GOOD MORNING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Tuesday, July 11, where there’s nothing Washington won’t stand in extremely long lines for, including mustard-flavored Skittles. HOUSE GOP INVESTIGATORS AREN’T COUNTERPROGRAMMING TRUMP (YET) Former President Donald Trump is set for arraignment at 4 p.m. Thursday on the four felony counts in his third indictment. He’s expected to show up in person at Washington’s downtown federal courthouse, a short walk from the Capitol. Speaking of the Hill, we noticed an interesting move: House Republicans aren’t revving up any new investigative pushes to change the subject from Trump’s latest indictment. That’s a break from the full-fledged pushback that the House GOP mounted earlier this year against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg after Trump’s first indictment came down. (Reminder: Republicans already fired off letters about Smith's investigation in the lead up to his first indictment of the former president.) The Republican response in the 24 hours since Trump’s indictment also signals that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) colleagues aren’t quite bought into her calls to try to defund Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office over his indictment of Trump. Greene had gotten some backup from other prominent conservatives off the Hill on that. It’s still early, of course, and GOP investigators on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees could edge closer to Smith as Trump’s latest legal battle rages on. For now, though, House Republicans are essentially telling voters to look away from the growing list of charges against their presidential frontrunner — and toward the business dealings of first son Hunter Biden. Virtually all the GOP reaction since Trump’s indictment Tuesday night has focused on details about President Joe Biden’s proximity to his son’s business clients, as outlined in an ex-Hunter Biden business associate’s Oversight Committee interview on Monday. The big GOP get: One top Republican who has yet to publicly address Trump’s indictment is Mitch McConnell. The Senate minority leader said pointedly in a speech outlining his vote to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial that there is “a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being [held] accountable by either one.” We reached out to his office on Wednesday, but McConnell didn’t comment. — Anthony Adragna and Daniella Diaz CAP POLICE: ‘WE’RE PREPARED’ FOR ARRAIGNMENT SCENE Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger told reporters on Wednesday that his department has been actively preparing for Trump’s arraignment, along with other law enforcement agencies. That includes a couple of calls on Wednesday to coordinate. “We've all been working together in preparation for whenever – if the indictment in fact did happen,” Manger said at a media availability. “We're prepared for whatever.” That preparation may well come into play on Thursday, if the hundreds of people who gathered in Miami for Trump’s arraignment back in June are any guide. (For those keeping track, that was the former president’s second indictment.) — Nicholas Wu and Anthony Adragna SENATE DEMS GEAR UP TO PIN SHUTDOWN RISK ON MCCARTHY As House Republicans palpably struggle to get the votes for their own spending bills ahead of a Sept. 30 government shutdown deadline, the Democratic-controlled Senate is working pretty well with its GOP counterparts on bills that boast higher numbers. And if Elizabeth Warren is any barometer (our answer: she is), Senate Democrats are all too ready to point a finger at the House GOP for gumming up the works as the odds of a shutdown grow ever higher. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his team “seem to be running some kind of clown show in which they all dress up in costumes and lay out the craziest possible proposals they can that they know will never make it through the Senate,” the Massachusetts Democrat told your Huddle host recently. “If the House is determined to crash us into a government shutdown, there's not a lot the Senate can do to prevent that,” Warren added. “But right now, that's up to the House Republicans and Kevin McCarthy.” Translation: When lawmakers return to Washington next month with less than a month to stave off a shutdown, Senate Democrats are in no mood to give ground to McCarthy. The more Democrats sound like Warren, the less chance that House Republicans will find any appetite in the Senate for spending levels below this spring’s bipartisan debt limit deal. — Daniella Diaz
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment