Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, penned an op-ed on Wednesday expressly refuting claims by former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that she is "favorite of the Russians" planning to run as a spoiler candidate to help reelect President Trump.
In
the Wall Street Journal piece, Gabbard writes that she is running for
president “to undo Mrs. Clinton’s failed legacy.” She adds that after
she decided to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., over Clinton in 2016,
Clinton never forgave the slight.
“The smears have been nonstop ever since,” Gabbard writes.
Earlier
this month, Clinton said on David Plouffe’s podcast that a Democratic
candidate was being groomed for a third-party run in 2020. Clinton's
team later confirmed the former secretary of state was referring to
Gabbard.
"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got
their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are
grooming her to be the third-party candidate," Clinton told Plouffe. Market Watch
reported, however, that Clinton was referring to Republicans, not the
Russians, as “grooming” Gabbard for a third-party run, revising some
initial media reports.
Gabbard hit back at Clinton on Twitter,
calling her the “queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and
personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so
long.”
She also claimed that from the beginning of her candidacy there has been a concerted effort to destroy her reputation.
“Whether Mrs. Clinton’s name is on the ballot or not, her foreign policy will be,” Gabbard wrote in the op-ed,
writing that many of the Democratic candidates “adhere to her doctrine
of acting as the world’s police, using the tools of war to overthrow
governments we don’t like, wasting taxpayer dollars, costing American
lives, causing suffering and destruction abroad, and undermining
America’s security.”
Meanwhile, Gabbard announced last week that she will not seek re-election to Congress so she can focus on her presidential bid.
Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., is expected to deliver a farewell address to Congress on
Thursday after announcing her resignation last weekend amid a House
Ethics investigation following allegations she had inappropriate sexual
relationships with a female campaign staffer and her male congressional
legislative director.
Reports of money paid to both -- consulting fees for the female staffer and an "election bonus" for the male aide -- have also drawn scrutiny.
The
freshman lawmaker will deliver her final address after Congress votes
to legitimize -- and set parameters for -- the ongoing House impeachment inquiry
into President Trump, USA Today reported. Hill has played a role in
impeachment efforts as the vice chair of the House Oversight and Reform
Committee and a freshman liaison to Democratic leaders. Her last day in
Congress will be Friday, her office said.
Hill said she would “not
allow my experience to scare off other young women or girls from
running for office.” She also slammed “the right-wing media” and her
Republican opponents for carrying out a “coordinated campaign” to smear
her name and perpetuate what she described as her estranged husband’s
abusive behavior toward her.
Hill announced her resignation Sunday
after denying she had an inappropriate relationship with her male
congressional legislative director, which had prompted a House Ethics
investigation. She also admitted she had an "inappropriate" relationship
with a female campaign staffer, after a series of leaks of personal
texts and photos.
The conservative website RedState.com first
reported Oct. 10 that Hill, 32, who is openly bisexual, previously had
been involved in a "throuple," or a three-person relationship, with a
female campaign staffer and her estranged husband Kenny Heslep, who has
since filed for divorce. According to RedState.com, Heslep filed for
divorce after learning of Hill’s alleged affair with her male
legislative director, Graham Kelly.
Hill never directly accused
her estranged husband of leaking the photos. Heslep, who married Hill in
2010, reportedly told his father that he thought his computer had been
hacked around the same time the photos surfaced in media reports,
according to BuzzFeed News.
Heslep’s father told BuzzFeed
on Wednesday that his son denied any role in distributing the photos
but said he did not contact law enforcement when he began experiencing
computer problems before the RedState.com story was published.
RedState.com also published screenshots of a since-deleted Facebook post
written by Heslep in which he publicly accused Hill of having an affair
with her male congressional staff member. That allegation launched the
House Ethics investigation.
Red State and the Daily Mail
published nude photos that purportedly show the freshman congresswoman,
some with an identified female campaign aide, and one which shows Hill
undressed holding a bong. Attorneys representing Hill sent the Daily Mail a cease-and-desist letter,
claiming the photos were published without Hill’s permission and
threatening legal action if the British tabloid did not remove the
images from its website.
Also
Thursday, George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide who has
alleged that he was targeted in FBI’s Russia probe as part of a scheme
to take down his boss, is expected to formally announce his candidacy
for Hill's seat in California's 25th Congressional District north of Los
Angeles. Papadopoulos on Tuesday filed paperwork to run for the seat to
be vacated by Hill. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during former
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the
2016 presidential election.
Hill unseated an incumbent Republican
in 2018 and is one of the few openly bisexual members of Congress.
Since her resignation announcement, three Republicans and one Democrat
have said they plan to run for her seat, USA Today reported. Fox News' Gregg Re, Joseph A. Wulfsohn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Still struggling in the polls nine months after announcing her run for the White House, Sen. Kamala Harris , D-Calif., said Wednesday she still considers herself a top-tier candidate
amid reports that she has restructured her campaign -- laying off staff
in several states and at campaign headquarters -- to focus all her
efforts on winning one of the Democratic Party’s top three spots in February’s Iowa caucus.
The
former California attorney general and San Francisco district
attorney – who gained national attention in 2018 with her
cross-examination of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during
his Senate confirmation hearings -- also admitted she was concerned she
might not spend enough time in Iowa before the Feb. 3 caucus if she's
required to remain in Washington for a possible Senate impeachment trial
of President Trump. KAMALA HARRIS CUTTING STAFF, RENEGOTIATING CONTRACTS AS CAMPAIGN RESTRUCTURES BEFORE IOWA
“We
are still committed to New Hampshire. I am still committed to Nevada. I
am still committed to South Carolina. But we needed to make difficult
decisions. That's what campaigns require at this stage of the game,”
Harris told reporters at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa.
“We
have made those difficult decisions based on what we see to be our path
toward victory,” she continued. “I believe that we are going to do well
in Iowa, and that's why we have put the resources that we are putting
here. And that's why I'm here right now. And we'll continue to be here
through the end of the year and into the caucuses.”
In a memo
obtained by Fox News, Harris campaign manager Juan Rodriguez said
Wednesday that the candidate would dramatically restructure her campaign
— cutting staff, reducing pay and renegotiating contracts – in an
attempt to make to most of limited resources and stay competitive in a
field of 18 candidates within the final 100 days leading up to the Iowa
caucus.
Rodriguez's memo, first reported by Politico, announced
that several dozen people would be laid off at the campaign's Baltimore
headquarters, as would volunteers in New Hampshire, Nevada and
California as part of an effort to go "all-in" in Iowa, then shift to
focus on South Carolina after the caucus. It was not immediately clear
how many staff members would lose their jobs. The campaign, which has
not yet run any television advertising, hopes to spend at least $1
million on a media campaign in the weeks before the caucus, the memo
said.
Meanwhile, the House on Thursday is set to vote to
legitimize and set the parameters for an ongoing Democratic-led
impeachment probe into President Trump. The Washington Post
reported that should the House drag its feet in the impeachment probe —
either due to possible delays from the Trump administration or holiday
scheduling — a Senate trial could be delayed until January or even early
February, interfering with key campaign trail time for U.S. senators
competing in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.
“I will
fulfill my constitutional responsibility -- there’s no question, I take
it very seriously,” Harris said about appearing at the Capitol for
Senate votes. “It’s [also] very important that I am in Iowa as much as I
can possibly be. There is no question about that.”
“I am always
concerned about limited time in Iowa. Are you kidding me?,” Harris told
reporters. “Were I able to be awake for 24 hours, if I could assure
that, people would talk to me for 24 hours a day, I would do it. So I am
always concerned that I have enough time.”
Harris plans to spend
significant time in Iowa again in November, including over Thanksgiving,
her campaign said. She'll be in Iowa through this weekend and has
announced a trip to New Hampshire next week. Her campaign hasn't
released her schedule beyond that.
A Fox News poll of national
Democratic primary voters earlier this month showed Harris polling in
fourth place at 5 percent, 12 percentage points behind third-place Sen.
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and 27 percentage points behind former Vice
President Joe Biden.
The
senator had already pledged to go all-in on Iowa, joking she was moving
there, and earlier Wednesday her campaign touted the 15 days she spent
in the state this month as the "October Hustle." It was more than any of
her competitors spent there in October, but she's still polling behind
competitors such as Biden, Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Fox News’ Kelly Phares, Sam Dorman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A coalition of conservative groups have filed an ethics complaint against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D.-Calif., alleging that she has “hypocritically usurped” the authority
of the president and “weaponized” impeachment proceedings.
“In launching her 'official' impeachment inquiry
without benefit of a vote of the full House of Representatives and
without indicating anything remotely qualifying as 'treason, bribery, or
other high crimes and misdemeanors' that is the subject of the inquiry,
Speaker Pelosi has weaponized impeachment,” reads the complaint, led by
Tea Party Patriots Action's Jenny Beth Martin and signed by 40 different groups.
The
complaint adds that Thursday's scheduled vote on a resolution codifying
the impeachment inquiry is “inadequate at this stage" and says Pelosi’s
“one-person decision” is in violation of historical precedent. In
previous cases, the House has launched an official impeachment inquiry
into a president by holding a vote of all the members.
“If
she now understands that before going any further, the full House of
Representatives must make its impeachment inquiry legitimate by the
casting of votes, she is tacitly admitting that what came before is
illegitimate,” the complaint states. “Consequently, all
'evidence' gleaned during this portion of the 'investigation' must be
discarded for the sake of fairness.”
The letter alleged there was
no outcry from Pelosi when former Vice President Joe Biden “bragged that
he had leveraged more than a billion dollars in U.S. assistance to
Ukraine to achieve [a] desired policy end, threatening Ukrainian
government officials that he would deny them U.S. assistance if they did
not remove the prosecutor general within six hours.”
The
letter also emphasized the authority of the executive branch over
foreign and national security policy. “Congress’ ability to influence
the conduct of U.S. foreign and national security policy is wholly
dependent on its power of persuasion,” reads the complaint, which calls
on the Office of Congressional Ethics to launch an inquiry into Speaker
Pelosi’s “misconduct.”
Republicans and some moderate Democrats have expressed concern over impeachment proceedings.
Earlier Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R.-Fla., filed an ethics complaint against House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Gaetz accused Schiff of "grossly misrepresenting the content" of President Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a hearing last month
A
Democratic lawmaker from New Jersey says he doubts he will vote in
favor of the resolution introduced by his party Tuesday to formalize an
impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., introduced the resolution Tuesday that
sets forth rules for the probe, but Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., said
he hasn’t seen anything “impeachable” yet and doesn't think he will vote
for it.
“I would imagine that I’m not voting for it,” Van Drew told a reporter from NBC News.
Van
Drew, who narrowly defeated his GOP rival in 2018 in New Jersey’s 2nd
Congressional District, has openly criticized impeachment, saying it
would further divide the country and put members of his party at risk in
the 2020 elections.
He
is among a handful of Democrats who continue to lean away from a formal
push for impeachment despite ongoing depositions of witnesses by three
House committees spearheading the probe.
Van Drew's office did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.
Democratic
Reps. Kendra Horn from Oklahoma, Joe Cunningham from South
Carolina and Anthony Brindisi from New York -- who all won GOP districts
last year but remain vulnerable Democrats in the House -- said they are
skeptical of impeachment and hedged about the vote to frame the
impeachment inquiry.
Similarly, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn.,
who clinched 52 percent of the votes in two consecutive elections
between 2016 and 2018, is at risk of losing his seat next year in a
district that Trump dominated by 31 percent in 2016.
GOP leaders
introduced a resolution last week pressuring House Democrats to hold a
vote to formalize the impeachment inquiry against Trump that
centers around whether or not the president engaged in a "quid pro quo"
and attempted to persuade Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open
an investigation into former vice president and 2020 candidate Joe
Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid to Ukraine.
Democrats
finally caved on Tuesday and introduced the resolution, but several
Republican lawmakers still decried that they are not being given enough
time to review the resolution before the vote and continued to blast
impeachment proceedings as a whole.
A vote on the resolution
-- which will only formalize the procedures of the investigation and not
actual impeachment itself -- is scheduled to take place on Thursday. Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
Jared Kushner, a
senior adviser to President Trump, said Tuesday that most of his White
House work involves "cleaning up the messes" left behind by former Vice
President Joe Biden.
Kushner,
who married the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump a decade ago, made
the remarks in an exclusive interview with News Israel 13. He was
responding to comments Biden made over the weekend on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” in
which the Democrat charged it was “improper” for Trump to appoint his
son-in-law and daughter to senior positions in his administration.
“A
lot of the work that the president’s had me doing over the last three
years has actually been cleaning up the messes that Vice President Biden
has left behind,” Kushner told News Israel 13. “I think President Trump
is entitled to pick his team. We’ve worked with him for a long time and
I think we’ve done a good job at trying to help him be successful.”
“I
think President Trump is entitled to pick his team. We’ve worked with
him for a long time and I think we’ve done a good job at trying to help
him be successful.” — Jared Kushner
Jared Kushner responds to questions during an interview with News Israel 13, Oct. 29, 2019. (News Israel 13)
Kushner also addressed the House Democrats' ongoing Trump impeachment inquiry, which has shed light on Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who reportedly used his father’s name
to gain a seven-figure job at one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas
companies despite having no prior related worked experience. Hunter
Biden worked for the company, Burisma Holdings, at the same time his
father, while vice president, was seeking the ouster of a Ukrainian
prosecutor who was investigating a top Burisma official.
The
impeachment probe stems from a whistleblower’s complaint that President
Trump, during a July phone call, asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky to investigate the Biden family’s business dealings in the
country. Trump made the request while the U.S. was withholding military
aid but maintains there was no quid quo pro.
Kushner insisted that the president was clear of wrongdoing.
“They’ve
been trying to impeach the president for the past three years or get
him out of office and they’ve been unsuccessful at that,” Kushner said.
“The best thing going for the president is that he hasn’t done anything
wrong, and at this point, they’ve investigated him over and over and
over again, and I think the American people are sick and tired of it.”
“The
best thing going for the president is that he hasn’t done anything
wrong, and at this point, they’ve investigated him over and over and
over again, and I think the American people are sick and tired of it.” — Jared Kushner
“The
president’s record of accomplishments is unimpeachable, and he’s going
to continue to do the things that the American people care about,”
Kushner continued. “If Congress wants to be a part of the work we do to
try to make the country stronger and more prosperous, we welcome them
to join us. If they want to play silly games, we’ll obviously deal with
that in an appropriate manner, but we’re not going to let that distract
us as an administration.”
Kushner, who is Jewish, traveled to
Israel on Monday where he met separately with Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and former military chief Benny Gantz. The two rivals were deadlocked following last month's Israeli elections,
with neither able to easily form a majority coalition, raising the
possibility of an unprecedented third election in less than a
year. Kushner urged Gantz and Netanyahu to form a government so Israel
would be able to seize on the “tremendous opportunities” in the region,
including military and business partnerships with Saudi Arabia and other
Middle Eastern nations.
“Benny was a great general in the IDF
[Israeli Defense Forces] and he did a great job there and served Israel
tremendously, and he seems to have a good intention to try and bring
good to Israel, and hopefully he will be able to work with Prime
Minister Netanyahu and find a way to move forward," Kushner told News
Israel 13.
He also responded to Israeli concerns after President
Trump made the call to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, a decision some
critics said left the Kurds, who are American allies, vulnerable to
Turkey and other forces.
“Anyone
in Israel who thinks it has any implications for the U.S.-Israel
relationship is badly mistaken,” Kushner said, “because under President
Trump, the bond between America and Israel has been significantly
strengthened and our intention is to continue to do more of the same.” Fox News' Brooke Singman, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Tuesday refused to support a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide,
saying it was important first to condemn the preceding "mass slaughter"
of "hundreds of millions of indigenous people," as well as the
"transatlantic slave trade."
Omar, in a statement explaining her
vote of "present" on the resolution, also seemingly suggested that the
century-old mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks may not have
occurred at all. She asserted that "accountability and recognition of
genocide should not be used as a cudgel in a political fight" but should
instead "be done based on academic consensus outside the push and pull
of geopolitics."
The comments prompted accusations that Omar,
again, was seeking to communicate a bigoted message while maintaining
a veneer of wink-and-nod deniability -- even as she has previously
called for a boycott over alleged Israeli human-rights abuses, described the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as an instance in which "some people did something", and asserted that "Israel has hypnotized the world."
Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib made history as the first Muslim women in Congress earlier this year, and within weeks, Omar was criticized by her own party for series of remarks deemed anti-Semitic -- including her claim that Jewish support in Washington was "all about the Benjamins, baby." (Tlaib, too, has also been accused of anti-Semitism in office.)
Political analyst Zaid Jilani noted that contrary to Omar's claim, the U.S. has condemned both the treatment of Native Americans and the slave trade.
"There's
nothing wrong with asking that the U.S. government acknowledge human
rights abuses here before we acknowledge them overseas," Jilani
wrote. "The issue is, the U.S. government already did acknowledge the
ones Omar is asking it to acknowledge. Didn't acknowledge the Armenian
genocide at behest of Turkey."
Jilani added: "Congress has passed
many resolutions condemning abuses against Native Americans and slavery.
It has never passed a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide.
That's why Ilhan Omar's explanation here rings hollow."
Other commentators were alternately perplexed and outraged by Omar's statement.
"Her explanation doesn’t cut it," said political scientist Ian Bremmer.
"Hard
to square this approach with her support for BDS. Not a good look,"
wrote former George W. Bush administration official Christian
Vanderbrouk, referring to Omar's support for the movement to boycott and
sanction Israel for alleged human rights abuses.
"This is a bizarre explanation," journalist Yashar Ali observed.
"All lives matter?" mused Alan Cole, a senior GOP economist on Capitol Hill.
"I'm
utterly confused by this," GOP political strategist Andrew Surabian
wrote, asking if Omar was "suggesting here that there is no 'academic
consensus' that the Armenian genocide occurred???"
The
New York Post's Brooke Rogers noted that Omar's invocation of term
"academic consensus" raised the possibility that Omar, like Turkey, was
seeking to dispute basic facts about the genocide.
Earlier this year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said nations accusing his country of committing genocide had their own “bloody past.”
Historians
estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed around World War
I, and many scholars see it as the 20th century's first genocide.
Turkey
disputes the description, claiming the toll has been inflated and
considering those killed victims of a civil war, rather than casualties
of genocide.
The nonbinding resolution passed 405-11 Tuesday.
Some
opponents of the resolution have advanced different reasons from Omar
-- arguing that formally recognizing the Armenian genocide risks
angering Turkey, whose relationship is crucial to stability in the
region.
But such apprehensiveness has waned with Turkey’s invasion of northeast Syria earlier this month following President Trump's abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region.
GOP Rep. Paul Gosar and Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson also voted present.
Speaking
on the House floor in support of the resolution, House Foreign Affairs
Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said the resolution “is an
important measure to set the record straight on the atrocities suffered
by the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in the early
20th century.”
"We know what happened in this dark period of
history. Between 1915 and 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were murdered.
This was a genocide — and it’s important that we call this crime what it
was."
There
have been no plans to bring the resolution up for a vote in the Senate.
A second resolution on Tuesday, imposing severe sanctions on Turkish
officials and prohibiting the sale of military arms to Turkey for use in
Syria, passed in the House by a 403-16 vote. Fox News' Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, accused the panel's Democrat chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, of coaching a Trump impeachment inquiry witness during closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill.
"I have never in my life anything like what happened today," Nunes, R-Calif., told "Hannity" on Tuesday, referring to the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.
The scene was unprecedented, Nunes said.
"I
mean, they've been bad at most of these depositions, but to interrupt
us continually to coach the witness, to decide... what we're going to be
able to ask the witness."
Nunes
slammed Schiff, D-Calif., for refusing to allow Republicans to not
yet call witnesses of their own, which he also said has never happened
to him in Congress.
"And, to see someone coach a witness, this isn't the first time that Schiff -- Schiff is very good at coaching witnesses."
He
said Schiff's staff previously met with the yet-unnamed Ukraine
whistleblower, again calling the entire impeachment inquiry process
under Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., "unprecedented."
In a fiery news conference earlier Tuesday, other GOP lawmakers said Schiff prevented a witness in the latest impeachment hearing from answering certain questions from Republican members.
Reps.
Steve Scalise, R-La., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told reporters that
Schiff shut down a Republican line of questioning toward Vindman.
"When
we asked [Vindman] who he spoke to after important events in July --
Adam Schiff says, 'no, no, no, we're not going to let him answer that
question,"' Jordan said.
Jordan went on to say that Schiff seemed
to be breaking his own rules for the hearings, implying the chairman was
acting almost as a "lawyer" for Vindman. Fox News' Tyler Olson contributed to this report.
Jared Kushner responds to questions during an interview with News Israel 13, Oct. 29, 2019. (News Israel 13)
CNN’s Scott Jennings once again took liberals to the cleaners on the Abrego Garcia case, the ‘Maryland man...
