CHAMBER'S TOP LAWYER JOINS JAN. 6 COMMITTEE: John Wood, who's served as general counsel and chief legal officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce since 2018, is leaving the business lobby after being tapped as the top attorney on the House committee probing the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) announced today. Wood, an alum of the George W. Bush administration and the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri will serve as the panel's senior investigative counsel and of counsel to Cheney, the lawmakers said.
— In a statement, Thompson and Cheney hailed Wood's hiring as a testament of the panel's lack of partisanship. "The Committee will continue to put politics aside to get answers the American people deserve about what happened and how to ensure it never happens again," they said. Thompson and Cheney praised his "impressive track record working inside and outside of government," asserting that "his expertise will enhance our efforts to investigate the events surrounding January 6th and understand what led to the attack against the U.S. Capitol that day." — The committee has requested hundreds of documents, including any internal communications on Jan. 6 related to a host of former Trump officials. They've also requested any notes summarizing former President Donald Trump's meetings on the day of the insurrection and for all documents sent to and from the White House Situation Room that day. The National Archives and Records Administration is passing records it finds to Trump's legal team on a rolling basis for review, POLITICO's Betsy Woodruff Swan reported this morning, which could force President Joe Biden's White House lawyers to make some tough calls over whether to reveal certain documents. BANKERS FIGHT BACK AGAINST ADMINISTRATION PUSH FOR IRS REPORTING RULES: Dozens of banking, business and finance groups fired a warning shot at House leadership over proposed bank reporting requirements the Biden administration is pushing to have included in House Democrats' $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend legislation. — "While the stated goal of this vast data collection is to uncover tax dodging by the wealthy, this proposal is not remotely targeted to that purpose or that population," the groups wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy today. The proposal from President Joe Biden would require financial institutions to give the IRS more information about inflows and outflows from bank accounts, in an effort to increase enforcement and recover more in uncollected taxes. The plan was left off House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal's menu of roughly $2 trillion in revenue raisers to pay for the package, which lobbyists are hustling to pare back. — After Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Chief Chuck Rettig appealed to Neal this week, the Massachusetts Democrat said he'd been in touch with the administration about their concerns and that they were determining a way to move forward "on reporting proposals that target sophisticated tax avoidance and evasion without impacting middle-class and working Americans." — The finance groups argued the proposal would create "significant privacy concerns" as well as "tremendous liability for all affected parties by requiring the collection of financial information for nearly every American without proper explanation of how the IRS will store, protect, and use this enormous trove of personal financial information." Citing those privacy concerns, they contended that the plan also "would almost certainly undermine efforts to reach vulnerable populations and unbanked households." — The letter was signed by more than three dozen trade associations representing various sectors of the finance and business worlds, including the Consumer Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, the Credit Union National Association, the American Land Title Association, the International Franchise Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, the American Hotel & Lodging Association and the National Association of Realtors. IF YOU MISSED IT THURSDAY: "A new conservative coalition led by former Trump administration advisers plans to launch an up to $10 million campaign to attack President Biden's economic package as it advances through Congress," The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports. — "The effort, set to launch Friday, is being spearheaded by the America First Policy Institute founded earlier this year by former Trump officials, as well as conservative organizations such as the Conservative Partnership Institute, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and FreedomWorks. Leaders of the campaign, called the 'Save America Coalition,' met Wednesday night at the Washington headquarters of the America First group located near the White House. — "They discussed plans to rally more than 100 conservative organizations and draw donors for advertisements and social media campaigns criticizing the Biden proposal in swing states and districts controlled by centrist Democrats." Among the former Trump hands spearheading the effort, per Stein and the policy institute's CEO Brooke Rollins — who led the White House Domestic Policy Council under Trump — are Larry Kudlow, Trump's top economic adviser; Linda McMahon, the former WWE executive who served as his small business administrator; and Russell Vought, Trump's OMB director. — Stephen Moore, a founder of the conservative Club for Growth and a former Trump campaign adviser, "is also helping lead the coalition through the Committee to Unleash Prosperity." He told the post that "a big part of conservatives' effort will be focused on slowing down the Democratic proposal — in part through encouraging activism at the grass roots level — believing that the 'the more we can delay this, the better.'"
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