| | | | |  | | By Katherine Tully-McManus | | | With an assist from Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz
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Is Rep. George Santos in his Cruella de Vil era? | Francis Chung/POLITICO | SANTOS STEPS IN (ANOTHER) DOG MESS — You can’t (continue to) make this up. In another dog-related incident, embattled New York Republican George Santos was charged with theft in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country in 2017 after a series of bad checks were written in his name to dog breeders, Jacqueline Sweet reports for POLITICO. Just days after $15,125 in checks were made out for “puppies,” according to the memo lines, Santos held an adoption event at a Staten Island pet store with his animal rescue charity Friends of Pets United, according to the store’s Instagram account and a person who attended the event. The charge was dismissed and his record expunged after Santos claimed someone had stolen his checkbook, according to the court and the lawyer. The new detail comes the same day a group of Democrats, led by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), and including Reps. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.), Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), offered a resolution to expel Santos from the House of Representatives. But hold your horses: The resolution now goes to the House Ethics Committee for further action and expelling a member requires two-thirds of the chamber to vote in favor. The last member actually expelled from the chamber was former Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio) back in 2002. Another thing to note: Even though he might not serve on any committees, Rep. George Santos still has access to classified briefings like the one held Thursday morning in the House on the Chinese spy balloon – even though he says he didn’t go. FEC, triggered: The Federal Election Commission has taken note that Santos is already raising and spending money on the 2024 election and is asking him to declare by March 14 if he's running again, ABC New reports. The spending triggered an FEC requirement to have an active campaign in order for his primary campaign committee, Devolder-Santos for Congress, to spend and raise funds. Keep your enemies close: Two of Santos’ most determined agitators are fellow New Yorkers – Democrats Richie Torres and Daniel Goldman – who together filed an ethics complaint against him. Sam Brodey from The Daily Beast asked Santos about his home-state enemies and Santos claimed to not have met Torres until coming to Congress, but Torres remembers meeting him at New Member Orientation in 2020. (A “fun” quirk of New Member Orientation is that folks whose races haven’t yet been called get to attend. Santos was there before his race was called for his Democratic opponent.)
| | A message from Humana: 30 million people choose Medicare Advantage. With Medicare Advantage, members can see better health outcomes at lower costs. That’s one of the reasons why nearly half of the total Medicare population chooses Medicare Advantage. Learn more. | | | TGIF! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Friday, Feb. 10, where staff tea is piping hot. HUDDLE WEEKLY MOST CLICKED: Huddle readers were hungry to get a peek inside the Congressional Prayer Room where Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) officiated a wedding and posted about it. Close second was the Senate GOP video ahead of the State of the Union.
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Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) on Capitol Hill this year. | Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press | CHC IN DISARRAY — Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) fired her executive director Jacky Usyk after a little more than a month into the job, raising questions within her caucus about her ability to lead the influential group on Capitol Hill during this Congress. “Jacky is no longer with the CHC. We wish her well in her future endeavors. We do not comment on internal confidential personnel matters,” Barragán told us in a statement. Barragán has a reputation of being a strict boss who struggles with lots of turnover in her office, folks on the Hill told POLITICO. Her personal office ranked third for highest turnover rate of any House office from 2001 to 2021, according to Legistorm. @Dear_White_Staffers, an Instagram account popular with Hill staffers, first posted about Usyk being fired Thursday night and Politico confirmed the news shortly after. People on the Hill familiar with the situation pointed out Thursday that the House being on recess for the next two weeks might be good news for Barragán, who will continue to face questions from her colleagues about firing the senior aide in the caucus. And there are no other staffers employed by the CHC office, at this point.
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House Oversight and Accountability Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). | Francis Chung/POLITICO | TWEET TROUBLE — A senior aide to Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) is apologizing after his tweet mocking the bandana Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has used to cover his head during cancer treatment made the rounds among dozens of his Hill colleagues this week. Raskin is currently undergoing treatment for lymphoma. “I would not make light of or mock Congressman Raskin or anyone else’s cancer diagnosis. I deleted a tweet from my personal account because I realized people who don’t know me might think otherwise, and have taken it the wrong way,” Ben Kamens, communications director for Kaptur, said in a statement to Huddle. “I am sorry for any offense taken or harm caused.” Kamens’s tweet put Raskin's bandana-covered visage side-by-side with a screenshot from the TV sitcom “The Office” of Steve Carell playing “Prison Mike.” Some of Kamens' fellow Democratic staffers privately fumed about his Raskin tweet, which followed his move to Kaptur’s office last year after departing Rep. Chuy García’s office (D-Ill.) just after the congressman's official Twitter account used a slur for people with developmental disabilities. García’s office posted a statement at the time that promised the individual responsible would be “held accountable and appropriate disciplinary action will be taken” and Kamens offered his resignation from his role as digital director and deputy communications director shortly thereafter. Though he never publicly took responsibility for the tweet from García’s account, the Raskin tweet provided evidence of a pattern for some fellow Hill Democrats. One Democratic staffer who talked to Huddle on the condition of anonymity said they worry about the appearance that Kamens can keep rising through the party's communications ranks after demonstrating a “pattern of ableism." “This institution sent a message that we’re okay with that behavior,” said another Democratic aide. “No lesson was learned.” Kaptur’s office, beyond Kamens, did not respond to a request for comment.
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | McCONNELL’S KNIFE IS OUT — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ripped into Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and his 12 point plan on a Kentucky radio podcast: “This is a bad idea. I think it will be a challenge for him to deal with this in his own reelection in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any other state in America.” Scott’s plan includes a sunsetting of all federal legislation after five years, which would force Congress to reauthorize Social Security and Medicare over and over again. President Joe Biden, at an event Thursday in Florida, handed out copies of Scott’s plan to attendees after Republicans loudly complained during Tuesday’s State of the Union address when the president suggested some in the GOP want to sunset Medicare and Social Security. “Speaker McCarthy said Social Security and Medicare are not to be touched and I’ve said the same. And I think we’re in a more authoritative position to state what the position of the party is than any single senator,” said McConnell, who came out victorious after Scott challenged him late last year for the top GOP position in the Senate. FIRST IN HUDDLE: DEBT LIMIT LETTER — A group of nearly 140 unions, religious, educational and civic organizations and others are urging Congressional leaders to not negotiate or bargain for separate legislative items and to move stand-alone debt limit legislation. “On behalf of 139 organizations representing millions of Americans across the country, we strongly urge you to pass a clean bill to raise the debt limit without hesitation, to protect American families and our economy from a catastrophe that is both wholly manufactured and devastatingly real in its consequences,” write the groups, led by the American Federation of Teachers. Read the letter. CRAIG’S ESCAPE — Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) was punched in the chin and grabbed by the neck by a man in her apartment building’s elevator early Thursday morning. She threw her hot coffee at the suspect to get away, according to a police report of the incident. D.C.’s Metropolitan Police announced that “26-year-old Kendrick Hamlin, AKA Hamlin Khalil Hamlin, of no fixed address,” has been arrested and charged with simple assault. Sarah and Nicholas have more on the attack.
| | | | A message from Humana:   | | | FETTERMAN UPDATE — Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) did not have another stroke, according to a statement from his communications director Joe Calvello last night. “According to John’s doctors at The George Washington University Hospital, the results of the MRI, along with the results of all of the other tests the doctors ran, rule out a new stroke,” said Calvello. “He is being monitored with an EEG for signs of seizure - so far there are no signs of seizure, but he is still being monitored.” ARCHITECT OF RAGE — Two more lawmakers are calling for the resignation of the architect of the Capitol following Thursday’s contentious hearing that angered many on the House Administration Committee. Imagine getting this performance review: “Your inability to do your job brings a lot of anxiety to me,” Torres told the architect, Brett Blanton. Read more from your Huddle host and Jordain.
| | | LUNCHTIME — Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) kicked off what he hopes will be a bipartisan lunch series. Thursday’s restaurant: Talay Thai. His first lunch partner was his fellow first-term Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who picked the restaurant while he picked up the tab. Although the restaurant isn’t always known for the quality of its food (it’s at 3.5 stars on Yelp), Moskowitz gave it his endorsement: his meal of garlic chicken, mushroom soup and a Thai iced tea was “pretty good.” Luna, who hails from a ruby-red district on the other side of the state, got pad thai with chicken and a Thai iced tea too. According to Moskowitz, despite their ideological differences, the two talked about their experience as new lawmakers, partisan divisions in Congress and political shop talk. The goal wasn’t to solve all of their problems with one lunch, Moskowitz said, but “the whole idea is to get to learn about each other so that we can find common ground, whether now or in the future, and to show the American people that we can have vigorous debates, but that we can still be normal and go to lunch.” A Luna spokesperson said they hoped to work together on legislation protecting service members and share an interest in protecting the U.S. from China. Weird wager: Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) are making bets ahead of Super Bowl LVII between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs this weekend in Glendale, Arizona. Strangely, neither lives in the state their teams represent. Coons lives closer to Philly than either Pennsylvania senator (Fetterman is from the Pittsburgh area and Sen. Bob Casey is from Scranton) and Moran’s hometown is closer to Arrowhead Stadium than Columbia, Mo. where Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) lived when he was elected or the St. Louis area where Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) hails from. On the line? BBQ and beer. QUICK LINKS Welch Brings Public Defender View to Senate Judiciary Panel, from Madison Alder at Bloomberg Law TRANSITIONS Jen Curt is joining Rep. Maxwell Frost's (D-Fla.) office as legislative director. Curt was previously the director of government affairs for the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and is a Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) alum.
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | TODAY IN CONGRESS The House meets at 11 a.m. for a pro forma session. The Senate is out. AROUND THE HILL A quiet Friday.
| | | THURSDAY’S WINNER: Steve Finley correctly answered that our current ambassador to the United Kingdom, Jane Hartley, met her husband (one of the founding partners of BlackRock) when they were staffers in the Jimmy Carter White House. TODAY’S QUESTION from Steve: Who was the last Republican U.S. senator and the last Democratic U.S. senator to lose twice as an incumbent? The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Huddle. Send your answers to ktm@politico.com. GET HUDDLE emailed to your phone each morning. Follow Katherine on Twitter @ktullymcmanus
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