Republican leadership is disinclined to take any major steps to exclude Santos, who is facing an array of investigations into his admitted dishonesty on the campaign trail.Here are McCarthy’s comments, courtesy of C-Span:.@SpeakerMcCarthy (R-CA) on Rep. George Santos (R-NY): “He’ll get seated on committees.” https://t.co/77obCJittk pic.twitter.com/Oo2JIBf9Cc— CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2023
      Republicans are continuing to pressure Joe Biden over the classified documents found at his residence and former office, while Democrats are working to point out the significant differences between the president’s case and that of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the White House is demanding Kevin McCarthy release the details of the agreements he made with conservative Republican to win their support for his House speaker bid.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Trump may be the big winner of the kerfuffle over Biden’s classified documents, as it undermines the investigation into the government secrets found at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
      The House Democrats’ lead prosecutor of Trump during his first impeachment will play a major role in defending Biden from the GOP’s investigation campaign.
      State Democratic parties are revolting against Biden’s plan to shake up the primary calendar for presidential nominations.
      In Florida, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports that US authorities are turning back more and more migrants amid a surge in arrivals:Authorities in Florida have been turning back growing numbers of undocumented Cubans and Haitians arriving by sea in recent weeks as more attempt to seek haven in the US.Local US residents on jet skis have been helping some of the migrants who attempted to swim ashore after making arduous, life-threateningand days-long journeys in makeshift vessels.Joe Biden’s turn to the center over immigration comes as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, attempts to plot his own strategy for handling a sensitive situation in the south of his state, calling out national guard troops in a hardline approach.US turns back growing number of undocumented people after arduous sea journeysRead moreTo the GOP, the White House’s demand for answers from Kevin McCarthy is little more than a distraction from the unfolding investigation into Joe Biden’s classified documents.Here’s Republican operative Matt Whitlock:The communications wizards at the Biden White House right now: https://t.co/dT9swCaPVc pic.twitter.com/hTKj4qIntv— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) January 17, 2023 More

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      George Santos will be seated on committees, House speaker says

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      George Santos will be seated on committees, House speaker says Kevin McCarthy deflects growing calls for Santos to resign over his largely made-up résumé and suspect campaign finances George Santos – the New York Republican congressman under local, state, federal and international investigation over his largely made-up résumé, suspect campaign finances and potentially criminal aspects of his personal history – “will get seated on committees”, the US House speaker said on Tuesday.How McCarthy’s speaker deals will cause ‘cannibalistic brawl among extremists’Read moreSpeaking to reporters at the Capitol, Kevin McCarthy said: “We will be done with all committees today – he will get seated on committees.”McCarthy must govern with a narrow majority, 222-213. Earlier this month, Santos supported McCarthy through 15 votes for speaker.McCarthy has deflected growing calls for Santos to resign, from Republicans in New York’s third congressional district and on Capitol Hill from senior Democrats.Instead, McCarthy and other Republicans have said the New York freshman should be subject to a House ethics process the party is trying to gut.Santos’s résumé has been shown to be largely fictional, including claims about where he went to college, which companies he worked for, and his racial and family background.Democrats and an outside watchdog have called for an investigation of Santos’s campaign finances. He is under investigation at local and state levels in New York, by US federal authorities and by authorities in Brazil, in that case over the use of a stolen chequebook.On Monday, the Washington Post extended the story to Russia, reporting that Santos “has deeper ties than previously known” to Andrew Intrater, “a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch”.Intrater is related to Viktor Vekselberg, a billionaire in the Russian energy industry. Intrater’s links with Michael Cohen, then Trump’s lawyer and fixer, came under the gaze of Robert Mueller, the special counsel who investigated Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his résumé but denied wrongdoing and insisted he will not resign.Democrats have raised questions about how much McCarthy and other Republicans knew of Santos’s falsehoods before he won last November.On Sunday, Daniel Goldman told CBS that he and another New York Democrat, Ritchie Torres, had written to McCarthy, his lieutenant Elise Stefanik and the head of McCarthy’s Super Pac about “bombshell … reporting from the New York Times that they all knew about Mr Santos’s lies prior to the election”.On Monday, McCarthy told reporters: “I never knew about his résumé or not but I always had a few questions about it.”The Times report said that in 2021 a member of Santos’s staff pretended to be McCarthy’s chief of staff.On Tuesday, McCarthy said: “My staff had concerns when he had a staff member impersonate my chief of staff and that individual was let go when Mr Santos found out about it.”In a column for NBC News, meanwhile, Torres said that having grown up across the street from former president Donald Trump’s “gilded golf course, I know what it’s like to have the neighbourhood you love hijacked by a man who is deceitful to the core”.“Now”, Torres added, “as I begin my second term in Congress representing the good people of the Bronx, I find myself in an institution that I love hijacked by yet another liar, cheat and fraud.”TopicsGeorge SantosHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansUS politicsKevin McCarthynewsReuse this content More

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      Republican Ex-Candidate Arrested in Shootings Targeting New Mexico Democrats

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      The authorities in Albuquerque said Solomon Peña, who lost his bid for a State House seat in November, was behind a series of recent shootings targeting Democratic elected officials.The authorities in Albuquerque said on Monday that a former Republican candidate who lost his bid for a State House seat in November had been arrested in connection with a series of recent shootings at the homes and offices of a half-dozen Democratic elected officials.Chief Harold Medina of the Albuquerque Police Department said at a news conference that the former candidate, Solomon Peña, was “the mastermind” behind a conspiracy in which four other men were paid to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators.Mr. Peña lost the election in a landslide to an incumbent Democrat, Miguel Garcia, but refused to concede after making unfounded claims of election fraud.Chief Medina said a gun that was found during the arrest of another suspect in the shootings last week was later linked to Mr. Peña.No one was injured in the shootings at three residences, a workplace and a campaign office in Albuquerque. Three of the shootings took place in December and two this month, most recently on Jan. 5.After losing the election, Mr. Peña “reached out and contracted someone for an amount of cash money to commit at least two of the shootings,” Kyle Hartsock, deputy commander of the Police Department’s homicide unit, said at the news conference. Mr. Hartsock said there was evidence that Mr. Peña pulled the trigger at a shooting on Jan. 3.This is a developing story. More

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      How McCarthy’s speaker deals will cause ‘cannibalistic brawl among extremists’

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      How McCarthy’s speaker deals will cause ‘cannibalistic brawl among extremists’The deals struck between Kevin McCarthy and the far-right House Freedom Caucus will give the most conservative figures considerable power The deals struck between the new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and almost 20 members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus are already emboldening the most conservative figures in the Republican party with moves set to give the caucus considerable power in the months ahead.In order to secure the speakership McCarthy was forced into a humiliating series of defeats before his deal-making and concessions finally offered enough to bring rebel members of the Freedom Caucus onboard.Now in McCarthy’s first days as speaker, the roughly 40-member Freedom Caucus has already scored big. Several caucus members landed plum seats on rules and appropriations panels, had a role in creating a new panel to launch a far-flung investigation of the Department of Justice (DoJ) and other agencies conservatives argue are “weaponized” against them, and stand to benefit from the gutting of House ethics oversight.Quite a few Freedom Caucus members have close ties to Donald Trump, whose role in finally sealing the deal to give McCarthy the speakership appears to have helped notch some votes.Craig Snyder, a former chief of staff to ex-Republican senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said the Freedom Caucus members are “bomb-throwing nihilists who try to tear down the institution without regard for consequences..“Trump helped spur this Frankenstein monster on. It’s not a battle between extremes and the establishment, because there’s no real establishment anymore. It’s a cannibalistic brawl among extremists … It’s all about how to advance their personal brands.”The Freedom Caucus was launched in 2015 by Ohio congressman Jim Jordan and Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows when he was in the House. It has evolved into a more extreme version of the small government rightwing Tea Party that emerged during the Obama administration opposing Obamacare, say critics.During Trump’s presidency, several of the Caucus’s most combative figures, including its current chairman, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, QAnon sympathizer Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jordan, were close allies of Trump as he sought to overturn his loss in 2020.“They don’t do compromise very well. They take hard positions and they’re doctrinaire. The Freedom Caucus more or less became Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers,” said former congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania.Dent added: “It’s striking that individuals who humiliated the incoming speaker by withholding their votes for almost 15 rounds have been rewarded with seats on powerful committees.”Jordan’s confrontational brand was palpable when the incoming chairman of the House judiciary committee announced a sprawling inquiry by a newly created select subcommittee he will lead into the alleged “weaponization” of the justice department, the FBI and other agencies against conservatives.Significantly, the subcommittee is expected to have resources similar to those of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, a chit that Freedom Caucus hardliners demanded as a reward for voting for McCarthy, whose campaign Jordan in a twist backed from the start.The panel’s sweeping mandate, which in another concession to the holdout gives the panel power to review “ongoing criminal investigations”, immediately sparked sharp criticism from some former senior justice department officials and others.Critics say the subcommittee’s real agenda is to provide a high-profile avenue for defending Trump from the DoJ investigation he faces into his attempted coup to stay in power and to rally the Republican base, under the guise of defending conservatives from alleged improper government targeting.“It’s essentially an effort to stop the legitimate work of law enforcement and the justice department to secure accountability for Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election,” said Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general during the George HW Bush administration.Michael Bromwich, a former DoJ inspector general, said: “Jim Jordan and his Freedom Caucus allies now have an institutional vehicle to air out their baseless conspiracy theories and attacks on the FBI, DoJ and the intelligence agencies. They will make a lot of noise, demonize good public servants and mislead millions of Americans.”Similarly, Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, a top Democrat on the House January 6 committee, told the Guardian: “This is an insurrection protection committee. These members have every interest in thwarting criminal investigations into what happened on January 6, and protecting themselves from further consequences.”To be sure, Jordan, Perry and other key Freedom Caucus members backed Trump in several ways as he schemed about ways to block Biden from taking office by echoing some of his false charges and conspiracies about 2020 voting fraud.Days before Christmas in 2020, Trump met at the White House with about 10 Freedom Caucus members – including Jordan, Perry, Greene, Harris, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar – where there was talk of how his 2020 election loss could be reversed.Perry, whose cellphone was seized last summer by federal agents and then returned, has drawn other scrutiny since he said publicly that he “obliged” Trump by introducing him in late 2020 to Jeffrey Clark, the head of the justice department’s civil division, as a useful ally at the DoJ, as Trump was prodding department leaders to support his false charges of massive voting in 2020.Clark was referred last year to the justice department for criminal prosecution by the House’s January 6 panel, after revelations about his meetings with Trump to discuss schemes to block Biden from office including an abortive plan to elevate Clark to replace Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general, to help push baseless claims of major voting fraud in key states Trump lost.On a related track, three caucus members, Jordan, Perry and Biggs, plus McCarthy, were all referred for ethics investigation by the January 6 panel because they stonewalled the committee’s requests and subpoenas for testimony and documents.The trio of caucus members may well benefit from another early move by McCarthy when he pushed through a controversial change revamping the House ethics process, which effectively reduces the number of Democrats who make recommendations about reviewing members for improper conduct, a move that quickly spurred sharp criticism from Democrats and watchdog groups.Craig Holman, a veteran ethics watchdog with the liberal group Public Citizen, said: “The emasculating of the ethics process was very self-serving for McCarthy and some members of the Freedom Caucus who were facing public investigations by OCE for refusing to comply with legal subpoenas from the January 6 committee.”Others concur.“The attack on the congressional ethics process is part of an effort to confer upon themselves and participants in the insurrection effective impunity and immunity,” Raskin said.On another front that suggests growing Freedom Caucus influence, the House on a strictly party line vote passed a measure last Monday to strip $80bn from the IRS that the Biden administration helped enact last year with an eye to going after tax cheats and bolstering the famously understaffed agency by hiring 87,000 new employees.The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that rescinding the $80bn for the IRS would increase the deficit by $114bn through 2032.Although the House measure has little chance of passing in the Senate and Biden wouldn’t sign such a bill, it signaled how McCarthy and his allies have moved fast to go after the IRS, an agency that conservatives have long charged is biased against them.Marc Owens, a former head of the IRS’s tax exempt organizations division, told the Guardian: “Rather than pushing for cuts to curb the agency that actually funds the government, the Freedom Caucus inspired crusade might help citizens more by pushing for adequate agency funds to go after tax cheats and sketchy non-profits, rather than protecting scammers by defunding enforcement.”Taken together, the influence of the Freedom Caucus with McCarthy is likely to keep growing, and breed chaos.Ex-Republican congressman Tom Davis of Virginia said the Freedom Caucus is able to “punch above its weight because there’s a slim majority … McCarthy landed the plane. But these guys [in the Freedom Caucus] were steering it.”That outsized influence is worrisome to analysts and liberals too as battles loom over major issues like raising the debt ceiling where Freedom Caucus members seem likely to demand key spending cuts for their votes.“The Freedom Caucus is a more extreme version of what the Republican Party used to stand for – low taxes, a small state, deregulation,” Princeton sociologist Kim L Scheppele said. “But they will take these ideas to an extreme – defunding the IRS and shutting down government.”Raskin too noted that the Freedom Caucus’s “basic credo is they will run everything in authoritarian fashion while they’re in charge, and to make public progress impossible when they’re not running things.”Looking ahead, Public Citizen’s Holman warned: “Expect dysfunction and chaos in Congress for the next two years. McCarthy has given away far too much of his leadership role to the Freedom Caucus, a group of rightwing Republicans whose agenda is to bring government to a halt if they do not get what they want.”TopicsKevin McCarthyRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      George Santos a ‘bad guy’ who did ‘bad things’ but should not be forced out, top Republican says

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      George Santos a ‘bad guy’ who did ‘bad things’ but should not be forced out, top Republican saysNew York congressman’s résumé is largely fiction and campaign finance questions abide but support is vital for speaker McCarthy The New York Republican congressman George Santos, whose résumé has been shown to be largely fictional, whose campaign finances are the subject of increasing scrutiny and who is under local, federal and international investigation, is a “bad guy” who has done “really bad” things, the new House oversight committee chairman said on Sunday.McCarthy may be speaker, but Trump is the real leader of House RepublicansRead moreBut Santos should not be forced to quit, James Comer said.“He’s a bad guy,” the Kentuckian told CNN’ State of the Union. “This is something that you know, it’s really bad … but look, George Santos was a duly elected by the people. He’s going to be … examined thoroughly. It’s his decision whether or not he should resign.”Saying Santos was “not the first politician unfortunately to be in Congress to lie”, Comer said he had not introduced himself to Santos, “because it’s pretty despicable the lies that he told”. But he said only proven campaign finance violations should lead to Santos’s removal.Santos was going to be investigated, Comer said, “not necessarily for lies but for potential campaign finance violations … It’s his decision whether or not he should resign.”Santos won New York’s third district, which covers parts of Long Island and Queens, in November. Since then his biography has been shown to be largely made-up and his campaign finances scrutinised amid questions about his personal wealth.This week, Democrats in Congress requested an ethics committee campaign finance investigation and a nonpartisan watchdog, the Campaign Legal Center, filed its own request for an investigation by the Federal Election Commission.The CLC complaint said: “Particularly in light of Santos’s mountain of lies about his life and qualifications for office, the [FEC] should thoroughly investigate what appear to be equally brazen lies about how his campaign raised and spent money.”Santos’s district party has disowned him and New York Republicans in Congress have called on him to resign. Santos has said he will not.Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker who Santos supported through 15 rounds of voting earlier this month, and who must operate with a small majority, has not taken action, instead pointing to a House ethics office his party is attempting to gut.On Sunday Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican moderate, told ABC’s This Week: “You know, if that was me, I would resign. I wouldn’t be able to face my voters.”But Bacon still followed the party line: “This is between him and his constituents, largely. They’ve elected him and they have to deal with him on that. I don’t think his re-election chances would be that promising.”One of the Democrats who demanded an investigation said he had written to McCarthy and other senior Republicans.Dan Goldman, also of New York, told CBS’s Face the Nation: “The speaker of the House indicated that he would support an ethics investigation.“And in fact this morning, Congressman [Ritchie] Torres and I sent a letter to Speaker McCarthy, [Republican] chairwoman [Elise] Stefanik and the head of the Congressional Leadership Fund, Kevin McCarthy’s super Pac, because there’s really, really bombshell … reporting from the New York Times that they all knew about Mr Santos’s lies prior to the election.”Goldman said he and Torres were calling on Republicans “to be fully cooperative with the investigators, both in Congress and outside of Congress to disclose exactly what they knew about Mr Santos’s lies, and whether they were complicit in this scheme to defraud voters.“George Santos is a complete and total fraud … nearly everything has proven to be a lie. His financial disclosures have clear false statements and omissions. And that’s what we refer to the ethics committee for an investigation to get to the bottom of whether he broke the law.“Eight Republican Congress members have called on him to resign … This is a scheme to defraud the voters of the third district in New York, and this needs to be investigated intensively. And Mr Santos needs to think twice about whether he belongs in Congress. And more importantly, the speaker needs to think twice about whether Mr Santos is fit to serve in Congress.”On Saturday, a prominent GOP right-winger – and ringleader of the attempt to stop McCarthy becoming speaker – offered Santos support.Speaking to CNN, Matt Gaetz of Florida said: “George Santos represents over 700,000 people in New York. And whether people like that or not, those people deserve to have members of Congress collaborating with the person who serves them.“George Santos will have to go through the congressional ethics process. I don’t want to prejudge that process, but I think he deserves the chance to at least make his case.”Serial liar George Santos is the politician Americans deserve | Moira DoneganRead moreEarlier this week, Gaetz spoke to Santos on the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast. Asked about his wealth, Santos nodded to Republican claims about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, saying: “I’ll tell you where it didn’t come from – it didn’t come from China, Ukraine or Burisma.”Santos is under investigation in Brazil, over the use of a stolen chequebook, and in the US over claims about his college history, business career and family background shown to be untrue. Santos has admitted “embellishing” his résumé but insisted he has done nothing wrong or unethical.On Bannon’s podcast, Gaetz said: “Embellishing one’s résumé isn’t a crime. It’s frankly, how a lot of people get to Congress. And we want everyone to be honest.”Writing for the Guardian, the columnist Moira Donegan pointed to Santos’s rise in a Republican party led by Donald Trump.“It would be a mistake to think that George Santos’s pathologies are his alone,” she wrote. “His lies are the product of a political system that incentivises dishonesty, punishes sincerity and is rife with opportunities for petty crooks.“In that sense, Santos is the politician that we deserve.”TopicsGeorge SantosRepublicansUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesNew YorknewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans accuse Biden of hypocrisy over classified documents discoveries

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      Republicans accuse Biden of hypocrisy over classified documents discoveriesHouse oversight chair requests Delaware visitor logs as Democrats stress difference from Trump classified records case Republicans pounced on the discovery on Saturday of more classified documents at Joe Biden’s residence, accusing the president of hypocrisy and questioning why the records were not brought to light earlier.There’s one winner in the Biden documents discovery: Donald TrumpRead moreBiden lawyers have discovered at least 20 classified documents at his residence outside Wilmington, Delaware, and at an office in Washington used after he left the Obama administration, in which he was vice-president.It is not yet clear what exactly the documents are, but Biden lawyers have said they immediately turned over the documents to the National Archives. This week, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed a special counsel, former US attorney Robert Hur, to look into the matter.The materials are already a political headache for Biden. When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to obtain classified material the former president kept, Biden said: “How could that possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible?”On Sunday, Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, told ABC’s This Week: “It just just reminds me of that old adage, ‘If you live in a glass house don’t throw stones.’ And I think President Biden was caught throwing stones.”James Comer of Kentucky, the new chair of the House oversight committee, told CNN’s State of the Union: “While he was doing this, he knew very well that he himself had possession of classified documents so the hypocrisy here is great.”There is no evidence Biden was aware he had the documents. His lawyers have said they were misplaced.Comer also noted Biden’s attorneys discovered the classified material on 2 November, days before the midterm elections, and questioned why the discovery hadn’t been made public earlier.“Why didn’t we hear about this on 2 November, when the first batch of classified documents were discovered?” he said.Comer has requested visitor logs for Biden’s Delaware residence from January 2021 to the present as well as additional communications about the search for documents, CNN reported.Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Mike Pence in the Trump administration, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “Why’d they hold it? Why didn’t anybody talk about it? Is it because of the midterm elections they didn’t want to interfere with?”Even though two special counsels are looking into how both Trump and Biden handled classified material, there are key differences between the cases.Trump had hundreds of classified files and rebuffed government efforts to return them. The White House has said the 20 or so Biden documents were inadvertently misplaced and turned over as soon as they were discovered.Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, told CNN: “We were delighted to learn that the president’s lawyers, the moment they found out about the documents that day, turned them over to the National Archives, and ultimately to the Department of Justice.“That is a very different posture than what we saw with Donald Trump. He was fighting for a period of more than eight months to not turn over hundreds of missing documents that the archives was asking about.“There are some people who are trying to compare having a government document that should no longer be in your possession to inciting a violent insurrection against the government of the United States,” Raskin added, referring to the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress Trump incited after losing the 2020 election to Biden.“And those are obviously completely different things. That’s apples and oranges.”The California Democrat Adam Schiff, the former chair of the House intelligence committee, praised the appointment of a special counsel in the Biden matter and said he wanted Congress to do its own intelligence assessment of the Biden and Trump materials.But Debbie Stabenow, a Democratic senator from Michigan, acknowledged that the discovery of additional documents on Saturday was “certainly embarrassing” and that Republicans would use it as a distraction.“It’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose,” she told NBC.Biden’s lawyers, she said “don’t think [this] is the right thing and they have been moving to correct it … it’s one of those moments that obviously they wish hadn’t happened.“But what I’m most concerned about, this is the kind of things that the Republicans love.”TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS national securityRepublicansnewsReuse this content More