House Republicans are fuming over a recent White House move that will slow roll their investigations, but leaders say it doesn’t change their game plan.

While the House GOP has spent weeks detailing its planned investigations into the Biden administration now that the party has a majority, the White House has stayed mostly silent on strategy. That changed Thursday morning, when White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber announced he plans to effectively reset the clock come Jan. 3 and ignore the long list of investigative requests already sent by Republican Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio — the incoming chairs for the Oversight and Judiciary Committees, respectively.

It’s an explosive start to a chapter that won’t even officially begin until next week. The relationship between House Republicans and the Biden White House seemed doomed to go sour from the start, but it’s an unmistakable signal that Biden’s administration won’t quietly go along with investigations — some of which it has openly deemed little more than political noise.

“At every turn the Biden White House seeks to obstruct congressional oversight and hide information from the American people,” Comer said in a statement.

House Republicans were quick to clarify that their investigative plans, which have been in the works for months and have included strategy meetings with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are moving forward regardless of the White House’s position. Comer said in an interview that he had already planned to reissue all of his information requests quickly in the new Congress, including for interviews and documents related to Hunter Biden’s business deals, last year’s Afghanistan withdrawal and the administration’s handling of the pandemic. The White House’s newly articulated position would be little more than a short delay of that process, he noted.

A Jordan spokesperson similarly said Thursday that the White House’s letter wouldn’t change the lawmaker’s timeline or strategy for issuing potential subpoenas next year.

And in a further twist of the knife, the Biden White House took unusual inspiration for its newly stated oversight posture: former President Donald Trump. In its letters to Comer and Jordan, the White House counsel’s office cited Trump administration legal opinions that Democrats once derided as extreme and undemocratic.

Former House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) termed the position “the latest in a series of abuses by the Trump administration to operate in a shroud of secrecy.” Even Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, at the time, criticized the Trump White House for construing congressional oversight so narrowly.

A GOP Oversight aide characterized the White House’s stance as an “attempt to delay” that “reveals they are acting in bad faith.” The aide added that “oversight and accountability are coming regardless.”

Meanwhile, Jordan has already sent a slew of letters to the administration outlining documents and interview requests he wants next year as Judiciary Committee chair, warning potential witnesses that while he’d prefer voluntary testimony, he’s willing to use a “compulsory process if necessary.”

Even as Republicans say they’ll move forward as planned, committee investigations will already be hobbled due to the party’s speakership fight. McCarthy has delayed elections for contested committee chairs until after the chamber selects who will wield the gavel, preventing some panels from making key decisions on targets and staffing, and the rules of the House dictate no committees can hold hearings or call witnesses until after the speaker is decided.

The relationship between the Biden administration and a GOP-controlled House was never going to sail smoothly. A majority of Republicans backed attempts to challenge Biden’s 2020 win and have been signposting a sprawl of investigations on everything from the president’s son to the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing border crisis. And the White House, meanwhile, has been staffing up for months to handle the investigative deluge over the next two years.

But the White House’s latest opening salvo appears to have touched a nerve among congressional Republicans.

“The Biden White House is used to House Democrats and the media sweeping essential oversight under the rug. In 5 days, a new Republican majority will have the authority and obligation to get answers for the American people,” House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tweeted Thursday.

Jordan, and Judiciary Committee staff, also spent Thursday teeing off on social media against the White House’s strategy and amplifying criticism from other corners of the party.

“The difference in how the ‘media’ covered oversight of Trump Administration and how it will cover oversight of the Biden Administration will be staggering. But it won’t stop us from doing our constitutional duty,” Jordan added in a tweet.

The White House’s move is likely to spark accusations of hypocrisy from both sides. Democrats remained mostly silent on the announcement Thursday, after expressing indignation at the Trump administration’s move years ago. And despite the current GOP fury, Jordan himself refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the Jan. 6 committee this term.

Additionally, White House aides, in response to GOP criticism that officials first aired their plans with the media and not with Republicans directly, were also quick to point out that Jordan and Comer went on Fox News earlier this year to announce a letter they sent as part of their coronavirus “origins” probe.

It might be the White House’s most controversial move that will delay GOP investigations, but it’s hardly the first.

Comer wants the Treasury Department to turn over so-called suspicious activity reports, known as SARs, related to Hunter Biden as part of the GOP investigation into his business deals. But the administration has batted down those requests while Republicans were in the minority, noting that their policy requires that a committee chair or a majority of the members on a panel OK a request for the reports, which are filed by financial institutions.

And Sauber, in his letter to Comer and Jordan, pointed to a similar distinction in Congress’ own rules, in addition to the Trump-era rationale, to make the case that the GOP requests so far don’t have teeth.

“Congress has not delegated such [oversight] authority to individual members of Congress who are not committee chairmen, and the House has not done so under its current Rules,” Sauber wrote.

But the 2017 stance sparked outrage from House Democrats, who were then in the minority.

“We cannot do our jobs if the Trump administration adopts this unprecedented new policy of refusing to provide any information to Congress unless a request is backed by the implicit threat of a subpoena,” Cummings said at the time.

The White House’s position, in theory, would disadvantage House Democrats in the new term as they fall back into the minority, unless they could get a GOP chair to bless their investigative requests. Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary panels are expected to spearhead the party’s day-to-day defense against the GOP investigations.

“The Democrats should be offended by that [letter], but considering they haven’t requested any information pertaining to oversight over the past two years, I don’t see them asking for anything over the next two years,” Comer said.

It doesn’t matter as long as the manufacturers were paid. The military only exists as consumers of shit no mentally competent civilian would want to own.

We are still furious at the way Biden handled the Afghanistan withdrawal. We've demanded accountability since the beginning.

But this Cheryl Rex wants none of that. She's too busy trying to secure another 15 minutes of fame over some imagined personal slight while those who bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal STILL haven't been brought to justice.

Get over yourself, Cheryl Rex.

god dammit why am i getting teary-eyed over a damn helicopter.

specifically, the CH-46 Sea Knight registered as N38TU if you wanna look it up.

just...fucking hell, man. one chopper. two generations. two pointless wars. same awful ending.

افغانستان سے فوج کا انخلا ایک غلطی تھی، سابق امریکی جنرل نے اعتراف کرلیا

افغانستان سے فوج کا انخلا ایک غلطی تھی، سابق امریکی جنرل نے اعتراف کرلیا

افغانستان سے فوج کا انخلا ایک غلطی تھی، سابق امریکی جنرل نے اعتراف کرلیا نیویارک، 13 اگست (الہلال میڈیا)   یکم اپریل کو امریکی فوج سے ریٹائر ہونے والے جنرل فرینک میکنزی طالبان کے ساتھ مذاکرات کے لیے جا رہے تھے جب انھیں یہ خبر ملی کہ کابل پر قبضہ کر لیا گیا ہے۔ یہ 15 اگست 2021 کا دن تھا، اور امریکی سینٹرل کمانڈ، اس وقت کے کمانڈر انچیف نے کئی ہفتوں کی بدامنی اور افراتفری کا مشاہدہ کیا جب اس گروپ…

View On WordPress

The Biden White House launched its first major broadside in response to incoming House Republicans likely to spearhead aggressive oversight of the administration.

A top lawyer for the President pledged in letters to those members that the administration would operate in good faith with them. But he also said that oversight demands made by congressional Republicans during the last Congress would have to be started over.

In respective letters to Reps. James Comer (R-Ky) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber said that the Biden administration had no immediate plans to respond to a slew of records requests that both men made the past several weeks. In those letters, obtained exclusively by POLITICO, Sauber described such requests as constitutionally illegitimate because both Jordan, who is expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee, and Comer, who is expected to head the Oversight Committee, made them before they had any authority to do so.

“Congress has not delegated such [oversight] authority to individual members of Congress who are not committee chairmen, and the House has not done so under its current Rules,” wrote Sauber, one of the White House’s top oversight lawyers.

Sauber did not rule out satisfying the requests once the next Congress is sworn in. But his letter nevertheless represents the first volley in what is likely to be a contentious and potentially litigious two years between House Republicans and the Biden White House. More narrowly, it is an apparent effort to shield the administration from a hail of potential subpoenas in early January by describing them as an abuse of the normal process of congressional oversight.

In a Nov. 18, 2022, letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Jordan had warned that if his requests for documents from the administration remained outstanding at the beginning of the 118th Congress, “the Committee may be forced to resort to compulsory process to obtain the material we require.”

On Thursday, Comer sharply criticized the administration for its letter saying it would not immediately satisfy his records request.

“President Biden promised to have the most transparent administration in history but at every turn the Biden White House seeks to obstruct congressional oversight and hide information from the American people,” the congressman said in a statement. “Just before dawn at 4:33 a.m., the White House informed us they will not provide the answers we have been seeking for the American people on important issues such as the border and fentanyl crises, the energy crisis, botched Afghanistan withdrawal, COVID origins, and the Biden family’s influence peddling. Why is the Biden Administration hiding this information? Republicans are undeterred by the Biden Administration’s obstruction and will continue pressing for the answers, transparency, and accountability that the American people deserve.”

White House officials, who briefed POLITICO, point to long-standing practice, going back to President Ronald Reagan’s administration , that ranking members in the minority do not jump-start the accommodations process on formal investigative requests. Sauber’s letter tells Jordan and Comer they should not expect records requests to be satisfied before they take their committee’s respective gavels.

Congressional oversight is a normal function of Congress. Yet with the razor-thin margin in the House and little expectation of major legislative breakthroughs with Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, investigations of the Biden administration are expected to be a top priority for Republicans.

Among the issues that Jordan and Comer have pledged to investigate are the federal government’s use of criminal and counterterrorism resources with respect to school board meetings, the drawdown of troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, and the business dealings of the president’s son Hunter Biden. They have pinpointed 42 administration officials who they want to testify before Congress.

Comer, in a Dec. 6 letter questioning the administration’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, demanded that the White House provide responsive material “no later than December 20, 2022.” In joint Dec. 13 letters to several administration officials relating to the origins of COVID-19, Jordan and Comer demanded materials by no later than December 27, 2022.

Republicans on the House Judiciary criticized the White House on Thursday for not engaging directly with them on the matter of records requests.

“Does leaking a story and sending a letter at 4:34 a.m. sound like ‘good faith’ to you, @JoeBiden?” the House Judiciary GOP twitter account posted. “No. It shows how scared you are of important congressional oversight, particularly one where your administration targeted parents protesting at local school board meetings.”

The likely ascension of Jordan, one of the harder-lined conservatives in his party, to the chair of the Judiciary Committee could, in particular, set off major political fireworks. He’s viewed within the party as one of its most effective political bulldogs. But he has also taken stances to diminish the reach and scope of congressional oversight. Jordan has refused to comply with a congressional subpoena related to his conversations with the Trump White House around the Jan. 6 insurrection, and he spearheaded a 2019 letter to oversight Democrats lambasting “partisan” subpoenas issued as part of the first impeachment of President Donald Trump. His charge that Attorney General Merrick Garland called parents “terrorists” for attending school board meetings has been revealed as false.

The Biden White House had largely stayed quiet about House Republicans’ oversight efforts, save when pressed by them during congressional hearings. But that changed after the election. In a statement, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, Ian Sams, likened the subpoena threats to “political stunts,” suggesting House Republicans “might be spending more time thinking about how to get booked on Hannity than on preparing to work together to help the American people.”

Sauber’s letter tries to forge a middle path, albeit one that restarts the clock on the era of GOP oversight.

“Should the Committee issue similar or other requests in the 118th Congress,” Sauber writes, “we will review and respond to them in good faith, consistent with the needs and obligations of both branches. We expect the new Congress will undertake its oversight responsibilities in the same spirit of good faith.”

Congress drops Afghan allies item, dimming evacuee hopes.

It wasn't "Congress"; it was Grassley and McConnell, and shame on them both.

Where the hell was Grassley on "security concerns" during the evacuation, when Pentagon brass gave free rides to every suspect who wanted to settle here?

And what is with McConnell's constant anal stage tantrums? "If I don't get what I want, no one else does, either"? Salvage your widdle budget items, and put them in another bill.

If age has robbed you of the mental flexibility you need to do that job, you should step down.

These are impressive, by author Steve Erickson. A small sample, but please go and read the whole:

WE DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF CONFUSING AN IMPERFECT CHOICE FOR AN UNCLEAR ONE Any dispassionate observer can reasonably conclude Biden should drop out of the campaign. It’s not ageist to suggest that though he’s not too old for the job at the moment, he will be sometime in the next four years, and from a political standpoint his age now so permeates the collective perception of him that nobody can see him straight; his poll numbers are almost perversely at odds with everything about his job performance. But presently every indication is that Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, and sometime soon it will be time for the rest of us to just shut up about it. Whatever one thinks of his age or Israel policy or Afghanistan withdrawal or anything else, he’s still the only one of the two prospective nominees who will defend your right to call him unfit for the job. Now and then a choice can be at once profoundly imperfect and manifestly clear anyway. WE DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF DEUS EX MACHINA While wishing Trump to be accountable before the law, we must accept that any trial or decision by a higher court is unlikely to spare the country what it karmically doesn’t deserve to be spared: a national political referendum on who we are as a people. Otherwise Trump will evermore in the eyes of history — not to mention his supporters, who will find a way to believe it in any case — be martyr to a systemic technicality. Trump needs to be rejected electorally by every single patriot who can drag her- or himself to the polls to do so. Which brings us to the final resolution....

Don’t Believe the Generals on Afghanistan

Don’t Believe the Generals on Afghanistan

A T-shirt that was popular with veterans for much of America’s nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan showed a helicopter in flight with the caption We Were Winning When I Left. U.S. generals seem to be the only ones who didn’t get the joke. On the first anniversary of our botched withdrawal, the military leaders most responsible for America’s disastrous outcome in Afghanistan have continued to loudly…

View On WordPress