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Top Democrat On J6 Committee: We Actually Didn’t Review Any Of The Surveillance Video

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MARCH 09, 2023

After Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired Capitol surveillance footage this week exposing yet more falsehood from the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 and leaving Democrats and their media allies irate, the committee chair on Wednesday said the panel never actually analyzed the crucial footage.

On Monday’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News aired the footage of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, undermining the select committee’s narrative of a “deadly insurrection.” Given access to the video by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson’s team reviewed over 40,000 hours of footage, which offered proof the committee manipulated audio and video to dramatize the riot for its made-for-TV hearings in an election year.

But in a Wednesday night statement to CNN, select committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., claimed the panel never analyzed the blockbuster footage Fox News aired this week.

“I’m not actually aware of any member of the committee who had access,” Thompson said. “We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video.”

Hiring investigators who “kind of went through the video” doesn’t sound like a very thorough investigation.

However, Thompson’s admission that his committee lacked due diligence makes no sense. Since when do lawmakers have no access to the same material as their own staffers? Did none of the nine panel members view the footage that was played for the cameras? Does Thompson not know who had access to the tapes? Was it just the former television executives they hired to produce their show trials? Either Thompson is lying and knows exactly who had access, or he handed the key to Vice Chair Liz Cheney and had nothing to do with it while the committee leaked exclusives to CNN.

Thompson’s office did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s inquiries.

The committee clearly had access to the footage Carlson aired this week that contradicted the panel’s key narratives. After all, members of the committee endlessly bragged about how many documents, more than 35,000, investigators reviewed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who used the committee to dodge responsibility for her own failure to secure the Capitol, just refused to make the tapes public — and after Carlson’s revelations, it’s clear why.

Carlson’s program showed that the man who became the face of the “insurrection,” known as the “QAnon Shaman,” was given VIP treatment by police. The tapes showed since-deceased Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick walking around “vigorously” after altercations with protesters who had allegedly murdered him. The footage also showed that mysterious rioter Ray Epps lied to congressional investigators about his whereabouts the day of the riot, yet the committee protected the “insurrectionist.”

On Monday, Carlson announced his team discovered proof that Democrats on Pelosi’s probe came across the same footage Fox made public.

“We can be sure because the footage contains an electronic bookmark that is still archived in the Capitol’s computer system,” said Carlson. “That means that investigators working for the Democratic Party saw this tape. They saw it, but they refused to release the tape to the public.”

Committee staffers even used some of the footage to show Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., allegedly fleeing the Capitol. All Carlson did was extend the footage a few seconds longer than what was televised in the committee’s show-trial hearings, and it became clear Hawley departed the Capitol along with other members of Congress. The clip published by the committee was always demonstrably dishonest.

[WATCH: J6 Tapes Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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We Wouldn’t Need Tucker Carlson If The Jan. 6 Committee Hadn’t Put On A Partisan Show Trial

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | MARCH 09, 2023

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Thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Fox News host Tucker Carlson now has access to more than 40,000 hours of unreleased surveillance video from the Jan. 6 riot. It’s created quite a bit of consternation and anger in the media. Of course, if the Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack, handpicked by Nancy Pelosi, hadn’t withheld inconvenient evidence from the public in the first place, then McCarthy wouldn’t have had the chance to give the Fox News host anything. Republicans have Fox. The Jan. 6 committee has virtually every other outlet.

Mitch McConnell is also outraged by Carlson’s framing of the surveillance video. Perhaps if the Kentucky senator had voiced outrage when the committee handed unfettered access to a former producer of “Good Morning America” and “Nightline,” so he could create a slick, selectively edited program that made Jan. 6 look like the September Massacres of the French Revolution, we wouldn’t be here. It says a lot about McConnell that he’s more upset by a media personality sharing videos than he is about Chuck Schumer, a government official, demanding a private company censor journalism.

“I could take footage from World War II, find a little piece of it, and convince somebody it’s the moon landing,” former Jan. 6 committee member Adam Kinzinger told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night. “There’s footage of soldiers [in Vietnam] at their bases hanging out in Saigon,” Cooper responded. “… You can take video of anybody in the course of a day.”

You can. And you can also take footage showing soldiers in Vietnam abusing civilians to create the perception that most servicemen abused civilians. The “mostly peaceful” formulation, typically used by liberals to whitewash leftist violence, is shameful. And so is the partisan fearmongering surrounding Jan. 6.

It’s difficult for me to muster any sympathy for the nutjobs who entered the Capitol building. It’s implausible that most of them didn’t understand what they were doing was wrong, dangerous, or illegal, whether they were just milling about or banging on doors or vandalizing offices. Many, of course, acted in threatening and violent ways. It was a national embarrassment.

None of that makes the dishonest political revisionism of the Jan. 6 committee any truer. It’s clear the QAnon Shaman wasn’t moments away from overthrowing the republic and declaring Donald Trump the king of America. It wasn’t anywhere close to “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” or the new Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Which is why Democrats conflate the actions of rioters with those of the thousands of people who protested the election results outside, the president who enflamed the crowd with conspiratorial rhetoric, and the politicians who were inside voting on certification. Wrong or right, conspiracists or not, the latter people did not do anything illegal.

Put it this way, the central difference between Jan 6, 2021, and the last day or two of May 2020, when Secret Service agents had to stick Donald Trump into a bunker for hours as a throng of “protesters” began overwhelming security at the White House, some throwing rocks and bottles and trying to break down barricades, was the effectiveness of the police.

Then again, QAnon Shaman, like anyone else accused of rioting, deserves a fair trial. If his lawyer is telling the truth, the defense had no access to video of cops peacefully escorting the man around the Capitol. We have no clue if that footage is exculpatory, but it is clearly relevant. QAnon Shaman was sentenced to over three years in prison, with another nearly three years of probation.

If Cooper were a member of a functioning press, he would have been grilling Kinzinger about his committee’s lack of transparency and denial of basic due process. Pelosi blocked members who could have asked for answers regarding security breakdowns or demanded the release of countervailing evidence or tempered the hyperbole and grandstanding that dominated the hearings.

Cooper knows that journalists “selectively” edit and cherry-pick video all the time. He knows that the Jan. 6 committee “selectively” edited and cherry-picked video, as well. Maybe seeing both narratives gives us a far better sense of what happened that day. There was a riot, not a coup d’etat. And the media should be elated that we have more footage for the historical record. Then again, that was never the point, was it?

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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McCarthy Begins to Build Case for Mayorkas Impeachment

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | FEBRUARY 17, 2023

Kevin McCarthy speaks at border press conference in Arizona — **‘This has got to stop,’ McCarthy said. ‘And it starts with the secretary of Homeland.’**

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TUCSON, Ariz. — Kevin McCarthy began to build the case for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment this week with the California lawmaker’s first trip to the border as House speaker. Talking to reporters, with the southeast Arizona border wall serving as his backdrop, McCarthy outlined the myriad crises plaguing the nation due to unchecked migration and charged the DHS secretary with lying to the public.

“Our border, we don’t even have operational control of it anymore,” McCarthy said. “This is why I will continue to investigate what has gone wrong here and we will hold people accountable. And that includes Secretary Mayorkas.”

In an exclusive interview with The Federalist after the press conference, McCarthy offered no timeline for a potential impeachment inquiry and maintained that the process depends on what lawmakers find over the coming weeks.

“You never do impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. “If something rises to that level,” he explained, “we will follow it wherever it goes.”

McCarthy led the congressional delegation with four GOP freshman, kicking off what will be a top priority for the new Republican majority under the second half of President Joe Biden’s term. Every House committee is expected to visit the southwest border in the ensuing months. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., already introduced an article of impeachment against the DHS chief on Feb. 1.

In November, McCarthy demanded that Mayorkas resign over the border crisis or face impeachment in the lower chamber once Republicans took over. Mayorkas has remained defiant while the cartels run rampant. A coalition of 21 attorneys general sent a letter to the Biden administration last week demanding that Mexican drug cartels be designated as terrorist organizations.

Days before the speaker’s border trip this week, DHS staffed up to face House impeachment proceedings, entering a multimillion-dollar contract with a liberal law firm that has a history of left-wing donations.

“You cannot tell us this is secure when more than 42 percent of gottaways come through here,” McCarthy said on Thursday. “You cannot tell us this border’s secure when now there is enough fentanyl in this country to kill every single American more than 20 times over.”

“This has got to stop,” the speaker added. “And it starts with the secretary of Homeland. Stop lying to the American public. Tell them the truth [about] what’s happening and change back the regulation that we had before so our border can be secure.”

The White House hit McCarthy’s border trip as a partisan publicity stunt with a Wednesday statement. “Solutions are what President Biden is focused on, and his is plan working,” said Ian Sams, a White House spokesman. “House Republicans would be wise to join him to work together to strengthen our immigration system and fund border security.”

Biden’s first border visit was a sanitized tour in January, with officials clearing the camps in El Paso before the president’s arrival. Biden proceeded to call on Congress to pass immigration reform at his annual State of the Union last week and claimed his border measures were working.

“We’ve launched a new border plan last month. Unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97 percent as a consequence of that,” Biden said. “But American border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts.”

ACTS ON WHAT????????? Fund what???????? The Wall has been funded since Clinton. Finish the Wall. We’ve got the materials. Put it up.

Contrary to his claims the border is secure, data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows otherwise.

Law enforcement reported more than 156,000 migrant encounters in January. While lower than the record of nearly 252,000 encounters in December, 156,000 is still higher than the almost 155,000 in January last year and the 78,000 the same month in 2021 — and way higher than the less than 37,000 in FY 2020. In fact, it’s an all-time high for the coldest month of the year. Even bundled-up reporters shivered under cloudless skies in the high desert winds when lawmakers ran late on Thursday.

A Deadly Crisis

While the Biden administration tries to argue there’s nothing to see on the southern border, Alex Espinosa, the director of a funeral home 15 miles east of McCarthy’s press conference, says otherwise.

“During Trump’s administration, I picked up four border crossers,” Espinosa told The Federalist in his conference room overlooking the border wall. “Right now, I can’t even tell you how many. There’s more deaths. Way more deaths.”

Most, Espinosa said, die from exposure to the elements or fentanyl. He explained the numbers picked up “right after Biden won.”

“Never, never, never, ever have I seen it this bad,” Espinosa told The Federalist. “I’ve probably buried 40 kids.”

A reformed ex-convict himself, Espinosa, 61, served time behind bars for drug smuggling 30 years ago. He now hands out free Narcan, a medication known to save lives in the case of opioid overdose, at services, saying it has become a hot commodity. The local health department replenished his stockpile after it ran out during a single funeral for a recent 23-year-old who overdosed. His own son has also struggled with opioid addiction.

In Naco, a town on the border five miles south of Espinosa’s funeral home, locals were shy about the crisis. A ranch hand working in a field with a pair of day laborers from across the border offered only his first name, Greg, and said he often sees helicopter activity but described the overall area as tame. Another pair of women operating a local nonprofit in the community denied the area even faced issues.

Espinosa, however, who conducts the funerals for the border crisis victims, said locals often feel too intimidated to speak openly about the dangers their neighborhoods face. Despite his Mexican heritage, Espinosa has been tarred as a racist, and his truck was burned after he challenged the mayor of Douglas over the leader’s plans to declare the border town a sanctuary city.

“They need to finish the wall,” Espinosa said frankly, warning that until then, the area would not be safe to walk around at night.

McCarthy told The Federalist on Thursday at the conclusion of his congressional tour that DHS needs to complete the wall with modern technology as originally planned.

“You gotta finish this,” McCarthy said, pointing at the wall. “Finish the technology you haven’t hooked up — the lights, the sensors. There’s places in the wall that’s not done yet.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Stefanik: Rooting Out Deep State Corruption Is a Top Priority for House Republicans

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JANUARY 25, 2023

House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York pledged that aggressive oversight of executive agencies to rid the federal government of overt corruption will be a top priority for Republicans in the new Congress. On Tuesday, Stefanik became one of a dozen Republican lawmakers appointed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to serve on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

In an exclusive interview with The Federalist on Wednesday morning, Stefanik characterized the select panel, which was established under the Judiciary Committee led by Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as House Republicans’ primary vehicle for pursuing accountability for the Biden administration’s abuses.

“A top priority for House Republicans is rooting out the weaponization of the federal government against everyday Americans,” said Stefanik. The No. 3 lawmaker in GOP leadership highlighted the nation’s top intelligence agencies as the committee’s primary focus.

[POLL: 4 In 5 Americans See Two-Tiered Justice System]

“The FBI and DOJ are ripe for oversight, and they deserve oversight,” she said, while also pledging that investigations would come for the Internal Revenue Service and National Institutes of Health. Both agencies “have run rampant in targeting Americans,” Stefanik said, adding that Congress has a “constitutional duty” to conduct meaningful oversight.

“Democrats failed to do that when we were in one-party rule,” she added.

Whom the committee plans to subpoena remains an open question. “We’re going to make that decision as a select committee,” Stefanik said.

Other prominent members of the Republican conference named to the panel include Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie and Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman. In August, Hageman successfully toppled three-term incumbent Liz Cheney in the Wyoming Republican primary by 37 points. Cheney, who ran House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6 as vice chair, relied on Democrats switching parties to blunt a loss that might have otherwise been near unanimous among the state’s Republicans.

McCarthy endorsed Hageman in the race two years after Cheney endorsed a primary challenge to Massie from her perch in leadership. In the spring of 2021, House Republicans replaced Cheney with Stefanik as GOP conference chair.

Stefanik plans to take a lead role on the new panel probing the weaponization of the federal government as she did during the first impeachment saga of former President Donald Trump in 2019.

“The government has the responsibility to serve the American people, not go after them,” she said.

While Pelosi barred McCarthy’s appointments to the Select Committee on Jan. 6, Stefanik said the new House speaker was likely to seat Democrats on the probe. No minority appointments, however, have been made so far.

On Tuesday night, McCarthy kept his word to bar California Democrat Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee. McCarthy has also pledged to kick Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee. Stefanik told The Federalist that while it was ultimately the speaker’s choice to approve Democrat appointments to the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, neither Schiff, Swalwell, nor Omar would likely be admitted to the panel.

McCarthy explained to reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday night that the trio of lawmakers would still serve on committees but none related to the nation’s top secrets.

“They’ll serve on committees,” McCarthy said, “but they will not serve on a place that has national security relevance because integrity matters to me.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Adam Schiff And a Band of Democrats Propose Overturning the First Amendment

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JANUARY 20, 2023

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States — **Happy Birthday, *Citizens United*!**

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Adam Schiff and a group of Democrats introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision, one of the greatest free-speech victories in history.

It’s just a political stunt, of course, as Schiff doesn’t have the votes. But it does reflect the authoritarian outlook of the contemporary left on free expression. From the day the decision came down, 13 years ago this week, Citizens United was a rallying cry for those threatened by unregulated discourse. President Barack Obama infamously, and inaccurately, rebuked the justices during his State of the Union for upholding the First Amendment. Since then, Democrats have regularly blamed the decision for the alleged corrosion of “democracy.”

Recall, however, that Citizens United decision revolved around the federal government’s banning of a documentary critical of 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton before the Democratic primary elections. At the time, McCain-Feingold made it illegal for corporations (groups of freely associating citizens) and unions (ditto) to engage in “electioneering” a month before a primary or two months before a general election. It was outright censorship. In oral arguments, then-Solicitor General of the United States, now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan initially contended that the federal government had the right to censor books that “express advocacy.”

Also recall that “campaign finance” laws — speech codes, in reality — were written by politicians and defended by a media encumbered by any limitations on their own free expression. These detestable laws prohibited groups of citizens from assembling and pooling their resources to engage more effectively in what is the most important kind of political expression at the most vital time, right before an election.

Schiff’s amendment would overturn Citizens United, and thus the First Amendment, and empower state and federal governments to enact “reasonable, viewpoint-neutral” limitations on speech that “influences” elections.

For one thing, even a wholly neutral restrictions on political speech were possible, they would still be restrictions on expression. It doesn’t matter one whit if you find those restrictions “reasonable” or “neutral.” The right of free speech isn’t contingent on fairness or outcomes or your good faith limitations. It is a free-standing, inherent right protected by the Constitution, not prescribed to us by the state in portions. It’s amazing that this has to be said.

Moreover, do Democrats trust Kevin McCarthy’s conception of “reasonable”? Because I don’t. Nor do I trust Hakeem Jeffries or that weasel Schiff, who has already personally engaged in censoring dissent. As Lois Lerner could tell you, any law empowering bureaucrats to define political speech will be arbitrarily enforced and, inevitably, abused. The only “viewpoint-neutral” position on speech is that it’s none of the state’s business.

Then again, not even the amendment is neutral. Section 4 of Schiff’s proposal offers an exemption to the “press.” Who is the press? Bureaucrats, no doubt, will make that determination. Schiff knows that most large communication companies already work for Democrats. The big studios produce movies and documentaries with one ideological viewpoint; and major news outlets give one side billions in in-kind contributions. The amendment would strip one group of its power to compete in the marketplace of ideas. “By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in Citizens United, “the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice.”

Schiff’s amendment could also be used to strip people of anonymity. “Dark money” has been a bogeyman of the left for years, treated as one of the most corrosive elements in contemporary politics — even though leftists are more reliant on anonymous big-dollar money than conservatives. Of course, the expectation that private citizens have any responsibility to publicly attach their names to political speech — as Publius might tell you — is destructive nonsense.

“Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority,” the 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission famously noted. It “exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation … at the hand of an intolerant society.” There are entire genres of mainstream “reporting” that exist to dox heretics and punish dissent and engage in struggle sessions. Leftists want to create as many Brendan Eichs as possible to chill speech.

Schiff claims he wants to “return power to people” by allowing the state to prescribe the way they can participate in political debate. Schiff’s amendment includes restricting corporations from spending “unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.” Corporations have been banned from donating directly to candidates since 1907. But why shouldn’t private entities, groups of people, be allowed to “influence” politics? Anyway, you can already imagine the malleability of the word “influence.” Will California ban corporations from influencing green policy? Or only from influencing cultural policy? Boy, I wonder.

A decade ago, politicians would give us some perfunctory words about the importance of free expression. Those days are gone. The bogus panic over “disinformation” — without free will, you guys are far too susceptible to bad ideas — has given them the excuse to wring their hands over the dangerous excesses of the First Amendment.

These days a person can contribute as much money as they please to any independent group that shares their values. The notion that there should be restrictions stopping you from airing those views, whether you’re a billionaire or a poor student, is fundamentally un-American and authoritarian.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Tucker Carlson Hammers GOP Rep. Crenshaw for Calling McCarthy’s Opponents ‘Terrorists’

By: HAROLD HUTCHISON, REPORTER | January 04, 2023

DCNF - Tucker Crenshaw McCarthy Speaker - Featured — **Screenshot/Rumble/Fox News**

Fox News host Tucker Carlson called out Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas Wednesday for calling opponents to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s speaker bid “terrorists,” saying that Crenshaw was ignoring “real concerns” raised by conservatives.

“They’re terrorists now? It’s hard not to see the connection, because over the past few years pretty much every part of the war on terror has been turned against the domestic political enemies of the neocons,” Carlson said after airing a soundbite of Crenshaw. “So now they’re coming out and telling you what they told you about Iraq: Either you’re with us or against us. You’re on the side of light or darkness. You’re good or evil.”

Crenshaw made the comparison Wednesday as McCarthy failed to garner the 218 votes necessary to become speaker in three separate ballots. Similarly, Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska compared McCarthy’s opponents to the Taliban. (RELATED: Tucker Carlson Reveals Two Things McCarthy Should Do To Win Speaker’s Gavel)

Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida received 20 votes for speaker during Wednesday’s ballots after he switched from McCarthy to Jim Jordan on the third ballot Tuesday.

WATCH:

“Dan Crenshaw went all the way, as neocons always do, he proceeded to go to CNN to call his political opponents enemies of the state,” Carlson said, before airing Crenshaw’s comments from an interview on CNN.

McCarthy agreed to some proposals put forth by the House Freedom Caucus, but failed to convince enough of them to back his bid to win the necessary votes to become speaker. The threshold for a “motion to vacate,” which allows rank and file members of the House of Representatives to unseat a speaker, is a sticking point, according to Donalds.

“No matter how you feel, you have to acknowledge, if you’re being honest, that people who don’t like Kevin McCarthy have a reason for that,” Carlson said. “They have real concerns, real issues, but you’ll notice that Dan Crenshaw didn’t address any of those, none of them, instead he impugned their motives, their character, their intelligence, their moral standards.”

“What you just saw as Dan Crenshaw just spoke, what you just saw is the snarling face of the donor class, revealed for all to see finally,” Carlson said. “The deep loathing of disobedient voters that may be their most passionate secret emotion. They’re not bothering to hide that emotion anymore. Now you know how they really feel.”

A spokesperson for Crenshaw referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to a tweet by the congressman, urging people to “unclutch your pearls” and “grow thicker skin.”

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House adjourns after Kevin McCarthy falls short in 3rd vote to become new speaker

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor | January 3, 2023

U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., walks to a meeting with House Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 03, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Today members of the 118th Congress will be sworn in and the House of Representatives will hold votes on a new Speaker of the House. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The United States House of Representatives failed to elect a speaker for the 118th Congress on Tuesday, as Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California was unable to get the necessary number of votes in support of his bid. For the first time since 1923, the Republican majority was unable to elect a new House Speaker on the first ballot, despite McCarthy being the favorite to win the position.

McCarthy was first nominated by Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, chair of the Republican Caucus, with her floor announcement receiving much applause by GOP congressmen. Stefanik championed McCarthy’s time as minority leader in the House, stating that he “has taken the fight to one-party Democratic rule on behalf of the American people.”

“A proud conservative with a tireless work ethic, Kevin McCarthy has earned this speakership of the people’s house,” Stefanik declared.

While McCarthy was expected by many to become the next Speaker, he faced key opposition from multiple Republican congressmen, among them Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona. Biggs had announced his intention to run for Speaker last November, explaining in a statement at the time that he was “about changing the paradigm and the status quo.”

“Minority Leader McCarthy does not have the votes needed to become the next Speaker of the House and his speakership should not be a foregone conclusion,” Biggs stated.

“There are reforms that must be made in the House in order to facilitate representation of our constituents. Items such as allowing members to move to amend bills, only allowing bills that cover a single subject, and requiring bills to go through committees before bringing them to the floor.”

Biggs also felt that members of the House “must also be granted more time to read the legislation and debate the merits of it.”

In response to Republican critics, McCarthy wrote a letter in advance of Tuesday’s vote pledging to “work with everyone in our party to build conservative consensus.”

“It’s time for our new Republican majority to embrace these bold reforms and move forward as one,” wrote McCarthy.

“That’s why on January 3 — and every day thereafter — I stand ready to be judged not by my words, but by my actions as Speaker.”

On the first ballot, McCarthy received 203 votes, while Biggs received 10 votes, and Jordan received six votes, while other elected officials received the rest.

After the first ballot results were announced, Jordan addressed Congress and expressed his endorsement of McCarthy, advocating for conservative policies during his remarks. After Jordan spoke, however, Republican Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida proceeded to nominate Jordan, and expressed his intention of voting for Jordan for the second ballot. On the second ballot, McCarthy again received 203 votes and failed to get the necessary majority, while Jordan, who had earlier endorsed McCarthy, received 19 votes.

For the third ballot, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana nominated McCarthy while Representative Chip Roy of Texas nominated Jordan. McCarthy saw his lead slightly decrease to 202 votes, while Jordan received 20, due to Representative Byron Donalds of Florida changing his vote.

“The reality is Rep. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes. I committed my support to him publicly and for two votes on the House Floor. 218 is the number, and currently, no one is there. Our conference needs to recess and huddle and find someone or work out the next steps,” tweeted Donalds shortly after voting in the third ballot.

During the same session, Democrat members of the House officially elected Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York as the new House Minority Leader, with all 212 voting for him.

Representative Pete Aguilar of California, chair of the Democratic Caucus, gave remarks on the floor in support of Jeffries, spotlighting his religious convictions and his being a regular church attender.

“He is guided by every step of the way by his faith that his mom instilled in him,” stated Aguilar. “Hakeem goes to church every weekend, sometimes that one where his church family is at Cornerstone Baptist, or somewhere else in the District, where he can meet his constituents where they are.”

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The Big Midterm Lesson: Defensive ‘Victories’ on the Right Aren’t Going to Save The Country

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Ron DeSantis speaking into a mic onstage — **Republicans won big in places where GOP leaders leaned into the culture war and passed abortion restrictions. That’s no accident.**

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If there’s a clear lesson to come out of Tuesday night’s bizarre midterm election, it’s that Republicans can no longer be content with defensive victories or defensive politics. To win political power and do what must be done to save the country, Republicans will have to go on offense, present a compelling vision for the future, and engage culture war issues like abortion and critical race theory without apologies.

When they do that, they win. But it stands in stark contrast to the perennial advice of Beltway GOP consultants, who think it best to avoid major culture war issues like abortion. Indeed, the “official narrative” of corporate media in the wake of Tuesday’s midterms is that abortion was a big winner for Democrats, who supposedly capitalized on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, successfully making abortion a major electoral issue and blunting a red wave by boosting turnout among young, pro-abortion voters.

It sounds good, but it’s not quite right. Republicans who didn’t shy away from talking about abortion after Dobbs, and who signed into law abortion legislation earlier this year without flinching or apologizing, did really well — they were Tuesday night’s winners. As Marc Thiessen noted on Fox News, Republican governors in Ohio, Georgia, New Hampshire, Texas, and Florida all signed post-Dobbs abortion restrictions, and they all won reelection by comfortable margins.

That’s not to say abortion was a non-factor. Democrats squeezed every last electoral drop they could out of Dobbs, spending $320 million on abortion-related TV ads (much more than on all other issues combined) which helped motivate a voter base that might have otherwise been depressed.

Still, there was a clear contrast between Republicans who heeded the advice of Beltway consultants and tried to dodge abortion questions or take a noncommittal stance and those who defended their anti-abortion positions and pushed for post-Roe legislation. Only one of those groups fared well Tuesday.

The larger lesson here is that Republican candidates should lean into the culture war and make no apologies for their positions, even on contentious issues like abortion. Fighting back against the left, it turns out, is what a lot of voters on the right want from Republicans.

Consider what Ron DeSantis achieved in Florida, winning 60 percent of the vote after narrowly eking out a victory four years ago. He did that by not shying away from big, high-profile fights over hot-button culture war issues like critical race theory and transgender indoctrination. Glenn Youngkin did the same thing last November to pull off an upset in the Virginia governor’s race.

But DeSantis and Youngkin are, sadly, exceptions to the general rule that Republicans tend to be reactionary and defensive. Indeed, the failure of the conservative movement is largely attributable to this default defensiveness, and it needs to end. For decades, conservatives whined about just wanting to be left alone even as the radical left was marching through our institutions and transforming society, showing us at every turn they had no intention of leaving us alone. Yet some on the right still don’t seem to get it. On Tuesday morning, anticipating a red wave, Ben Shapiro tweeted: “The mandate for Republicans will be to stop Biden’s terrible agenda dead. It will not be to make very loud but tactically foolish moves.”

Shapiro didn’t specify what he meant by “very loud but tactically foolish moves,” but he followed it up with this:

The American people keep saying the same thing over and over: we want some semblance of normalcy. Stop bothering us. Leave us alone. This is not a difficult thing to achieve.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 8, 2022

Sorry, but the era of normalcy and being left alone is over. The left will never leave us alone. They want to win and wield power, and if we want to stop them, we will have to win and wield power ourselves. Conservatives who want to be left alone will simply lose, as they have been for decades now.

Those like Shapiro who long to be left alone are also apt to argue that the conservative project has been moderately successful over the years, moving slowly to notch wins. Look at Dobbs. Look at religious liberty and the Second Amendment. Look at all the good judges appointed to the federal bench during the Trump administration.

But this is a cope. Yes, there have been a few victories for conservatives. The Dobbs decision was the greatest policy victory of the conservative cause in a generation, and it was due mostly to the dogged work of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two institutions often unfairly maligned as “Conservative, Inc.” by the New Right, and — at least before Dobbs dropped — dismissed as failures.

Yet even the Dobbs decision was a defensive victory, handed down like a gift from on high by the Supreme Court. But it didn’t end legal abortion, and indeed the ruling itself bent over backward to avoid the broader implications of its own constitutional logic, which, as Justice Clarence Thomas explained in his concurring opinion, calls into question the constitutionality of substantive due process and the long train of Supreme Court rulings that have followed its invention more than a century ago.

As Dobbs itself suggests, defensive victories delivered by the federal judiciary aren’t going to reverse what has been, with few setbacks, a relentless, decades-long march by the left through every institution of American life. Anyone who tells you things aren’t that bad because we happen to have five mostly reliable Supreme Court justices is either delusional or quietly willing to acquiesce to leftist tyranny.

They’re probably also inclined to think Republicans didn’t really do so bad in the midterms, and that what Americans really want is just some tinkering with Social Security and the welfare state. Nothing too loud and tactically foolish. That’s more or less Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s plan if he becomes speaker of the House. After all, the country just wants to heal.

No. The country does not want to heal. It does not want “some semblance of normalcy.” There are two diametrically opposed moral systems at war right now in America, and it’s not enough at this late hour to be content with the status quo, to repose in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and hope the five good justices will somehow stop the revolutionaries.

Just look at the successful pro-abortion midterm referendums in Michigan, Vermont, and California, where the right to kill the unborn is now enshrined in those states’ constitutions. What’s true of the abortion issue is true of nearly every other major issue in American public life. Being passive and defensive is not going to cut it. If Republicans want to win, they’d better be willing to fight. Let’s hope they are. The future of the republic depends on it.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Trump-Endorsed Karoline Leavitt Runs Away with Primary Win Despite $5 Million in Smear Ads by Kevin McCarthy and GOP Elites! – Trump Congratulates!

By Jim Hoft | Published September 14, 2022

Kevin McCarthy, Congressional Leadership Fund, and Defending Main Street spent $5 million to prevent Karoline Leavitt from winning her primary election for New Hampshire’s District 1 that was held on Tuesday.

McCarthy, GOP Elites and Super PACs dumped $5 million to stop Karoline Leavitt.

It is the same tactics the GOP elites use in every state. They can’t win on the issues so they spend MILLIONS to slander and smear MAGA Republican candidates.

MILLIONS!

#NH01 GOP primary getting expensive as Defending Main Street kicks its spending up to $1.27M to oppose Karoline Leavitt. The GOP's Congressional Leadership Fund SuperPAC has spent $1.4M, largely on boosting Matt Mowers. Anti-Leavitt spending is now the largest single component. https://t.co/WMpGLdae1b pic.twitter.com/FeUSqBSksv
— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) September 7, 2022

#NH01 GOP primary getting expensive as Defending Main Street kicks its spending up to $1.27M to oppose Karoline Leavitt. The GOP’s Congressional Leadership Fund SuperPAC has spent $1.4M, largely on boosting Matt Mowers. Anti-Leavitt spending is now the largest single component. https://t.co/WMpGLdae1b pic.twitter.com/FeUSqBSksv

— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) September 7, 2022

** You can support Karoline Leavitt here.

Leavitt once tweeted that Dr. Deborah Birx was a “DEEP STATE DOCTOR” — We agree.

On Tuesday Karoline Leavitt won her primary by 10 points!

President Trump cheered Karoline’s big win!

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/108997006470192139/embed

Last Thursday night Karoline Leavitt joined Tucker Carlson to discuss the $5 million in attack ads and smears by the GOP elites.

Here is Karoline’s campaign ad.

Jim Hoft

Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

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Democrats Have Arrested, Prosecuted, And Raided Their Enemies. There’s Only One Way to Make Them Stop

BY: CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD | AUGUST 10, 2022

President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff in June 2022. White House/Adam Schultz.

Author Christopher Bedford profile

CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD

VISIT ON TWITTER@CBEDFORDDC

Arrests and convictions over contempt of Congress. Police enforcement of bureaucratic and relatively obscure archivist laws. FBI raids on former presidents (and future political opponents?). In their rage, the Democratic Congress and administration have written a vicious battle plan — one that conservatives will do well to follow when they return to power if they’re at all serious about restoring any semblance of respect for law in our country. In weeks past, there’s little reason to believe conservatives are; but Monday night’s raid might finally have changed that.

Just over one year after President Joe Biden’s election to the White House, his Department of Justice arrested Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former political director. Bannon was arrested for contempt of Congress, or, refusing to answer a congressional subpoena. After he was convicted last month, Bannon became the first American to face a prison sentence for contempt since the House Un-American Activities Committee sent 10 uncooperative, suspected Hollywood communists to prison in 1948. In the more than 70 years between the Hollywood Ten’s sentencings and Bannon’s conviction, contempt of Congress had devolved into more of a political tool used to investigate the other party, but rarely brought to its legal conclusion.

While Democrats tried to prosecute contempt of Congress twice during the Reagan years, the administration only let one prosecution come to pass (in which the defendant was ultimately found innocent of contempt). Decades later, when Republicans tried to bring a similar case against President Barack Obama’s obstinate attorney general, Eric Holder declined to prosecute himself, citing executive privilege. Two years later, when Republicans sought answers from the IRS’s Lois Lerner over her targeting of political opponents, Holder also declined to prosecute. Later, when Democrats tried to bring criminal contempt charges against Trump’s secretary of commerce and attorney general, Bill Barr similarly declined to prosecute himself.

Criminal enforcement is extremely rare because the reality is Congress can refer who they like, but the administration prosecutes whomever the administration chooses to prosecute.

The Biden administration has made clear they’ll prosecute their political opponents every chance they get. That means that despite Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s threat to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland accountable in the next Congress, he will only be empowered to hold Garland accountable under a Republican administration (unless he complies with Republican congressional oversight, which he won’t).

True: Arresting an administration official after he’s left office is a dangerous precedent, but it’s one Democrats gleefully set this past year. And contempt of Congress is far from the only weapon the administration has wielded against their out-of-power opponents: Tuesday’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s home, for example, reportedly centered on his handling of classified information (and the Watergate-era Presidential Records Act).

While politicians such as Hillary Clinton have been accused of similar crimes, prosecution is extremely rare — and focuses on the most egregious cases. For example, Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was prosecuted in 2004 for stealing and destroying classified documents on the Clinton administration’s handling of terrorism prior to his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Gen. David Petraeus was similarly charged for sharing classified documents with his mistress. Neither Berger nor Petraeus was charged with so much as a felony, instead pleading guilty to misdemeanors. Neither Berger nor Petraeus’s homes were ever raided, either, and, neither man ever served a day in prison. Most importantly, neither was a former president of the opposing party — nor a potential political opponent in the next general election.

That’s what makes the FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home so shocking — so disconcerting that voices from former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the liberal Bloomberg editorial board to D.C.-groupthink mouthpiece Playbook have all voiced their unease.

These liberals’ unease stands in contrast with Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, who ignored a reporter’s Tuesday afternoon question on the subject and didn’t issue so much as a peep of concern for the first 23 hours after the raid was publicized. He was joined in his silence by Senate Republican Whip John Thune (who issued a statement at the same time, Tuesday night), Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (who remained silent as of 9 p.m. on Tuesday), and the Senate’s premier “thoughtful conservative” cosplayer, Ben Sasse. Why the silence? While after five years of increasingly unrealistic (and unproven) conspiracies and accusations against the former president, some Republicans still somehow trust the FBI. The reality is that others, such as McConnell, are pleased by the raid. But regardless of their private thoughts and motivations, their impotent silence in the face of the Biden administration’s charges, arrests, and raids on its political opponents exposes their inability to handle the crisis the American state finds itself in.

While over the coming years, still other Republicans will cite this dead norm or that gutted precedent as they hesitate to use the Democrats’ own battle plans back on them, one-sided disarmament is no strategy at all. The only way to fight back is to make the kinds of people who’ve weaponized and undermined the American state suffer for their actions. They’ve arrested their enemies, revived obscure rules as pretexts for partisan attacks, and raided their opponents’ homes, and they won’t be sorry until they’ve felt the same pain.

They aren’t sorry at all — yet.

Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, a founding partner of RightForge, vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at The Daily Caller News Foundation and National Journalism Center, and the author of “The Art of the Donald.” His work has been featured in The American Mind, National Review, the New York Post and the Daily Caller, where he led the Daily Caller News Foundation and spent eight years. A frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business, he was raised in Massachusetts and lives across the river from D.C. Follow him on Twitter.

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EXCLUSIVE: McCarthy Plans Training Sessions For House GOP Staffers as Party Preps Investigations into Biden Admin

Reported by SHELBY TALCOTT, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT | July 12, 2022

U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) presides over a news conference about the Save Our Sequoias Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., June 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert — **REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert**

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is planning a series of training sessions for House Republican committee staffers in what’s viewed as the party’s next step to prepare for post-midterm investigations. McCarthy and House Administration Committee ranking member Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois sent an email Tuesday morning to staffers inviting them to the upcoming sessions, dubbed “informational briefing(s).” The email, obtained by the Daily Caller, is titled “Oversight Education Series: Investigations 101” and the briefings are designed to ready House committee staffers for conducting oversight, a person familiar with the House Republicans’ plans explained to the Caller.

“Leader Kevin McCarthy and Ranking Member Rodney Davis would like to invite you to attend this informational briefing with Jon Skladany, Chief Oversight Counsel for the Committee on Financial Services, and Rachel Kaldahl, Republican Staff Director for the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight,” the email reads. “This briefing will review the basics of performing effective oversight investigations and will highlight best practices to fulfill Congress’s Constitutional oversight obligations.”

The first “Investigations 101” briefing is slated for the afternoon of July 22, according to the email. McCarthy will also host a second briefing Sept. 8 and a third Sept. 26.

The GOP has a long list of oversight investigation topics should they take over the House post-midterms, the person familiar with Republicans’ plans said. The investigations list, the Caller previously reported, includes border policies implemented under the Biden administration, the origins of COVID-19, and the administration’s reaction in testing, opening schools, and its dismissal of natural immunity. The person familiar with Republicans’ plans also said the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract at the Department of Defense (DOD) is on the investigations list.

The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings are likely to be the subject of oversight investigations as well, a Republican Oversight Committee aide added. The individuals were granted anonymity in order to speak on private planning matters pertaining to the GOP. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Kevin McCarthy Plots An Investigation Avalanche If GOP Retakes House)

Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives with wife Melissa Cohen Biden prior to President Biden awarding Presidential Medals of Freedom during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 7, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Republican lawmakers have been outspoken on their plans to investigate some of these topics. McCarthy, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Kentucky Rep. James Comer wrote an op-ed published July 1 by the New York Post about investigating Hunter Biden. Comer and Jordan would play leading roles in any investigations of the Biden administration, since they are slated to head the Oversight and Judiciary committees, respectively.

Republicans have already sent “hundreds of preservation notices throughout different parts of the Biden Administration,” the person familiar with the plans said. These preservation notices serve as a request that various documents relevant to a case be preserved, and some have been publicly touted by the party in recent months.

“We’re just laying the groundwork now, we’re going to keep sending our letters. I would imagine at some point … those letters are repackaged and we say, ‘Hey, you did not respond to this request we sent you six months ago. We expect you to turn over these documents,’” the Republican Oversight Committee aide told the Caller.
“We’re just getting ready. We keep conducting oversight … We’ll be ready to roll in January with several investigations already prepared to go,” the aide added.

Preservation letters and informational briefings appear to be just the start in the GOP’s prep for an anticipated House takeover. A senior Republican aide told the Caller that preparation for the majority will likely “kick into full gear once August recess rolls around.”

“It’s expected that House Republicans will flood the Biden Administration with [more] preservation notices and requests that will help jump-start GOP investigations come 2023,” this senior aide said, specifying that there will be “way, way more” preservation notices in the near future.
“Everything will be on the table, including the possible impeachment of multiple cabinet officials,” the senior aide continued. (RELATED: Jim Jordan Lays Out The Investigations Americans Might See If Republicans Win Back The Majority)

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland are two cabinet officials that Republicans are honing in on for impeachment, according to the senior aide. Axios reported in April on the initial plan to impeach Mayorkas, noting at the time that “many committee members” support the move. Meanwhile, Jordan has not publicly ruled out trying to impeach Mayorkas, The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday.

“That’ll be a decision that will be made by the entire conference,” Jordan told the Free Beacon.

As Republicans lay the groundwork for a flood of investigations, the Biden administration is also reportedly busy prepping their defense, according to an article published by The Washington Post in April. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller.

“Senior officials have begun strategizing on how various White House departments, especially the counsel’s office, may be restructured to respond to an onslaught of investigative requests if Democrats lose control of the House or the Senate in November’s midterm elections, as many in both parties expect,” The Washington Post reported.

The White House has also brought on new staffers recently in the hopes that they’ll aid in responding to the various GOP probes, according to The Washington Post. Some of these staffers, like President Joe Biden’s current senior adviser, Anita Dunn, are well known to the president.

“White House officials say their preparations are hardly surprising, given the Democrats’ narrow majorities in Congress and the uncertain outcome of the midterm elections,” The Washington Post reported. “Biden officials also said the White House Counsel’s Office had been structured to respond to Republican oversight efforts from the beginning.”

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Pelosi Says She Won’t Block Stock Trading Ban, Trashes Supreme Court Ethics Rules

REPORTED BY MICHAEL GINSBERG, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER | February 09, 2022

pelosi stocks — **Screenshot via YouTube/Yahoo Finance**

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi signaled Wednesday that she would not block a bipartisan attempt to ban members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks, a position that she herself has opposed.

“I do believe in the integrity of people in public service. I want the public to have that understanding. We have to do something to deter something that we see as a problem, but it is a confidence issue, and if that’s what the members want to do, then that’s what we’ll do,” Pelosi said during a press conference.

The comments were similar to ones she made in January, when she said that she didn’t believe new rules were necessary but that the House Administration Committee could review the issue. Pelosi is on record as personally opposing a ban, claiming in December that trading stocks allows members to “participate” in the U.S.’s “free market economy.”

WATCH:

Pelosi added in the press conference that she would prefer to “tighten the fines on those who violate the STOCK Act. It’s not sufficient to deter behavior.”

The STOCK Act requires members of Congress to file stock transactions with their chamber clerk within 45 days of conducting the trade. Members frequently flout the reporting requirement, but enforcement is uneven.

“The enforcement of the financial-disclosure requirements is virtually nonexistent,” a former investigative counsel in the House’s Office of Congressional Ethics reportedly told Business Insider. “The committee does not look for late filings. There is no notification or follow-up.”

Democrats and Republicans have introduced legislation that would prohibit Congress members and their direct family members from trading individual stocks. A bill proposed by Democratic Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy would require members, spouses and dependent children to place their investments in blind trusts, while legislation introduced by Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley would require members to surrender individual stocks to the Treasury Department if they are caught holding them.

Pelosi did not endorse any current legislation.

“I’m a big believer in our committees, and we tasked the House Administration Committee to review the options that members are putting forth, and they have different views on the subject,” she said.

The House speaker went on to criticize the Supreme Court’s ethics requirements, claiming that any financial reform would have to be “government-wide.” Although lower federal courts are bound by ethics rules legislated by Congress, the Supreme Court sets its own ethics and disclosure rules. Prominent liberals, most notably Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, have claimed that the Court’s lack of disclosure rules allow it to be controlled by right-wing dark money.

“We make a disclosure every year, our financial disclosure, that is what it is. And then in addition to

that, on regular basis, when there is a stock transaction, to report that. The court system, the third branch of government, the judiciary, has no reporting. The Supreme Court has no disclosure, it has no reporting of stock transactions, and it makes important decisions every day,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi conducted up to $30.4 million worth of stock trades in 2021, according to her ethics disclosures. According to the financial analysis blog Unusual Whales, Pelosi’s trades had the sixth-best performance of all members of Congress, and the best among Democrats. Notably, Pelosi exercised call options on Microsoft stock in March, less than two weeks before the U.S. Army announced a nearly $22 billion contract with the tech giant.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy revealed in January that he would consider a limit or ban on individual stock trades should Republicans take back the House of Representatives in the midterms. More than three-quarters of general election voters support banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks, a poll conducted in December by the Trafalgar Group found.Tags :

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Mollie Hemingway Op-ed: Pelosi Owns the J6 Commission, And That’s Why It Failed

Commentary by: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | JANUARY 05, 2022

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 Commission was supposed to help Democrats hold onto their slim majority during tough 2022 midterm elections. Instead, it stumbled out of the gate, failed to gain legitimacy among the public, and has been plagued with serious legal and ethical problems.

Pelosi’s decision to politically exploit the riot at the Capitol was a no-brainer. Democrats nearly lost the chamber in 2020 when Democrats took control of the Senate and presidency. The president’s party almost always loses significant numbers of House seats during midterm elections. The only time that didn’t happen in recent history was 2002, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Pelosi understandably felt her best bet to preserve power was, with a massive assist from left-wing media, to somehow turn disgruntled Donald Trump supporters’ riot at the Capitol into the next 9/11.

There were massive problems with the scheme. For one thing, Republicans had immediately and vociferously denounced the riot. This was a far cry from the Summer of Violence, when Democrats and their media enablers cheered as leftist groups destroyed sectors of cities throughout the country, resulting in “some 15 times more injured police officers, 23 times as many arrests, and estimated damages in dollar terms up to 1,300 times more costly than those of the Capitol riot.”

Democrats did not condemn these serious and lengthy attacks on the White House, federal courthouses, police buildings, private businesses, and homes. Instead, they joined with the rioters in calling for the defunding of police and other radical measures.

The riots were the result of a deeply destructive lie, pushed by top Democrats, that the country and its policing are irredeemably evil and racist. What’s more, any and all attempts to quell the siege of federal buildings were condemned in the most hysterical terms by Pelosi and other Democrats.

Kamala Harris, then a senator from California and the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, supported bailing out rioters who destroyed much of Minneapolis. Pelosi pooh-poohed the destruction of federal statues and historical markers. Republicans had consistently opposed political violence, beginning in the summer of 2020, but Democrats had not.

Still, the plan might have worked had Pelosi put together a decent committee. Yet she made several critical errors if she hoped it would be taken seriously.

Consider, first, how Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy managed a similarly important committee with a confidence that Pelosi has lacked.

Democrats threw together their first impeachment of President Trump in 2019 after their long-promised Russia collusion impeachment fell apart due to lack of evidence. Democrats and their media enablers had been claiming for years that Trump was an illegitimate president, and some Republicans had helped them in their general efforts to oust him. McCarthy had a difficult task, knowing that Republican voters weren’t nearly so weak as some of their leaders and would desert the party if it helped Democrats impeach President Trump.

McCarthy was constrained by Democrats’ avoidance of the Judiciary Committee as the venue for the impeachment investigation. Pelosi was concerned that Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, didn’t have what it would take to run impeachment. Impeachment was instead run through the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, then led by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

That committee included a few Republican members known for opposing Trump, such as Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas. He and Mike Conaway, also of Texas, had already announced they weren’t running again. Some were urging McCarthy to remove Hurd and replace him with someone else. But McCarthy let everyone who wanted stay, while also encouraging any members who enjoyed performing oversight of the intelligence community but didn’t want to take part in an impeachment circus to step away temporarily. When Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Arizona, graciously agreed to such a move, McCarthy replaced him with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Even that choice showed McCarthy’s confidence, since both McCarthy and Jordan had run for the top leadership spot not long prior. Jordan had also successfully helped block McCarthy from becoming speaker a few years prior. But once McCarthy was made Republican leader, he made Jordan the top Republican on the House’s Oversight and Reform Committee, even over the objections of his supporters on the Steering Committee.

The diverse Republican group on the Intelligence Committee ran an effective opposition, even with Schiff and Pelosi manipulating the proceedings for maximum gain. In the end, Republicans held together, with not a single member of the conference voting to impeach Trump over his phone call with the Ukraine president. It was significant that conservatives and moderates all agreed the charges didn’t pass muster. In the Senate, only Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah fell for the impeachment trial as led by Schiff, leading to Trump’s first acquittal.

By contrast, Pelosi’s roster management has been something of a disaster.

Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi is not even pretending to aim for impartiality and is not well versed in due process. He filed a lawsuit against Trump months before Pelosi chose him as her chairman. And he recently told rabid MSNBC conspiracy theorist Rachel Maddow that if you invoke your constitutional rights against being forced to testify, you are “part and parcel guilty” of crimes.

Pelosi picked Schiff for the committee despite — or perhaps because of — his years of fabulism and lies concerning the Russia collusion hoax. Schiff falsely claimed for years that he had secret evidence that Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, leaked fake Donald Trump, Jr. emails, fabricated the transcript of a 2019 phone call between former President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president, and lied about his interactions with the so-called whistleblower behind House Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump.

Far from protecting members from the politicized committee, Pelosi also harmed a few vulnerable members by putting them on it. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Florida, was viewed as a “rising star” in the party, even being floated in May as a tough potential opponent for Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. But a few weeks ago, she announced she would not even try to win re-election for her House seat.

Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia is also facing a tough re-election race, in a district the Republican governor-elect just won. Her seat is being targeted by Republicans. Being part of a uniparty probe with ethical problems can not be helping.

Pelosi’s fatal error, however, was blowing up her own committee by taking what she herself admitted was the “unprecedented” step of removing the Republican ranking member and another top member from it. Pelosi said that she would not allow Rep. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, a distinguished Afghanistan veteran and leader of the Republican Study Committee, from serving. She also banned Jordan, now ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

Pelosi later claimed the members’ concerns with the integrity of the 2020 election were the reason. But that made no sense, since she appointed Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, and he objected to Trump’s election in 2017. Pelosi herself objected to President George W. Bush’s election in 2004 and said there was “no question” that the 2016 election was “hijacked.”

The resolution establishing the committee requires the committee to follow House rules on the ranking member and minority party representation. But since Pelosi removed the ranking member, its subpoena and deposition activities are at best questionable, and at worst illicit.

Worse, the committee has been falsely claiming to witnesses to have ranking representation. Pelosi’s hand-selected “co-chair” is Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is expected to lose her re-election bid in a few months. The Republican Party of Wyoming does not recognize her as a member, and she lost her Republican leadership position last year because of her vindictive obsession with fighting Trump, whose less interventionist foreign policy she regularly opposed during his time in office.

Known for being a primary pusher of the false “Russian bounties” claim, Cheney has falsely been presented as the ranking member of the committee. She is not. She was chosen even before the Republican-appointed members were removed by Pelosi.

After Pelosi removed the choices of the Republican conference, she added another hand-selected “Republican” to represent her Democratic conference. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, also announced he would decline to run for re-election, rather than face defeat from his voters. No Republican-appointed member serves on the committee.

Pelosi wanted to run the commission as a star chamber, and that’s precisely how it’s being run. It’s being used to persecute political opponents, violate due process, and obtain the private communications of Republican members, citizens, and journalists. It has been exposed for repeatedly fabricating evidence. And Pelosi herself has blocked the release of evidence implicating her office in mishandling security at the Capitol.

Pelosi is expected to step down from Congress following her lame-duck term and expected loss of the majority in November. Her handling of her J6 Committee shows she has lost her leadership skills and lacks the confidence necessary to run such a political operation.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College. A Fox News contributor, she is a regular member of the Fox News All-Stars panel on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, National Review, GetReligion, Ricochet, Christianity Today, Federal Times, Radio & Records, and many other publications. Mollie was a 2004 recipient of a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship at The Fund for American Studies and a 2014 Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com

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Congressmen Across The Board Demand Biden Respond To ‘Murderous’ Terrorist Attack, Keep Americans Safe

Reported by MICHAEL GINSBERG | GENERAL ASSIGNMENT REPORTER | August 26, 2021

Senators Meet For Weekly Policy Luncheons On Capitol Hill — **(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)**

Members of Congress in both parties are demanding that President Joe Biden respond to the ISIS-Khorasan Province terrorist attack that has killed at least 12 Americans.

The attack outside Hamid Karzai International Airport made Thursday the deadliest day for Americans in Afghanistan since Aug. 6, 2011, and the third-deadliest day throughout the 20-year-long war. Two ISIS-Khorasan Province suicide bombers detonated explosive vests before gunmen opened fire on a crowd, U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told reporters.

“This murderous attack offers the clearest possible reminder that terrorists will not stop fighting the United States just because our politicians grow tired of fighting them,” Senate Minority Leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell said in a statement. “I remain concerned that terrorists worldwide will be emboldened by our retreat, by this attack, and by the establishment of a radical Islamic terror state in Afghanistan. We need to redouble our global efforts to confront these barbarian enemies who want to kill Americans and attack our homeland.”

McConnell’s counterpart, Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, declared that “it must be made clear to the world that the terrorists who perpetrated this will be sought and be brought to justice.”

“The U.S. cannot and will not be silent in the face of these attacks – we must bring to justice the terrorists who committed these heinous acts as we work to extract others from harm’s way,” Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen added. “We must work to establish stability on the ground and remain focused on securing the safety of U.S. citizens, our troops, and our Afghan partners.”

House Minority Leader and Republican California Rep. Kevin McCarthy called on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to “bring Congress back before Aug. 31 so we can be briefed thoroughly by the Administration and prohibit the withdrawal of our troops until every American is safely out.”

House Republicans were briefed by Biden administration officials on Tuesday.

Pelosi did not commit to bringing the House back from recess, but she did say that “Committees of Jurisdiction will continue to hold briefings on Afghanistan.”

Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez appeared to take a shot at the Biden administration’s withdrawal policy, declaring, “We can’t trust the Taliban with Americans’ security.”

Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse urged Biden to “rip up the Aug. 31 [withdrawal] deadline and defend evacuation routes by expanding the perimeter around the Kabul airport or by retaking Bagram” Air Force Base.

Four Republicans, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Georgia Rep. Mark Green and North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker called on Biden to resign.

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McCarthy To Pull Every Republican Member From The Jan. 6 Committee

Reported by HENRY RODGERS, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT for DailyCaller.com | July 21, 2021

Photo by Alex Wong:Getty Images 231232 — Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he would pull every Republican member from the House Select Committee to look into the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi rejected the recommendations of Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, two sources familiar told the Daily Caller.

Pelosi released a Wednesday statement two days after McCarthy selected a group of five Republicans to serve on the House Select Committee. McCarthy’s Republican picks include Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong and Texas Rep. Troy Nehls.

“Monday evening, the Minority Leader recommended 5 Members to serve on the Select Committee. I have spoken with him this morning about the objections raised about Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan and the impact their appointments may have on the integrity of the investigation. I also informed him that I was prepared to appoint Representatives Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong and Troy Nehls, and requested that he recommend two other Members,” Pelosi said in the statement.
“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these Members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee. The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision,” Pelosi added.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at a press conference on the INVEST in America Act on June 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. The act directs federal funding into repairing roads and bridges and improving transit systems around the country. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Pelosi announced in late June that she would be establishing the select committee. The House then approved a resolution to form the committee weeks after Senate Republicans killed a bipartisan commission in late May. The House Select Committee announced it will hold its first hearing July 27. The resolution authorized Pelosi to select eight members to serve on the committee and McCarthy to select five. The resolution ended up passing in the House 222 to 190, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in voting in favor. Those two Republicans were Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.

Pelosi picked her panelists. One of them is Cheney.

Pelosi also selected Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, California Rep. Adam Schiff, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, California Rep. Pete Aguilar, Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria and Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy.

McCarthy announced his opposition to a Jan. 6 commission in May. McCarthy has said he would like the commission to investigate violence committed by Black Lives Matter and Antifa throughout the summer of 2020, as well as the Capitol riot.

“Putting Adam Schiff and Raskin on it looks more like an impeachment committee than one that wants to get to the bottom of the questions that are still out there,” McCarthy said in an interview with Fox News.

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Mitch McConnell: Capitol Rioters Were ‘Fed Lies‘ and ‘Provoked by the President’ and Others

Reported by HANNAH BLEAU | 19 Jan 2021

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 19: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks during his weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol on November 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. Republicans spoke about their desire to work on their legislative agenda despite the impeachment hearings in the House. (Photo by Alex Edelman/Getty …

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday spoke about the major breach that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, stating that the mob was “fed lies” and “provoked” by President Trump, as well as others.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, McConnell said that the “mob was fed lies” and “provoked by the president and other powerful people” — effectively echoing the claims made by his Democrat colleagues, who accuse Trump of inciting the chaos that descended upon the Capitol that day.

“The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like,” the Kentucky Republican said.

“But we pressed on. We stood together and said an angry mob would not get veto power over the rule of law in our nation,” he continued:

McConnell’s remarks echo the statements made by many of his Democrat colleagues, who contend that Trump incited the violence despite the fact that he, at no point during his “Save America” speech, urged supporters to engage in lawless and violent acts. As the chaos unfolded, Trump — who at the time had access to his personal Twitter account — repeatedly called for protesters to respect law enforcement and refrain from violence.

“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” he wrote on Twitter shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

Less than an hour later, the president wrote, “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

However, one week later, the House impeached Trump for the second time, with the single article asserting that Trump incited members of the crowd.

“President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transfer of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government,” the article states.

“He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States,” it adds.

Ten House Republicans joined Democrats in supporting impeachment. While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) openly opposed impeachment, he too suggested that Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

“He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” he said on the House floor last week.

“These facts require immediate action of President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term,” he continued.

McCarthy told House Republicans earlier this month that Trump “told him he bears some of the responsibility for the Washington, DC, riots,” as Breitbart News detailed.

McConnell has not revealed if he would vote to convict Trump in the Senate impeachment trial, stating that he intends to “listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.” He has reportedly told colleagues that their decision will be a “vote of conscience.”

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‘You Can’t Find One That Wasn’t Dating A Chinese Spy?’: Trey Gowdy Rips Pelosi Over Swalwell’s Intel Committee Seat

Reported by VIRGINIA KRUTA, ASSOCIATE EDITOR | December 18, 2020

Trey Gowdy appears on “Outnumbered OT.” Screenshot/Fox News

Former Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for keeping Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee.

Gowdy made an appearance Friday with Fox News host Harris Faulkner to discuss the recent revelation that a Chinese spy had gotten close to Swalwell as he worked his way from city council to Congress — so close that Swalwell has claimed that the details of their relationship are “classified.”

Faulkner began the segment with a clip of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has questioned whether Swalwell should be allowed to remain on the Intelligence Committee after being linked to an alleged Chinese spy.

“Congressman Swalwell has yet to explain what his relationship was with the suspected spy. This feels like, Trey, this just got a little bit more heated, more important to pay attention to,” Faulkner said.

“It’s the hardest committee in all of Congress to get on,” Gowdy replied, noting that members of Congress and even the Intelligence Committee are not required to go through background checks and they are frequently privy to classified information. This, he explained, was why the Speaker and the minority leader were so careful to choose the right people.

“Kevin is 100% right. There are 230 members of the House. You can’t find one that wasn’t dating a Chinese spy?” Gowdy asked. “Out of all 230, you can’t find a single member on the Democrat side that wasn’t involved in a relationship, which he won’t even tell us what it was, Harris. He won’t say whether he was sleeping with her or not. He says it’s classified. How? How is that classified, Eric? I mean you want people to not find out about it but it’s not classified.”

Gowdy went on to claim that Swalwell sat on that committee because he was a “loyal acolyte” to Pelosi and Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff.

“This is the only reason he is on it. Having to work with him, he is eminently replaceable. I can promise you that,” Gowdy continued.

Faulkner then asked Gowdy what he would like to hear Swalwell say with regard to the situation.

“Eric, how did this happen for four years. Eric, with all candor, when a woman is expressing interest in you chances are great that she is paid to do so. You have to have the self-awareness to ask, ‘Why do I have this new face in my life?’ ‘Why is this person trying to put an intern in my office and why are they trying to help me get elected to Congress?’” Gowdy replied, going on to note that Swalwell had been front and center when it came to accusing the president and members of his family of similar transgressions.

“You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Swalwell in the Russia investigation. Where is he now? He’s criticizing Jared and Donald Trump Jr. For meeting with a Russian lawyer. They weren’t dating one. They were meeting with one. So, just answer some questions, Eric,” Gowdy concluded.

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Mollie Hemingway: Swalwell Story Increases Concern That China Controls Democrats

DECEMBER 11, 2020 By Tristan Justice

Mollie Hemingway: Swalwell Story Increases Concern That China Controls Democrats

Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway said Thursday that recent revelations about California Rep. Eric Swalwell’s deep partnership with a Chinese spy heightens worries the Chinese have developed compromising influence on the Democratic Party.

“I think there’s a lot of concern that the Democratic Party, that the Chinese have too much control over the Democratic Party and its agenda, in the same way that they have too much control over Hollywood and the NBA,” Hemingway said. “This is a big issue for the entire party.”

“I think it’s important to note that Devin Nunes and the House Republicans tried to focus on China when they had control of the committee,” Hemingway said. That was before Democrats took control of the House in 2018 and shifted the conversation to Russia under the leadership of California Rep. Adam Schiff spinning conspiracies of Russian collusion culminating in a failed deep-state coup.

That senior members of the House intelligence committee might have known of Swalwell’s allegedly romantic relationship with a Chinese operative, Hemingway added, “makes that look even worse than it did at the time that they were trying to dissuade House intel from looking into China.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Tristan Justice is a staff writer at The Federalist focusing on the 2020 presidential campaigns. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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WH Considers Using Obscure Law To Gut Omnibus Bill, Democrats Helpless To Stop

Reported By Scott Kelnhofer | April 4, 2018 at 9:29am

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/wh-considers-using-obscure-law-to-gut-omnibus-bill-democrats-helpless-to-stop/

Conservatives who were angry with President Donald Trump and Republicans with some of the expenditures approved as part of the recently signed omnibus spending bill may soon be in a slightly better mood.

Joseph Lawler of the Washington Examiner reports congressional conservatives want Trump to use the 1974 Impoundment Act to rescind some spending authorized by the $1.3 trillion government appropriations bill, and White House officials are reportedly considering doing so.

The measure referred to by the Examiner is officially known as the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. For the most part, the act established the Congressional Budget Office and gave Congress more control over the budget process.

Trump, GOP consider rarely used Impoundment Act to rescind some of the omnibus spending – Herman Cain https://t.co/RPzcwxJTZ6 pic.twitter.com/FX0Icj1UoI

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) March 31, 2018

The Impoundment Control Act allows the president to ask Congress to rescind funds that have been allocated in the budget. Congress is not required to vote on the request, but if they do agree to vote, a simple majority in both chambers is all that is needed to approve cuts the president requests.

Congress has 45 days to approve any or all rescission requests from the president.

A congressional Republican aide told the Examiner that conservatives have been lobbying for Trump to use the Impoundment Act.

“It’s a good opportunity to take advantage of a law passed decades ago and that hasn’t been used recently,” the aide said.

A spokesman for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., confirmed to The Washington Post that McCarthy’s office is working with the Trump administration on the idea. White House legislative director Marc Short also confirmed the president is looking into requesting cuts to the budget.

“The administration is certainly looking at a rescission package, and the president takes seriously his promise to be fiscally responsible.”

The Impoundment Control Act was put in place in 1974 in response to President Richard Nixon’s practice of withholding funds for programs he opposed. Instead, the act requires any requests to withhold funding to go through Congress.

The Impoundment Control Act is considered obscure because it hasn’t been used often in recent years. The Examiner report says it was never used by Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush, but was used frequently during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

After signing the omnibus spending bill that he originally threatened to veto, Trump called on Congress to give him line-item veto authority on spending bills. However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that such authority was unconstitutional.

These measures could pass with just a majority vote, meaning Democrats could do nothing to stop them — unless, of course, they can convince enough Republicans not to support the president’s wishes. Considering the slim 51-to-49 majority Republicans hold in the Senate, it wouldn’t take many left-leaning Republicans to foil the president’s plans.But a chance to rescind some of the budget programs gives conservatives reason for hope — and if Republicans throw away that chance, it will make conservatives angry all over again.

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Hillary Clinton’s 5 Biggest Lies in Her Benghazi Testimony

by Ben Shapiro 22 October 2015

URL of the original posting site: http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/22/hillary-clintons-5-biggest-lies-benghazi-testimony

Former Secretary of State and Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, October 22, 2015. AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB/Getty Images

Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement on Wednesday that he would not run for president of the United States made it a foregone conclusion that the media would worship at the shrine of Hillary Clinton during her Benghazi testimony on Thursday.

They have no other choice. The precious must be protected at all costs, which means covering up for her lies, her calculated obfuscations, and her charmless faux-gravity. Already the narrative has been set: Hillary Clinton was a victim of a political Benghazi committee dedicated to her destruction. Every Congressional committee in history has entailed some political motivation—would anyone argue that the Watergate investigations were completely apolitical?—but the media myopically focused on the idiotic comments of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) before Hillary’s testimony, crafting the story of her victimization before it had even taken place.

Hillary, as always, is the poor, put-upon victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy.

She set up a private email server and deleted relevant emails from it for purely political reasons;
she pressed for a pointless invasion of Libya for political reasons,
chortled at its conquest for political reasons,
watched it descend into chaos while doing nothing for political reasons,
and then allowed her ambassador to twist in the Libyan tornado without proper security for political reasons;
finally, she covered up that disaster by lying about its causes for political reasons. But those who ask questions about such matters are partisan politicians.

As Charles Krauthammer rightly observed on Thursday evening, “We’re not going to get the facts, we’re not going to get the real story underlying it. We’re living in an age where what you say and its relation with the facts is completely irrelevant.”

But after 11 hours of lying—which is only slightly longer than the hours Hillary and her boss’ administration did virtually nothing as Americans died under fire in Benghazi—we may as well examine Hillary’s most important lies.

Hillary Cared Deeply About the Human Cost.

Hillary kept claiming that she cared deeply about her good friend Chris Stevens. At one point, she whipped out her pre-planned righteous indignation to complain, “I would imagine I’ve thought more about what happened than all of you put together. I’ve lost more sleep than all of you put together.” This was salt in the wound, the equivalent of Johnny Cochrane lamenting his worries over the fate of Nicole Brown Simpson.

Hillary admitted in her testimony on Thursday that her good friend Chris Stevens did not have her private email address, and that she could recall no conversations with him after he became ambassador to Libya. The night of his death, she wrote an email with the subject line: “Chris Smith,” conflating his death with that of diplomat Sean Smith. She didn’t bother speaking with survivors of the attacks until days later.

As to the notion that Hillary lost sleep, she apparently didn’t the night of the attack—she went home instead of sticking around at the State Department or heading over to the White House, because, she said, she had to prepare for what would be a rough rest of the week. She didn’t talk to then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey. We do know that she spent the night alone, a fact which led her to chortle. Hillary may have lost sleep over her failures later—clearly, she spent some time coming up with lies about a YouTube video.

Hillary Thought The Attacks Had Something to Do With a YouTube Video.

Hillary maintained on Thursday that she believed the attack still had something to do with the YouTube video, “The Innocence of Muslims.” But the night of the attack, she emailed Chelsea Clinton and told her that an al-Qaeda-like group had killed the ambassador. As Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said to Clinton, “You tell the American people one thing. You tell your family an entirely different story.”

In fact, Hillary told the Egyptian Prime Minister the day after the attacks, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack. Not a protest.” Hillary tried to state that she had actually told people that some people were pinning the attack on the video, but she herself pinned the attacks on the YouTube video in videos released in Pakistan. She lied, because it was obvious that she had failed in her central duty to protect her diplomats in the most dangerous part of the world—a part of the world she had made more dangerous with her favorite invasion.

Hillary Didn’t Use Sidney Blumenthal As an Advisor.

Hillary Clinton had reams of email exchanges with hitman Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal had been banned from the Obama administration for his corruption and Clintonian loyalties. Hillary said that the emails were unsolicited.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) shot that idiocy down easily: “You wrote to him, ‘Thanks and please keep them coming,’ ‘Greetings from Kabul and thanks for keeping this stuff coming, any other info about it?’ ‘What are you hearing now?’” Hillary then tried to amend her statement by saying they began as unsolicited emails. Hillary used Blumenthal as an advisor, and she routinely corresponded with him. Any implication to the contrary is absolutely false.

Hillary Was Transparent About Her Emails.

Hillary insisted again on Thursday that she’d been fully transparent about her emails. Even the State Department has rejected that nonsense repeatedly. The hearings did provide some perspective into just why Hillary might have deleted 30,000 emails, however, she claimed that her correspondence about Libya, which dropped dramatically from 2011 to 2012, was not because she cared less about the country—it was because she had people shuttling documents to her in suitcases. In fact, she said, she didn’t even have a computer in her office. A State Department email address could have confirmed whether any of that was true. Now we will presumably never know.

Chris Stevens Was Responsible for His Own Death.

The most despicable lie of the day came from Hillary’s defense of her own conduct via ripping Chris Stevens, the dead ambassador. She spent virtually the entire day suggesting that Stevens knew the risks of his job, that he accepted those risks, and that he died knowing those risks. She even said that Stevens “felt comfortable” on the ground. If that is true, it’s certainly odd that the State Department team in Libya asked for more security over 600 times. Hillary said she didn’t receive any of those requests and blamed her security team for not granting more security—all the while saying she took responsibility for what had happened.

Then, the capper: Hillary said that when Stevens wrote an email asking about whether the Benghazi compound would be closed, he was just being a sly jokester. She said, “One of the great attributes that Chris Stevens had was a really good sense of humor, and I just see him smiling as he’s typing this because it’s clearly in response to the email down below talking about picking up a few ‘fire sale items from the Brits.’” When told that those “fire sale items” were security barricades, Hillary answered, “Well, I thought it showed their entrepreneurial spirit.” Disgusting.

Hillary Clinton was largely responsible for a pointless invasion of Libya, which promptly turned into a terrorist-run hellhole. She was responsible for the security of her diplomats in Libya, but she didn’t provide for it. She had no correspondence with those diplomats on the ground but plenty of time for Sidney Blumenthal. When those diplomats and those who ran to help them were killed, she blamed a YouTube video. And finally, she used her jerry-rigged email server to selectively edit the material the public would see.

But don’t worry—Hillary’s the victim. Republicans are the perpetrators. And Chris Stevens is just one more bump in the road on her journey to the White House.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News, Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire.com, and the New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of the book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.

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Posts tagged ‘Kevin McCarthy’

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MARCH 09, 2023

[WATCH: J6 Tapes Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]

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BY: DAVID HARSANYI | MARCH 09, 2023

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BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | FEBRUARY 17, 2023

ACTS ON WHAT????????? Fund what???????? The Wall has been funded since Clinton. Finish the Wall. We’ve got the materials. Put it up.

A Deadly Crisis

“They need to finish the wall,” Espinosa said frankly, warning that until then, the area would not be safe to walk around at night.

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BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JANUARY 25, 2023

[POLL: 4 In 5 Americans See Two-Tiered Justice System]

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BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JANUARY 20, 2023

Schiff’s amendment would overturn Citizens United, and thus the First Amendment, and empower state and federal governments to enact “reasonable, viewpoint-neutral” limitations on speech that “influences” elections.

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By: HAROLD HUTCHISON, REPORTER | January 04, 2023

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By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor | January 3, 2023

Follow Michael Gryboski on Twitter or Facebook

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BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | NOVEMBER 10, 2022

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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By Jim Hoft | Published September 14, 2022

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BY: CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD | AUGUST 10, 2022

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Reported by SHELBY TALCOTT, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT | July 12, 2022

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REPORTED BY MICHAEL GINSBERG, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER | February 09, 2022

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Commentary by: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | JANUARY 05, 2022

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Reported by MICHAEL GINSBERG | GENERAL ASSIGNMENT REPORTER | August 26, 2021

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Reported by HENRY RODGERS, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT for DailyCaller.com | July 21, 2021

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“The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like,” the Kentucky Republican said.

“But we pressed on. We stood together and said an angry mob would not get veto power over the rule of law in our nation,” he continued:

“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” he wrote on Twitter shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

“President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transfer of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government,” the article states.

“He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States,” it adds.

“He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” he said on the House floor last week.

“These facts require immediate action of President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term,” he continued.

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Former Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for keeping Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee.

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“I think there’s a lot of concern that the Democratic Party, that the Chinese have too much control over the Democratic Party and its agenda, in the same way that they have too much control over Hollywood and the NBA,” Hemingway said. “This is a big issue for the entire party.”

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Reported By Scott Kelnhofer | April 4, 2018 at 9:29am

Conservatives who were angry with President Donald Trump and Republicans with some of the expenditures approved as part of the recently signed omnibus spending bill may soon be in a slightly better mood.

“It’s a good opportunity to take advantage of a law passed decades ago and that hasn’t been used recently,” the aide said.

“The administration is certainly looking at a rescission package, and the president takes seriously his promise to be fiscally responsible.”

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by Ben Shapiro 22 October 2015

Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement on Wednesday that he would not run for president of the United States made it a foregone conclusion that the media would worship at the shrine of Hillary Clinton during her Benghazi testimony on Thursday.

Hillary Cared Deeply About the Human Cost.

Hillary Thought The Attacks Had Something to Do With a YouTube Video.