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December 1, 2023
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PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Friday morning and happy December.
There’s a lot that’s unusual and unprecedented about the Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) saga.
Allegations are that the New York Republican used campaign funds to pay for Botox, credit card bills and vacations to the Hamptons and Las Vegas. Santos reportedly steered tens of thousands of dollars from his campaign to a consulting firm he secretly controlled in order to repay a loan that was never made. The veritable tsunami of lies Santos told about his education, religion, personal history and professional experience. All this defies easy explanation. Or any explanation.
But there’s another interesting dynamic at play today in the Capitol. House Republicans are going to the floor at 10 a.m. without knowing if they’re going to be successful in expelling the 35-year-old Santos from Congress.
If Republicans are looking to their leadership for guidance, they aren’t getting a ton of help. Speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t said how he’s voting. House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Majority Whip Tom Emmer haven’t either.
Late Thursday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told us he’d oppose Santos’ expulsion.
“He’s going to have his day in court, which he deserves,” Scalise said while walking onto the House floor. But that criminal trial isn’t expected to begin until September — at the earliest.
House Democrats believe every one of their 213 members will vote to expel Santos. That means roughly 80 of the 222 Republicans would need to vote for expulsion to end Santos’ brief congressional career. Remember, expulsion requires two-thirds of those present and voting.
The conventional wisdom among top leadership aides is that Santos will be expelled.
But the House Republican leadership hasn’t whipped the expulsion vote at all. They’re flying blind here.
And there’s some doubt inside the GOP leadership about the outcome. Several aides and lawmakers told us that the vote could be tight. There were seven absences Thursday and a similar amount is expected today.
There are lawmakers concerned about the precedent it would set to boot a member who hasn’t been convicted of a crime nor formally sanctioned by the Ethics Committee. Count Reps. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) and Chris Smith (R-N.J.) in that camp.
“Due process is important,” said Smith, a 22-term member of the House. “If he’s convicted, it’s a no-brainer.”
There are also dozens of members who have said they plan to vote against the expulsion.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said he expects most of his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus will oppose the resolution.
“You’re going to see a lot of guys like me vote ‘no,’” Burlison told us.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), an HFC member, sent around a letter earlier this week warning his colleagues of “serious concerns” over how the investigation and potential expulsion of Santos has been handled.
Meanwhile, Santos said in a small pen-and-pad Thursday that he plans to leave D.C. if expelled. Santos — who is under federal criminal indictment in New York — has no plans to return to Capitol Hill, blaming bitter relationships with his colleagues.
“It’s a very sour relationship with a lot of people in the body,” Santos said. “So I don’t think I will come back to this format of Congress in the near future.”
Some news: Johnson held his first big D.C. fundraiser Thursday night, hosted by fundraiser and lobbyist Jeff Miller and Altria’s Todd Walker. It raised $4 million, as promised.
Organizers announced at the fundraiser that they’ll hold another event on Feb. 8. By then, donors’ contribution levels will have been refreshed. And Republicans have set the goal of raising $12 million next time.
On Johnson: CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck: “Speaker Johnson wrote foreword for book filled with conspiracy theories and homophobic insults”
— Jake Sherman and Mica Soellner
THE SENATE
What the Senate’s border stalemate means for Ukraine
The Senate’s “make-or-break” week on border security negotiations ended without a bipartisan agreement needed to unlock GOP votes for a massive Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan aid package.
At the same time, Democrats and Republicans alike — in addition to the White House — are heightening the urgency around reaching a deal, with Ukraine standing to lose the most if Congress doesn’t act before January.
“The runway is getting shorter,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby warned Thursday. “We think we’ve got until the end of the year before it gets really really hard to continue to support Ukraine.”
And soon enough, the stalemate will force Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer into a serious time crunch — if it hasn’t already.
The New York Democrat has said he’ll put President Joe Biden’s $105 billion-plus foreign aid request on the floor as soon as next week. This ups the pressure significantly on the bipartisan group negotiating border policy changes.
“We all know the border is a problem that we should deal with. But it’s not related to Ukraine, or to Israel, or to the Indo-Pacific,” Schumer said Thursday. “It’s been put in there by Republicans. And that means there’s an onus on them to make sure it’s bipartisan… or we won’t get anything done.”
To hear Democrats tell it, Republicans are demanding the inclusion of parts of H.R. 2, the House GOP’s border security bill. This is a non-starter for Democrats. And that’s making them more pessimistic about the prospects for a deal. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator, said the end result may very well be that the two sides “won’t be able to come to a deal because Republicans are being unreasonable.”
So far, Republicans aren’t buckling. The bipartisan group has made progress on asylum reform. But at the end of another week of negotiations, GOP senators say any agreement must also crack down on the use of parole for migrants seeking asylum.
Even those Republicans who support Ukraine aid are vowing to filibuster the foreign-aid package absent these border reforms, in part, because they think it’ll force Democrats to take their proposals more seriously.
“It would be fantastic to put a supplemental [on the floor] without border security because it will fail,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), one of the lead GOP negotiators, told us. “The American people are getting fed up with their current posture. And that’s why I think we’ll ultimately get to a deal, and we’ll just have to deal with the dumpster fire in between.”
For now, Schumer is buying some time. He teed up nomination votes for early next week, which gives the negotiators breathing room. Schumer also knows that a failed vote on a Ukraine package would send a terrible signal to U.S. allies.
But Republicans believe Democrats will eventually bow to their border demands due to the urgency over sending more aid to Ukraine, so they’re comfortable dragging this out. In other words, the conventional wisdom is that it’ll all come together in the end — because failure isn’t an option.
“At the end of the day, it’s not a matter of whether. It’s a matter of when,” Tillis told us. “It could be sooner so [Ukraine] can continue to succeed… or it could be later where people will die, Russia will gain momentum, and then we’ll have to recover from that. That’s what these folks have to decide.”
— Andrew Desiderio and John Bresnahan
W.H. pushes back against GOP claims of obstruction in Biden inquiry
News: The White House is circulating a memo to Hill Democrats pushing back on Republican claims that the administration is refusing to cooperate with the House GOP impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
In the messaging guidance, White House Oversight spokesperson Ian Sams accuses Republicans of “trying to invent claims of ‘obstruction’ and ‘stonewalling’ to rationalize their illegitimate so-called ‘impeachment inquiry.’”
The memo comes as House Republican investigators pitch their colleagues this morning on the necessity of formally voting to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden. House GOP leadership claims the vote is necessary to overcome the White House’s alleged refusal to turn over key documents.
The White House memo, however, argues that the administration has cooperated with congressional requests. Sams points out that multiple senior officials have testified as part of the Biden probe, including the unprecedented appearance of Special Counsel David Weiss during his ongoing investigation of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
Republicans have also accessed “35,000 pages of private financial records,” “more than 2,000 pages of Treasury Department financial reports” and “thousands of Vice Presidential-era records released by the National Archives,” according to the White House.
“Despite receiving this significant volume of material, House Republicans have just failed to turn up any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden — but plenty of evidence debunking their claims,” Sams writes.
The GOP argument: The Republicans leading the probe see the situation very differently.
“We need an impeachment inquiry because this administration continues to obstruct,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told us. “They continue to refuse to turn over documents, tens of thousands of pseudonym emails.”
The Kentucky Republican is referring to emails possessed by the National Archives and Records Administration that were sent by pseudonym addresses used by then-Vice President Biden. Comer is also seeking emails between Biden and his family’s business entities while Biden was vice president.
Comer has recently subpoenaed scores of Biden family business associates and relatives as he attempts to gather more information on the Bidens’ financial dealings. Republicans are increasingly aware that some of these subpoenas — and future probes that could target the White House directly — may result in legal disputes.
Later today, chairs of the main committees conducting the inquiry — Comer, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Smith (R-Mo.) — will provide an update on their investigatory progress during the special GOP conference meeting.
The three GOP chairs will argue that voting to establish an inquiry will strengthen the House’s legal position in enforcing key subpoenas. A vote by the full House would cut off a line of argument from potential witnesses that the GOP probe isn’t legitimate, Republicans said.
As we scooped on Wednesday, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told his colleagues to expect to vote on establishing the impeachment inquiry in the coming weeks.
In our Thursday AM edition, we reported that many of the most vulnerable House Republicans are ready to vote to officially open the impeachment inquiry. That’s a good sign that if the measure is brought to the floor, it will likely pass, even with Republicans’ thin majority.
While House Republicans have uncovered plenty of new information about Biden family business dealings, there still isn’t any direct evidence of wrongdoing by the president.
— Max Cohen and Mica Soellner
MAYORKAS UPDATE
And that other impeachment effort: DHS Secretary Mayorkas
The push to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is ramping up, at least according to a key supporter of the effort.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told us she’s received new assurances from Speaker Mike Johnson and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) that the House will vote on impeaching Mayorkas.
“I got guarantees that we will be moving forward with impeachment,” Greene said late Thursday. “It’s going to happen very soon. I know the timeline but… we’re not making that public.”
This, of course, comes after Greene filed another privileged resolution to impeach Mayorkas on Wednesday. Greene said Thursday that she withdrew that motion for now after speaking with House GOP leaders on the issue.
You’ll recall that Greene filed the same Mayorkas impeachment resolution before Thanksgiving recess, but the measure was instead referred to the Homeland Security Committee.
“My articles of impeachment are in the Homeland Committee, we’ll be picking those up and moving forward with those,” MTG said.
The Homeland Security Committee has been investigating what Republicans claim is Mayorkas’ “dereliction of duty” at the U.S.-Mexico border. But far-right lawmakers have been impatient with the pace of Green’s investigation and worry it was getting overshadowed by efforts to oust President Joe Biden.
Earlier this week, Green told us he wouldn’t provide members with “false hope” that Mayorkas would definitely be impeached based on the panel’s months-long investigation.
Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said Green’s flip indicates that impeachment was the goal all along.
“Apparently, their baseless, so-called ‘investigation’ was just a shell game to justify a predetermined, evidence-free impeachment over policy differences rather than any Constitutional grounds,” Thompson said in a statement.
Mia Ehrenberg, DHS spokesperson, defended Mayorkas’ oversight of the agency and called any effort to impeach Mayorkas a “baseless attack.”
— Mica Soellner
THE CAMPAIGN
Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) got in a screaming match with a former aide at a charity event in D.C. Here’s the video, from Luke Radel at the Syracuse University TV station.
New: In a preview of Democratic abortion messaging in 2024, the DCCC is running a digital ad targeting vulnerable Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) on the issue.
The ad hits Ciscomani for voting to advance the Agriculture approps bill out of the House Appropriations Committee. The package contains a provision that would restrict the sale of mifepristone, a widely-used abortion pill.
An interview Ciscomani conducted with a local Arizona outlet — where the Arizona Republican justifies his vote because the mifepristone provision was one part of the larger Ag approps package — is featured in the ad.
Context: Arizona Democrats are seeking to secure enough signatures to include a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy on the ballot in 2024.
— Max Cohen
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Read our latest series
Our newest editorial project, in partnership with Google, explores how AI is advancing sectors across the U.S. economy and government through a four-part series.
Check out our fourth feature focused on AI and economic investment with Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa).