Tag: U.S. House

Devin Nunes Threatens To Go After FBI Officials Who Investigated Trump

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is threatening to go after career FBI officials who investigated Trump and his campaign’s misdeeds during the 2016 election, telling Fox News on Sunday that he’s planning to file eight “criminal referrals” to the Department of Justice against unnamed investigators.

Nunes gave few specifics, including no names and no actual evidence of possible crimes that were committed by these officials.

But the “referrals” seem to hinge on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants issued against members of Trump’s campaign.

View the complete April 8 article by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here. 

House Judiciary Chair Will Call Mueller To Testify

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has concluded, but countless questions remain about what he discovered.

Attorney General Bill Barr is scheduled to testify in Congress this week, and he will surely be peppered with questions about the investigation and how he has handled its conclusion, which has been widely criticized. Undoubtedly, Democrats will grill him over his delay and caginess in releasing the investigation’s final report. But there’s one person Congress and the American people will want to hear from even more: Mueller himself.

And on Monday, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, confirmed that he plans to call Mueller to testify. As special counsel, he remained phenomenally and conspicuously silent and his team was virtually leak-proof, so hearing direct testimony from the former FBI director will be a blockbuster event. But Nadler included a caveat on his plans: He wants to wait until their report has been released:

View the complete April 8 article by Cody Fenwick with AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Five things to watch in Trump tax-return fight

House Democrats this week formally requested President Trump‘s tax returns from the IRS, kicking off a new battle with the administration.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) asked for six years of both Trump’s personal tax returns and the returns of several of his business entities.

Trump, who has long said he won’t release his tax returns because he’s under audit, quickly indicated that he did not want the administration to comply with the request.

View the complete April 6 article by Naomi Jagoda on The Hill website here.

House sues Trump administration over border wall

The House sued members of President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday over his emergency declaration to force funding for a border wall.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., asserts Trump’s emergency acts in direct disregard of Congress’ will and disputes the president’s ability to access certain funds for the wall simply by declaring an emergency. It names Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and the departments they oversee. It does not name Trump as a defendant.

“The House has been injured, and will continue to be injured, by defendants’ unconstitutional actions, which usurp the House’s appropriations authority and mean that the relevant funds are no longer available to be spent on the purposes for which they were appropriated,” the complaint says.

View the complete April 5 article by Matthew Choi on the Politico website here.

House Republicans Vote To Let Domestic Abusers Keep Guns

Given the choice between preventing women from being murdered by their partners, or fighting for domestic abusers to keep their guns, Republicans overwhelmingly sided with domestic abusers.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by a vote of 263-158. Only 33 Republicans voted in support of the bill, while one Democrat voted against it.

The bill provides resources and strengthens legal protections for survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, and sexual assault. In addition, the reauthorization this year contains a provision making it harder for known domestic abusers to obtain guns.

View the complete April 4 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

Violence Against Women Act clears House

Measure includes firearms restrictions and expansion of transgender rights

The House voted Thursday to renew the lapsed Violence Against Women Act, but the proposal stoked contention over provisions restricting gun rights and expanding rights for transgender individuals.

Lawmakers voted 263-158 to pass the measure, which highlighted divisions within the Republican caucus. While the bill does have one Republican co-sponsor, Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, other House Republicans objected to new provisions included in the VAWA reauthorization measure. In all, 33 Republicans voted for the measure, and one, Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, voted present.

The most contentious provision would lower the criminal threshold to bar someone from buying a gun to include misdemeanor convictions of domestic abuse of stalking. The law currently applies to felony convictions.

View the complete April 4 article by Katherine Tully-McManus on The Roll Call website here.

House to probe rise in hate crimes since Trump was elected

Looking into rising hate crimes is a priority for House Judiciary Chairman Nadler

The House Judiciary Committee will look into rising rates of hate crimes and white nationalism in the U.S. at a hearing on Tuesday, April 9.

After the midterm elections last year, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the committee who was then the ranking member, promised to hold hearings in the new Congress on the rise of racially and religiously motivated violence.

The committee will “examine the causes of racial and religious violence, assess the adequacy of federal hate crimes statutes, and scrutinize targeted domestic surveillance of specific groups,” Nadler wrote in a letter last November to the Homeland Security Department, Justice Department and FBI.

View the complete April 4 article by Griffin Connolly on The Roll Call website here.

House panel approves subpoena for Mueller report

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted to authorize a subpoena to compel the Justice Department to hand over special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report to Congress, intensifying a power struggle with the Trump administration.

In a party-line vote, the committee voted 24-17 to approve a resolution authorizing subpoenas for Mueller’s report, including accompanying exhibits and other attachments, as well as its underlying evidence. The resolution also authorizes the committee’s Democratic chairman to subpoena testimony related to the special counsel’s report.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said he would give Attorney General William Barr time to produce the final, unredacted report to Congress before issuing the subpoena; however he did not provide a timeline on when that would happen.

View the complete April 3 article by Morgan Chalfant and Olivia beavers on The Hill website here.

Republicans Are Trying To Kill An LGBT Bill In Congress By Arguing It Hurts Women

“Women, lesbians, and families become the collateral damage.”

An LGBT rights bill needs to die — to help women.

That was the message Republicans brought to a rowdy congressional hearing on Tuesday, when conservative lawmakers and think tanks denounced the nondiscrimination bill with increasingly uniform charges of sexism.

The bill’s protections for transgender people, they contend, advance a “radical gender ideology” that will erase and victimize women.

“Women, lesbians, and families become the collateral damage of identity politics,” said Republican Doug Collins of Georgia, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

View the complete April 2 article by Dominic Holden on the BuzzFeed News website here.

Nine White House officials of interest in Dem security clearance probe

Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee are zeroing in on a handful of current and former officials in President Trump‘s White House as part of their investigation into the administration’s security clearance practices.

Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has ramped up the probe in recent weeks, accusing the White House of stonewalling his efforts to obtain additional documentation and information about the process.

He released a memo Monday detailing allegations raised by White House staffer Tricia Newbold, who has worked as a career official in the Executive Office of the President for 18 years.

View the complete April 1 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.