(WASHINGTON) — Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney will not seek reelection in 2024, he announced Wednesday — marking the potential end to a storied conservative career that had in recent years put him in conflict with his party’s standard-bearer, Donald Trump.
In a video statement, Romney, 76, touted his role in major pieces of bipartisan legislation on issues including infrastructure, guns and COVID-19 relief but said it was time for a “new generation” to take the reins — both on Capitol Hill and in the White House, accusing President Joe Biden, 80, and former President Trump, 77, of not doing enough to address America’s challenges.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, was elected to the Senate in 2018 and will leave Washington in January 2025.
“I have spent my last 25 years in public service of one kind or another. At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-eighties,” he said in his recorded statement. “Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders. They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”
“We face critical challenges — mounting national debt, climate change and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China. Neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront them,” Romney added. “Political motivations too often impede the solutions that these challenges demand.”
Still, Romney insisted he wouldn’t entirely leave politics, noting that his Senate term lasts for over another year and hinting he’d remain involved beyond his departure.
“While I’m not running for reelection, I’m not retiring from the fight. I’ll be your United States senator until January 2025. I will keep working on these and other issues and I will advance our state’s numerous priorities. I look forward to working with you and with folks across our state and nation in that endeavor,” he said, speaking to Utahans.
Romney’s announcement caps months of speculation over whether he would seek a second term in the Senate.
He was one of the GOP’s few high-level officeholders to consistently criticize Trump, ultimately voting to convict Trump in each of his impeachment trials — attacks that fueled both discussion over Romney’s place in a party reshaped in Trump’s image and questions over whether he would even be able to win a primary in another campaign.
Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs is the only Republican officially in the 2024 Utah Senate GOP primary race so far, but state House Speaker Brad Wilson has launched an exploratory committee and former Rep. Jason Chaffetz is weighing a campaign, too.
“We are at a crossroads, and it’s never been more important to elect a strong conservative fighter to the U.S. Senate. The stakes are too high, and we need a leader with the guts to stand up and get things done for the people of this state. I’ve been encouraged so far by the record-breaking fundraising, groundswell of grassroots support, and unprecedented endorsements we’ve received so far,” Wilson said in a statement.
Chaffetz said in a text message to ABC News that Romney’s retirement would not change his decision-making.
Romney’s camp, meanwhile, has swatted away worries over his vulnerability in a primary, citing local polling suggesting he would have been able to run a muscular campaign.
“He made his decision from a position of strength and on his own terms,” Romney spokesperson Liz Johnson said on Wednesday.
Romney did enjoy support from the GOP’s establishment flank, with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell praising him after news of his retirement broke.
“The U.S. Senate is known to attract bright and proven public servants. However, we rarely get to welcome new Senators already as accomplished and well-regarded as Mitt Romney. The Senate has been fortunate to call our friend from Utah a colleague these past four and a half years, and I am sorry to learn that he will depart our ranks at the end of next year,” McConnell said in a statement.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Romney admitted his Trump criticism had left him somewhat adrift in the Republican Party and that while he would like to see another candidate win the party’s 2024 presidential nomination besides Trump, he suggested his endorsement wouldn’t serve to help any candidate.
“I’m not looking to get involved in that,” he said.
While it’s unclear what his post-Senate political involvement will look like, Romney insisted to the Post that he won’t run for president on the potential No Labels third-party ticket, warning it could spoil Biden’s campaign for reelection.
“I lobby continuously that it would only elect Trump,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Building on a key part of his pitch to conservative voters, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said during a speech in the nation’s capital on Wednesday that he wants to cut the federal workforce by 75% — in part by dismantling the government.
Ramaswamy argued that if elected, he would use the “executive authority to shut down redundant federal agencies and to reorganize the federal government accordingly.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — A Trump-era opinion issued by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel is being highlighted as a possible barrier for House Republicans in their impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday directed House committees to move ahead with the inquiry without a House vote. A lack of support among his caucus made it unclear whether he would’ve had the votes to launch the probe.
Now, the Biden administration could focus one part of their legal defense on a 2020 DOJ opinion that took the position that impeachment investigations by the House are invalid without a vote of the full chamber.
“The Constitution vests the ‘sole Power of Impeachment’ in the House of Representatives … For precisely that reason, the House itself must authorize an impeachment inquiry, as it has done in virtually every prior impeachment investigation in our Nation’s history, including every one involving a President,” Steve Engel, a top lawyer for the department, wrote in the opinion.
Engel added, “no committee may undertake the momentous move from legislative oversight to impeachment without a delegation by the full House of such authority.”
A Justice Department spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the opinion. Politico first reported on the 2020 opinion after McCarthy’s announcement Tuesday.
White House counsel spokesperson Ian Sams was asked if the administration would use the opinion as a guiding force in their response during an appearance on CNN on Wednesday morning.
“I think we’re going to see what they’re going to do,” he responded. “I don’t want to speculate on what the House Republicans may or may not ask for. I mean, they won’t even vote for it and they can’t even say what they’re impeaching him for. So I think we’re going to have to see what exactly what they try to do with this newfound impeachment inquiry.”
The opinion was written in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s launch of an impeachment inquiry against Trump in 2019 over allegations the president abused his power by pressuring a foreign official to investigate Biden.
Pelosi announced the inquiry in September 2019 without a full House vote. A resolution formalizing the inquiry was later approved by the full House in late October.
McCarthy had previously said a House vote would be taken before launching an inquiry, telling Brietbart in August an impeachment probe would “occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person.”
Asked about his apparent reversal, McCarthy told reporters Wednesday he “never changed my position” and pointed to Pelosi’s past action.
“Nancy Pelosi changed the precedent of this House on September 24,” he said.
Top House Democrats pushed back on McCarthy’s unilateral maneuver during a press conference on Wednesday morning.
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, who served as an impeachment manager for Trump’s second impeachment, called it “impeachment theater” and claimed the 2020 DOJ opinion means House Republicans will be granted no additional power until a vote is held.
“There is no additional power the Republican Congress has simply because they called this impeachment inquiry and that’s because the Department of Justice under the Trump administration issued a ruling stating unless there is a vote of the House, there is no additional power of the House for doing an impeachment inquiry,” Lieu said.
While such opinions don’t dictate how a court would eventually rule on a potential legal challenge brought by House Republicans should the Biden administration resist the probe, the opinion is currently considered binding between administrations unless Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Office of Legal Counsel issues a new opinion altering their approach to such inquiries.
ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
(ATLANTA, GA) — The same federal judge who denied former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ effort to move his Fulton County election interference case to federal court has denied Meadows’ request for an emergency stay of the order, pending appeal.
Judge Steve Jones said in his order Tuesday that Meadows “failed to show a stay should be granted.”
As part of the order, Jones took note of Meadows’ argument that he would be irreparably harmed by the possibility of a trial next month, but the judge said that “no trial date has been set for Meadows, and he admits that it is not guaranteed his trial will be in October.”
The development comes as Fulton Country District Attorney Fani Willis continues to push for all 19 defendants in the case to be tried together.
“Breaking this case up into multiple lengthy trials would create an enormous strain on the judicial resources of the Fulton County Superior Court,” Willis wrote in a court filing Tuesday.
Judge Scott McAfee last week set an Oct. 23 trial date for defendants Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell after they both filed speedy trial demands. Several additional defendants — including former President Donald Trump — have filed motions to sever their cases.
Willis, in Tuesday’s filing, laid out a potential “logistical quagmire” if severance is granted: that once granted severance, the defendants then turn around and request their own speedy trials after the Oct. 23 trial has started, thus “forcing the Fulton County Court System to simultaneously accommodate three or more trials, on the same facts, before three or more sets of judges.”
As a result, the DA asked the judge to require the other defendants to waive their right to a speedy trial and “go on the record” with their requested trial date, in order to “prevent the logistical quagmire” she described.
Meadows, meanwhile, still has a separate, pending motion for emergency stay with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. No ruling has come down from that court, which has ordered briefings from both parties.
Judge Jones last week rejected Meadows’ bid to have his case moved, based on a federal law that calls for the removal of criminal proceedings brought in state court to the federal court system when someone is charged for actions they allegedly took as a federal official acting “under color” of their office.
Meadows and 18 others, including former President Donald Trump, have pleaded not guilty to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.
The former president says his actions were not illegal and that the investigation is politically motivated.
(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced he was ordering House Republicans to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, alleging a “culture of corruption” involving him and his family.
McCarthy had signaled the impeachment inquiry for weeks, but his announcement Tuesday comes at a time when he is facing mounting pressure from GOP hard-liners, who threaten to oust him if he doesn’t follow through on a Biden impeachment.
While Democrats claim the effort is “extremist,” McCarthy claims the move is not political but aimed instead at getting “answers” the American people deserve.
The White House is adamant that the president did nothing wrong, and that there is no evidence to suggest otherwise after an investigation into any relationship between him and Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
ABC News is breaking down all of the layers in this impeachment inquiry, the precedent set in previous such efforts and what the path ahead for McCarthy looks like.
What is an impeachment inquiry, and how does it work?
An impeachment inquiry is an investigation into possible wrongdoing — meaning an inquiry is a step toward potential impeachment.
Typically, the House Judiciary Committee conducts an impeachment inquiry — a process that can include public hearings and subpoenas for information and documents. When the inquiry is over, articles of impeachment are prepared and must be approved by a majority of the committee. The House then debates those articles of impeachment with a majority vote needed to pass each article.
From there, the Senate holds a trial on the articles of impeachment. The Senate has the ability to convict and remove someone from office.
What’s behind this impeachment inquiry?
Republicans have accused President Biden of profiting from the foreign business ventures of his son, Hunter Biden, while he served as vice president from 2009 to 2017.
Hunter Biden has been the subject of several investigations over the last few years, and none has presented substantial evidence supporting McCarthy’s claims. He said Tuesday that House Republicans uncovered “serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”
“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption and warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” McCarthy told reporters.
Most of the Republican accusations are centered on Hunter Biden, but they have accused the president of corruptly influencing Hunter’s business ventures to enrich himself. The White House says they haven’t produced direct evidence to prove that.
The five-year investigation into Hunter Biden has not produced accusations of financial crimes beyond failure to pay taxes.
What’s the timeline?
Leaving the GOP weekly conference meeting Wednesday, McCarthy did not answer a question from ABC News’ Rachel Scott on a timeline for the impeachment inquiry and explained what documents House Republicans still want.
“If you had an FBI informant allege someone was bribed and they used shell companies. How do you prove that? You’d have to get the document. If you have a staffer that worked in the White House, saying the president approved the reason, we’re talking points. You have facts there,” McCarthy said.
“We don’t have any credit card statements from all the credit cards from this, shell companies. We don’t have the president’s bank statements. We don’t have Hunter Biden’s bank statements. Providing information like that would answer the question. All we’re looking at [with the] impeachment inquiry, is answering the question,” the speaker continued.
Impeachment inquiry vote: A brief history
McCarthy did not say if the House will take a vote on the impeachment inquiry during his Tuesday news conference, but his office confirmed to ABC News’ Scott that he does not intend to hold a floor vote, maintaining that the inquiry is “now open.”
He claimed he does not need to hold a formal vote to launch the impeachment inquiry, although the impeachments of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton began with House votes to empower the investigations.
For example: During former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, the House voted on an impeachment inquiry only after weeks of closed-door depositions and interviews. The eventual vote on the “inquiry” endorsed the findings of the committees’ investigations and teed up a series of public hearings with experts and fact witnesses to present additional evidence.
However, during Trump’s second impeachment in 2021, the House did not vote on an impeachment inquiry at all. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, like McCarthy is doing now, formally announced the inquiry, but the chamber did not end up voting on it.
What will the inquiry allow the House to do?
McCarthy said he’s directing three House committees to continue their investigation: the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the House Judiciary Committee.
McCarthy has said that by launching a formal probe, it would give the House added subpoena powers. It’s unclear as of right now if that’s the case.
McCarthy, for example, has said the inquiry would allow committees to obtain more bank statements and other documents relating to President Biden and his son, Hunter.
One suggestion is that it could give Republicans stronger legal standing if they go to court if the Biden administration refuses to turn over records.
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said the impeachment inquiry will allow the House to “continue down the road and present hard proof.” Greene told ABC News’ Scott that the House is currently lacking the “hard proof” needed to impeach the president.
“We don’t have a check, but what we have is mountains of evidence that shows the entire Biden family has been enriched by tens of millions of dollars,” Greene said.
Democrats, for their part, maintain that Republicans have obtained an enormous number of documents and extensive witness testimony and that none of it shows any wrongdoing by President Biden; in fact, they say they believe the evidence gathered proves the opposite.
According to Democrats, Oversight Committee Republicans have received more than 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, reviewed more than 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports, and spent hours interviewing witnesses, including two former business associates of Hunter Biden.
Why is McCarthy doing this now?
GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz and a few other conservative hard-liners have been pushing McCarthy to deliver an impeachment probe — or face a leadership challenge.
These hard-liners helped McCarthy ascend to the speakership only after he agreed to a list of their demands — including the ability of a single member to call for a quick vote to remove him from office.
The situation is further exacerbated because of the looming federal government spending deadline.
Gaetz and other conservatives have said they will not support a bill to fund the government if McCarthy does not act on impeachment.
In McCarthy’s calculation, this is a win-win for him at the moment: He is seeking to appease these hard-liners on the front end now, so that the chamber can focus on the spending bills as a deadline draws closer at the end of the month. And he can stave off any calls to step down as speaker for not acting on impeachment.
Gaetz, however, reiterated his threat of leadership change during a floor speech Tuesday, saying, “this is a baby step following weeks of pressure from House conservatives to do more.”
“I rise today to serve notice: Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role,” Gaetz said Tuesday. “The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate, total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair.”
Problems for McCarthy
As of right now, House Republicans likely do not have the 218 votes needed to impeach President Biden, and some Senate Republicans are on record saying they don’t think there’s enough evidence to proceed.
Many Republicans have said they haven’t seen enough evidence against President Biden to support impeachment and/or an impeachment inquiry.
House Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has said he doesn’t believe the House has produced any evidence that Biden profited from or influenced his son’s foreign business deals.
He has also cast doubt on whether the evidence even exists — which is particularly significant since he is a senior member on the Judiciary Committee that would help oversee an official impeachment inquiry.
Senate Republicans also are not sold on the idea of a third impeachment trial in so many years.
Senators are solely focused on funding the government ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline and have largely said they haven’t seen any evidence against Biden that amounts to impeachment or — conviction in the Senate.
Did McCarthy flip-flop?
McCarthy is getting blowback for making contradictory statements. Last month, he insisted that an impeachment inquiry should be launched only after a House vote is taken.
“If we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person,” he said last month in an interview with Brietbart.
Yet, on Tuesday, McCarthy and his team are indicating a vote is not expected.
In 2019, McCarthy introduced a symbolic resolution slamming Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, which was initially launched without a vote.
In that resolution he wrote that then-Speaker Pelosi’s “extraordinary decision to move forward with an impeachment inquiry without any debate or vote on such a resolution by the full House undermines the voting privileges afforded to each Member and the constituents they represent,” and represented an “abuse of power and brings discredit to the House of Representatives.”
On Wednesday, the speaker said “I never changed my position” when asked by ABC News’ Scott about his August comments to Breitbart.
“Nancy Pelosi changed the precedent of this House on Sept. 24. It was withheld and good enough for every single Democrat here. It was good enough for the judge. Why didn’t it have to be different today? What we’ve learned in the last couple of weeks wouldn’t you want to know the answer to?” McCarthy said.
White House response
White House spokesperson Ian Sams responded to McCarthy’s call for a formal impeachment inquiry.
“House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing His own GOP members have said so. He vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip flopped because he doesn’t have support. Extreme politics at its worst,” Sams wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The White House also argued that even some Republicans have acknowledged that there doesn’t seem to be evidence to merit an impeachment inquiry.
Among those Republicans was Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, who told Forbes he is “not seeing facts or evidence” that would merit an impeachment inquiry. Also, Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota told CNN that “there is a constitutional and legal test that you have to meet with evidence” when it comes to impeachment and that he has “not seen that evidence.”
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said, “With respect to impeachment, we’re not there yet.”
The White House also notes McCarthy’s flip-flop on the impeachment vote could be a sign he simply doesn’t have the votes.
The Biden campaign has also put a statement slamming McCarthy for “doing Donald Trump’s bidding.”
“As Donald Trump ramped up his demands for a baseless impeachment inquiry, Kevin McCarthy cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign. 11 days ago, McCarthy unequivocally said he would not move forward with an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote on the House floor. What has changed since then?” spokesperson Ammar Moussa said.
The White House is urging news organizations to ramp up their scrutiny of Republicans for what it said was “opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.”
“When even House Republican members are admitting that there is simply no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong, much less impeachable, that should set off alarm bells for news organizations,” Sams says in a memo to media executives Wednesday morning.
(ATLANTA, GA) — The same federal judge who denied former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ effort to move his Fulton County election interference case to federal court has denied Meadows’ request for an emergency stay of the order, pending appeal.
Judge Steve Jones said in his order Tuesday that Meadows “failed to show a stay should be granted.”
As part of the order, Jones took note of Meadows’ argument that he would be irreparably harmed by the possibility of a trial next month, but the judge said that “no trial date has been set for Meadows, and he admits that it is not guaranteed his trial will be in October.”
Meadows still has a separate, pending motion for emergency stay with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. No ruling has come down from that court, which has ordered briefings from both parties.
Judge Jones last week rejected Meadows’ bid to have his case moved, based on a federal law that calls for the removal of criminal proceedings brought in state court to the federal court system when someone is charged for actions they allegedly took as a federal official acting “under color” of their office.
Meadows and 18 others, including former President Donald Trump, have pleaded not guilty to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.
The former president says his actions were not illegal and that the investigation is politically motivated.
WASHINGTON — Vivek Ramaswamy calls for a renewed belief in God and country on the campaign trail, listing “God is real” as the first of his campaign’s 10 foundational “truths,” even as he fields repeated questions from conservative voters about his own Hindu faith.
These interactions underscore Ramaswamy’s unique background in the field and how voters on the trail have been receiving his message. (The other Indian American in the race, former Gov. Nikki Haley, was raised Sikh but converted to Christianity.)
“Your first line says, ‘God is real.’ What God are we talking about?” one voter in Iowa asked in August. (In Hinduism, there is one supreme god, the Brahman, that can be manifested as several gods and minor deities. Christians believe in one God and the teachings of his son, Jesus.)
It’s a conversation the entrepreneur has had many times, with questions on his faith coming up again on his most recent Iowa visit.
It’s a conversation the entrepreneur has had many times, with questions on his faith coming up again on his most recent Iowa visit.
“I’m a Hindu. I was raised Hindu. We raised our kids in the same tradition as well,” Ramaswamy replied when Terrill Campbell, 57, from Fort Dodge, Iowa, asked what “religions” Ramaswamy believes in on Saturday.
“I happen to be well-versed in the Bible because I went to Christian high school: St. [Xavier] in Cincinnati. … I’m never gonna pretend to be something I’m not,” he said.
Ramaswamy, who frequently invokes stories from the Bible on the campaign trail, has said, “There is a true god.” He has also drawn parallels between Hinduism and Christianity, saying “religions like ours” — unlike “new secular religions” have stood the test of time.
Having attended a Jesuit high school, Ramaswamy says he has read the Bible more closely than many of his Christian friends, a sentiment that some have praised him for. While he says he read the religious text for the first time in ninth grade, he maintains it always felt familiar. After “[leaving] faith altogether” in his 20s, considering himself agnostic, Ramaswamy says the year leading up to the birth of his first son, Karthik, revitalized his relationship with Hinduism and overall belief in God.
“So the value set is the same and to be very honest with you,” Ramaswamy continued. “To state the obvious, I would not be qualified to be your pastor. But I’m not running for pastor in chief, I’m running for commander in chief. But I do think it’s important that we have a president who shares those values.”
No matter how persistent, the questions don’t seem to bother Ramaswamy, who would be the United States’ first Hindu president if elected.
“I’m so happy when people ask me this because that means we’re being honest with each other, that you feel free enough to ask me this question,” Ramaswamy shared at a later event in Nevada, Iowa on Saturday.
“I think I have a special responsibility, a special duty to actually make faith and family and patriotism and hard work cool again in this country,” he added.
The juxtaposition of Ramaswamy’s Hindu faith and his championing of Judeo-Christian values in a country where Christianity remains the most prevalent religion puts him in an interesting position to defend them, he says.
“I am a, therefore a, staunch defender of religious liberty in this country. I will not apologize for that. I will hold the line firmly on the encroachment of religious liberty we’re seeing in this country. And I have two advantages, one is I’m young so I get to make faith and family and patriotism cool, you know, to the next generation of Americans. That’s my job. And the best part is nobody’s going to accuse me of being a Christian nationalist when I do it,” he told a receptive crowd in Vail, Iowa, in early August.
After the event on Saturday, Campbell said he was satisfied with Ramaswamy’s answer.
“He answered it right. Like, ‘I’m not qualified to be your pastor, [but] I’m qualified to be your president,'” he told ABC News.
After clarifying Ramaswamy’s Hindu faith, a voter in Hollis, New Hampshire, expressed his concern for the candidate’s ability to secure the votes of evangelical Christians, claiming former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney couldn’t turn out the evangelical vote in 2012. (White evangelical voters voted for Romney with as much enthusiasm as his other supporters did, according to the Pew Research Center’s “Election 2012 Post Mortem.”)
Ramaswamy responded telling his supporters his goal is for everyone to know who he and his family are and what they stand for.
“And if everybody by the end of this election across the country knows that and decides in their heart of hearts that they want to go with someone else, I’m deeply at peace with that,” he said.
“An easy thing for me to do, [for] any politician, is to follow this track and shorten my name and profess to be a Christian and then run. It honestly happens. You know, make ‘Vivek’ ‘Vic’ or ‘Vicky’ or whatever, and so I’m not doing that. But I think that honesty, I hope, is rewarded,” he said.
Fellow GOP contender Nikki Haley, whom Ramaswamy has previously called by her birth name of “Nimarata,” has been accused of changing her name for political reasons, though the former governor and ambassador has explained several times that “Nikki” is her middle name and “Haley” is her married surname.
“I mean, he of all people should know better than that. But I’ve given up on him knowing better than anything at this point,” she told Fox News Digital last month.
(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday he was ordering House Republicans to move ahead with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
“Today, I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” McCarthy said at the U.S. Capitol in a short formal statement. He did not take questions from reporters.
McCarthy previously indicated there would be a full House vote for an impeachment inquiry, as has happened in the past, but as of Tuesday he didn’t appear to have the votes to open one. A spokesperson for McCarthy tells ABC News that McCarthy is not expected to hold a vote to launch the impeachment inquiry Tuesday.
He has signaled a Biden impeachment inquiry for weeks, in part to placate GOP hard-liners, and in order to obtain bank records and other documents from Biden and his son, Hunter.
“This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather the full facts and answers for the American public,” he said on Tuesday. “That’s exactly what we want to know — the answers. I believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations as well.”
McCarthy said House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan and House Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith will lead the inquiry.
House Republicans have been investigating for months alleged ties implicating Biden in his son’s business dealings, but have so far have not been able to prove any wrongdoing by the president. McCarthy said House Republicans, during the August recess, uncovered “serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”
“I do not make this decision lightly,” Speaker McCarthy added. “Regardless of your party, or who you voted for, these facts concern all Americans.”
White House spokesperson Ian Sams responded to McCarthy’s call for a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden.
“House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing His own GOP members have said so. He vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip flopped because he doesn’t have support. Extreme politics at its worst,” Sams wrote on X, the platform formally known as Twitter.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell said “McCarthy has shown he will do anything to hold on to his gavel” including launch an impeachment inquiry “based on repackaged, inaccurate conspiracies about Hunter Biden and his legitimate business activities.”
McCarthy spoke to reporters when he left the House floor Tuesday, reiterating that opening an impeachment inquiry allows House committees to get more information.
ABC’s Rachel Scott asked McCarthy if he believes there’s an impeachable offense that President Biden has committed.
“All I’ve said is an impeachment inquiry allows us to get answers to get questions that are out there. Don’t you think the public wants answers?” McCarthy said.
Republicans’ reactions
Senate Republicans will be briefed by Reps. Jordan and Comer during their lunch Wednesday, a Republican aide confirmed to ABC News. The briefing will be the first direct taste of evidence Jordan and Comer say they’ve uncovered, and could be critical for senators who said they need more information on what the House has uncovered before they can decide whether or not to back the actions.
In a statement, Comer, Jordan and Smith said they support the impeachment inquiry.
“The House Committees on Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary, and Ways and Means, will continue to work to follow the facts to ensure President Biden is held accountable for abusing public office for his family’s financial gain. The American people demand and deserve answers, transparency, and accountability for this blatant abuse of public office.”
Sen. Mitt Romney, one of seven Senate Republicans who voted in 2021 to remove former President Donald Trump from office over his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection, endorsed the use of an impeachment inquiry to gain more access to information regarding Biden’s business dealings.
“The fact that the White House has been singularly silent and has coddled Hunter Biden suggests an inquiry is not inappropriate,” Romney said. “That’s very different than an impeachment, an actual impeachment would require the evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor that has not been alleged. But inquiring is something the president and the White House could have avoided.”
“An inquiry is an inquiry, it’s not an impeachment,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has been investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings for years. “And it seems to me it will open up an avenue to get a lot of information that we feel we’ve been stonewalled.”
“If they’ve got facts and evidence, and they want to run through a traditional process, we’ll see what the result is,” Sen. Thom Tillis said of the House effort. “I don’t think that it’s going to result in a removal on the Senate side. But if there’s meaningful information that they think the American people need to know about, I’m OK with it.”
The announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry comes as McCarthy looks to stave off a possible revolt from conservative hard-liners and avoid a government shutdown.
The House returned from recess on Tuesday with a fast-approaching Sept. 30 deadline to pass a spending measure to keep the government open. House Republican leaders are looking to pass a continuing resolution, or a short-term funding extension, to buy more time to hammer out the details of a broader appropriations package.
But members of the House Freedom Caucus — the same group that held up McCarthy’s ascension to the speakership and opposed his debt limit deal with President Biden — have said they would not support a continuing resolution unless it includes certain language on border security and “weaponization of the DOJ.” The group is also opposed to further aid to Ukraine, potentially putting the House at odds with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
Amid the tension, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has publicly threatened to bring a motion to vacate against McCarthy. The motion would force a vote on whether McCarthy should continue on as speaker. McCarthy brushed off the threat while speaking to reporters on Monday evening, saying Gaetz “should go ahead and do it… Matt’s, Matt.”
Gaetz only doubled down on the warning during a floor speech Tuesday shortly after McCarthy’s announcement regarding impeachment.
“Moments ago, McCarthy endorsed an impeachment inquiry. This is a baby step following weeks of pressure from House conservatives to do more,” Gaetz said.
(LITTLE ROCK, Ark.) — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ push to overhaul the state’s expansive public records law stumbled at the start of a special legislative session she called this week, with Republican leaders late Monday reworking a bill to enact her changes as Sanders, who says the move is about security and government efficiency, faces criticism over the issue — even from within her party.
A special three-day session Sanders announced on Friday, called also to address tax cuts and prevent potential COVID-19 mandates, comes as a lawsuit pends against the state for allegedly withholding information related to her travel requested under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
The man who filed the suit believes the timing isn’t a coincidence.
Matt Campbell, an attorney in Little Rock and founder of the progressive blog “Blue Hog Report,” filed his complaint on Sept. 5 against the Arkansas State Police, which provides security for the governor, after he says the agency failed to provide passenger manifests that he requested for some of Sanders’ flights.
A circuit judge in Arkansas is scheduled to hear Campbell’s case — which he contends is “the easiest, most straightforward FOIA win ever” — on Thursday morning, but if lawmakers pass proposed exemptions to the public records law before then, he fears it will be rendered moot.
“I think they realized this lawsuit was something they were going to lose. So they thought, ‘We need to try to change the rules now,'” Campbell told ABC News, saying he’s requested flight logs in past administrations but did not face the same opposition.
The effort to now broaden exemptions to what records the public can access related to the governor’s administration has brought together some unlikely allies. Democrats have voiced concerns alongside the Pulaski County Republicans and the Saline County Republican Committee as well as the conservative group Americans for Prosperity.
“Why should we settle for less transparency in the reddest state in the nation?” Saline County Republicans asked in a public Facebook post over the weekend. “Why have so many of our Republican legislators blindly lined up behind this bill, which is contrary to our own party platform?” they added Monday.
Sanders says the overhaul is meant to modernize the state’s public records law and address security concerns for her three school-aged children while increasing efficiency in government.
Her office notes that under the proposed changes, state police would be required to submit a document of expenses incurred by the governor’s detail each quarter.
“The amount of misinformation and lies being spread about this bill is typical from left wing activists,” Sanders spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in a statement to ABC News. “The governor was the first White House press secretary to need Secret Service protection due to credible threats against her life and some on the left are weaponizing FOIA putting the Governor and her family at risk.”
Campbell says the state police denied his FOIA request because of a statute that he feels doesn’t apply, but the agency told the Associated Press that what he was seeking would “violate ASP’s statutory obligation to ensure the safety and security of the Governor and the First Family.”
Police argued the same to Campbell, according to emails he cites in his lawsuit.
FOIA advocates sound alarms
The Arkansas Press Association, meanwhile, warns the proposed changes would “eliminate the ability to hold our government accountable by shielding processes that provide essential context for decisions that affect millions of Arkansans.”
The Arkansas FOIA Task Force, a bipartisan working group formed by the state Legislature to examine such changes, voted unanimously on Monday morning against proposed exemptions and said the changes should be considered in a regular session, when more time can be given to the bill.
“Nothing is more important than the security of our constitutional officers, including our governor, but I believe that that portion of the bill goes too far, but it’s the other portions that are more concerning as far as the future viability of the act itself,” John Tull III, an attorney in Little Rock who sits on the task force, told ABC News.
“There’s been an increasing amount of requested exemptions over the last few years, but this takes it to an entirely different level,” Tull said. “I do see a greater effort across the country to try and squelch the transparency that the Freedom of Information of Acts attempt to accomplish.”
Sanders’ support for expanding public records exemptions in an expedited session is prompting comparisons from some critics, like Campbell, to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a bill to shield his travel records from public access earlier this year, just before announcing his bid for president.
Republicans in Florida said that change was about security as well.
Proposed changes include retroactive clause
Arkansas’ FOIA was signed into law by 1967 by Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and is among the most transparent such laws in the nation.
Proposed legislation would broaden what security details from the governor’s travel and other constitutional officers’ are exempt from the law — and includes a retroactive clause to June. 1, 2022, before Sanders took office.
It would also block the release of records “reflecting communications” between the governor’s office and her Cabinet secretaries, after a previous version more broadly blocked the release of state agencies’ “deliberative process” — an exemption modeled after federal law as defined in United States Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, Inc.
Additionally, the legislation would make it harder for citizens in FOIA suits to recover attorney’s fees, which critics say will discourage lawyers from taking on such cases and clients from bringing them.
“For a Republican governor to come in and try to gut that access because it’s inconvenient is really kind of shocking,” Democratic State Rep. Ashley Hudson told ABC News, noting Sanders’ position here isn’t a traditionally conservative one. “What it’ll mean is that it’s going to make it a lot harder, if not impossible, for citizens to access certain information from government agencies and elected officials, and it’s going to make it a lot more expensive.”
Mike Huckabee’s former police director weighs in
Tom Mars, who served as Arkansas State Police director under former Gov. Mike Huckabee, told ABC News that when requests for public records like the ones Campbell sought would come to his office, he would inform the governor, Sanders’ father, “just as a heads up.”
“We fully and properly complied with all those, but I never heard Mike Huckabee or anybody else ever express any concern that the disclosure of information about the use of the [state police] aircraft, who was on the aircraft, how many hours it flew, where it flew, had any potential to create a security risk to the governor or the security team or members of his family — and I think the reason I didn’t hear that from anybody is that any suggestion to the contrary is absurd,” Mars said.
Citing his own experience of how the offices correspond, Mars believes the decision to withhold the records that Campbell requested likely came directly from Sanders’ office and he condemned the effort to change the law retroactively, arguing it signals an admission of their wrongdoing.
“The Freedom of Information Act has always been a key component of what makes Arkansas great, because people are entitled to know what goes on behind closed doors,” Mars said.
(WASHINGTON) — As the House returns from recess Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is facing a new leadership showdown.
He’s caught in the middle between a government shutdown threat from House Republican hard-liners demanding spending cuts, opposed to Ukraine aid and threatening to oust him if their demands aren’t met — and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who supports more Ukraine aid and opposes any shutdown.
The government funding battle this month promises to be perhaps the toughest test for McCarthy since he claimed the gavel in January following a weeklong fight to become speaker.
Unlike the standoff in June between McCarthy and President Joe Biden over raising the debt limit, this new battle will pit McCarthy against McConnell, his Senate Republican counterpart.
During the debt-limit fight, McConnell stood fully behind McCarthy, insisting that the debate was squarely between the speaker and the president, and promising to back whatever deal the two leaders struck. McConnell kept the Senate Republican Conference in lockstep over this position.
This time, though, McCarthy won’t find full-fledged support from McConnell. The two are fundamentally at odds over Ukraine and disaster aid, a standoff that could lead to a government shutdown at month’s end.
McConnell has reiterated several times on the Senate floor a need for Congress to endorse President Biden’s supplemental aid request for Ukraine. While the Senate hasn’t yet explicitly laid out the details, it’s likely that Ukraine aid could be attached to a short-term funding bill to keep the government open past Sept. 30.
“Standing with our allies against Putin is directly and measurably strengthening the U.S. military,” McConnell argued last week. “Growing the U.S. industrial base and supporting thousands of good-paying American jobs. The overwhelming majority of the money we have appropriated is being spent here in America.”
But the administration’s Ukraine-aid request is one of the things that McCarthy’s far-right flank in the House is threatening to oppose a short-term stopgap measure over.
“We will oppose any blank check for Ukraine in any supplemental appropriations bill,” the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hard-line conservatives, said in a statement in August.
McCarthy could likely pass a clean short-term funding bill on the House floor that includes Ukraine aid with the support of some House Democrats. But doing so would roil the House Freedom Caucus and other hard-line conservatives, who have the power to challenge McCarthy’s leadership at any time after that far-right group pushed him into the position early this year only after he agreed to a list of their demands — including the ability to call for a quick vote to remove him from office.
The speaker is also trying to appease hard-liners in his conference to stave-off a shutdown by saying he’ll launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden as soon as when the chamber comes back into session.
McCarthy maintains a shutdown would make it challenging for House Republicans to launch an impeachment inquiry against Biden or move forward with investigations into him and his family.
“If we shut down, all the government shuts it down, investigation and everything else. It hurts the American public,” McCarthy said on Fox News in August.
Back from a “busy, busy, busy” recess, McCarthy spoke briefly in the Capitol Monday evening, saying he’s not worried about his speakership as the government funding deadline approaches.
McCarthy said “not at all” when asked if he’s worried about losing his speakership or GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz’s public threats to bring a “motion to vacate” — to force a vote on whether McCarthy should continue.
“He should go ahead and do it… Matt’s, Matt,” McCarthy dared.
“We got a lot of work — we got a lot in September to do. We’re gonna get our work done just as we’ve been doing,” McCarthy added.
When asked if he will have to cut a deal with Democrats on a continuing resolution to keep the government open, McCarthy said, “You’re already looking to a CR. I would like to get the work done … You’re going to have to pass appropriations bills.”
“We’re not spending the type of money the Senate wants to spend. That’s not going to happen. We’re going to secure our border,” he added.
The status of spending bills
The Senate is slowly beginning to work its way through its spending bills. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer set the procedural wheels in motion to tee up votes on a package of three spending bills on the floor as soon as next week.
Those bills are expected to include amendment votes, something Schumer has touted as part of the bipartisan nature by which the Senate is considering its funding bills. Almost all the bills have received broad bipartisan support when they were worked through committee earlier this year.
It’s a good first step that demonstrates the Senate’s commitment to trying to work on appropriations bills through regular process. But this floor action in no way delays the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline. The three bills are some of the least controversial of the 12.
By the time they complete work on this small package, they could have as little as a week to negotiate a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open while further negotiations take place.
Meanwhile, the House has only cleared one of 12 appropriations bills and plans to take up one for the Defense Department this week. So far, House Democrats have voted against the GOP funding bills since the conference marked the bills at levels lower than the spending caps agreed to by McCarthy and Biden in the debt-limit deal in June.
Schumer and McConnell, in a relatively rare occurrence, agree that a short-term funding bill will be necessary to keep negotiations ongoing.
