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Five unanswered questions about Biden’s classified documents

It’s a controversy that erupted out of nowhere to dominate the headlines.

On Monday, CBS News revealed that documents marked as classified had been discovered in an office used by President Biden after he left office as vice president.

Subsequent days brought disclosures of a second batch of documents discovered in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home; one more sheet of paper found elsewhere in the residence; and then an admission that an additional five pages bearing classified markings had been found.

The revelations have pushed Biden and the White House onto the defensive. They’ve also lifted Republicans’ political spirits after the bruising fight to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as Speaker.

There are a number of unanswered questions. Here are five of the biggest.

Why wasn’t the public told sooner?

The timeline regarding the documents is one of the most mysterious — and politically damaging — elements of the controversy.

The first batch of documents was uncovered on Nov. 2 in Biden’s old office at a University of Pennsylvania facility in Washington.

This appears to have precipitated a search of other locations, which led to the revelation of the Wilmington garage documents by Dec. 20.

Another document came to light only on Wednesday.

But hopes among Biden supporters that this would be the final revelation were dashed by a Saturday statement from White House lawyer Richard Sauber, noting that there were “five additional pages with classified markings” uncovered by him on Thursday.

Crucially, there was a long stretch when the whole issue remained unknown to the public. The first CBS story came almost 10 weeks after the initial discovery.

Politically speaking, the problem is not only the passage of time in itself. It’s that the first documents came to light six days before the midterm elections.

Republicans including incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have seized on that point, insisting that the American people had a right to know about the matter when they were on the cusp of casting their ballots.

Finally, on Saturday, the president’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, made a counterargument.

In a statement, Bauer asserted that “limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity” had militated against public disclosure.

Much will depend on whether voters buy that argument or see it as a convenient excuse.

What did Biden know and when did he know it?

The president has said that he was surprised to learn about the documents.

Biden also contends that he does not know what exactly they contain — and says that his lawyers have advised him against asking.

There was one further, odd comment in an exchange with Peter Doocy of Fox News. 

Doocy asked Biden what he was “thinking” by having classified documents “next to your Corvette.” 

Biden shot back that he would speak more about the matter soon and added, “By the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage. OK? So it’s not like it’s sitting out in the street.” 

The apparent implication — that measures sufficient to secure a sports car would also be adequate for classified documents — was not helpful to Biden’s cause.

In any event, Biden was, at the very least, apprised of what was going on with the documents as it was happening. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who came under sustained pressure from reporters at several briefings this week, said that Biden “has been kept informed by his counsel throughout this process.”

The president is sure to face more questions soon on the specifics.

What is in the documents?

Perhaps the biggest question of all.

So far, Biden’s defenders have taken heart from the fact that the whole matter seems to focus on a modest number of documents. 

The initial batch, in the University of Pennsylvania office, reportedly numbers less than a dozen.

CBS News reported early Saturday that “the total number of known documents marked classified is roughly 20, between the two locations.” This count came before Sauber’s statement referencing the five additional pages, however.

Much will hinge on the sensitivity of the information contained in the documents.

CNN reported on Tuesday that some documents from the office included intelligence and briefing materials on “topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom.”

That seems bad news for Biden. 

If the documents open him up to the accusation of jeopardizing the national security of the United States or allies such as the U.K., it would be potentially grave.

How broad does the special counsel’s probe become?

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to look into the matter. 

Garland has said that a special counsel is necessary to reassure Americans about the probity of the investigation.

But presidents dislike special counsels for a reason — they are typically given very wide-ranging powers.

The order appointing Hur notes that he can look into the documents and “any matters that … may arise directly” from them.

No one is expecting Hur’s probe to resemble the most famous special counsel investigation of recent years, headed by Robert Mueller. But by way of illustration of a special counsel’s powers, Mueller’s probe into allegations of collusion between Russia and former President Trump’s 2016 campaign lasted from 2017 to 2019 and involved the issuance of around 2,800 subpoenas.

It would be amazing if Hur’s probe lasted more than a fraction of that time. 

But there is always the possibility that the special counsel, who was nominated by Trump to be the U.S. attorney for Maryland, could uncover new and damaging information. 

Will voters grasp the difference between his case and Trump’s?

Republicans wasted no time in using the Biden matter to try to neutralize criticisms of Trump for his conduct in relation to documents marked as classified and discovered at Mar-a-Lago.

The comparison works at a headline level: Both men are now subject to investigation for their handling of classified documents.

But there is at least one huge difference. 

In Biden’s case, the documents were promptly returned to the National Archives upon being discovered.

In Trump’s case, the fate of those documents was subject to a long battle. 

The National Archives requested documents that it believed were in Trump’s possession in May 2021. The FBI did not raid Mar-a-Lago, search warrant in hand, until August 2022. 

During the intervening 15 months, there appear to have been two occasions on which the Trump team said or implied it was handing over all relevant documents while not actually doing so.

It’s this chain of events that many legal experts believe puts Trump at real risk of obstruction charges from the special counsel in his case, Jack Smith.

Nothing comparable, so far, has been discovered in Biden’s case.

But politically, much will depend upon whether the White House can persuade the American public that Biden or his staff committed an inadvertent error, whereas Trump was involved in something more nefarious.

The distinction is crucial, but will voters accept it?

Source: TEST FEED1

Five more classified documents found at Biden's Wilmington home, lawyer says

Five more classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president were found at his Wilmington, Del., residence on Thursday, the White House said Saturday.

Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement that one classified document was found in a room adjacent to Biden’s garage on Wednesday night. The lawyers who discovered that document did not have security clearances and paused their search as a result, Sauber said.

Sauber, who has a security clearance, arrived Thursday night to facilitate the transfer of documents to the Justice Department.

“While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” Sauber said. “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”

The discovery of five more documents brings the total number of materials with classified markings found at Biden’s old office and Wilmington home to roughly two dozen. Biden arrived at his Wilmington residence on Friday night. He is set to spend the weekend there, as he does frequently.

Sauber referred further questions to the special counsel that was appointed Thursday to review the matter moving forward, and he reiterated that the White House will cooperate with the special counsel.

“The President’s lawyers have acted immediately and voluntarily to provide the Penn Biden documents to the Archives and the Wilmington documents to DOJ,” Sauber said in a statement. “We have now publicly released specific details about the documents identified, how they were identified, and where they were found.”

Attorneys for the president found roughly 10 documents with classified markings on Nov. 2, 2022, at a Washington, D.C., office that Biden used from 2017-2019 while working as an honorary professor for the University of Pennsylvania. That discovery was confirmed by the White House on Monday after it was reported by CBS News.

On Wednesday, it was reported that additional documents were found in a second location. The White House confirmed Thursday that attorneys searched Biden’s homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Del., after the office discovery, and they found classified materials in Biden’s WIlmington garage, as well as one document in an adjacent room.

The five additional documents were found Thursday evening, but the findings were not disclosed until Saturday morning.

The White House has repeatedly deflected questions about the process to the Justice Department, where Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to handle an investigation into the handling of the documents.

But the administration has come under scrutiny for the slow drip of disclosures to the public about their findings.

Bob Bauer, a personal attorney to the president, said in a statement Saturday that Biden’s lawyers “have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity. 

“These considerations require avoiding the public release of detail relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing,” Bauer said.

Biden has said he was surprised to learn that classified documents were found from his time as vice president, and he has said repeatedly he takes the handling of sensitive government materials seriously.

The president has said the garage at his home is locked, and he at one point suggested some of the documents may have been found in his personal library.

The appointment of a special counsel to review the matter now means there are two separate special counsels reviewing how the past two presidents have handled classified materials, though their cases differ in significant ways.

Garland in November appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into former President Trump’s handling of classified documents. Federal officials found hundreds of sensitive government materials at Trump’s Florida home last year, including some marked top secret. 

The FBI searched the property last August after Trump and his team for months stone-walled investigators and would not cooperate to turn over documents sought by the National Archives.

Source: TEST FEED1

Democrats worry Biden controversy will be Clinton emails repeat

Democrats are increasingly worried that the controversy surrounding the classified documents found at President Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home and at his former office will loom large over his expected reelection campaign.  

While Democrats say they remain confident that Biden can overcome the problem, they say the disclosure of numerous batches of classified documents complicates matters for the president ahead of his campaign launch.  

Privately, they wonder how tough it will be for Biden to explain what happened and draw comparisons to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email controversy, in which the former secretary of State admitted to using a private email account while doing government business.  

It also gives Republicans a gift by complicating Democratic attacks on former President Trump over the FBI’s search of his Florida residence, where classified documents were seized in August 2022. 

“This is going to be a pretty big problem for the president,” said one Democratic strategist who asked that their name be withheld to speak candidly about the issue. “Republicans have always been good at drumming up scandal and even though the situation here with Biden is completely different than the situation involving Trump, they’re going to act like this is a huge deal.” 

While Democrats are privately acknowledging the problem, publicly they have taken pains to argue that the situations of Trump and Biden are dramatically different.  

“It’s apples and oranges,” said Rodell Mollineau, a veteran Democratic strategist. At the same time, he warned that Democrats “need to be thoroughly prepared for Republicans to turn this into the biggest scandal since Watergate.” 

“This isn’t their silver bullet, but they’re going to try,” he said. 

Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability launched an investigation this week into the documents marked classified in Biden’s possession.  

The Republican National Committee (RNC) devoted much of its energy to the story this week in press releases and on social media, including file video of Biden backing his Corvette into his garage. “Here’s a shot of Joe Biden’s “locked” GARAGE where he was hiding classified documents,” read one post on Twitter from the RNC’s research account. 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took to Twitter to jokingly connect it to Clinton’s ongoing problem in 2016: “Big story coming tomorrow: Hillary’s server was also in Joe’s garage.”  

On Thursday and Friday, reporters pressed administration officials if the news would impact Biden’s decision to run for reelection. 

Speaking to journalists at the White House press briefing on Friday, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a senior adviser to the president for public engagement, was asked if the discovery of the documents would have any “bearing on his decision to run again?”

“I’ll refer those questions to the president,” she replied. “He can speak for himself on that.”

Asked if the revelation of the documents would impact Biden’s decision to run again, White House Deputy Press secretary Andrew Bates replied, “It doesn’t.” 

“The President is honoring his promise to respect the independence of the Department of Justice and divorce it from politics,” Bates said. “You’ve heard it from him directly, including after his agenda resulted in the best midterms for a Democratic President in 60 years, that he intends to run. 

“With inflation falling, the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, more jobs back to America, and lowering drug costs, all in the last week alone– his focus is on delivering even more progress for American families. We also saw House Republicans’ vision: raising taxes on the middle class to cut them for the wealthy, worsening inflation, and national abortion ban.” 

One aide on Biden’s 2020 campaign said if the disclosure of the documents wasn’t an issue, Republicans would be attacking the president on something else. But pursuing Biden on the documents issue is a losing one for them because of Trump’s baggage on the same topic. 

The former Biden campaign aide said Republicans have difficulty answering why Trump had pages upon pages of documents and then resisted the FBI’s request that he turn them over. The aide also said that fighting an issue on who’s more law abiding is a no-win situation for Republicans as demonstrated in the midterms, pointing to defunding the FBI, defending Jan. 6 insurrectionists and fueling conspiracy theories about 2020.

Ultimately, the aide said voters will care more about issues including bringing down inflation. 

Before the classified documents controversy, Biden and his aides were riding a string of good news.  

They’d had a more-successful-than-expected midterm election season that kept the Senate in Democratic hands and strengthened Biden’s position ahead of a 2024 reelection race. 

Republicans looked divided as they debated who should lead them in 2024 and whether their party needed to move on from Trump. Last week’s Speakership election in the House also underscored divides in the GOP. 

Biden has seen his polling numbers inch up slightly, and the economy has also shown signs of improvement, including a slowdown of inflation.  

Collectively, the streak of good news gave Biden a running start as he prepared to announce another run for the presidency.  

But the drip-drip-drip of Biden’s possession of the classified documents — first discovered at his onetime office in Washington and then inside his Wilmington garage — made Democrats nervous. The appointment of a special counsel on Thursday created more anxiety. 

Appearing on MSNBC on Thursday evening, Biden’s former press secretary Jen Psaki voiced some of that fear. 

“No one wants a special counsel. You don’t go into a year before you may run for president and think, ‘I want a special counsel this year. No one wants that,” Psaki said, before adding that the White House had projected a sense of confidence that this was “likely sloppy staff work during a transition,” and could “end up over the long term, even with short-term pain, being to their benefit.”   

Former Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), a past chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Republicans could overreach on the documents’ revelation, pointing to lessons learned from the Tea Party majority that preceded former President Obama’s successful reelection in 2012. 

“President Obama was comfortably reelected and Democrats picked up eight House seats,” Israel said. “I think what happened is that the GOP majority overplayed their hand. They excited their base, but after a while lost moderate voters who wanted focus and everyday challenges and not daily inquisitions.” 

But privately, Democrats acknowledged that this is not how Biden wanted to enter 2023. 

“Everyone can say what they want but this weakens him, full stop,” said one Clinton campaign veteran. “This is just one of those things that will stick around and won’t go away.  

“It’s annoying and it will continue to loom whether they like it or not,” the former Clinton aide added. “It just creates the question. ‘If he’s being this frivolous with the documents in the garage with his Corvette, who knows what else he’s doing?’” 

GOP strategist Susan Del Percio said the revelation of the documents was a gift to Republicans.  

“This one is on a platter,” Del Percio said of the revelations. “In and of itself, it’s not a big deal but it’s how it’s weaponized by Republicans.”  

Up until now, she said, all Republicans had on Biden was the tax and business dealings controversy around Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and issues around the economy.  

“If Biden wanted a reason not to run, this is a pretty good one,” Del Percio said. “He’s not going to want this kind of campaign … if you’re explaining, you’re losing.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Risk of prosecution on Biden, Trump docs differs due to cooperation

Two presidents. Two tranches of classified documents. Two special counsel investigations. But the similarities in the cases between President Biden and President Trump appear to take a sharp divide when it comes to important elements of the law prohibiting the mishandling of state secrets.

Biden is under fire following revelations that since November, his staff has alerted authorities to classified documents found at both an office he used following his tenure as vice president, as well as in two locations within his Delaware home.

The situation has drawn comparisons to the investigation of Trump, whose Florida home was searched after he failed to fully comply with repeated requests to return presidential records, including some 300 classified documents that were ultimately recovered.

Like Trump, the Biden saga could implicate the Espionage Act, which bars the willful detention of national defense information. But prosecutions under the law, which requires demonstrating intent, are less likely when a subject notifies and cooperates with authorities.

“Once he was told he had [classified documents], what happened next? And that is the big, big, big, big distinction here,” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, a nonprofit law firm specializing in national security law.

“As soon as they can prove that you know you have the documents, what happens next? Donald Trump fights you, and fights you, and fights you, and fights you and ultimately has to be searched by the FBI. Joe Biden immediately turns them over and lets you know that he has stuff that you didn’t even know was missing.”

Many of the facts currently known about the case were relayed by Attorney General Merrick Garland as he announced the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed U.S attorney, to oversee the matter. Garland noted that Biden’s team initially notified the National Archives of the discovery on Nov. 2, finding additional documents on Dec. 20 and Thursday.

In response to Hur’s appointment, Biden’s team seemed to call out for the need to show the documents were intentionally removed or retained.

“As the President said, he takes classified information and materials seriously, and as we have said, we have cooperated from the moment we informed the Archives that a small number of documents were found, and we will continue to cooperate,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement. 

“We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake,” he continued.

Experts say the case doesn’t just boil down to whether the documents were intentionally removed, but also whether they were intentionally retained.

“The intent matters completely and is the significant difference in the two cases. More precisely [it’s] not the intent to take the documents home or to wherever — although that would certainly be a factor — it’s really the intent to retain the documents past being requested to have it returned,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney specializing in national security law.

Securing classified material removed during the Trump transition proved to be a more complex task for authorities.

The Archives requested the missing presidential records just months after Trump left office, but didn’t ultimately receive them until almost a year after Biden’s inauguration. Spotting classified records among the tranche, Archives referred the matter to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which initiated its own investigation. After correspondence back and forth, the department issued a subpoena for the records, asking Trump’s legal team to certify all classified documents had been returned after receiving additional records with such markings.

After gaining evidence that more classified documents may be on the property, the FBI secured a search warrant, recovering another roughly 100 documents from Mar-a-Lago.

Those details, as well as apparent efforts to move the materials within the property while engaging with law enforcement, resulted in the Espionage Act being included in the warrant to search the property, along with a statute for obstructing justice.

A federal judge has since ordered Trump’s team to search his other properties for records with classified markings.

Alongside the 300 classified records, more than 10,000 presidential records were also recovered from Mar-a-Lago.

It’s not clear how many classified records were discovered from Biden’s days as vice president. The first batch found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement were reported to include about 10 documents, but the White House has only said that a “small number” were found between the center and Biden’s home.

It’s not entirely uncommon for “spillage” — when classified documents are accidentally removed by federal employees — to occur. However, such matters are typically handled administratively for current government employees, with severe consequences at stake, particularly beyond the first incident.

“They could be suspended for a period of time or given a warning or ultimately lose their security clearance and their job,” Zaid said.

“You could ruin your career — what is left of it — in such an instance. It’s not inconsequential. It’s just not handled criminally,” he added.

But when former officials report a stray document, the matter is left to the DOJ, which must balance prosecution decisions with the desire to encourage those with records to come forward and return them. 

“The inadvertence matters legally, because if it was truly inadvertent, the elements of an Espionage Act charge would not be met — the willfulness requirement. But it also matters just as a matter of DOJ precedent and them deciding which cases make sense to prosecute and which don’t. Looking at that precedent, DOJ has never prosecuted someone for inadvertently taking a classified document home,” said Brian Greer, a former CIA attorney.

Greer stressed that alone is not a “Get Out of Jail Free card,” but with “a borderline case like this,” it could be a determining factor.

“DOJ wants to deter bad behavior and incentivize good behavior as a policy matter. And if someone engages in good behavior, which here means promptly reporting it, they’re going to be more reluctant to prosecute, because otherwise it creates a disincentive to report — particularly in cases where the retention was inadvertent.”

For now, special counsels will continue their investigation into both Trump and Biden, unclear when either will reach their conclusion.

While Hur will oversee a more narrow matter, Special Counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the Mar-a-Lago investigation alongside the Jan. 6, 2021, investigation, appointed shortly after Trump announced his 2024 bid for office.

Zaid said the dual appointments are designed to offer fairness and independence to both men.

“It is important to ensure that … both Biden and Trump are being treated similarly. That is what the appointment of the Special Counsel is seeking to achieve,” he said.

“Where the facts go — it wouldn’t surprise me if it leads somewhere different, but that doesn’t mean the procedure wasn’t handled the same.”

Source: TEST FEED1

How McCarthy won: Inside one of the most dramatic weeks in the House

The four-day, 15-ballot floor fight over whether Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) should get his gavel was the culmination of weeks of tension bubbling up from the House GOP’s right flank.

The threat to his Speakership first came into focus on election night, escalated through battles over House and GOP conference rules and ended with a whirlwind, late-night vote on the House floor.

The Speakership fight illustrates fault lines in the party that could impact policymaking for years to come.

Here’s how the Speaker fight went down.

Election night

Preparing for a big midterm win, McCarthy had invited the press to join him at a hotel bash in downtown Washington, D.C., where he was expecting to deliver an early victory speech. 

It didn’t happen. 

The resiliency of vulnerable Democrats meant that control of the House was too close to call that evening, and the stunning results forced a disappointed McCarthy to address the sparse crowd at almost 2 a.m.

The ultimate slim, four-seat majority created the opportunity for the House GOP’s right flank to make its strongest move in years, and nearly keep McCarthy from the gavel. 

The confrontational House Freedom Caucus had been pushing for rules changes for months, having released a list of demands in July. Now, with a slim majority, they had the leverage to extract some concessions.

Conservatives press for election delay

The first step in that process was to cast doubts on McCarthy’s primacy by pushing to delay the GOP leadership elections until the midterm dust had settled.

“People haven’t come to Washington, D.C., because they don’t know if they’ve won their races yet,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said three days after the elections. 

GOP leaders would ultimately ignore those pleas, staging the internal leadership elections even before control of the House was formally determined. 

Biggs announces run

Less than 24 hours before the Republicans’ closed-door balloting, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a former chairman of the far-right Freedom Caucus, announced that he would challenge McCarthy for the party’s Speaker nomination. 

“We have a new paradigm here, and I think the country wants a different direction from the House of Representatives,” Biggs told Newsmax at the time.

It was a long-shot bid — one that never had any real chance of succeeding — and McCarthy prevailed easily, 188 to 31, in the Nov. 15 secret ballot, where just a simple majority determined the victor. 

But Biggs’s challenge was effective in the sense that it revealed McCarthy remained a long ways from securing support from the majority of the full House — 218 votes — which he would need to win the Speaker’s gavel in early January. 

Fears of moderates working with Democrats

Members of the House Freedom Caucus started to fracture on McCarthy’s Speakership.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), once a McCarthy critic, became one of his fiercest supporters. She warned that moderate Republicans could work with Democrats to elect a less conservative Speaker than McCarthy. 

Those fears gained steam after Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told NBC News that he was open to working with Democrats to coalesce around a consensus candidate, assuming McCarthy could not win the gavel after multiple ballots.

Rumors of a consensus alternative continued to swirl, with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (R-Calif.) expressing openness to the prospect, but none ever emerged.

Members coming out to oppose McCarthy

By the end of November, five House Republicans explicitly said or strongly indicated they would not support McCarthy for Speaker.

Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Matt Rosendale (Mont.), Bob Good (Va.), Ralph Norman (S.C.) and Biggs became known as the “Never Kevin” group. Those five members alone could keep McCarthy from the Speakership, assuming all members voted for a specific candidate.

McCarthy started getting more publicly vocal about his Speakership troubles, warning Republicans not to “play games” on the House floor.

December squabbles

With McCarthy’s path to the gavel in danger due to conservative opposition, members of the GOP conference were getting frustrated with the “Never Kevins,” with some even creating buttons that said “O.K.” for “Only Kevin” in response.

Members of the Republican Governance Group, a caucus of more centrist Republicans formerly known as the Tuesday Group, released a Dec. 1 letter in support of McCarthy that urged opponents to “put posturing aside” and elect McCarthy to be Speaker. On Dec. 7, members of the Main Street Caucus, a group in favor of “pragmatic” governance, also released a letter urging unified support for McCarthy.

Despite the threats, some McCarthy supporters remained optimistic that he could win the gavel on the first Speaker ballot, brushing off opposition as “saber-rattling.”

The uncertainty about the Speakership led the House GOP Steering Committee, a panel of around 30 members and leaders that makes committee assignments, to delay making selections for contested chairmanship seats – including for the power Ways and Means gavel. 

A group of seven members withholding support for McCarthy, who would all be part of the group of 20 members opposing him in floor votes, listed their desires from a Speaker in a Dec. 8 letter: Require just one member to move to vacate the chair; ban leadership from getting involved in primaries; increase the number of House Freedom Caucus members in chairmanships and on the House Rules Committee; use “must-pass” bills to leverage spending concessions; and create a “Church Committee”-style panel to target “weaponized government,” among other items.

Through the lame-duck congressional session, McCarthy held meetings with a group that he jokingly called the “Five Families,” bringing together leaders of the various ideological groups to discuss rules changes and priorities. 

McCarthy accepted some suggestions, like requiring 72 hours from release of final bill text before a vote on the floor. He took a strong stance against the omnibus spending package that passed late in the year, blaming Senate GOP leaders for not blocking new government funding until after the GOP took the House majority, and pledged to bring up 12 regular appropriations bills individually as Speaker. But none of the holdouts moved.

First rules package offers some concessions, but not enough

McCarthy offered key concessions to his conservative holdouts in the rules package released on New Year’s Day.

It included a critical victory for the conservative detractors — a promise to create a “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” addressing the calls for a “Church-style” committee. And in another concession, it lowered the motion to vacate the chair down from at least half the GOP conference to five members. McCarthy separately indicated he would boost the number of conservative hardliners on committees. 

But the positives did not outweigh the negatives for Perry and his allies, who wrote a letter warning that “expressions of vague hopes reflected in far too many of the crucial points still under debate are insufficient.” They called for a one-member threshold to vacate the chair and noted that McCarthy did not address a request to stay out of open primaries.

Tense conference meeting

The first day of the Speaker election on Jan. 3 started on a fiery note for House Republicans, with the conference’s 90-minute closed-door meeting going off the rails just hours before the first ballot began.

During the gathering in the Capitol basement, McCarthy delivered a passionate final pitch on why he believed he was the best person to serve as the next Speaker. But the speech, in which he claimed he had “earned” the job, was not well-received among his conservative opponents. Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) said McCarthy “lied” to members during his address.

“This morning’s conference meeting was a complete disaster, and it hardened people and expanded the no votes,” Roy told reporters that night at the Capitol.

Floor battle begins

Nineteen Republicans voted against McCarthy on the first ballot for Speaker, demonstrating the uphill battle the GOP leader would face in his quest to secure the gavel – and surprising even some of the “Never Kevins.” On the third ballot, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) joined the defectors, bringing the group to 20 members.

Speculation ticked up over whether incoming House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) could become Speaker if McCarthy dropped out.

But McCarthy was adamant he would never withdraw, and as McCarthy’s defectors cycled through alternative Speaker candidates — including Biggs, Donalds, former President Trump, and Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) — no serious alternative ever emerged.

McCarthy allies team up, work on a deal

After the failed ballots, McCarthy allies — including Reps. Patrick McHenry (N.C.), French Hill (Ark.) and Garret Graves (La.) — asked him how they could help bring the conference together. They became key negotiators of final concessions with the holdouts that eventually secured the Speakership for McCarthy.

McCarthy maintained a happy face as he emerged from an office near the House floor the night of Jan. 3, and suggested that there was a path to the gavel if he could win over at least 11 detractors and get the other nine to vote “present.”

On Jan. 4, negotiations seemed to make real progress. Roy, Perry and Donalds, among other detractors, met with McCarthy allies in incoming House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s (R-Minn.) office. 

“We’re having ongoing conversations, they’ve actually been more productive in the last two hours than they’ve been in a long time,” Roy told reporters between the fifth and sixth ballots.

More concessions emerge 

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a McCarthy-aligned super PAC, announced a major concession on Jan. 4: It would no longer spend in safe open Republican primaries. In return, the Club for Growth — a conservative group that had opposed McCarthy’s bid — agreed to support him for Speaker. 

Details of an offer from McCarthy to the detractors emerged that night: McCarthy would lower the threshold to vacate the chair to just one member, a move he had long resisted. More hard-line conservative members would get seats on the House Rules Committee, which controls how bills are debated on the floor. McCarthy would bring a vote on a bill to impose term limits on members of Congress, and a vote on a border security bill.

But Perry lashed out about those details being leaked to the press, and some of the fiercest McCarthy critics warned they would never vote for him to be Speaker. 

Failed ballots for McCarthy continued as negotiations dragged on before the House voted to adjourn after the 12th vote on Thursday, Jan. 5.

McHenry later said that when Gaetz voted in favor of adjourning that time, he knew that McCarthy would eventually get over the finish line.

House Republicans held a conference call the morning of Jan. 6 to discuss details of a tentative agreement, but stressed that nothing was final.

At noon, McCarthy showed major progress on the 11th and 12th ballots, flipping 14 of his defectors to support him. The House adjourned to allow talks to continue, and give two McCarthy allies who were absent in the morning — Reps. Ken Buck (Colo.) and Wesley Hunt (Texas) — time to travel back to Washington and push him over the finish line.

Dramatic late-night roller coaster on final two ballots

When the House returned at 10 p.m. for the 14th ballot, McCarthy allies were hopeful, but felt uneasy.

Emotions were high, and members were exhausted. One member described a pungent odor of alcohol, cigar smoke and clothes that people had been wearing for nearly 18 hours. 

With six remaining holdouts, McCarthy needed a combination of present votes and votes for him to secure the Speakership.

As the clerk went down the roll, Boebert voted present, in a surprise to some who had expected her to vote for McCarthy on that ballot. Gaetz did not respond on the first call of his name, and the four other holdouts — Good, Rosendale, Biggs and Crane — voted for other candidates. 

It all came down to Gaetz. McHenry sat next to him, in an intense conversation, later telling reporters that Gaetz was wanting to adjourn until Monday, hoping the four remaining holdouts would get to the point that they could vote present.

When the clerk returned to call his name, Gaetz voted present. Some Republicans on the floor cheered, in apparent confusion about the Speakership math and not realizing Gaetz put McCarthy one vote shy of winning the gavel.

McCarthy allies tried to convince Gaetz to vote for him and end the spectacle, arguing first that the holdouts had gotten every concession that they possibly could get, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Then they tried a sympathy appeal. Freshman Hunt had flown back for the vote, leaving his wife and premature newborn son in the hospital. Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) was set to leave for his mother’s funeral the next day. Rep. Roger Williams’s (R-Texas) wife was hospitalized after experiencing a stroke, according to Greene.

Good, one of the four remaining holdouts, later said he was also surprised that McCarthy did not win on the 14th ballot.

McCarthy got up from his seat and went to talk to Gaetz, who appeared unmoved by the conversation.

Anger on the floor

As McCarthy walked away, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) angrily came up and confronted Gaetz, reportedly saying that he would end Gaetz’s career. Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) pulled Rogers away, with his hand slipping over Rogers’s face.

Greene at one point called up Trump and asked for his help, holding her phone up to Rosendale to try to get him to talk to the former president.

“Matt Rosendale blew up, yelled at me, and screamed at me, ‘Don’t you ever do that to me Marjorie. Don’t you ever do this,’” Greene later said.

McHenry moved to adjourn until Monday. But just as the fight looked as if it could drag on to the next week, McCarthy’s fate changed.

“It just became increasingly clear to me that it was only a matter of time — there was no path to defeating Kevin McCarthy for Speaker,” Good later told The Hill. “The situation had just become untenable, the emotions of the moment — and I didn’t feel like it was healthy to sustain it unnecessarily for the weekend.”

Good went up to the remaining holdouts, and they decided to have one more vote and all vote present, ending the Speaker battle. 

Gaetz informed McCarthy that they wanted to do one more vote, but 218 Republicans had already voted electronically to adjourn. McCarthy and his whip team rushed to get members to give physical cards to change their vote, flooding the Well of the House on the floor.

On the 15th ballot, all four remaining holdouts moved to vote present, and McCarthy clinched the Speakership.

“There’s a lot of unpacking to do on what happened, because a lot happened,” McHenry told reporters after leaving the floor in the wee hours of Jan. 7. “A week happened in an hour on the House floor.”

Source: TEST FEED1

White House under pressure to explain why it didn’t reveal documents discovery earlier

The White House is under mounting pressure to explain why the discovery of classified Biden documents was not immediately revealed to the public, with critics openly questioning if there was an intentional effort to keep the first find quiet in the lead up to the midterm elections.

The first batch of documents were first discovered on Nov. 2, which was just six days away from the election. But the White House did not disclose the findings until after they were reported by CBS News earlier this week. 

“That’s your version of the case,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked on Friday if not revealing the discovery when it happened was to protect the president from political damage.

“I’ve been very clear here and I’ve answered that question multiple times, in different versions, in the last couple of days. Look, I want to very clear: There’s a process here, we are going to respect that process,” she added, responding “no” when asked if staff were involved in crafting a strategy as to when the disclosure should be made.

A second batch of classified documents was found in a storage space in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence on Dec. 20, and another one-page document was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room this week. The search of Biden’s residence was completed on Wednesday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents on Thursday, following the announcement of additional documents found at Biden’s Wilmington residence. He also said he was notified in real time when the White House found the documents.

“The timing of the revelation of the document discovery is indeed curious,” said former Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.), a longtime Biden ally and former intelligence officer. “President Biden must be accountable and accept responsibility for this awkward episode. The most important thing here is not preventing political embarrassment, it’s protecting our nation’s security.”

Reporters pointed out on Friday that while Jean-Pierre says she answered questions throughout the week on the documents, she’s only faced questions at all because CBS broke the news. She argued that’s because it’s an ongoing process.

“There is a process here, the Department of Justice is independent. We respect that process,” she said.

Congressional Republicans are also raising questions over the timing of the disclosure, and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability launched an investigation into the documents this week.

“Look, this happened Nov. 2nd. Joe Biden said he would be the most transparent president in American history. Why are we just now learning this? CBS did a great job uncovering this or we would never know, ” Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said on CBS this week.

The news that classified documents were discovered in November and December, without the White House disclosing it, has cast a shadow on any other political developments this week, such as the federal report that inflation slowed in December.

Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, argued the same would have happened if the discovery was revealed in November. And, he said, Democrats wouldn’t have wanted that to distract from their messaging in the last week of the election.

“That’s one of the first questions that very reasonably comes up, about the timing. Would this have had a major impact on the races in 2022? It’s not clear, but you can’t go back and disprove the negative,” he said.

“Clearly, it’s not what Democrats would have liked their closing message to be, especially given that so much of what they were talking about was ‘Look at these insane people running who are Trump acolytes,’” Heye added.

Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and former Department of Justice official, noted that the way former FBI Director James Comey announced details about the investigation into then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just before the 2016 election left a “bad taste” in many people’s mouths.

“Having said that, I don’t know why once the election was over, they didn’t affirmatively disclose it. When it was discovered, the press was all over it, and that put them on the defensive,” Saltzburg said.

The White House referred The Hill to previous statements when asked if there was an intentional effort to keep the discoveries quiet, especially ahead of the election. Those statements reiterate that the Department of Justice review is an ongoing process, so the White House is limited on what they can say.

There were reportedly 10 documents with classified markings found at Biden’s Washington office, which he used between his time as vice president and his 2020 presidential run, mixed in with other personal material. Those documents reportedly contained briefing material about Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Iran.

“While it’s common to finger-point in Washington, we cannot forget the potential damage uncontrolled intelligence documents can do to this nation’s security. No matter if it’s Biden, Trump, or anyone else who loses control of the documents, potentially grave national damage can result,” said Carney, now a senior policy adviser at Nossaman.

He added that, as someone who has handled classified documents, he is “infuriated that national leaders can be so cavalier with intelligence reports.”

Biden’s team alerted the National Archives and the Department of Justice about the discovery shortly after the documents were found, the White House has said.

That sets a clear distinction from former President Trump’s handling of government documents. Officials had requested documents from Trump multiple times before an FBI search was conducted last summer.

Biden, during a press conference in Mexico this week, commented that he had been surprised to learn that documents were found at his old Washington office. He added that he is unaware of what the documents were.

But the White House failing to disclose the findings at the time raises more questions than just what is in the documents, including if they wanted this discovery to remain a private matter to protect the president.

“Between the Biden press conference and then Karine’s briefing, I was reminded, there’s an old line in politics: If you’re explaining, you’re losing,” Heye said. “Yesterday, which should have been a day of good economic news, was a day of explaining.”

Brett Samuels contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1

Japan sells Tokyo as US linchpin of security against China, Russia 

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit with President Biden is aimed at selling Tokyo as the linchpin of eastern security and a bulwark against Chinese and North Korean aggression.  

It’s part of a historic shift for the island nation, which has committed to growing its military and shirking off its pacifist policy that was self-imposed in the aftermath of World War II. 

Japan has also joined sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine war, though it has not provided lethal aid to Kyiv. 

“Japan has really broken out of the kind of postwar mold, if you’d like, of hesitancy about its military,” said Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Asia-Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations 

“So we have a new Japan on the world stage, in some ways, that is less hesitant about the need for military power as one of the arrows in the quiver of its statecraft.” 

Meeting in the Oval office on Friday, Biden described Kishida’s Washington visit as a “remarkable moment” for the U.S. and Japan alliance.   

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time when we were closer,” the president said. 

“Let me be crystal clear: The United States is fully, thoroughly, completely committed to the alliance and, more importantly, to the defense of Japan.”  

Kishida on Friday said that the U.S. and Japan are “facing the most challenging and complex security environment in recent history.”  

Japan’s commitment to double its defense spending over the next five years was widely welcomed in Washington, and Tokyo is walking away with concrete gains from the Biden administration. 

This includes upgrading U.S. troops stationed in Japan with increased capabilities such as advanced intelligence and surveillance, Biden officials said. The U.S. and Japan are also expanding their mutual defense commitments to cover space and cybersecurity. 

The administration has also endorsed Japan’s decision to develop counterstrike capabilities. This would allow Tokyo to defend itself from incoming missile attacks and launch strikes against aggressors – likely North Korea or China.  

Japan has identified China’s military buildup as a threat to Tokyo, and sees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as having the potential to spill over in the Indo-Pacific region.  

“As Russia’s aggression against Ukraine attests, the international community, of which Japan 

is a member, is facing serious challenges, and has plunged into a new crisis,” the government wrote in its National Defense Strategy published in December.  

“In the future one cannot rule out the possibility of serious events taking place in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in East Asia, that might shake the foundation of the stable post-war international order.” 

Japan joined U.S. and European sanctions on Russia and has sent Kyiv humanitarian and defensive assistance. 

In June, NATO members took an unprecedented step by inviting Japan to join the summit meeting that took place in Madrid.  

Jacob Stokes, senior fellow for the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, called it “an incredibly important time” in Japan’s defense policy and the U.S.-Japan alliance. 

“You’re really seeing a very foundational change in Japan’s approach that is reflecting what they see, rightly, as a very severe security environment in Northeast Asia. Of course the challenge from China, but also threats from North Korea and Russia as well,” he said. 

“From a U.S. strategic perspective, Japan is really the cornerstone of our engagement with the region. Arguably, the most important country relationship the U.S. has in the Indo-Pacific.” 

Kishida arrived in Washington for the final stop of a five-nation tour that took him to Group of 7 nations France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada. 

Japan holds the presidency of the G7 for 2023 and will host the leaders summit in Hiroshima in May – the site of the first detonation of an atomic weapon by the U.S. Japan is also chairing the United Nations Security Council for the month of January, part of its two-year stint as a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council. 

Tokyo is looking to use both venues to increase calls for the disarmament and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. This comes as Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, as China has increased its stockpile and as North Korea lays the groundwork for a possible nuclear weapons test.  

“Japan feels very strongly on issues of nuclear disarmament and the need to mitigate the risk of the use of nuclear weapons,” said Smith, of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Tokyo is balancing that advocacy with its pursuit of a military expansion. It signed a defense pact with the U.K. on Wednesday and has fully aligned itself with what U.S. and European allies define as the defense of the “rules-based” international and economic order. 

“It’s an interesting recognition, I think, that the Indo Pacific allies – Japan, first and foremost – are aligned now with our European allies in a very different way than they have been in the past. And that is, again, thanks to Vladimir Putin,” Smith continued. 

“You now have a very similar language coming out of our European allies and our Indo Pacific allies, led by Japan, that this is really a moment of challenge for the postwar order.” 

One area where the Biden administration and Japan are not fully aligned is Washington’s refusal to respond to Japan’s requests to join a regional trade agreement – formally called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). 

“So on CPTPP, this is not an option we’re exploring,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre said Friday. She said the U.S. is focused on an initiative launched in May, the Indo Pacific Economic Framework. 

The CPTPP is a free trade agreement that was formed by the 11 members of the Obama-era Trans Pacific Partnership. Former President Trump withdrew the U.S. from that deal on his first day in office in 2017.  

The U.K. is on the brink of ascending to the CPTPP and China and Taiwan have both applied to join the agreement. Smith said that Japan is keen on having the U.S. in the CPTPP as a bulwark against China’s pursuit of joining the agreement.  

“There’s a worry, I think, that China, its economic heft will eventually begin to persuade other members of the CPTPP that maybe letting China in, it’s not a bad idea after all,” she said. “And the counterbalance, I think, is what the region is looking for. People may not say it out loud, but the U.S. counterbalance to China is really what this is all about.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

White House calls for debt ceiling hike 'without conditions'

The White House on Friday called for the debt limit to be raised without conditions, laying down a marker ahead of what is likely to be a bruising fight with House Republicans in the coming months.

“We believe, when it comes to the debt limit, it has been done in a bipartisan way over the years and decades. And it should be done in a bipartisan way. And it should be done without conditions. That is important here,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre’s comments came shortly after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote to Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to warn the U.S. is projected to reach its roughly $31.4 trillion borrowing limit in less than a week, and the department would have to soon begin taking “extraordinary measures” to buy time for Congress to avoid default.

Those measures would likely buy lawmakers until early June to reach a deal, Yellen said.

Republicans are expected to use the looming debt default to try to secure cuts or reforms to government spending. A push among several conservatives for promised spending cuts was central to the fight last week over electing McCarthy Speaker, though many in the GOP have tried to distance themselves from talk of cutting Social Security or Medicare, two popular programs.

But Jean-Pierre has been clear that the White House is not interested in engaging in those discussions, and any such proposals that pass the GOP-controlled House are unlikely to get through the Democratic-controlled Senate. White House officials have warned that a U.S. default would could have catastrophic consequences for the economy. 

“This is not political gamesmanship,” Jean-Pierre said. “This should be done without conditions. And that’s how we see this process moving forward.”

She added that there are no current discussions about eliminating the debt limit entirely, something for which Yellen has previously advocated.

Lawmakers last voted to raise the debt ceiling in December 2021 with a measure that passed the then-Democratic House on a largely party-line vote.

Source: TEST FEED1