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PRESENTED BY

BY JOHN BRESNAHAN, ANNA PALMER AND JAKE SHERMAN
WITH MAX COHEN AND CHRISTIAN HALL

THE TOP

Happy Thursday morning.

In a Congress already filled with big political moments, Wednesday night’s bombshell legal filing by the Jan. 6 select committee may ultimately prove to be the biggest.

The select committee – led by Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) – is now asserting that former President Donald Trump “and others” may have committed fraud and obstruction in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

It’s been clear for months that the panel was putting together a potential criminal referral for the Justice Department against Trump – and we’ve written that. This latest filing, however, is the select committee’s clearest statement yet on what it considers possible criminal activity by Trump. It’s worth noting here once again that no former U.S. president has ever been charged with a crime.

Wednesday’s filing came as part of the panel’s attempt to enforce a subpoena for John Eastman, a well-known conservative lawyer. Eastman advised Trump on the purported legal justification for blocking congressional certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, the action at the center of the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

This case is playing out in a federal court in California. Eastman is trying to prevent the select committee from obtaining thousands of emails he asserts are protected under attorney-client privilege. The select committee counters that Eastman hasn’t proved he was actually working for Trump, and even if he was, the alleged criminal behavior by Eastman would negate any attorney-client privilege.

There are good write-ups of Wednesday’s filing in the NYT, WaPo, AP and WSJ. It’s also worth reading the angry email exchanges between Eastman and Greg Jacob, counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence. Pence, of course, refused to give into Trump’s extraordinary pressure campaign to block the Electoral College certification on Jan. 6. Our friends Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu at Politico reported on the Eastman-Jacob emails.

Eastman asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination almost 150 times during his interview by the select committee on Dec. 9. The interview transcript was submitted as part of Wednesday’s filing.

We wanted you to see some of these excerpts from the select committee’s filing. It demonstrates the panel’s current thinking about a potential criminal referral against Trump, which would be a very difficult case both legally and politically for DOJ. But among those on the left, the new revelations will increase pressure for Justice to pursue a criminal case against Trump at some point.

→ “[E]vidence and information available to the Committee established a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts, and that [Eastman’s] legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities.”

→ “The President and [Eastman] engaged in an extensive public and private campaign to convince the Vice President to reject certain Biden electors or delay the proceedings, without basis, so that the President and his associates would have additional time to manipulate the results. Had this effort succeeded, the electoral count would have been obstructed, impeded, influenced, and (at the very least) delayed, all without any genuine legal justification and based on the false pretense that the election had been stolen. There is no genuine question that the President and Plaintiff attempted to accomplish this specific illegal result.”

→ “The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation” of federal law.

→ “The evidence supports an inference that President Trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough legitimate state electoral votes to be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election during the January 6 Joint Session of Congress, but the President nevertheless sought to use the Vice President to manipulate the results in his favor…Thus, even if the Vice President had authority to reject certified electoral certificates (and he did not), there was no valid lawful basis to do so.”

→ “The evidence supports an inference that President Trump, [Eastman], and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”

Again, we’re not going to get into the legal merits here of a criminal case against Trump over the insurrection. But it’s clear this latest declaration by the select committee will be broadly attacked by Trump’s allies inside the Republican Party. The implications here for both the midterms and 2024 are just too big for there not to be a major pushback by the Trump camp.

And this is only going to provide further fuel for Trump to go after Cheney. So we’ll see what today’s reaction will be among lawmakers.

Thompson told us in an interview earlier in the week that he hopes to begin public hearings sometime in April, with an interim report issued by June. The select committee’s final report would come later in the fall. But before Election Day.

SPENDING WARS

NEWS: W.H. seeks $10B for Ukraine, plus another $22.5B for Covid

The White House will officially ask Congress today to approve $10 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine and Eastern European allies following Russia’s invasion. Ukraine faces a growing Russian onslaught that has left its major cities in ruin, hundreds of soldiers and civilians dead and forced more than 1 million Ukrainians to flee their homes.

In addition to more weapons for Ukrainians to fight off the Russian invasion – as well as help caring for refugees – the request will pay for sanctions enforcement and a new federal task force to target Russian oligarchs.

The Biden administration also wants another $22.5 billion in funding for the federal government’s Covid response efforts. Sources familiar with the situation said this money is needed immediately to pay for programs during the next few days and weeks. All funding previously approved by Congress – including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan – has run out. Without additional money, several important government efforts, such as free Covid testing for the uninsured, will end quickly, the sources added.

Shalanda Young, Office of Management and Budget’s acting director, made the requests in a letter sent to Capitol Hill late Wednesday night. You can read Young’s letter here.

“I urge the Congress to address these critical and urgent needs as part of a comprehensive government funding bill ahead of the March 11 funding deadline,” Young said in her letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders. 

Young wants the Ukraine and Covid funding requests to be included in the massive $1.5 trillion omnibus package that House and Senate appropriators are putting together right now. Government funding runs out on March 11. Party leaders in both the House and Senate hope to have the omnibus passed by that date. 

But that’s looking more problematic by the day, although no senior lawmaker in either chamber is ready to say they can’t make that deadline yet. There’s also very little appetite among Democrats or Republicans for another stopgap funding bill. So expect the omnibus negotiations to kick into high gear during the next few days.

The prospects for Covid and Ukraine money: There is strong bipartisan support for Ukraine funding. However, getting congressional approval for the additional Covid money is going to be a challenge. Leadership aides in both parties say it will be a tough lift. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and dozens of other Senate Republicans want a “full accounting” of the $6 trillion already approved by Congress to respond to the pandemic.

Roughly $5 billion of the proposed new Covid funding would go toward global vaccination efforts, while the remainder would be used by the Health and Human Service Department for testing, oral antiviral treatments, monoclonal antibodies and research on new vaccines. President Joe Biden unveiled the “National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan” this week to ready the country for the next stage of the pandemic, including potential new variants. 

Young noted the two requests will be declared emergency spending, which is what GOP and Democratic leaders have already decided upon anyway. The White House will be coming back to Congress for more money on Ukraine as the crisis unfolds, Young indicated.

“Given the rapidly evolving situation in Ukraine, I anticipate that additional needs may arise over time,” Young said. “This funding request is based on the Administration’s best information on resource requirements, and we will remain in touch with Congress in the coming weeks and months as we assess resource requirements beyond these immediate needs.”

The larger question to us is how do the leaders get the omnibus through the House and Senate. In the House, there’s discussion of dividing it into two “questions” on the floor – one on the defense side, one non-defense. The two would then be combined upon House passage and sent to the Senate as one bill. This is the method preferred by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy wants his rank-and-file Republicans to be able to vote for the Ukraine aid, but against the other portion of the bill.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune told us Wednesday that if the Ukraine money is embedded in the omnibus, it would entice Republicans to vote for it.

“Presumably that would help,” Thune said in an interview. “Most of our guys are going to be for the Ukraine funding. So is it additive? Probably.”

Also: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will meet today with the following senators on the Judiciary Committee: Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Follow us on Instagram to get a behind-the-scenes look at KBJ’s trips to Capitol Hill.

THE NEW HOTNESS

Hill delegations ready for trips to Europe

War is raging in Eastern Europe. Guess who thinks it’s a good idea to head over there: members of Congress.

We’ve heard of two delegations of lawmakers readying to head to NATO’s eastern front. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is looking to head to Germany and Poland with a bipartisan delegation March 17-20. Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee – including Chairman Greg Meeks of New York and top Republican Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas – are heading to the Poland-Ukraine border this weekend. Our friend Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News scooped the House trip last night.

→ Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) is raising money off of shouting at President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Check it out.

→ Building Back Better is airing an ad aimed at boosting Kentanji Brown Jackson’s nomination for the Supreme Court. Of note: Former Speaker Paul Ryan, who is distantly related to KBJ, is quoted in the ad praising her. Thanks to AdImpact.

FRONTS

MOMENTS

9 a.m.: President Joe Biden will speak to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio about Ukraine "and its implications for the Indo-Pacific."

10:45 a.m.: Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold her weekly news conference

11:15 a.m.: Biden will get his intelligence briefing.

1 p.m.: Jen Psaki will brief.

2 p.m.: Biden will hold a Cabinet meeting.

5 p.m.: Biden will sign the “Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021.” Vice President Kamala Harris and Biden will speak.

CLIP FILE

News: Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s White House chief of staff and the founder of the lobbying powerhouse the Duberstein Group, has died at 77.

NYT

→ "The U.S. is preparing more sanctions aimed at Russian oligarchs," by Alan Rappeport

→ “As Biden Pivots, Democrats Seek to Salvage His Domestic Agenda,” by Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Jonathan Weisman and Emily Cochrane

→ “Biden Rehires National Security Staff Member Pushed Out Under Trump,” by Mike Schmidt and Julian Barnes

→ “A War the Kremlin Tried to Disguise Becomes a Hard Reality for Russians,” by Ivan Nechepurenko in Sochi, Russia, and Anton Troianovski in Dubai

WaPo

→ “Judge partially blocks Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse,” by María Luisa Paúl and Casey Parks 

→ “Elon Musk invites a union vote at Tesla, following a contentious history with organized labor,” by Faiz Siddiqui

WSJ

→ “For Average Russians, Western Sanctions Over Ukraine War Begin to Bite,” by Ann Simmons in Moscow

Bloomberg

→ “India Avoids Condemning Putin to Get Weapons for China Fight,” by Sudhi Ranjan Sen

AP

→ “Neutral Finland, Sweden warm to idea of NATO membership,” by Jari Tanne in Helsinki

Reuters

→ “Lavrov says Russia will continue Ukraine war till ‘the end’” by Moscow Bureau

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