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May 4, 2023
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PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Thursday morning.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has taken his biggest gamble yet, subpoenaing records from the FBI that he claims could show that then Vice President Joe Biden allegedly received bribes from a foreign national in exchange for policy favors.
In the bevy of investigations that Comer has launched, this one carries the most risk. The Kentucky Republican is now raising accusations of alleged criminal actions by Biden based on an anonymous whistleblower. This claim can only be backed up by an FBI document that will be difficult to obtain. Of course, if Comer can’t get the document, he can try to convince the whistleblower to testify in a hearing.
Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) — Biden’s Senate colleague for decades — said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday that the document in question “includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose.”
Behind the scenes, senior House GOP aides note that it’s highly unlikely that the FBI will ever turn over this document. That could force Comer into a prolonged legal battle that would likely involve the House holding the FBI in contempt of Congress and then attempting to sue the bureau in federal court to try to get the document.
In a brief interview on Wednesday, Grassley acknowledged that the whistleblower — who appears to be an FBI employee — approached his office, but he wouldn’t provide any more information about the source for this new allegation. Grassley also repeated his demand for a copy of the FBI document.
“Will the FBI give me the unclassified document, or will the White House classify it?” Grassley said.
Grassley doesn’t have subpoena power and Comer does, which might help explain how the Kentucky Republican became involved.
The White House has strenuously denied the allegations, saying that the GOP continues to launch probes into Biden based on little or no evidence.
“Innuendo and insinuation masquerading as investigation,” tweeted Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson.
In reality, many of these GOP inquiries only exist behind closed doors, outside of public view and with little input or review by House Democrats.
By merely raising the prospect that Biden was involved in a criminal act, Comer and Grassley have continued to try to paint Biden and his family as corrupt. This is the overarching narrative Republicans have tried to spin about Biden — and it’s caught on in Republican circles.
When you zoom out and look at the broad landscape of House GOP investigations, it looks as if Republicans are beginning to try to build an impeachment case against Biden. Between probing bank records for Hunter Biden and accusing the president of corruption, some GOP lawmakers suggest impeachment is in play.
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), a member of the Oversight Committee, told us Wednesday: “If proven to be true, yes, I think pursuing impeachment would be likely and quite frankly necessary.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a top ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said it’s time House Republicans move toward impeachment. To be fair, MTG has been calling for impeachment for months.
Yet House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whose committee would oversee impeachment, was far more cautious.
“It’s a move just to get the facts,” Jordan told us in an interview.
The internal political dynamics here are fascinating to examine. McCarthy is giving Comer and Jordan incredible leeway to investigate Biden and his family. In the leadership’s view, Mayorkas is far more preferable to try to remove from office than the president.
Yet this most recent set of allegations on Biden will undoubtedly push the impeachment talk to a fever pitch.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told us he wants to see all the documents before deciding on whether to initiate impeachment proceedings, but he didn’t rule it out.
A House Oversight Committee spokesperson told us there haven’t been any discussions with leadership about starting impeachment proceedings. The aide insisted Comer was focused on obtaining the FBI document to determine the accuracy of the allegations.
“Chairman Comer and the Oversight Committee are focused on obtaining the FD 1023 document from the FBI to determine the truth and accuracy of the information contained within it,” the Oversight spokesperson said. “We aren’t going to speculate on the outcome of the investigation and have not spoken to anyone about impeachment.”
– Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan, Mica Soellner and Max Cohen
JUDICIARY WATCH
Jordan to bring in Brennan, Clapper for transcribed interviews
The House Judiciary Committee’s weaponization panel will conduct dozens of transcribed interviews during the coming weeks, including with former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
The select subcommittee will interview Brennan on May 11 and Clapper on May 17.
Mark Pomerantz, a former special assistant district attorney at the Manhattan DA’s office, is also scheduled to sit for a transcribed interview with the full Judiciary Committee on May 12.
Earlier this year, Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Clapper and Brennan, as well as other intelligence officials, that Republicans wanted to interview them regarding their assertions that the Hunter Biden laptop leak was “Russian disinformation.” Jordan also chairs the weaponization subcommittee.
The panel also conducted a transcribed interview in early April with Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA.
Clapper, Brennan and Morell were among more than 50 intelligence officials who signed onto a public letter in 2020 regarding the Hunter Biden laptop. The letter said the leaked emails connected to President Joe Biden’s son “had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Jordan has aggressively sought to go after intelligence officials and Silicon Valley over what he and other Republicans have argued was an organized effort to protect the younger Biden from bad press during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Pomerantz is of interest in Jordan’s probe into the indictment of former President Donald Trump.
– Mica Soellner
THE ECONOMY
White House, Fed to Congress: The debt limit is your problem
The debt-limit fight will truly come into full view next week, when the Big Four congressional leaders head to the White House for their first meeting in months with President Joe Biden.
But two significant things happened Wednesday that should help inform some of the debate going forward. The Federal Reserve and the White House both said that there’s no alternative to Congress acting to lift the government’s borrowing limit.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell said if the debt limit is breached, the Fed — which has grown enormously in power during recent years — couldn’t “protect the economy from the potential short- and long-term effects of a failure to pay our bills on time.”
More from Powell:
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the Biden administration is “not going to entertain” invoking the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the full faith and credit of the United States.
In other words, it’s up to Congress to act.
The White House and Democrats appear to have a new sense of urgency when it comes to the debt limit — even if administration officials can’t read Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s intentions or predict what he wants.
The bottom line is this: There is no offramp on the debt limit. Congress has to act.
– Jake Sherman
THE SENATE
Senate GOP cautiously optimistic on Schumer’s new China competition effort
Chuck Schumer’s decision to launch a new bipartisan effort on China is playing well with Republicans so far. But the Senate majority leader has a lot of work to do if he wants to get enough of them on board to pass anything.
Schumer announced the initiative on Wednesday alongside senior Democrats, vowing to work with Republicans to assemble a broad, comprehensive bill to address the myriad national-security and economic threats emanating from Beijing.
That might be easier said than done. At the leadership level, Republicans are skeptical but not shutting the door on the Democratic effort. They want to wait and see how Schumer proceeds. Republicans also want a heavy focus on the military and defense side of the China debate, including an emphasis on critical minerals.
Some GOP senators were also confused that Schumer announced the bid while haranguing Republicans over the debt-limit crisis and appearing only with Democrats.
There was significant GOP support for the Senate’s last China-centric effort — the CHIPS and Science Act. Yet there are still some hard feelings among Republicans over provisions that were left out of that bill and the Biden administration’s implementation of it.
Schumer is looking to alleviate those concerns.
“As you saw, of our five pieces, two are related to the foreign policy and defense aspects,” Schumer told us. “We have to deal with that issue but we also have to deal with the economic issue because we’re in a large, very important, very crucial competition with the Chinese government.”
We caught up with top Republicans, some of whom have already started working on what could be included in the eventual legislation. The initial reaction from these GOP senators was cautious optimism.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted for and negotiated many of the Senate’s bipartisan bills in the last Congress, said Chinese competition is a good area of focus for the Senate because of how little partisanship is involved in it.
Tillis said he hopes the bill ends up as a “whole-of-government strategy” to counter China’s military and economic rise.
“We only swim in our lanes” in Congress, Tillis lamented. “So hopefully it will be crafted in a way that really matches up against the way that China faces us.”
Schumer said Wednesday he’s asking his committee chairs to work with their GOP counterparts on different aspects of what will become a broad, comprehensive bill.
Schumer views the new initiative as a continuation of the CHIPS bill. That bipartisan law focused on domestic semiconductor manufacturing but didn’t include many proposals aimed at shoring up the U.S. military and defense competition with Beijing.
For example, the CHIPS bill didn’t include the Strategic Competition Act, sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and ranking member Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho).
That legislation would mandate sanctions for Beijing’s human-rights abuses and boosted funding for efforts to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Menendez and Risch are working on an updated version, with an emphasis on U.S.-China competition in both the defense and economic spaces.
“This is a bipartisan issue and I intend to keep it that way. It’s a work in progress,” Risch told us of the new legislative bid, saying it’s “similar” to the Strategic Competition Act.
Schumer and Democratic committee chairs rattled off a slew of issues they’re focusing on for the broader bill: limits on U.S. investments and advanced technology transfers to China, the CCP’s intellectual property theft, critical minerals, sanctions, Chinese-owned technology like TikTok, China’s purchases of large swaths of U.S. land and more.
Senators also want to chart a new strategy for dealing with China’s increasingly aggressive behavior in the Indo-Pacific.
Risch said he’s “modestly” optimistic that this will lead to a bipartisan outcome.
Another big question mark is the House. Democrats aren’t expecting cooperation from Speaker Kevin McCarthy. But Tillis suggested that one way to do this would be to loop in the House’s China select committee. The panel’s chair, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), has already worked closely with Democrats on China policy.
“The logical next step, if people are genuinely committed to getting an outcome, is to get those groups in the room,” Tillis said. “That’s an area where I don’t sense a lot of partisan tension.”
— Andrew Desiderio
THE MONEY GAME
If you want some face time with Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, you’re in luck. The Arkansas Republican is hosting a lunch series for donors, starting with a May 10 event featuring special guests Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) and House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.).
There’s also another edition of the lunch series featuring Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sept. 13.
And this weekend, donors can take part in Westerman’s Inaugural Cheeca Lodge Retreat in Islamorada, Fla., with special guest Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.). If you like fishing, the Florida Keys and these two House Republicans, we can’t think of a better weekend excursion.
— Max Cohen
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