Tag: GOP

Democrats ding Biden on documents even as they push back against GOP

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Another Democrat, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, said he is concerned about the number of documents officials keep finding at Biden’s home.
“Well, I’m concerned; there’s a standard we follow when it comes to members of Congress and classified information,” the Illinois Democrat said. “To think that any of them ended up in boxes in storage one place or the other is just unacceptable.”
But Durbin’s statement was also in line with what other Democrats have said — arguing that no matter how careless or problematic Biden’s handling of classified documents has been, it’s still better than the way former President Donald Trump handled the same type of material after leaving office.
“Joe Biden has shown total cooperation in this effort. That’s a sharp contrast to President Trump,” Durbin said.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) downplayed concerns about Biden’s handling of classified documents, adding: “I don’t think this is an issue that is keeping Americans up at night.”
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Coons said that concern over the discovery of additional classified documents at Biden’s residence in Delaware is, more than anything else, distracting the nation from more important issues. Coons noted the search was “consensual,” contrasting it with how Trump pushed back on those seeking to recover classified materials and how Trump has continued to argue that he had the right to possess those documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Fla.
Biden’s attorneys discovered a series of classified documents on multiple occasions from November 2022 to January 2023. On Saturday, it was announced that six additional documents marked as classified were found at Biden’s Delaware home after the Justice Department searched for nearly 13 hours.
In a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” 34 percent of Americans said they think Biden handled classified documents appropriately after he left office as vice president, compared with 64 percent of Americans who think he acted inappropriately.

Those numbers were still better than those for Trump; 77 percent of those polled said they thought the former president acted inappropriately. But the polling was conducted before the announcement of more documents being discovered in Biden’s possession.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), speaking on Fox’s “Fox News Sunday,” echoed Coons’ sentiments, saying that there’s a “stark comparison to the other investigation of classified documents with former President Trump.”
“The White House needs to cooperate with the Justice Department,” Gottheimer said. “That’s what they’ve been doing for months. I think as long as the White House does what it should do, which is cooperate fully so we can get to the bottom of this, there’s the appropriate process.”
In November, lawyers to the president discovered Obama administration documents in a Biden-associated Washington think tank. Days later, Biden’s legal team found additional documents in Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Del., one of Biden’s lawyers announced.
Biden aides found five additional documents in this president’s Delaware home, the White House announced Jan. 14. They were then turned over to the Justice Department, which had appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter.
On Sunday, Republicans were less forgiving than Democrats on the matter.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) called Biden a “serial classified-document hoarder” while insisting that the investigation looks more like a cover-up.
“That is why the special counsel’s work is going to be really important, because I can think of no reason why the President should have taken home, as a senator or as vice president, any classified documents that clearly have no protection. They’re available and open to anybody,” Turner said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Speaking after Coons, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) wondered why any public official was taking any classified material home and said the fallout could still end up being much larger than anticipated now.
“Watergate started as a very small burglary, and it led to the president of the United States resigning,” said the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “So, I don’t know what’s there until we see the documents — if there are national security documents relating to foreign nations adversaries, particularly China.”
On Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Rep. James Comer, the new chair of House Oversight Committee, also expressed concern that the situation was worse than originally portrayed.
“I took the president at his word,” the Kentucky Republican told host Maria Bartiromo, “when the first set of documents were found at the Biden Center for Diplomacy that he had just inadvertently misplaced those documents. But now this has gone from simply being irresponsible to downright scary.”
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#Democrats #ding #Biden #documents #push #GOP
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 22, 2023
DOJ reserves right to not cooperate with certain House GOP requests

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It’s an early marker of DOJ’s position as Republicans pledge to probe President Joe Biden’s administration over a laundry list of issues, including with a select subpanel that has a broad mandate to investigate the federal government. Conservatives have hinted they would use that panel to try to look into certain ongoing law enforcement investigations.
The Justice Department letter cites a 1982 directive from President Ronald Reagan, stressing that the administration would try to respond to congressional oversight requests and avoid invoking executive privilege, reserving it for use “only in the most compelling circumstances.” Uriarte, an assistant attorney general, said DOJ would respect the committee’s “legitimate efforts” to seek information, “consistent with our obligation to protect Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”
DOJ also outlined guidance for potential hearings House Republicans might call, including which Justice Department staff might be able to testify. Citing a 2000 DOJ letter to Congress, Urirate wrote that DOJ would not be making line agents or attorneys involved in everyday casework available to testify and instead would direct inquiries to supervising officials.
“We are available to engage in staff-level meetings to determine which information requests incorporated into your recent letters reflect the Committee’s current priorities in light of prior Department responses and disclosures,” Uriarte said.
A Jordan spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney contributed to to this report.
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#DOJ #reserves #cooperate #House #GOP #requests
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 21, 2023
Trump to GOP: Don’t touch Medicare or Social Security in debt ceiling fight

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Republicans have vowed not to raise the federal government’s borrowing capacity unless Biden makes steep cuts to federal spending, potentially impacting social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. Trump’s video is a warning to his fellow party members not to go there. Instead, he suggests targeting foreign aid, cracking down on migration, ending “left wing gender programs from our military,” and “billions being spent on climate extremism.”
“Cut waste, fraud and abuse everywhere that we can find it and there is plenty there’s plenty of it,” Trump says. “But do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security, don’t destroy it.”
The video message was shared in advance of its release with POLITICO.
Trump’s position echoes his long-held, albeit unorthodox, conviction that the Republican Party should stay away from attaching themselves to entitlement reform. Prior to being elected president, Trump was highly critical of then-Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for pushing austerity budgets during the Obama years. As a candidate for president, he insisted he would preserve both Medicare and Social Security. There was never any serious discussion of doing so during his time in office, though he obliquely hinted he may consider it in a second term.
Nevertheless, in issuing his statement now, Trump places his fellow Republicans in a political corner. Several of them have openly discussed using the looming debt ceiling standoff to extract cuts in non-discretionary spending, though party leadership has not fully embraced such a demand.
Over the last few months Trump himself has insisted that congressional Republicans use the debt ceiling as a leverage point to achieve policy objectives, despite having done no such thing during any of the times the debt ceiling was lifted when he was president. But his statement makes clear he views certain pursuits as off limits. And it puts him at least partially on the same page as Biden, who has not only insisted he won’t cut Social Security or Medicare but excoriated Republicans for suggesting they would.
The statement is among a series of policy-specific videos Trump has released since formally launching his third bid for the White House. And it suggests that the ex-president is looking to enhance his footprint on the current political landscape following weeks of criticisms that his campaign was off to a sluggish start.
Trump is slated to be in South Carolina next Saturday to make announcements related to campaign hires at an event his aides have described not as a rally but a more “intimate” gathering. Since announcing his third presidential run, Trump has not held any rallies and has remained at his properties in South Florida.

But Trump’s team has said they are at work behind the scenes from the campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, and the ex-president will soon start making more public appearances, including a speech at the upcoming CPAC conference outside Washington, D.C.
Trump’s team has also asked Facebook to allow him back on the platform after he was thrown off of it following the Jan. 6 insurrection he helped foment. The social media platform has played an important role in fundraising and voter outreach, according to aides, and Meta is set to decide if it will lift Trump’s suspension this month.
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#Trump #GOP #Dont #touch #Medicare #Social #Security #debt #ceiling #fight
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 20, 2023