Leaders
of the House Democrats backed off the idea of immediately launching
impeachment proceedings against President Trump in an urgent conference
call Monday evening amid a growing rift among the party's rank-and-file members, presidential contenders and committee chairs on the contentious issue. Fox News is told by two senior sources on the private conference call that even House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters,
an anti-Trump firebrand, told fellow Democrats that while she
personally favored going forward with impeachment proceedings, she was
not pushing for other members to join her. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, D-Calif., and her leadership team were clear there were no
immediate plans to move forward with impeachment, Fox News is also
told. Well-placed sources said it was a spirited 87-minute call
involving more than 170 Democrat members, including House Intelligence
Committee Chair Adam Schiff and House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah
Cummings. "We have to save our democracy," Pelosi said, according
to the sources. "This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about
saving our democracy. If it is what we need to do to honor our
responsibility to the Constitution – if that’s the place the facts take
us, that’s the place we have to go." Pelosi asserted that more
investigations were needed: "We don’t have to go to articles of
impeachment to obtain the facts, the presentation of facts.” Waters'
hesitation and Pelosi's remarks signaled clearly that, for the time
being, any impeachment effort would struggle to gain steam. Just last
week, Waters, D-Calif., took a far more aggressive tone, charging that
"Congress’ failure to impeach is complacency in the face of the erosion
of our democracy and constitutional norms."
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said while she personally favored
impeachment proceedings, she was not pushing for other lawmakers to join
her. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Waters also has called Attorney General Bill Barr a "lackey," saying
he was not being "respectful" to Congress. Barr held a news conference
presenting Special Counsel Robert Mueller's conclusions and has referred
bluntly to the FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign as "spying," rankling Democrats even as he said the important issue was whether the spying was properly predicated. But
on the call Monday night, Waters took a more muted tone and said she
was simply saying what she personally thought -- not demanding
impeachment proceedings. Congress is currently on a two-week recess, and representatives are scattered across the country. The brewing fractures among Democrats were evident on the Sunday talk show circuit, as Schiff, D-Calif, told "Fox News Sunday" that the impeachment question presented a "very difficult decision" that would take "the next couple of weeks" to determine. “I'm
not there yet, but I can foresee that possibly coming,” Cummings,
D-Md., said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” House Majority Leader Steny
Hoyer, D-Md., said Democrats would be wise to instead focus on the
upcoming presidential election. “Obstruction of justice, if
proven, would be impeachable,” New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee, said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,”
adding his committee would “see where the facts lead us.” Nadler issued a subpoena on Monday for documents and testimony from former White House Counsel Donald McGahn, who resisted Trump's calls to fire Mueller, according to the special counsel's findings. On
the conference call, Nadler discussed the subpoena and announced that
McGahn will be the first witness in a new series of public
hearings based on the Mueller report and Democrats' other related
document requests. Nadler said the hearings will aim to provide
the public with a robust understanding of what’s at stake in these
matters and an opportunity to hear from the key witnesses who could
speak directly to questions of obstruction, abuse of power and
corruption that may have been committed by the president or his allies. Meanwhile,
prominent progressive freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.,
and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat running for
president in 2020, wholeheartedly embraced the impeachment push. Pelosi recognized the intra-party split in a letter to Democrats on Monday, ahead of the conference call. “While
our views range from proceeding to investigate the findings of the
Mueller report or proceeding directly to impeachment, we all firmly
agree that we should proceed down a path of finding the truth,” Pelosi
wrote. “It is also important to know that the facts regarding holding
the president accountable can be gained outside of impeachment
hearings.” Pelosi added: “Whether currently indictable or not, it
is clear that the president has, at a minimum, engaged in highly
unethical and unscrupulous behavior which does not bring honor to the
office he holds." During the call, Pelosi urged colleagues to read the letter carefully. Mueller's 18-month-long probe found no evidence the Trump team conspired illegally with Russians, and debunked numerous conspiracy theories that mainstream media outlets had advanced on the topic. Democrats quickly pivoted
to focus on whether the president had illegally obstructed the Russia
investigation -- a question Mueller chose to allow Barr, the Justice
Department, and Congress to address. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told "Fox News Sunday" that it was unfair for Democrats to expect that Mueller could ever "exonerate" Trump on obstruction. "You
do not apply a standard of exoneration to anyone," Giuliani told Chris
Wallace after saying the standard was "warped" and that the Mueller
report was full of "lies" told by disaffected Trump aides. "Whether it’s a president, an impeachment," Giuliani said, "you can’t exonerate. Exoneration means proving a negative." Fox News' Alex Pappas, Chad Pergram, Mike Emanuel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson spoke on “The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton” in
an interview that aired Sunday about proposed new regulations aimed at
making it easier for investors to take advantage of tax breaks for
investing in “Opportunity Zones” in low-income areas. “Policies
have been pretty much aimed at putting people into programs,” Carson
said, and now the Trump administration is trying to get poor Americans
“out of the programs and self-sufficient.” President Trump said
last week that 8,700 neighborhoods across all 50 states and U.S.
territories have received the Opportunity Zone designation and would be
eligible for the federal tax incentives he's proposed. “The entire island of Puerto Rico is an opportunity zone,” Carson said. “We are very concerned about the rural areas, too,” he added. Trump’s
proposed regulations were issued by the Treasury Department. They
sought to clear up questions that were keeping some investors from using
the incentives. The program was included in the $1.5 trillion tax cut legislation that Trump pushed through Congress in 2017. The new Opportunity Zones were set up to enable private investors to re-invest profits into designated areas. “They are going to invest that money somewhere,” Carson said. He noted private investors would do what they do because they “want to be successful.” As
White House officials have explained, investors in Opportunity Zones
could get tax benefits by deferring their capital gains taxes invested
in the zones until 2026. They also could receive discounts of up to 15
percent on capital-gains profits invested in the zones and would pay no
capital-gains taxes on investments in the zones held for at least 10
years. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a news conference to
announce the Trump administration's plan to designate Iran's
Revolutionary Guard a "foreign terrorist organization." (AP
Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The Trump administration is set to inform
five nations that they will no longer be exempt from U.S. sanctions if
they continue to import oil from Iran, reports said Sunday. Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo plans to announce the policy move on Monday, which
would no longer renew sanctions waivers for allies Japan, South Korea,
and Turkey. The other countries no longer exempt are China and India. The
waivers for sanctions will expire on May 2. The Washington Post first
reported on the move, and three sources confirmed the report to the
Associated Press. President Trump finalized the measure on Friday, according to the Post, in an effort to apply “maximum economic pressure” by cutting off its oil exports and reducing its main revenue source to zero. In
reaction to the administration’s move and expectations of tightening
supply, early trading on Monday indicated Benchmark Brent crude oil
futures rose by as much as 3.2 percent to $74.31 a barrel, the highest
since Nov. 1, Reuters reports. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Mueller report
is a 400-page, $35 million op-ed that amounts to an “impeachment
report” for the liberal media and House Democrats, argued Mark Levin on
his Sunday program, “Life, Liberty & Levin." ' The
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation into
Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election found “no collusion”
between President Trump and Russia. The Department of Justice released a
redacted version of the report in two volumes on Thursday. Levin
called the result a "pathetic joke of a report" that established
nothing the general public didn't already know and its findings didn't
warrant a "special investigation." “There’s
no collusion, says the Special Counsel. That takes one sentence. It
doesn’t take 200 damn pages. It doesn’t take $35 million dollars,” Levin
said, referring to Vol. 2 of the report. Despite the Democrats warning of a "Saturday Night Massacre" like President Nixon during Watergate,
President Trump never asserted executive privilege to prevent documents
or people around him from talking to Mueller. He was an open book,"
Levin argued. But after the report found no evidence of collusion,
the Democrats, who had been discussing impeachment since the day after
Trump was elected, pivoted to pinning obstruction of justice charges on
the president, Levin said. "This is an abuse of power by a
prosecutor. This is the only prosecutor in the entire country who writes
a report under justice department regulations, a report that is only
supposed to go to the Attorney General,
who then makes decisions about whether to release any of it. Or all of
it, because there’s no requirement for this to be released at all,"
Levin said. The
Mueller report is, essentially, Levin argued, "an impeachment report"
that was written for the "media and the "Democrats in the House of Representatives." “They
wrote it for CNN, they wrote it for MSNBC. They wrote it for Nadler and
Schiff and all the other reprobates. They wrote the report for them,”
Levin said. Levin
said the investigation "runs completely contrary to a civilized
society" and a "constitutional system," yet there is not a single
Democrat member of the House of Representatives or "so-called news
person" at any major outlet that appears to be concerned.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg
on Friday said that President Trump’s supporters were similar to Bernie
Sanders’ supporters because they both feel marginalized and want to
tear down the system. The comments came during a campaign stop in downtown Nashua, N.H. before a crowd of mostly high school students, according to The Washington Examiner. The
37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind. said that a sense of “anger and
disaffection” grows from neighborhoods and families who are struggling
to get by despite reports of a healthy economy. “It
just kind of turns you against the system in general and then you’re
more likely to want to vote to blow up the system, which could lead you
to somebody like Bernie and it could lead you to somebody like Trump.
That’s how we got where we are,” Buttigieg said. Buttigieg drew a distinction between himself and the 77-year-old Vermont Senator, saying that although he greatly admires Sanders, “I don’t have the same views on everything that he does.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing ethics questions after revelations the freshman lawmaker's office gave her boyfriend a congressional email account. The
democratic socialist waded into the issue in response to a tweet
alleging boyfriend Riley Roberts had been put on staff. The tweet
included a screenshot of an official House email address. Ocasio-Cortez
insisted that he was only given the email account so he could access her
calendar. “Actually this calendar designation is a permission so
he can have access to my Google Calendar. Congressional spouses get Gcal
access all the time,” Ocasio-Cortez
wrote, after political consultant Luke Thompson tweeted the picture
showing Roberts having an official account like other staffers on the
Hill. "Next time check your facts before you tweet nonsense." Asked
about the arrangement, David O'Boyle, the spokesperson for the Office
of the Chief Administrative Officer, told Fox News: "From time to time,
at the request of members, spouses and partners are provided House email
accounts for the purposes of viewing the member’s calendar." But Jason Chaffetz, former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Ocasio-Cortez' claims don’t stack up. "It’s
totally naïve and inappropriate – you wouldn’t allow it in most
companies, let alone the House of Representatives. There should be real
consequences,” Chaffetz told Fox News.
"It’s totally naïve and inappropriate – you wouldn’t allow it in most companies, let alone the House of Representatives." — Jason Chaffetz
“When
I was in the House, my scheduler would forward my wife my schedule once
a week. But you’re not allowed unfettered access. And he isn’t even her
spouse,” he added. “... It should be referred to the ethics committee
for further investigation.” Meanwhile, Thompson's tweet touched off a Twitter battle with the congresswoman's staff. Saikat
Chakrabarti, the congresswoman’s chief of staff, insisted that the
boyfriend isn’t on the payroll and that he’s not doing any work related
to the government. “He's not paid. We have no volunteers in the
office. He's not doing any government work. He can see her calendar just
like spouses/partners/family members in other congressional office,” he
wrote, adding in another tweet, “Spouses and partners normally get
http://mail.house.gov e-mail addresses for the purpose of getting
calendar access.” House
IT rules generally prohibit the use of “the House’s electronic mail
systems and resources” by unauthorized members, and only “U.S. House of
Representative Members, Officers, Employees, Fellows, Interns and
Contractors” with appropriate permission can use the system. Still,
O'Boyle cited the practice of sometimes allowing spouses access. Chaffetz
said that Roberts having email access could also create other security
issues and the matter should be referred to the Capitol Police for
further investigation. “Being given a password to get into the House computer system has other potentially problematic issues,” he said. Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not respond to Fox News’ requests for comment.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said while she personally favored
impeachment proceedings, she was not pushing for other lawmakers to join
her. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
