The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

The impeachment inquiry to forever

House leaders expect a big TikTok vote today

How GOP leadership candidates voted on key issues

Progressives pose a problem for House Dems’ discharge plan

Emmer defends GOP push to block a digital dollar

THE TOP

The impeachment inquiry to forever

Happy Wednesday morning.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump formally clinched their respective party’s nominations Tuesday night, setting up a long-anticipated — and for many voters, unwanted — rematch.

According to the Associated Press, Biden’s victory in Georgia put him over the top, while Trump’s wins in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington State gave him the Republican nomination for the third straight cycle.

Inside the House Republican Conference: Will the Biden impeachment inquiry ever end?

It’s the middle of March and the House Republican impeachment probe is now officially six months old. GOP investigators have interviewed Biden’s son Hunter Biden, as well as the president’s brother James Biden.

They’ve heard from the special counsel who probed Biden’s handling of classified documents. They’ve spoken to a number of key witnesses intimately involved in the business dealings of Biden’s family members. House Republican investigators have accessed “tens of thousands of pages of private financial records,” thousands of Treasury Department financial reports and “thousands of Vice Presidential-era records released by the National Archives,” according to the White House.

Yet top Republicans admit there’s still no conclusive evidence of an impeachable offense that shows Biden acted improperly while in office to enrich his family members. And no one in the House GOP leadership has a clear vision for how this all ends, including whether there will be an impeachment vote at some point.

Here’s what Speaker Mike Johnson told us when we asked him what he says to lawmakers who say it’s time to drop it or accelerate the process: “There’s a lot of thoughtful discussion going on about that and I need to get the updates.”

With Biden now having locked up the Democratic nomination, here’s some perspective on how unprecedented all this is. When House Democrats impeached former President Donald Trump over his “perfect call” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — which Republicans decried as a blatant interference in Trump’s reelection campaign — the House voted on Dec. 18, 2019. Trump’s Senate trial ended with his acquittal on Feb. 5.

The two Republican chairs running the inquiry — House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — wouldn’t say on Tuesday if they wanted to interview Biden directly or what their deadline is for finishing the investigation, releasing a report or drafting impeachment articles. Getting a Biden interview or written testimony could take weeks or even months of negotiations. The White House hasn’t received any request from Republicans for an interview, we’re told.

In a sign of the confusion surrounding the inquiry, former Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) — who serves on the Judiciary Committee — told us he has no clear sense of where the impeachment inquiry is going. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), another Judiciary Republican, also expressed the same sentiment.

“If [impeachment] is a messaging of his wrongdoing, then let’s be honest, and say that we’re impeaching him as a message,” Issa said. “I don’t think we’ve been able to convince the other side of the aisle that as [Richard] Nixon needed to go, this man needs to go.”

For now, Comer and Jordan said they’re focusing on the March 20 hearing where Hunter Biden and his former business associates are invited to testify. But Hunter Biden still hasn’t confirmed that he’ll appear for that session.

Jordan also told us he’s waiting on testimony from two DOJ tax attorneys who looked into the Hunter Biden case, as well as another interview with former Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf. Comer wants access to more “pseudonym emails” between Biden and his son Hunter.

“After this public hearing, then we’ll see where we are,” Comer said. “But I would love to wrap it up.”

Most House Republicans understand that they haven’t found evidence that Biden is guilty of any high crimes and misdemeanors. And most Republicans privately admit they’ll never be able to pass an impeachment resolution with their razor-thin majority. In fact, House GOP leaders worry that one of their conservative hardliners could offer impeachment articles on their own against Biden as a privileged resolution only to see it fail, giving the president a big political win.

“I do believe we need to bring this to a conclusion,” Issa told us.

One House Republican leadership aide said this: “Jordan and Comer are becoming the chairmen who cried wolf, promising there’s a ‘there’ there over and over again and producing nothing anywhere close to an impeachable offense.”

But other GOP lawmakers insist Johnson and Republican leaders have plenty of time to make a decision on impeachment while they focus on priorities like finishing the FY2024 spending bills, Ukraine, FISA and FAA reauthorization, plus myriad other issues.

“We have a two-year term on the session,” Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said. “We have no deadline on anything until you get to noon on Tuesday in January 2025, right?”

Democrats, for their part, are calling on Republicans to end the inquiry in the wake of former Special Counsel Robert Hur’s testimony.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told us this:

— Max Cohen, John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman

Some fun news: Punchbowl News was named “Hottest in Subscription Services” on AdWeek’s 2024 Media Hot List. … Read the NYT story about Punchbowl News and some of our peers. The Times calls us “sprouts of hope in a gloomy media landscape.”

INCOMING!

House leaders expect a big TikTok vote today

The House will vote today on a bill that could ban one of the world’s most popular social media apps from the United States.

It’s been less than a week since H.R. 7521, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, was introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the chair and ranking member of the China select committee.

Remember: This bill needs to pass with a two-thirds House majority under the fast-track suspension of the rules procedure that the GOP leadership is planning to use. Lawmakers in both parties said that would happen.

The bipartisan legislation — the product of months of secret negotiations — would require Beijing-based ByteDance to divest itself of control of TikTok or be banned from U.S. app stores and hosting services. Both House GOP and Democratic leaders back the legislation, and President Joe Biden has said he’ll sign it if this bill comes to his desk.

There was a single classified briefing by officials from the FBI, Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the threat faced by Americans who use TikTok before last Thursday’s markup in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That vote was 50-0.

There was another classified briefing for all House members on Tuesday. Today there will be a floor vote on the bill, just over a week from start to finish.

Even opposition from former President Donald Trump to a TikTok ban has barely dented the House blitz. GOP leaders now say that Trump “has backed away” from his initial statements.

“It’s looking strong,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, of the outlook for the bill. “He’s stepping back,” CMR added on Trump.

We’ll say this — almost no legislation moves through the House this quickly. It’s extraordinarily unusual, especially for a bill that could both directly impact millions of Americans while also spilling over into U.S.-China relations.

U.S. officials assert the Chinese government can access internal TikTok data on users, including Americans. ByteDance insists that can’t happen. There are more than 170 million TikTok users in this country, including huge numbers of younger Americans. What to do about the app has been a problem for years.

There’s some House opposition to the legislation. A number of progressives and conservatives have come out as no.

“This legislation is an infringement of our constitutional right to freedom of speech that also places a nearly impossible condition for the app to be sold within six months or less — it’s unrealistic,” freshman Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said in a statement.

There were also some senior members in both parties still undecided late Tuesday night. They don’t like that the bill singles out TikTok and ByteDance, despite their concerns about the app. And they worry about the politics too. Banning an app that roughly one-third of young Americans use doesn’t strike them as very wise politically.

“This is a free vote in some ways,” one Democratic aide said. “Once it gets to 290 [the two-thirds threshold], people can vote however they want.”

The big issue inside the Capitol is going to be what happens to the bill in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he’ll consult with his members about the legislation. Senate Minority Whip John Thune indicated he thought the bill was directionally right. But we’re sensing skepticism among some senators — in both parties — that could lead to the bill’s slow demise.

Here’s Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas):

— John Bresnahan Jake Sherman and Andrew Desiderio

THE SENATE

How GOP leadership candidates voted on key issues

There are five declared candidates for the top three leadership positions in the Senate Republican Conference.

As a reminder, the declared candidates for GOP leader are Senate Minority Whip John Thune and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Senate GOP Conference Chair John Barrasso is running unopposed thus far for whip. And Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are running for conference chair, the No. 3 position.

One of the many factors that GOP senators will be considering as they mull who to choose for these roles is their voting record. A major criticism of the Mitch McConnell era has been the longtime GOP leader’s willingness to cut deals with Democrats even when it splinters the Republican Conference.

This frustration reached a boiling point after the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, which saw the Senate pass several landmark bipartisan bills that united — or nearly united — Democrats but brought along just a sliver of Republicans necessary to overcome a filibuster.

So we thought it would be useful to show how each of the candidates voted on these and other important issues: certifying the 2020 election, same-sex marriage, the $95 billion foreign aid package, the debt-limit deal, CHIPS, infrastructure and the bipartisan gun safety bill.

This is an especially important metric for conservatives, who opposed nearly all of these measures.

“This opportunity to choose a new leader doesn’t come around very often,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). “We’ve got to be moving forward with broader support from our conference on things.”

Conservatives are looking toward next Wednesday’s GOP Conference meeting where senators will discuss what they want to see in their next leader. Schmitt said this gathering should help Republicans unite around an agenda that can alleviate those concerns.

And it’s not just past votes that GOP senators will be looking at when evaluating the leadership candidates. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already telegraphed a return to bipartisan legislating after Congress funds the government for the rest of the fiscal year.

So there could be votes on everything from railway safety and cannabis banking legislation to the House’s tax bill. There’s also pending bipartisan legislation on bank executive clawbacks.

— Andrew Desiderio

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

Progressives pose a problem for House Dems’ discharge plan

House Democratic leadership’s plan to throw its weight behind a discharge petition that would force the Senate supplemental on the floor is running into a progressive roadblock.

Left-wing members upset with the devastating war in Gaza are hesitant to back the petition thanks to $14 billion in unconditional aid that would go to Israel if the proposal is adopted.

For every progressive member who refuses to sign the petition, Democrats need a Republican to fill the void. That’s unlikely given the existence of a competing discharge petition — led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) — that’s gained the support of a number of moderate Republicans and Democrats.

Most progressive lawmakers we spoke with said they were on board with every provision in the Senate foreign aid bill except for Israel. With more than 30,000 Palestinians already dead in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, these progressives would only support defensive weapons for Israel.

“Sending an additional $14 billion to Israel right now while there’s collective punishment and starvation continues, I don’t support doing that,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) told us.

Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) also told us they don’t want to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government more money for weapons.

“The offensive weapons being used in Gaza is where I have really significant reservations,” Casar told us. “That’s why I’m not on it today.”

Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) echoed that sentiment, saying she was fine with most provisions in the petition. She also said Democrats shouldn’t have to bail out Republicans on the issue of foreign aid.

“This is a Republican issue. They have to figure out how to bring it to the floor,” Jayapal told us. “I’m just not inclined to sign on — certainly not at this time.”

Prominent progressive Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said they were still in the process of reviewing the details of the discharge petition.

— Max Cohen and Mica Soellner

Emmer defends GOP push to block a digital dollar

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer took a shot at the Federal Reserve on crypto policy in a podcast episode published this morning.

The Minnesota Republican argued that Congress should preemptively block the federal government from creating a central bank digital currency, better known as a digital dollar.

Speaking on IntraFi’s Banking with Interest podcast, Emmer defended a recently renewed push from congressional Republicans to ban the Federal Reserve from creating a digital currency.

Officials including Chair Jay Powell have said repeatedly that the U.S. central bank would wait for congressional authorization. Emmer’s not buying it, telling IntraFi’s Rob Blackwell:

Emmer said he was worried about a gap between Powell’s public statements and signs that parts of the Fed are preparing for a digital dollar.

“The chair is telling us he needs congressional approval and yet the machine of the Fed is moving forward with it. That’s incredibly concerning and very disturbing,” Emmer said.

Emmer is the crypto industry’s most senior advocate in Congress. Republican crypto backers have claimed that a digital dollar would give unprecedented surveillance powers to the U.S. government.

But not everyone agrees a digital dollar has to be a privacy nightmare. Policymakers and academics have said it could be built with key privacy protections for individual users.

And both crypto and banking interests have money to lose if a central bank digital currency is ever a reality. A digital dollar would likely obviate the case for key crypto innovations — like instant payments between users — while banks would need to compete with the Federal Reserve for commercial and retail deposits.

Don’t lose track of those business incentives.

— Brendan Pedersen

MOMENTS

CLIPS