Tag: Democratic House

Adam Schiff hiring full-time team to investigate Trump’s Russia connections

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is adding more investigative manpower to his committee staff. Credit: Bill Clark, CQ Roll Call file photo

House Intelligence Committee chairman hiring more investigators to revive House Russia probe

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is sinking panel resources into a robust investigative staff to revive the probe into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia with roughly seven committee staffers directing their energy full-time.

Schiff and the Democrats have made offers to six new staffers, CBS News reported, including a corruption expert and a former prosecutor. The committee is still looking to hire six more people as Schiff restructures the subcommittee and plans targeted lines of inquiry into the president and his 2016 campaign staff’s connections with Russian officials.

Democrats on the committee will more than double their staff, from 11 to 24 people. About seven will work on the resuscitated Russia probe full-time, while others will help out on a “surge” basis, according to CBS, citing a senior committee official.

View the complete January 15 article by Griffin Connolly on The Roll Call website here.

DNC on Democratic Legislation to Raise the Minimum Wage

In response to House Democrats introducing legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024, DNC spokesperson Daniel Wessel released the following statement:

“Republican leadership has done nothing for American workers. Republicans gave massive tax breaks to the rich and big corporations at the expense of working families. Now, Democrats have taken over, and the contrast couldn’t be starker. Instead of prioritizing those at the top, Democrats want to put more money directly into the pockets of American workers.”

House Democrats unveil first major legislative package of voting, campaign finance and ethics overhauls

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., plan to bring a bill to the floor in the coming weeks to overhaul voting and campaign finance laws. Democrats are introducing it as H.R. 1 to signal that it’s their top priority. Credit: Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call

Committees will soon begin marking up aspects of the package ahead of floor vote on H.R. 1

Automatic voter registration, independent redistricting commissions, super PAC restrictions, forced release of presidential tax returns — these are just a handful of the provisions in a massive government overhaul package House Democrats will formally unveil Friday, according to a summary of the legislation obtained by Roll Call.

The package is being introduced as H.R. 1 to show that it’s the top priority of the new Democratic majority. Committees with jurisdiction over the measures will hold markups on the legislation before the package is brought to the floor sometime later this month or early in February.

H.R. 1 features a hodgepodge of policies Democrats have long promoted as solutions for protecting voters’ rights and expanding access to the polls, reducing the role of so-called dark money in politics, and strengthening federal ethics laws.

View the complete January 4 article by Lindsey McPherson on The Roll Call website here.

Key players in new fight over Trump tax returns

House Democrats see getting President Trump’s tax returns as one of their top oversight priorities — and they are bracing for a fight in the new year.

Trump is the first president in decades who hasn’t made his tax returns public.

Democrats want to review Trump’s returns in order to get more information about any potential conflicts of interest.

View the complete December 28 article by Naomi Jagoda on The Hill website here.

White House lacks lawyers to deal with empowered Democrats

Don McGahn, ex-White House senior attorney, left the counsel’s office in October. Credit: Evan Vucci, AP Photo

The office has been without a permanent leader since October and top deputies are departing, leaving just a skeletal staff in place.

The White House counsel’s office is down to a skeletal staff, potentially leaving it unprepared to deal with a flood of subpoenas for documents and witnesses when Democrats take control of the House.

The office has been without a permanent leader since White House senior attorney Don McGahn left the administration in mid-October. His replacement, Pat Cipollone, is caught up in an extended background check that’s prevented him from starting. And in the coming weeks, deputy counsel Annie Donaldson, who served as McGahn’s most trusted aide and as the office’s chief of staff, is expected to leave the administration, according to two Republicans close to the White House. Donaldson is moving to Alabama with her husband, Brett Talley, whose nomination for a federal judgeship the White House withdrew in December 2017.

Amid the leadership tumult, the counsel’s office has shrunk to about 25 lawyers, according to a second Republican close to the administration. That’s fewer than its recent high point of roughly 35 attorneys and well short of the 40 that some expect it will need to deal with a reinvigorated Democratic Party eager to investigate President Donald Trump’s tax returns and business dealings in foreign countries, reopen probes into Russian election meddling and explore the behavior of a bevy of Cabinet officials.

View the complete November 26 article by Nancy Cook and Darren Samuelsohn on the Politico.com website here.