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FBI's McCabe grilled nearly 8 hours amid anti-Trump bias allegations

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testified behind closed doors for nearly eight hours Tuesday on Capitol Hill, amid calls for his firing over allegations of conflicts of interest and anti-Trump political prejudice at the law enforcement bureau.

McCabe's testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, which had been rescheduled from last week, was the latest development in a controversy swirling around text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.

McCabe was believed to be the "Andy" to whom Strzok and Page referred in their messages.
“I’ll be a little bit surprised if (McCabe is) still an employee of the FBI this time next week,” U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a member of the House panel, told Fox News several days ago.
Gowdy and other committee members were tight-lipped on the details of McCabe’s testimony on Tuesday, and most avoided speaking with reporters. But the committee’s ranking member,U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said McCabe “has been a professional FBI agent” and that he does not understand “the calls of some to fire him.”
Strzok was dismissed from Mueller’s Russia probe after being linked to a number of anti-Trump messages, including those calling Trump a “menace” and a “loathsome human.” But one particular text sent by the agent caused great concern and appeared to implicate McCabe.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok wrote Aug. 15, 2016. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said last week that the text was “very troubling” because it implied the agents had “a plan to take action to make sure that Donald Trump does not get elected president of the United States at the highest levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Lawmakers may have also questioned McCabe on demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr. The official had undisclosed meetings with Fusion GPS – the company that produced the infamous anti-Trump dossier containing salacious allegations about then-candidate Trump. Nellie Ohr worked at Fusion GPS on Trump-related issues.
Republican members of the committee were also expected to press McCabe on issues of conflict of interest and whether he should have recused himself from the Hillary Clinton email investigation. McCabe’s wife in 2015 ran for a state Senate seat in Virginia and received money from donors linked to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
McCabe was named the agency’s deputy director in January 2016 by then-FBI Director James Comey. He briefly served as acting director of the FBI after Comey was fired by Trump in May.

Joy, fury on social media after Senate passes tax overhaul

Optimism and anger – without much middle ground – characterized social media reactions by celebrities and politicians to the news that the Senate had approved a historic tax overhaul early Wednesday.

Republicans, who have promised tax reform even as they suffered other significant legislative defeats since President Donald Trump took office, sounded a note of year-end triumph.

“Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare) Repealed,” President Donald Trump tweeted at 1:09 a.m EST. “Goes to the House tomorrow morning for final vote. If approved, there will be a News Conference at The White House at approximately 1:00 P.M.”
GOP congressional leaders echoed his reaction and took stock of the once-in-a-generation scale of the reform.
“The #Senate has passed #TaxReform to boost our #economy, help grow #SmallBusiness, and give our nation more #energy independence,” tweeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell., R-Ky.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has served in the Senate since 1981, said the tax overhaul was overdue.
"I’m 1 of only 5 to be involved w tax reform as a senator in 1986 & again in 2017,"  Grassley tweeted. "It shouldn’t have taken so long but we’ve delivered tax cuts & tax simplification to the American ppl as promised."
Meanwhile, Democrats, in stark terms, suggested that Republicans would ultimately face a backlash from voters.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, referred to the legislation as a "heist" on Twitter, adding that "sooner or later, a reckoning is coming" because Americans are "angry."
And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the bill an "absolute disgrace."
Comedian Rosie O'Donnell, who promised on Twitter early Tuesday to pay "2 million dollars to senator susan collins and 2 million to senator jeff flake" if they voted against the tax legislation, tweeted her age and an anti-Trump hashtag minutes after the bill passed.
"55 - still alive #survivingtrump," she wrote, along with an Instagram photo of herself.

Why Trump's tax reform triumph isn't matched by public enthusiasm

After a long political drought on Capitol Hill, tax reform is a big win for President Trump, no question about it.

So why isn’t there a celebratory mood?

The legislation, passed by the House yesterday, has been so widely disparaged, by opponents and many in the media, that it just isn’t very popular with the public. (The House will revote today because of a rules glitch.)
In a USA Today poll, 32 percent support the bill, 48 percent oppose it.
In a CNN poll, 33 percent support the bill, 55 percent oppose it.
In a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll yesterday, 24 percent say it is a good idea, 41 percent say it’s a bad one.
And many surveys echo one by the New York Times and Survey Monkey, that only a third of Americans expect their taxes to go down.
Now the numbers reflect some undeniable partisanship. A majority of Republicans support the measure, which makes sense because it is passing only with GOP votes. It’s no surprise that Democrats and some independents who don’t like Trump don’t think much of his tax bill, either.
The pounding by the press focuses on the fact that the lion’s share of benefits go to corporations and that some middle-class families, especially in high-tax states, will pay more, either now or in the future. Even some in the top 5 percent aren’t happy, as reflected in this Times column: “Tax Cuts Benefit the Ultra Rich, but Not the Merely Rich.”
A Wall Street Journal headline: “Middle Class to Get 23% of Tax Cuts for Individuals Under GOP Bill.”
The street obviously likes the tax cuts because the market has continued to climb, now gaining 5,000 points during Trump’s tenure to finish yesterday at 24,754.
The bill’s image got scuffed a bit by what is being called, somewhat unfairly, the Corker Kickback (a play on the Cornhusker Kickback used to pass ObamaCare). After Sen. Bob Corker flipped from no to yes, it was revealed that Orrin Hatch had added a big fat break for real estate profits—and Corker is a Tennessee developer who would benefit (along with another prominent Republican).
Thus, a Times editorial is headlined “Tax Bill Lets Trump and Republicans Feather Their Own Nests.”
At yesterday’s White House briefing, NBC’s Hallie Jackson said: “You’re getting a lot of questions what will benefit the president, what won’t benefit the president. I get he doesn’t want to release taxes. That would obviously put all of these questions to rest.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeated the standard answer that Trump remains under audit.
Whatever the sniping back and forth over tax reform—which is normal in a bill so complicated—public sentiment may change over time. ObamaCare, having survived years of Republican criticism and Trump’s attempt to repeal it, is above 50 percent approval for the first time.
If the measure delivers real tax relief to enough Americans—and the corporate cuts keep the economic expansion going—the bill could rise in popularity. And if not, the Republicans will face some heavy lifting in 2018.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Senate OKs tax reform package, sends bill back to House for final vote

The U.S. Senate passed the most sweeping rewrite of the nation's tax laws in more than three decades early Wednesday, all but ensuring the bill will soon become law.

The vote also likely helped hand President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans a major year-end legislative triumph.

The final vote, shortly before 1 a.m. EST, was 51-48, with no Democrats voting in favor of the bill and all Republicans supporting it.
Only U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who had announced his support for the bill earlier this month, was not present for the vote. His office said he “looks forward to returning to Washington in January" as he recovers from brain cancer treatment.
The Senate's vote meant that Vice President Mike Pence, who had postponed a trip to the Middle East to be at the Capitol if needed, was not required to break a tie vote.
During the vote, protesters interrupted with chants of "kill the bill, don't kill us," and Pence repeatedly called for order.
Before Trump can sign the tax overhaul into law, the House of Representatives must re-vote because of procedural flaws in the chamber's vote earlier Tuesday.
The office of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said House members would reconsider the Senate's bill Wednesday morning and send it to President Trump for his signature.
The House voted 227-203 in favor of the tax bill Tuesday afternoon, but the package ran into trouble in the Senate because of two provisions that Democrats said ran afoul of the Senate's strict budget reconciliation rules.
In order to avoid a filibuster according to Senate rules, the tax overhaul must directly address fiscal issues, not policy matters. Matters that are considered extraneous to budget are subject to potential filibustering, meaning they would require 60 votes for passage, instead of a 51-vote majority.
Senate Democrats, including Vermont independent Bernie Sanders and Oregon's Ron Wyden, specifically objected to two provisions in the House bill: one providing for the use of 529 savings accounts for home schooling expenses; and the other establishing criteria to determine whether endowments of private universities are subject to the legislation’s new excise tax.
Additionally, Democrats objected to the name of the House bill.
The Senate parliamentarian reportedly sided with Democrats, forcing the Senate to remove those provisions before the vote.
Top Democrats charged that the procedural snafu was a sign that Republicans were rushing the legislation through Congress.
“The House revote is the latest evidence of just how shoddily written the GOP tax scam really is," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
The complex legislation, weeks in the making, scales back the popular deduction for state and local taxes, bad news for Americans in some of the wealthiest suburbs of New York, New Jersey and California.
The bill preserves the deduction for medical expenses, rebuffing an effort by House Republicans to eliminate it.
It also provides steep tax cuts for businesses and wealthy families, and more modest reductions for low- and middle-income families.