Kamala Harris says she's 'all in' on Iowa -- despite campaign restructuring, layoffs

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.

Nancy Pelosi targeted in ethics complaint filed by 40 conservative groups

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

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New Jersey Democrat bucks House trend, says he likely won't back impeachment resolution

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 slams Joe Biden, claims he's been cleaning up 'messes' ex-VP left behind

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.

Ilhan Omar votes 'present' on bill condemning Armenian genocide

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.

Schiff 'interrupted continually' to 'coach' latest Trump impeachment witness: Nunes

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.

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