GOP chairmen are carving out their turf in controversial probes stemming from the Obama administration.
Senate Republicans are set to escalate their investigations on Thursday, when two panels will vote on dueling subpoenas that have significant areas of overlap.
But Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)—who chair the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, respectively — say they are trying to avoid a jurisdictional fight as they prepare to do a deep dive into decisions stemming from the Obama era. Continue reading.
Senate Republicans say GOP unity during the upcoming House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings will be critical to setting the tone ahead of a likely Senate trial.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said if House Republicans unanimously vote against impeachment, that would make it “less likely any senator would jump ship.”
One senior GOP senator said that if House Republicans stay unified against articles of impeachment, the Senate Republican Conference will do the same.
The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website July 22, 2018:
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill on Oct. 24. Credit: Carlos Barria, Reuters
Earlier this year, the political world was gripped by a stunning accusation from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that the government’s application for a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was born of bias and almost entirely reliant on a dossier of information compiled on the dime of Democratic operatives. He had a memo that made that argument; eventually, and probably without much goading, President Trump was persuaded to release it publicly.
Even based on what was known then, the hype surrounding Nunes’s memo seemed to oversell the point. In short order, other revelations about the warrant application made it clear that the contents of the memo were iffy. It was the second time in two years that Nunes had gone to bat in defense of one of Trump’s pet theories, and neither time worked out that well.
As it turns out though, Nunes’s efforts to raise questions about the surveillance warrant, granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, were even less robust than they seemed at the time. With the release Friday of a redacted copy of both the initial warrant application targeting Page in October 2016 and the three 90-day extensions of the warrant, we can get a better sense of just how far from the mark the Nunes memo actually was.
The following article by Eric Lutz was posted on the Mic.com website July 18, 2018:
Maria Butina Credit: AP
Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are accusing their Republican counterparts of having blocked them from interviewing alleged Russian spy Maria Butina, who was arrested Sunday and charged over apparent attempts to infiltrate American political organizations to advance Moscow’s interests.
The following article by Cynthia McFadden, William M. Arkin and Kevin Monahan was posted on the NBC News website February 7, 2017:
The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.
The following article by Daniel Marans was posted on the Huffington Post website February 3, 2018:
Credit: Evan Vucci, AP
Just a day after the release of an underwhelming Republican-authored House Intelligence Committee memo alleging inappropriate law enforcement spying on Donald Trump’s campaign, President Donald Trumpis already using it to cast aspersions on the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The following commentary by the Editorial Board of the Washington Post website January 26, 2018:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
“I DON’T HEAR much pressure to pass anything,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in November when asked about bills that would protect special counsel Robert S. Mueller III should President Trump try to fire him. “There’s been no indication that the president or the White House are not cooperating with the special counsel,” Mr. McConnell explained.
Now there is an indication, and a pretty strong one. The New York Times reported and The Post quickly confirmed Thursday that the president moved to fire Mr. Mueller in June, shortly after the special counsel’s appointment. Mr. Trump pulled back only after White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn threatened to resign. Continue reading “Shall we protect Robert Mueller now, Mr. McConnell?”
The following commentary by Joe Scarborough was posted on the Washington Post website January 26, 2018:
Joe Scarborough Credit: NBC/Today
We learned this week that President Trump in June ordered the firing of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, but few Republicans on Capitol Hill bothered to raise an eyebrow. In more settled times, this kind of presidential assault on an independent investigation would have stirred grave concerns throughout the halls of Congress. But Trump’s corrupted coalition has instead trotted out one twisted conspiracy theory after another, all designed to distract the president’s most fevered fans and concoct a case against Mueller’s investigation.
The following article by Emily Singer was posted on the mic.com website January 24, 2018:
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Susan Walsh/AP
A torrent of news from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged ties to Russia has streamed out over the past week: Attorney General Jeff Sessions sat for an hours-long interview with Mueller’s team, FBI Director Christopher Wray threatened to quit after Sessions pressured him to purge the FBI of staff President Donald Trump didn’t like, and Mueller’s team is now reportedly ready to interview Trump himself.
The following article by Emily C. Singer was posted on the Mic.com website December 26, 2017:
A handful of Republican lawmakers have embarked on an effort to discredit the top federal law enforcement agency, charging the FBI with bias as it investigates President Donald Trump and his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia.
On Tuesday, Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) became the latest Republican member of Congress to attack the Department of Justice and the FBI, charging both with bias against Trump.
“I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it and say look, we’ve got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know that good work’s being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state,” Rooney said Tuesday on MSNBC. Continue reading “Republican lawmakers continue attacks on FBI to delegitimize the Russia investigation”
GOP chairmen are carving out their turf in controversial probes stemming from the Obama administration.
A handful of Republican lawmakers have embarked on an