Republican oversight chair takes aim at ‘Biden family influence peddling’ – live | US news

The justice department has again expressed its unwillingness to share details of ongoing investigations with the House GOP.

Here’s the department’s letter, obtained by ABC News, in response to the demand for information from judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan and member Mike Johnson:

In their letter sent 13 January, Jordan and Johnson requested a range of document from the justice department, including “all documents and communications referring or relating to the appointment of Robert K. Hur as Special Counsel, including but not limited to any memoranda regarding his appointment” – which is exactly the kind of thing the justice department is loath to discuss.

Memphis relieves sixth police officer of duty after Tyre Nichols death

Christian nationalists who were involved in spreading Covid-19 misinformation and promoting Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election have made a new push to win adherents nationwide, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports:

A far-right project that has helped spread Donald Trump’s false claims about voting fraud in 2020, and misinformation about Covid vaccines, is trying to expand its mission, while facing new criticism from scholars and religious leaders about its incendiary political and Christian nationalist messages.

ReAwaken America, a project of the Oklahoma-based entrepreneur Clay Clark, has hosted numerous revival-style political events across the US after receiving tens of thousands of dollars in initial funds in 2021 from millionaire Patrick Byrne, and become a key vehicle for pushing election denialism and falsehoods about Covid vaccines.

ReAwaken America also boasts close ties to retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn, who in December 2020 met with Trump, Byrne and others at the White House to plot ways to reverse Trump’s election loss. The meeting happened shortly after Trump pardoned Flynn, who was convicted for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador before serving briefly as Trump’s national security adviser.

Clark’s project also has links to Dr Simone Gold, who served a 60-day jail sentence for illegally entering the Capitol on 6 January and founded America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vaccine group that has also touted bogus cures.

“Christian nationalism has deep roots in American history and has gained traction at different points,” said Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “The ReAwaken America Tour taps into the unholy well of Christian nationalism to sow doubt about the US election system and the safety of Covid vaccines while equating allegiance to Trumpism with allegiance to God.”

Donald Trump spent this weekend campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina, where he made a special effort to attack Florida governor Ron DeSantis. There’s a reason for that, the Guardian’s Maya Yang reports:

America’s 2024 presidential race is showing signs of kicking into gear amid reports that Florida’s rightwing Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is now laying the groundwork for a White House bid as Donald Trump finally hit the campaign trail.

DeSantis’s moves even spurred Trump into attacking him directly as the former US president held relatively low-key events over the weekend in the key early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.

“Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me … when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal,” Trump said, before seeking to attack DeSantis’s actions over fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

DeSantis began his time as Florida’s governor in the shadow of Trump, whose political messaging he closely emulated. But he has since emerged as Trump’s most powerful political rival in the Republican party, increasingly popular with many party officials who are wary of the scandals and chaos that accompanied Trump’s time in office.

The Democrats have several strategies to fight back against the Republican investigation campaign. One of them is the deployment of outside groups, among them Facts First USA, which was set up last year specifically to counter the GOP’s inquiries.

In a statement released following James Comer’s event, Facts First criticized the GOP oversight chair for acknowledging that the Treasury department’s reporting system for suspicious financial transactions needs reform. As part of his investigation into the president, Comer had demanded from the Treasury suspicious activity reports related to Hunter Biden, but at the event acknowledged the reporting system is flawed.

“We probably need suspicious activity reform … because there are too many suspicious activity reports file. There’s so many, the bank examiners don’t have time to thoroughly go through them all,” Comer said. “But I will say this, if they’re no big deal, then why won’t they let us have access to it? Because I couldn’t tell you. I would find it very surprising that a bank would file a suspicious activity report on the son of the sitting vice president United States unless they were pretty certain that there had been some type of major violation committed with that suspicious activity report.”

Here’s what Facts First USA president David Brock had to say about that:

Comer just admitted that one of his previous key rationales for launching an inquisition into the private life of Hunter Biden was actually based on a lie and a flawed reporting system that he now says needs reform. The fact that Comer is already being forced to backtrack from his own lies before he even held his first hearing is clear foreshadowing that his investigations into conspiracy theories are already headed towards the inevitable crash landing as Durham and Barr’s failed four-year investigation for Trump chasing the fake deep state.

John Durham was the special counsel appointed by Trump’s attorney general William Barr to investigate the origins of the investigation into the former president’s ties with Russia – an inquiry that has so far turned up little.

As far as James Comer is concerned, Donald Trump has been investigated enough, and his committee doesn’t plan to look into the former president’s conduct.

“If someone can bring me evidence that Trump was using documents or was influenced peddling with inside information, then we will investigate that. But I believe that Donald Trump has been investigated for the past six years for just about everything imaginable,” Comer said. “And now there’s a special counsel that’s coming around, the second special counsel, that’s coming around and investigating his mishandling of classified documents and probably everything else.”

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The comment isn’t a big surprise, given how Republican generally remain in lockstep with Trump. And though Hunter Biden may be a name you will hear from Comer and other Republicans in the months to come, the oversight chair made clear Joe Biden is their target.

“This isn’t a Hunter Biden investigation. This is an investigation of the president,” he said.

James Comer’s committee won’t just be focused on investigations. He also said it could play a role in negotiating an increase in the debt ceiling.

“We’re sincere about trying to be the leader in Congress in coming up with proposed cuts,” the Republican oversight committee chair said. “There’s a lot of talk about the debt ceiling. And let me say this, we will never default. That’s not going to happen. But I do think we need to be serious about finding spending cuts, and we can cut spending without cutting Social Security and Medicare.”

So what would Republicans have cut in exchange for their votes to increase the government’s ability to pay its bills?

“Everything except Social Security, Medicare is gonna be on the table … including defense,” Comer said. That last part may be controversial among Republicans, many of whom favor keeping the military well funded.

The Republicans are determined to probe two potential scandals involving Joe Biden: the president’s possession of classified documents, and the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

Or are they, in fact, one scandal? At the National Press Club, Comer made the case that they are. Here’s what he said:

It’s really one investigation. It’s not really two, because the reason that that I’m concerned about the Biden documents is because there’s some reason that China has donated so much money to the different Biden interests. I don’t think they’re doing it out of the kindness of their heart. Look, China’s an adversary.

According to Factcheck.org, there is no evidence that China was able to see the classified material, or that the country funded the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Biden’s former office at the center was one of the locations where the secret documents from his time as vice president were discovered.

‘I’m just an average guy with average ability’: top GOP investigator strike bipartisan tone

Elsewhere in Congress, Black lawmakers want to revive stalled police reform talks following the beating death of Tyre Nichols, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt and Edwin Rios report:

An influential group of Black elected officials has called for a meeting with Joe Biden to discuss police reform, as calls for changes to American policing intensify after officers’ deadly beating of Tyre Nichols.

The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Steven Horsford, said the group of 60 members of Congress had asked to meet with the president this week to “push for negotiations on much-needed national reforms to our justice system – specifically, the actions and conduct of our law enforcement”.

The appeal to Biden, who has called for Congress to pass police reforms, came as protests prompted by Nichols’s killing continued in Memphis over the weekend.

Nichols, a Black man, died on 10 January, three days after Memphis police officers beat him by a traffic stop. Nichols’s parents, who have been invited to attend Biden’s State of the Union speech on 7 February, said the 29-year-old was driving home after photographing the sunset.

Video footage released by Memphis officials last week showed officers kicking and punching and Nichols and hitting him with a police baton.

In addition to House oversight chair James Comer, another Republican who will be leading the investigation campaign against the Biden administration is Jim Jordan.

The judiciary committee chair is one of the best-known conservatives in the chamber, and made headlines earlier this month by leading the creation of a subcommittee to investigate the “weaponization of the federal government”. He has already sent a flurry of demands for documents and testimony to the justice department, but in a five-page response, a top attorney cited longstanding practice in refusing to share details of ongoing investigations with Jordan, one of Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress.

In an interview with Punchbowl News today, Carlos Uriarte, the justice department’s point man for legislative affairs who authored the letter to Jordan, elaborated on its approach. He told the outlet that the point of the letter “was to really demonstrate our interest and willingness to cooperate with [Republicans] in their investigations”, but only to the extent it kept with historical norms that he said dated back to the 1940s.

Asked if he sees Jordan as an “honest broker”, Uriarte replied, “I think Representative Jordan, just like any member of Congress, has a set of goals that he wants to accomplish as chair.”

The Democrats retook control of the House of Representatives midway through Donald Trump’s term, and did what the party not in the White House often does: used its power in Congress to hold the president to account.

Its most potent investigation came after Trump left office in the form of the January 6 committee, which spent months unveiling shocking revelations about the former president’s conduct as the Capitol was attacked, and his attempts to undo his 2020 election loss.

The GOP is now back in the majority in the House for the first time since 2018, and plans to give Democrats a taste of their own medicine. They’ve already jumped on the revelations that Joe Biden had classified documents in his personal possession, as well as the surge of migrant arrivals at the US border. The 2024 presidential election looms large here: should Biden run again, the Republicans hope they will have unearthed enough damning details that people who supported him in 2020 change their minds.

GOP to kick off investigation campaign against Biden administration