Trump White House counsel to speak to January 6 committee
Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel for Donald Trump, has agreed to testify to the January 6 committee, The New York Times reports:
NEWS: Deal for Cipollone to testify on Friday in transcribed interview, per person briefed on the matter.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2022
Cipollone is appearing under subpoena for a transcribed interview with the House select committee.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2022
The appearance is not going to be in public, according to the person briefed on the matter.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2022
The committee investigating the attack had last month subpoenaed Cipollone, who “repeatedly raised legal and other concerns about President Trump’s activities on January 6 and in the days that preceded”, the committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, said.
Key events:
Biden has started his speech to union workers in Cleveland, and while the address is mostly about the economy, he began with brief remarks about the police shooting of Jayland Walker in nearby Akron.
“The justice department’s civil rights division, the FBI and the local US attorney’s office are closely viewing what happened,” the president said. “If the evidence reveals potential violations of federal criminal statutes, the justice department will take the appropriate action.”
Walker, who is Black, sustained more than 60 wounds after multiple officers opened fire at him following a car chase.
Biden has arrived in Cleveland and is expected to shortly begin giving remarks on the economy, focused on the American Rescue Plan spending bill he won passage of near the beginning of his term last year.
Also speaking at the event are Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, and two of the state’s Democratic House representatives, Marcy Kaptur and Shontel Brown. However, two notable Democrats won’t be in attendance: Tim Ryan, the party’s nomination for US Senate, and Nan Whaley, its nominee in the governor’s race.
Plenty of mounting questions from fellow Dems on Biden’s ability to lead after abortion ruling, mass shootings and inflation. Today he’s in Cleveland to talk “Jobs, unions, retirement security.” Notably, the two Democrats running for statewide office in the state aren’t there. pic.twitter.com/02098n1SK5
— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) July 6, 2022
With Joe Biden so unpopular, and Donald Trump ensnarled in investigations centering on the January 6 insurrection and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the question must be asked: is it possible that neither man will be on the ballot in 2024?
There would be many contenders to fill the vacuum created if neither man stands in the next presidential election, and Politico has a look at one possible matchup: California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom against Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis:
The governors for California and Florida have hurled insults about each other’s leadership and policies during most of the Covid-19 pandemic. But now Newsom has ratcheted up the conflict by taking almost daily pot-shots at his Republican foils such as DeSantis and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Most recently, Newsom dropped more than $100,000 on a new ad airing on Fox News that tweaked DeSantis in his home state. On Tuesday, he started fundraising off the ad and conflict with DeSantis.
Fox-watching Floridians won’t likely switch their voter registration or move to California after seeing a TV spot in which Newsom warned them “freedom is under attack in your state.” But the ad is producing a frenzy of national coverage that boosts Newsom’s profile while allowing DeSantis to sharpen his attacks on Democrats ahead of a possible 2024 White House bid.
The fight highlights how two young governors have captured the attention of their respective parties: On one side is Newsom, a progressive and telegenic leader who survived an attempted recall. On the other is DeSantis, who is often heralded as a more disciplined Donald Trump but who also has a penchant for populism and a refusal to back down from a fight.
“Most politicians operate best when they have somebody or something to contrast against, and there’s no bigger contrast to Gavin Newsom and California right now than Florida and Ron DeSantis,” said Jim Ross, a Democratic consultant who ran Newsom’s first mayoral campaign.
Newsom has in fact just put out a statement to supporters explaining why he purchased ads in Florida:
New: @GavinNewsom emails supporters to explain why he spent $100,000 to run a TV spot in Florida: to reclaim the word “Freedom,” declaring that “The DeSantis vision of freedom is a fraud.” Here’s what Newsom says freedom should really mean: pic.twitter.com/Vf7s5pLcJS
— Doug Sovern (@SovernNation) July 6, 2022
Sam Levine
Arizona was one of the states where Trump attempted unsuccessfully to convince officials to work with him to overturn the results of the 2020 elections. As Sam Levine reports, its elections are under scrutiny again, this time by Biden’s justice department:
The Department of Justice is challenging a new Arizona law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship for presidential elections, among other new restrictions, saying the measure was a “textbook violation” of a federal law meant to protect voters.
The challenged Arizona measure, HB 2492, was signed into law by the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, in March, requires anyone who wants to vote in a presidential election, or vote by mail in any election, to provide proof of citizenship.
The law was among several pushed by the Arizona legislature following the 2020 election in a state where Donald Trump and his allies have spread baseless claims of fraud. Voting by mail is widely used in Arizona, a key battleground state, and Republicans in the state have made numerous attempts to make it harder to cast a ballot that way.
Hugo Lowell
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has more details about what to expect from Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony to the January 6 committee:
The former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone is expected to testify to the House January 6 select committee on Friday after reaching an agreement over the scope of his cooperation with a subpoena compelling his testimony, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The testimony from Cipollone is expected to be a transcribed interview and recorded on camera, the source said, and the former top White House lawyer is expected to only answer questions on a narrow subset of topics and conversations with the former president.
Among the topics Cipollone could discuss include how he told Donald Trump that pressuring Mike Pence, the vice-president, to refuse to certify Joe Biden’s election win was unlawful, and Trump’s plot to coerce the justice department into falsely saying the 2020 election was corrupt.
The dispute over USICA and the Democrats’ potential reconciliation bill has now spilled on to Twitter.
It began when John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas, criticized Democrats’ move to pass a spending package unilaterally via the reconciliation procedure, accusing them of giving up on the USICA technological competitiveness bill:
Looks like Schumer giving up on USICA, including shoring up the vulnerable supply chain for high end semiconductors. Major chip makers will likely abandon their plans to build manufacturing facilities in the US. Body blow to US national security, economy, and well paying jobs. https://t.co/KwV7mUR4iF
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) July 6, 2022
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not take kindly to his accusation:
Cornyn is joining McConnell to hold hostage a bipartisan bill that would make more in America, in order to protect pharmaceutical companies’ profits.
We need to do BOTH: increase American manufacturing and strengthen our competitive edge against China, AND lower Rx drug costs. https://t.co/VewJih7c59
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) July 6, 2022
Prompting this retort from Cornyn:
Whether on Twitter or in Congress, expect the broader dispute to play out in the months to come.
Meanwhile, the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell has given Democrats an ultimatum: if they proceed with their reconciliation package, his lawmakers won’t support a bill to enhance US industries’ technological competitiveness.
Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill.
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 30, 2022
The United States Innovation and Competition Act, known as USICA, has been bargained over in Congress for months. According to Punchbowl, the prospects for the Senate’s democratic majority pulling off both the reconciliation package and USICA are not good:
There are 1,015 outstanding items in the USICA package and GOP sources tell us that party leaders have only come to agreement or agreed to drop 127 of them. That means nearly nine-tenths of the bill is open and unresolved.
Democrats take issue with this characterization. They say the two sides have actually closed out many more issues, but Republicans have withheld final confirmation on several hundred items until bigger-picture topics have been resolved.
In negotiations like this, it’s often difficult to totally discern where talks stand because both sides have incentive to show that the other is slow walking the talks or otherwise acting in a capricious manner.
But let’s put it this way: Any way you slice it, the two sides can’t even agree on which phase of the negotiation they’re in.
Politico has details of Senate Democrats’ efforts to find agreement on a major piece of legislation that they can pass, likely without Republican support.
The negotiations come after the collapse of Biden’s Build Back Better proposal last year, which was meant to spend potentially trillions of dollars on fighting climate change, expanding social services and other Democratic priorities, but collapsed amid infighting in the party, particularly with senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Democrats have been quietly trying to come up with a new proposal that could make it through the chamber using its reconciliation procedure, and Politico reports that they’ve reached an agreement on a measure to lower prescription drug costs:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will submit text today to the Senate parliamentarian on a 50-Democrat agreement (yes, that includes Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)) to allow the federal government to negotiate prescription drug costs for Medicare, according to two sources familiar. That will kick off the so-called “Byrd Bath” where the parliamentarian reviews the proposed text to make sure it abides by the Senate’s reconciliation rules. The bath is supposed to purge extraneous provisions that don’t align with the reconciliation instructions.
But drug price negotiation is just one piece of the puzzle. The rest of the party-line package is still in flux and isn’t ready for its Byrd Bath. Schumer and Manchin have been meeting regularly about what might make it into the bill, talking about tax reform and climate provisions.
Biden holds call with the wife of Brittney Griner
Joe Biden, joined by Kamala Harris, spoke today with Cherelle Griner, the wife of Brittney Griner, the US basket ball star detained in Russia. Griner was detained by Russian Federal Customs Service in February after they said they found vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow.
In a readout of the call, the White House said: “The President called Cherelle to reassure her that he is working to secure Brittney’s release as soon as possible.”
It added: “The President directed his national security team to remain in regular contact with Cherelle and Brittney’s family, and with other families of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad, to keep them updated on efforts to secure the release of their loved ones as quickly as possible.”
Brittney Griner recently wrote a letter to Biden appealing for his assistance in getting her released from prison.
The day so far
Congress may be in recess but there’s been plenty of political news this morning, from the ongoing work of the January 6 committee to jostling within states ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Here’s what has happened so far:
Speaking together in Britain, the heads of the FBI and MI5 have issued a joint warning about China’s behavior, saying Beijing is stealing western technology and studying from the war in Ukraine, particularly when it comes to evading sanctions.
BREAKING: The heads of MI5 and the @FBI have used an unprecedented joint speech to warn that China is their biggest “game-changing challenge”, with the UK doubling efforts to combat Chinese “activity of concern”. 1/
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
Christopher Wray, the FBI director, said Beijing is drawing lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Talking about the Chinese threat against Taiwan, he said the Chinese government was looking for ways to protect its economy against any potential, future sanctions. 2/— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
“In our world, we call that kind of behaviour a clue,” Mr Wray said, sharing a platform with Ken McCallum on a visit to MI5’s headquarters in London. Western allies used sweeping sanctions to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine. 3/
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
The 2 chiefs focused on the Chinese Communist Party & its covert operations.
They accused Beijing of a vast, enduring effort to steal western advances in technology, research & other sectors as well as use the West’s democratic, media & legal systems to their own advantage. 4/— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
“The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr McCallum said.
“It’s covertly applying pressure across the globe. This might feel abstract. But it’s real and it’s pressing. We need to talk about it. We need to act.” 5/— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) July 6, 2022
Illinois parade shooter confesses, says planned second attack
The shooter at an Independence Day parade in a Chicago suburb has admitted to the attack and told police he contemplated opening fire at a second Fourth of July gathering, the Associated Press reports:
The man charged with killing seven people at an Independence Day parade confessed to police that he unleashed a hail of bullets from a rooftop in suburban Chicago and then fled to the Madison, Wisconsin, area, where he contemplated shooting up an event there, authorities said Wednesday.
Robert Crimo III turned back to Illinois, where he was later arrested after deciding he was not prepared to pull off a shooting in Wisconsin, Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said.
An Illinois judge ordered Crimo to be held without bail. Police found the shells of 83 bullets and three ammunition magazines on the rooftop that he fired from, Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Ben Dillon said in court.
The Georgia Senate race is another closely watched election this year, where the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock will face off against Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
Walker has had multiple complaints leveled against him of breaking rules governing electioneering, but Politico is reporting that Warnock also may have violated campaign finance laws:
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) used campaign money to cover legal expenses for a lawsuit relating to his time as a church minister — transactions that raise questions about whether the spending runs afoul of federal rules governing personal use of campaign funds.
The case, first filed in 2019 by Atlanta resident Melvin Robertson, involved baffling and seemingly baseless allegations against Warnock that date back to 2005 when he was a pastor. It was dismissed by a federal district court judge in Georgia without any of the defendants being served.
But Robertson refiled a similar lawsuit in April 2021, outlining the same allegations against Warnock while also suing Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he has long served as senior pastor, and other public figures.
This time, Warnock was serving in the Senate. And he enlisted his campaign attorneys from Elias Law Group to represent him in the case, along with an Atlanta firm, Krevolin & Horst, which assisted ELG.
The issue for Warnock is whether this was a proper use of campaign funds.
Federal Election Commission guidance states that campaign money can be used on “litigation expenses where the candidate/officeholder was the defendant and the litigation arose directly from campaign activity or the candidate’s status as a candidate.”
Warnock was one of two Democrats elected to represent Georgia in the Senate last year, giving the party control of the chamber by a one-vote margin. Walker, meanwhile, is a rare Black Republican politician, and looking to reclaim a seat held by the GOP for the past 15 years.