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July 19, 2023
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THE TOP
Happy Wednesday morning.
News: The White House is on the hunt for a new legislative affairs director.
President Joe Biden announced last week that Louisa Terrell, who has served as the White House’s top Hill liaison since 2021, would leave.
And the administration is eyeing two House insiders to take over.
Jamie Fleet, a longtime adviser to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic staff director of the House Administration Committee, has interviewed with senior figures in Biden’s orbit. Much like he did for Pelosi, Fleet currently advises House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries while serving as the top Democratic staffer on House Administration.
Fleet isn’t as publicly well known as some Hill aides but he has more influence than almost any other top Democratic staffer. Fleet has been involved in nearly every major event in the House for the last decade, including running the Jan. 6 Select Committee.
At the same time, some in the administration are pushing for Shuwanza Goff to return to the White House. Goff was Biden’s top House legislative affairs aide for the first two years of his administration, helping the White House secure the passage of a huge chunk of the president’s domestic agenda.
Goff has extensive relationships with a broad cross section of House Democrats.
More interestingly, Goff was the floor director for then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for years and enjoys a close working relationship with House Republican leadership, especially Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his staff. With Republicans in the majority for the remainder of Biden’s first term, these kinds of relationships could be key. Furthermore, the White House lacks a true bridge to McCarthy — and Goff could seamlessly serve in that role.
And while there’s little in the way of bipartisan activity, the White House and McCarthy will have to work closely together to fund the government in the fall and continue to fund the war in Ukraine.
Goff was an instrumental link between the White House and congressional Democrats last Congress, when the party passed several major pieces of legislation including the infrastructure bill, the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan.
Both Democrats and Republicans were dismayed when she decamped to the private sector earlier this year. Goff is currently a principal at Cornerstone.
The White House declined to comment. Goff and Fleet did not respond to requests for comment.
Will the U.S. have an ambassador in Israel? With Israeli President Isaac Herzog set to speak to Congress today, we thought it was worth pointing out that the U.S. may not have a confirmed ambassador to Israel any time soon thanks to the Senate’s struggle to confirm executive-branch nominees.
Tom Nides just ended his stint in Jerusalem. And Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) told us he didn’t know if the Biden administration intends to send a nominee to the Senate, but added this:
FAA update: The House seems likely to adopt an amendment to the annual FAA reauthorization bill that would allocate seven new slots at Washington Reagan National Airport — one for each airline that currently operates at DCA.
DMV-area senators are working feverishly to make sure the Senate doesn’t approve a similar proposal — and warning once again that it would imperil the underlying legislation.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told us that Congress shouldn’t be “micromanaging” airports, and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) suggested that lawmakers pushing for more slots were doing so out of self-interest. Both senators pointed out that the airport is already at capacity and adding flights would only exacerbate delays.
“They shouldn’t be screwing around with our airports,” Kaine told us. “The convenience of a few dozen members does not even begin on a scale to equal the inconvenience of the 25 million passengers [per year] who use Reagan National.”
Ouch.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, is looking to build support for his deal with the panel’s chair, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), that would increase the number of flights at DCA.
“I am supportive of anything that increases competition,” Cruz told us, adding that he wants to make sure San Antonio gets one of those new direct flights to and from DCA.
Cruz said the Commerce Committee could resume marking up the FAA bill as soon as next week. The markup was derailed last month amid a squabble over pilot training requirements.
— Jake Sherman, Heather Caygle and Andrew Desiderio
Tomorrow: Leaders of the House China Select Committee Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) join Punchbowl News founder and CEO Anna Palmer for an interview on the race to protect and modernize the national supply chain. RSVP to join the conversation at 12 p.m. ET.
INVESTIGATION NATION
What to expect at the whistleblower hearing today
Two IRS whistleblowers who claim the Justice Department improperly interfered in the investigation into Hunter Biden will testify in front of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. It’s a big moment for House Republicans who have touted the testimony of longtime IRS employee Gary Shapley as evidence of political bias within the Biden administration.
But Republicans are facing a massive quandary ahead of the anticipated hearing this afternoon: U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss — who ran the Hunter Biden probe — has repeatedly disputed the whistleblowers’ major claims.
Weiss has written to congressional Republicans to insist he has had full latitude to pursue any and all charges against Hunter Biden. Weiss has also claimed he never sought special counsel status in the case, and thus never had a request for that status rebuffed by the DOJ. These are central claims Shapley has made in behind-closed-doors testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee and in television interviews.
What Republicans are seeking to gain:
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) acknowledged that much of the details of the case — IRS whistleblowers, private transcribed interviews and shell companies — are “kind of hard for the average person to understand.” So Comer is banking on the testimony of the two “A-team” whistleblowers to corroborate his panel’s work to the wider public.
Here’s Comer:
As we’ve detailed, the whistleblowers and Weiss are giving different accounts of what transpired during the investigation. As a result, Comer is focusing his energy on playing up the credibility of Shapley and “Whistleblower X,” another senior IRS official whose identity will be revealed at the hearing.
“They’re current IRS employees, they’ve never blown the whistle on anything else. They have received every award that the IRS can give,” Comer said. “I think if we had tried to find two IRS employees to testify, I don’t think we could find two better than what we’re going to have tomorrow.”
Expect Republicans to also cite the testimony of an FBI special agent who spoke with committee staff on Monday. The GOP says this agent corroborated key aspects of the IRS whistleblowers’ testimony.
How Democrats will push back:
Democrats will play up Weiss’ own words during the hearing. Here’s how ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) summed up his message on Tuesday:
In his opening statement, Raskin will also draw attention to the fact that some complaints made by the whistleblowers and the FBI agent date back to December 2020, when Donald Trump was president.
Raskin will say that he expects the whistleblowers to “describe for us their disagreements and frustrations with their supervisors, as well as with the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Mr. Weiss and his team of prosecutors, disagreements which began in 2020 when President Trump’s own appointees ran both the IRS and the Department of Justice.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) previewed another line of Democratic pushback: What the IRS whistleblowers describe is a normal disagreement between investigators and prosecutors.
“Every investigator thinks they got the strongest case ever. The prosecutor is the one who’s actually got to prove it,” Moskowitz said. “There’s no reason why David Weiss would be doing Hunter Biden any favors.”
The view from 1600 Pennsylvania:
“President Biden has upheld his commitment that this matter would be handled independently by the Justice Department, under the leadership of a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney,” Ian Sams, the White house spokesperson for oversight and investigations said in a statement.
— Max Cohen
Inside the weird crypto collab eyeing the NDAA
News: Some of the crypto sector’s top skeptics and supporters in the Senate are coming together for an NDAA amendment that introduces new anti-money laundering provisions for the industry.
It’s an unusual team-up between Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). Read the amendment here.
The reform here is simple but significant. First, federal regulators at the Treasury Department, Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission will be required to adopt financial institution examination standards for crypto firms, with a focus on preventing money laundering and complying with sanctions.
The second part of the amendment would direct the Financial Crime Enforcement Network to issue a report on the use of crypto “mixers and tumblers,” services that exist to anonymize digital asset transactions.
What makes the collaboration notable? Gillibrand and Lummis are best known in the crypto-verse for a 2022 regulatory bill the industry strongly favored. Then we saw the collapse of FTX, and the sector’s goodwill in D.C. evaporated.
Warren and Marshall, on the other hand, have pushed for sharp new rules that would expand the government’s authority to crack down on crypto’s use in criminal activity. It’s a package that crypto advocates have decried as the “most direct attack” on crypto users’ civil liberties from Congress to date.
All of this makes this NDAA amendment fascinating, even if it hasn’t been included in the manager’s package. The senators are pushing for the measure to be included in amendment votes and are working behind the scenes now to shore up support from colleagues.
This is also the latest sign — at least in the Senate — that a policy consensus is beginning to form around crypto and illicit activity. Already, the revamped 2023 version of the Gillibrand-Lummis crypto bill took some inspiration from some of Warren-Marshall’s money laundering provisions.
— Brendan Pedersen
PUNCHBOWL NEWS EVENTS
Missed our conversation Tuesday with Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) on the policy opportunities for quantum computing and the fireside chat with Darío Gil, IBM’s senior vice president and director of research? You can watch the full video here. We’ll also have a recap with highlights from the conversation in the midday edition later today.
EYES ON THE SKIES
Major sports leagues raise concerns about FAA bill
News: The NFL, MLB, NCAA and NASCAR are raising major concerns about the FAA reauthorization bill on the House floor this week, saying it reverses federal law that prohibits aircrafts from flying over sporting events.
The FAA bill and a manager’s amendment by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) loosens the longtime temporary flight restriction over stadiums and facilities holding major sporting events — restrictions that have been in place since 9/11. Graves is well known to be a pilot.
The leagues are so concerned that they penned a letter to members of Congress Tuesday, saying the language would “permit countless aircraft to fly near and over stadiums during games, putting millions of fans at risk, and unnecessarily so.”
Here’s the letter, which we have exclusively, and an excerpt here:
To be frank, the leagues will have to work this provision when the Senate takes up the FAA bill, as the House is moving its version this week with this language already in the bill.
Ken Edmonds, the NFL’s vice president of government relations and public policy, told us this:
— Jake Sherman
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