For the Republicans, investigating Joe Biden is about keeping their promises. The party told their voters they’d hold his administration to account, and intend to use the House’s investigative abilities – which include subpoena power – to do so.
Such inquiries are one of Congress’s core functions, and also one of the things the Republicans can do alone, since any legislation they muscle through with their slim majority in the House can be ignored by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The House is scheduled to take up legislative business today from 12pm eastern time, and by the afternoon will vote to set up two committees.
The first will be the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. This is the more anodyne of the two, since many Democrats also have concerns about China’s policies towards the United States and its allies.
The second order of business will be creating the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which Republican leadership has said will investigate how federal law enforcement, including the FBI and justice and homeland security departments, “obtain information from and provide information to the private sector, non-profit entities, or other government agencies to facilitate action against American citizens.” The subcommittee will reportedly be chaired by Jim Jordan, a well-known conservative and ally of Donald Trump.
Republican leadership summed up the subcommittee like this: “House Republicans will hold the Biden Administration accountable.” Needless to say, Democrats are not expected to vote for this one, but five members of the party could serve on it.
Key events
The day so far
House Republicans are gearing up to launch investigations and trying to make the most of reports that classified documents dating to his time as vice-president were found in an office used by Joe Biden. But unlike with the government secrets the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago, it didn’t take a search warrant for Biden to turn over the material – he ordered it done so immediately, which Democrats are citing to defend the president.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Joe Biden is traveling in Mexico, where he just concluded a meeting with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.
He did not answer questions shouted by members of the White House press corps in attendance, including one about the classified documents.
Documents on Iran, Ukraine, UK found in Biden’s office
CNN reports that an attorney for Joe Biden found 10 documents related to Iran, Ukraine and the United Kingdom in a personal office, dating from his time as vice-president.
The attorney clearing out an office Biden once used in Washington DC found briefing materials and intelligence memos from 2013 through 2016, when Biden served under Barack Obama, according to CNN, which cited a source familiar with the matter. The documents were mixed in with family materials, some of which related to the funeral of his son Beau Biden, who died in 2015.
Upon realizing the papers were classified, the attorney immediately contacted the National Archives and Records Administration. Biden’s team eventually turned over several boxes “in an abundance of caution, even though many of the boxes contained personal materials, the source said,” according to CNN’s report.
California senator Dianne Feinstein is unfazed by Katie Porter’s announcement that she’d run for her Senate seat in 2024.
The 89-year-old is the oldest sitting senator, and has in recent months been the subject of reports questioning her fitness to serve. Feinstein was blase when the San Francisco Chronicle asked for her thoughts on the challenge from the 49-year-old Porter:
NEW: Feinstein tells @sfchronicle “Everyone is of course welcome to throw their hat in the ring … Right now I’m focused on ensuring California has all the resources it needs to cope with the devastating storms slamming the state.” https://t.co/tgTkfLPFxo
— Sara Libby (@SaraLibby) January 10, 2023
GOP asks national intelligence director for Biden documents ‘damage assessment’
Republican leader of the House intelligence committee Mike Turner has asked top security official Avril Haines to asses what damage the secret documents found at Joe Biden’s former office may have done to US national security.
In a letter sent today to Haines, who serves as director of national intelligence, Turner asked for “an immediate review and damage assessment following numerous reports that then Vice-President Biden removed, and then retained highly classified information at an undisclosed and unsecure non-government office in Washington, D.C., for a period of at least six years.”
“It has been reported that a portion of the materials at issue were marked ‘sensitive compartmented information,’ indicating the highest classification and most sensitive intelligence information in our government,” Turner wrote.
“This discovery of classified information would put President Biden in potential violation of laws protecting national security, including the Espionage Act and Presidential Records Act. Those entrusted with access to classified information have a duty and an obligation to protect it. This issue demands a full and thorough review.”
House Democrats are defending Joe Biden after reports emerged that secret documents from his time as vice-president were found at an office he used prior to his successful White House run, Politico reports.
House Democrat Pete Aguilar said there was no comparison between the documents found at an office Biden used until 2019 and the government secrets the FBI discovered last August when it searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. While the former president resisted government requests for a full accounting of his classified material for months, Aguilar noted that Biden’s personal lawyers immediately turned over the documents they had found:
Asked about the Biden classified docs, Rep. Aguilar tells reporters that it is “Republican hypocrisy at its finest”
“What President Biden did is…exactly the way that you should handle this. ” Says Biden following “established protocol” + go from there
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) January 10, 2023
“this is being handled the way he should…the president is handling this the way that he should”
“we’re not downplaying this, which is exactly what House Republicans have done”
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) January 10, 2023
The justice department has appointed a Trump-nominated US attorney and the FBI to look into the documents found in Biden’s office.
California’s Katie Porter announces Senate campaign
Democratic congresswoman Katie Porter has announced she will run to represent California in the Senate – though there isn’t yet a vacant seat.
Porter appears to be getting a jump on the expected retirement of Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, who has served since 1992 and is up for reelection in the reliably blue state next year. Several Democrats are thought to have interest in succeeding her, but Porter is the first to announce a formal run:
California needs a warrior in the Senate—to stand up to special interests, fight the dangerous imbalance in our economy, and hold so-called leaders like Mitch McConnell accountable for rigging our democracy.
Today, I’m proud to announce my candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2024. pic.twitter.com/X1CSE8T12B
— Katie Porter (@katieporteroc) January 10, 2023
Porter, a progressive, has become known for using a whiteboard to devastating effect against witnesses in committee hearings, and for her testy exchange with a gun rights advocate in a hearing held after the Uvalde school shooting this past summer.
House Republican majority leader Steve Scalise made no promises that the party would cooperate when the time comes to raise the debt ceiling.
The US government is expected to hit its legal authority to borrow money in the second half of this year, and it will be up to Congress to increase it. That means the two parties will need to broker a deal, or risk the possibility that the world’s largest economy will default for the first time ever.
The debt ceiling is one of the few pieces of leverage House Republicans will have over Biden and the Democrats who control the Senate. Here’s what Scalise had to say about it at his press conference this morning:
Majority Leader @SteveScalise, asked if he can guarantee US won’t breach the debt limit, likens it to a family hitting its credit card limit and needing a new budget. “If we’re about to max out the credit card,” he says, there should be a debate about “living within our means.”
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 10, 2023
A slide from the conference makes clear that Republicans will only agree to an increase in exchange for “budget agreement” or “fiscal reform” – both codes for spending cuts:
A slide shown in GOP Conference meeting showed the budget and spending priorities for the 118th Congress, including tying the debt ceiling to spending cuts pic.twitter.com/9h1EVQT9ku
— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) January 10, 2023
What will Republicans do about George Santos? The House representative lied about his qualifications, but there’s no sign that he will resign his seat representing a New York district.
House majority leader Steve Scalise was asked about Santos at his press conference this morning, but had few details to offer:
While it may be a bad look for House Republicans to welcome an admitted fabulist into their caucus, they might not have much of a choice. Their majority in the chamber is only six seats, and Santos comes from a district that typically leans Democratic. If he leaves, there’s no guarantee a Republican would replace him.
That the House is operating at all is only because the GOP yesterday managed to agree on the rules governing the chamber for the next two years – which was no sure thing, considering it took most of last week just to elect Kevin McCarthy speaker. Here’s the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland on what happened, and what it means:
The Republican-led US House of Representatives on Monday adopted a package of internal rules that give rightwing hardliners more leverage over the chamber’s newly elected Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
Lawmakers voted 220-213 for the legislation, with only one Republican voting against. All 212 Democrats voted against the rules package, saying it was full of concessions to the right wing of the Republican party.
The rules package, which will govern House operations over the next two years, represented an early test of McCarthy’s ability to keep his caucus together, after he suffered the humiliation of 14 failed ballots last week at the hands of 20 hardliners before finally being elected speaker on Saturday.
Even as it gears up to hold the Biden administration to account, House Republicans yesterday acted to defang the independent body that could have investigated its lawmakers, Hugo Lowell reports:
House Republicans moved to pre-emptively kill any investigations against its members as it curtailed the power of an independent ethics office just as it was weighing whether to open inquiries into lawmakers who defied subpoenas issued by the House January 6 select committee last year.
The incoming Republican majority also paved the way for a new special subcommittee with a wide mandate to investigate the US justice department and intelligence agencies, which could include reviewing the criminal investigations into Donald Trump and a Republican congressman caught up in the Capitol attack inquiry.
The measures took effect as House Republicans narrowly passed the new rules package that included the changes for the next Congress, 220-213, setting the stage for politically charged fights with the Biden administration over access to classified materials and details of criminal investigations.
Here’s something you can expect to hear much about from Republicans today. Classified papers were found at an office used by Joe Biden before he became president, a discovery that the GOP has compared to the government secrets found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which caused the FBI to search the property. But as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, there are major differences between the two cases – not least being that Biden’s office quickly turned the documents over to the government:
The US justice department is investigating a number of documents bearing highly sensitive classified markings stored at Joe Biden’s former institute in Washington DC from his time as vice-president in the Obama administration, the White House acknowledged in a statement on Monday.
The documents were found by Biden’s personal lawyers at the start of November when they closed out office space at the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy, a thinktank where he was an honorary professor until 2019.
Biden’s personal lawyers sent the documents to the National Archives, which referred the matter to the justice department because of their sensitive nature, with some classified at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level, a source familiar with the matter said.
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, has since assigned the Trump-appointed US attorney in Chicago John Lausch to oversee the investigation alongside the FBI, a second person said. A spokesperson for the justice department declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
For the Republicans, investigating Joe Biden is about keeping their promises. The party told their voters they’d hold his administration to account, and intend to use the House’s investigative abilities – which include subpoena power – to do so.
Such inquiries are one of Congress’s core functions, and also one of the things the Republicans can do alone, since any legislation they muscle through with their slim majority in the House can be ignored by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The House is scheduled to take up legislative business today from 12pm eastern time, and by the afternoon will vote to set up two committees.
The first will be the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. This is the more anodyne of the two, since many Democrats also have concerns about China’s policies towards the United States and its allies.
The second order of business will be creating the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which Republican leadership has said will investigate how federal law enforcement, including the FBI and justice and homeland security departments, “obtain information from and provide information to the private sector, non-profit entities, or other government agencies to facilitate action against American citizens.” The subcommittee will reportedly be chaired by Jim Jordan, a well-known conservative and ally of Donald Trump.
Republican leadership summed up the subcommittee like this: “House Republicans will hold the Biden Administration accountable.” Needless to say, Democrats are not expected to vote for this one, but five members of the party could serve on it.
Republicans gear up to use House’s powers of investigation against Biden
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Even before he won the White House, Republicans were accusing Joe Biden of committing all kinds of nefarious deeds, and the accusations have only increased since he took office. Today, they’ll finally get the chance to make good on threats to hold him to account, when the GOP-controlled House of Representatives votes to lay the groundwork for the first of what are expected to be several investigations into his policies. With the Senate still under the control of Democrats, who are unlikely to entertain anything but the most crucial of legislation coming from the House, expect these inquiries to be a major focus of Republican lawmakers over the coming months, if not years.
Here’s what else is going on today:
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Biden continues his trip in Mexico, where he’s scheduled to speak alongside its president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau at 4.45pm eastern time.
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The House Republican leadership will give a press conference at 10am eastern time.
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The supreme court will hear Glacier Northwest v International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a case in which conservative justices could roll back protections for unions.