Tag Archives: midterm elections

US

Jeff Zients to replace Ron Klain as White House chief of staff

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CNN
 — 

Jeff Zients, who ran President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response effort and served in high-ranking roles in the Obama administration, is expected to replace Ron Klain as the next White House chief of staff, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Klain is expected to step down in the coming weeks.

The move to replace Klain is particularly important for Biden, who has entered a critical moment in his presidency and his political future. As he continues to weigh whether to seek reelection in 2024, the early stages of a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents has rattled Democrats and emboldened congressional Republicans, who now hold the House majority and have pledged their own probes.

Biden decided on Zients after an internal search when it became clear that Klain favored Zients as his successor, a factor that played a big role in the president’s decision. Klain had tapped Zients to lead a talent search for expected staff turnover following the midterm elections, but that didn’t ultimately materialize after Democrats performed better than expected. Klain is now the most significant departure and is being replaced by the person he picked to help bring in new team members.

A source said Klain will continue to be involved and remain close to the West Wing. Biden’s core political and legislative team – which includes Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Bruce Reed and Louisa Terrell – will continue to advise him. Zients’ new role is being compared to when Jack Lew was Obama’s chief of staff and others, like David Plouffe, focused more on his political portfolio.

Additional political talent is expected to join for the likely re-election campaign, CNN is told.

In replacing Klain with Zients, Biden is turning to a consultant with more business experience than political background as he enters the third year of his presidency.

The decision to pick Zients surprised some internally given that there were differences in Biden’s and Zients’ management styles early on in the administration. But Biden was impressed with his job as the coronavirus response coordinator when Zients inherited what officials described as a “largely dysfunctional” effort by the Trump administration.

Another factor in the search was how this stretch of Biden’s presidency will focus on implementing the legislation enacted in his first two years, and Zients is seen internally as a “master implementor,” one source said. His operational skills were on display as his handled the coronavirus response and helped with the bungled 2013 launch of HealthCare.gov during the Obama administration.

Zients now has a closer relationship with Biden and with his senior advisers and multiple Cabinet members.

While Zients is not viewed as a political operator, his deep experience inside two administrations and his reputation for technocratic skill would likely serve as assets at a time when both are viewed as critical for what Biden faces in the year ahead. Still, he will be tasked with replacing an official who was a central force inside the administration – and someone with a rapport developed over decades with Biden himself.

Klain, who had long planned to depart the White House after Biden’s first two years, has targeted the weeks after the February 7 State of the Union address for the end of his tenure.

A number of top officials had been viewed as top candidates to succeed Klain, including Cabinet members and close Biden advisers such as Ricchetti, counselor to the president, and Dunn, the senior adviser with a wide-ranging strategy and communications portfolio.

But while Zients isn’t among the tight-knit circle of long-tenured Biden advisers, he’s been deeply intertwined with the team since the 2020 campaign, when he served as co-chairman of Biden’s transition outfit.

After the election Biden tapped Zients to lead the administration’s Covid-19 response effort as he entered office with the country facing dueling public health and economic crises. While Zients left that role last spring, he was once again brought into White House operations a few months later when Klain asked him to lead the planning for the expected turnover inside the administration that historically follows a president’s first midterm elections.

Zients was tasked with conducting a wide and diverse search for prospective candidates outside the administration to fill Cabinet, deputy Cabinet and senior administration roles, officials said, in an effort that would be closely coordinated with White House counterparts.

But even as wide-scale turnover has remained minimal for an administration that has taken pride in its stability in the first two years, now, the official leading the planning effort may soon shift into one of, if not the, most critical role set to open.

The White House chief of staff is a grueling and all-consuming post in any administration, and Klain’s deep involvement across nearly every key element of process, policy and politics touching the West Wing only served to elevate that reality.

A long-time Washington hand with ties Democratic administrations – and Biden – that cross several decades, Klain is departing at a moment that officials inside the West Wing have spent the last several months viewing as a high point.

Biden entered 2023 on the heel of midterm elections that resulted in an expanded Senate majority for his Democratic Party and the defiance of widespread expectations of massive GOP victories in the House.

The sweeping and far-reaching cornerstones of Biden’s legislative agenda have largely been signed into law, the result of a series of major bipartisan wins paired with the successful navigation of intraparty disputes to secure critical Democratic priorities.

Biden has made clear to advisers that the successful implementation of those laws – which is now starting to kick into high gear across the administration – is one of their most critical priorities for the year ahead.

But Zients will also inherit a West Wing now faced with a new House Republican majority that is girding for partisan warfare – and wide-scale investigations into the administration and Biden’s family.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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Arizona certifies 2022 election despite GOP complaints

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PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s top officials certified the midterm election results Monday, formalizing victories for Democrats over Republicans who falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged.

The certification opens a five-day window for formal election challenges. Republican Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor, is expected to file a lawsuit in the coming days after she’s spent weeks of criticizing the administration of the election.

Election results have largely been certified without issue around the country, but Arizona was an exception. Several Republican-controlled counties delayed their certification despite no evidence of problems with the vote count. Cochise County in southeastern Arizona blew past the deadline last week, forcing a judge to intervene on Thursday and order the county supervisors to certify the election by the end of the day.

“Arizona had a successful election,” Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who beat Lake in the race for governor, said before signing the certification. “But too often throughout the process, powerful voices proliferated misinformation that threatened to disenfranchise voters.”

The statewide certification, known as a canvass, was signed by Hobbs, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, a Ducey appointee.

When the same group certified the 2020 election, Ducey silenced a call from then-President Donald Trump, who was at the time in a frenetic push to persuade Republican allies to go along with his attempts to overturn the election he lost.

“This is a responsibility I do not take lightly,” Ducey said. “It’s one that recognizes the votes cast by the citizens of our great state.”

Republicans have complained for weeks about Hobbs’ role in certifying her own victory, though it is typical for election officials to maintain their position while running for higher office. Lake and her allies have focused on problems with ballot printers that produced about 17,000 ballots that could not be tabulated on site and had to be counted at the elections department headquarters.

Lines backed up in some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, though there’s no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted.

Hobbs immediately petitioned the Maricopa County Superior Court to begin an automatic statewide recount required by law in three races decided by less than half a percentage point. The race for attorney general was one of the closest contests in state history, with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 510 votes out of 2.5 million cast.

The races for superintendent of public instruction and a state legislative seat in the Phoenix suburbs will also be recounted, but the margins are much larger.

Once a Republican stronghold, Arizona’s top races went resoundingly for Democrats after Republicans nominated a slate of candidates backed by Trump who focused on supporting his false claims about the 2020 election. In addition to Hobbs and Mayes, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was reelected and Democrat Adrian Fontes won the race for secretary of state.

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This story has been corrected to show that Fontes ran for secretary of state, not attorney general, and that Arizona was once a Republican stronghold, not Democratic.

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What we know about Georgia voters ahead of Senate runoff

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CNN
 — 

For the past two years, the eyes of the political world keep turning back to Georgia.

And for the second time in two years, voters in this key state will choose their senator in a runoff election, which this time will determine whether Democrats expand on their 50-50 majority.

Early data shows voters are not tired of their civic duty.

Heading into Tuesday’s Senate runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, nearly 1.5 million Georgians have voted early after only about a week. Black voters have made up nearly a third of the early electorate so far, while more than a quarter of voters so far are under 50.

About 300,000 Georgians have voted early each day this week – setting records for the largest single-day early voting turnout in state history. Early voting for the runoff ended on Friday.

Georgians had only five mandatory days of early voting this year, compared with three weeks during the last runoff and for last month’s general election. All but 22 counties chose not to allow early voting last Saturday and Sunday as well.

Overall, 2022 midterm turnout was slightly up from the 2018 midterms but down more than 21% from the 2020 general election.

While midterm voters typically skew older and Whiter, turnout data from the Georgia secretary of state’s office shows that in 2022, midterm voters in Georgia were older and Whiter than they have been in the past four elections, including the 2018 midterms. Those voters tend to lean Republican. The fact that Warnock not only forced a runoff but also narrowly led Walker in the first round of voting last month suggests he had the support of independent and some Republican voters, political scientists told CNN.

“The key to Warnock was that according to the exit polls, he won the independent vote by a pretty big margin,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. “And that was enough to pull him through. In the runoff, I think he’ll need to do that as well.”

CNN exit polls of Georgia voters in the November election show that the share of independent voters shrank 4 percentage points compared with 2020. However, independent voters were 24% of the electorate, which Warnock won by 11 points, according to CNN exit polls.

A slightly larger share of White voters and smaller shares of Black, Asian and Latino voters cast their ballots in 2022 compared with Georgia’s previous three midterm elections and runoffs. The share of Black voters was the lowest of any Georgia election since the 2018 midterms.

A CNN exit poll from 2021 showed that Warnock won 93% of Black voters in Georgia’s last runoff election, a 6-point improvement from the general election held in November 2020.

Black voters’ share of Georgia’s electorate increased in the 2021 runoff election when Warnock faced Sen. Kelly Loeffler after neither took a majority of the vote in the 2020 general election. Black voters made up 28% of the Georgia electorate in that runoff, slightly higher than their share in the 2020 general election. Black voter turnout was highest when Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, first ran against now-Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, for governor in 2018.

Voters in the 2022 midterms were also older. Georgians over 50 represented 59% of the electorate this year, a new high since 2018. The share of voters under 30, meanwhile, shrank to 11%, its lowest point since 2018.

Exit polls show Warnock was able this year to sustain the improvements he made in the 2021 runoff election with the youngest voters and those in urban areas. He won 68% of the 18-24 vote in the 2021 runoff – a 16-point improvement over Democrats in the 2020 general election. He also won the support of 67% of urban voters in the 2021 runoff, 4 points more than Democrats’ share in 2020. Warnock won 69% of 18-24 year-olds and 68% of urban voters in last month’s general election.

Last month’s election was unusual in that more than 17,000 Georgians skipped the Senate race at the top of the ballot but did vote for governor.

“We aren’t entirely sure, but it is highly likely that those voters are probably Republicans,” said Amy Steigerwalt, a political science professor at Georgia State University.

There were also Kemp voters this year who crossed the aisle to vote for Warnock and then voted for the rest of the Republican ticket, Steigerwalt said. Kemp received 2.1 million votes, roughly 200,000 more than Walker.

The big question for this runoff is how Walker does when he runs on his own and without a chance of Republicans regaining control of the Senate, Abramowitz told CNN.

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US

Arizona county certifies election after judge’s order

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PHOENIX (AP) — A rural Arizona county certified its midterm election results on Thursday, following the orders of a judge who ruled that Republican supervisors broke the law when they refused to sign off on the vote count by this week’s deadline.

Two Republicans on Cochise County’s three-member board of supervisors balked for weeks about certifying the election, even as the deadline passed on Monday. They did not cite any problems with the election results. Rather, they say they weren’t satisfied that the machines used to tabulate ballots were properly certified for use in elections, though state and federal election officials have said they were.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbsfiled suit Monday, as did a local voter and a group of retirees, asking a judge to force the supervisors to certify the election, a process formally known as a canvass. Hobbs said she is required to hold the statewide certification on Dec. 5 and by law can delay it only until Dec. 8.

At the end of a hearing Thursday, Judge Casey McGinley ordered the supervisors to convene within 90 minutes and to approve the election canvass by the end of the day.

“I am not ashamed of anything I did,” said Supervisor Peggy Judd, one of the two Republicans who twice blocked certification. “And today I feel I must, because of a court ruling and because of my own health and situations that are going on in our life, I feel like I must follow what the judge did today.”

The board’s other Republican, Tom Crosby, skipped the meeting.

Two hours earlier, Supervisor Ann English, the board’s lone Democrat, urged the judge to order the board to immediately certify the election and not wait another day. She said Crosby is trying to stage a “smackdown between the secretary of state and the election deniers” at a meeting scheduled for Friday.

“I think it’s a circus that doesn’t need to have to happen,” English said. “So I’ve had enough. I think the public’s had enough. So I’m asking for a swift resolution of this if that’s possible.”

The vote allows the statewide certification to go forward as scheduled on Monday.

Hobbs, a Democrat who was elected governor in November’s election, had warned that she may have to certify statewide results without numbers from Cochise County if they aren’t received in time, an outcome that could have tipped the balance of several close races. The county’s 47,000 votes went overwhelmingly to Republicans.

The board members represented themselves in court after struggling to find someone willing to take the cases. The elected county attorney, who normally represents the board in legal disputes, refused to handle the cases, saying the supervisors acted illegally. The board voted hours before the hearing to hire a Phoenix-area attorney, but he was not able to get up to speed before the hearing and did not inform the court he was representing the supervisors.

Days before the Nov. 8 election, the Republican supervisors abandoned plans to hand count all ballots, which the court said would be illegal, but demanded last week that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results. On Monday, they said they wanted to hear again about those concerns before taking a vote on certification. A meeting is scheduled for that purpose on Friday.

There are two companies that are accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to conduct testing and certification of voting equipment, such as the electronic tabulators used in Arizona to read and count ballots.

Conspiracy theories surrounding this process surfaced in early 2021, focused on what appeared to be an outdated accreditation certificate for one of the companies that was posted online. Federal officials investigated and reported that an administrative error had resulted in the agency failing to reissue an updated certificate as the company remained in good standing and underwent audits in 2018 and in early 2021.

Officials also noted federal law dictates the only way a testing company can lose certification is for the commission to revoke it, which did not occur.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Phoenix sanctioned lawyers who represented Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the defeated Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state, respectively, in a lawsuit seeking to require hand counting of all ballots.

Judge John Tuchi, a Barack Obama appointee, agreed with lawyers for Maricopa County, who argued the lawsuit was based on frivolous information, and ordered the lawyers to pay the county’s legal fees.

The lawyers “made false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions” in their lawsuit, Tuchi wrote. He said the court will not condone lawyers “furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust” in the democratic process.

The lawyers for Lake and Finchem, including well-known Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. They told the court that their claims were “legally sound and supported by strong evidence.”

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This story corrects a previous version that said Mark Finchem was the Republican candidate for attorney general. He was the candidate for secretary of state.

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US

Rural Arizona county delays certifying midterm results as election disputes persist

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CNN
 — 

Officials in a rural Arizona county Monday delayed the certification of November’s midterm elections, missing the legal deadline and leading the Arizona secretary of state’s office to sue over the county’s failure to sign off on the results.

By a 2-1 vote Monday morning, the Republican majority on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors pushed back certification until Friday, citing concerns about voting machines. Because Monday was the deadline for all 15 Arizona counties to certify their results, Cochise’s action could put at risk the votes of some 47,000 county residents and could inject chaos into the election if those votes go uncounted.

In the lawsuit filed by the office of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – a Democrat who will be the state’s next governor – officials said failing to certify the election results violates state law and could “potentially disenfranchise” the county’s voters.

CNN has reached out to the supervisors for comment.

Arizona official rebuts Kari Lake’s claim about vote counting

The standoff between officials in Cochise County and the Arizona secretary of state’s office illustrates how election misinformation is continuing to stoke controversy about the 2022 results in some corners of the country even though many of the candidates who echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were defeated in November.

A crowd of grassroots activists turned up at a special meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to loudly protest that county’s election administration procedures during a public comment portion of the meeting after problems with printers at voting locations on Election Day led to long lines at about a third of the county’s voting locations. In a new letter to the state attorney general’s office – which had demanded an explanation of the problems – the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said that “no voter was disenfranchised because of the difficulty the county experienced with some of its printers.”

Disputes over the results have erupted elsewhere.

In Pennsylvania, where counties also faced a Monday deadline to certify their general election balloting, local officials have faced an onslaught of petitions demanding recounts. And officials in Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, deadlocked Monday on whether to certify the results, according to multiple media reports. Election officials there did not respond to inquiries from CNN on Monday afternoon.

In a statement to CNN, officials with the Pennsylvania Department of State said they have reached out to Luzerne officials “to inquire about the board’s decision and their intended next steps.”

On Election Day, a paper shortage in Luzerne County prompted a court-ordered extension of in-person voting.

Arizona, another key battleground state, has long been a cauldron of election conspiracies. GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and GOP secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, both of whom pushed Trump’s lies about 2020, have refused to concede their races, as they continue to sow doubts about this year’s election results.

Kari Lake won’t commit to accepting 2022 election results

Lake’s campaign filed a lawsuit last week demanding more information from Maricopa County’s elections department about the number of voters who checked in to polling places compared to the ballots cast. And Arizona’s GOP attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh – who, like Lake and Finchem, was backed by Trump – filed a lawsuit in the state superior court in Maricopa County last week challenging the election results based on what the suit describes as errors in the management of the election.

Hamadeh is trailing his opponent Democrat Kris Mayes by 510 votes as their race heads toward a recount. But the lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction prohibiting the Arizona secretary of state from certifying Mayes as the winner and asks the court to declare Hamadeh as the winner. A recount cannot begin until the state’s votes are certified.

Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director of All Voting is Local, said the drama over certification of the votes and the refusal by losing candidates to back down is part of an “infrastructure of election denial” that has been building since the 2020 election in Arizona.

“Those folks are going to continue to try and find fertile ground for their efforts to undermine our elections. They are not going to give up,” Gulotta said. “We had a whole slate of election deniers, many of whom were not elected.”

But their refusal to concede “was inevitable in Arizona, at least in this cycle, given the candidates. These aren’t good losers,” he added. “They said from the beginning that they would be bad losers.”

In Cochise County, the Republican officials on the county Board of Supervisors advocated for the delay, citing concerns about voting machines.

Ann English, the Democratic chairwoman, argued that there was “no reason for us to delay.”

But Republican commissioners Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, who have cited claims that the machines were not properly certified, voted to delay signing off on the results. Monday’s action marked the second time the Republican-controlled board has delayed certification. And it marked the latest effort by Republicans on the board to register their disapproval of vote-tallying machines. Earlier this month, they attempted to mount an expansive hand count audit of the midterm results, pitting them against Cochise’s election director and the county attorney, who warned that the gambit might break the law.

State election officials said the concerns cited by the Republican majority about the vote-tallying machines are rooted in debunked conspiracy theories.

The state’s election director Kori Lorick has confirmed in writing that the voting machines had been tested and certified – a point Hobbs reiterated in Monday’s lawsuit. She is asking the court to force the board to certify the results by Thursday.

An initial deadline of December 5 had been set for statewide certification. In the lawsuit, Hobbs’ lawyers said state law does allow for a slight delay if her office has not received a county’s results, but not past December 8 – or 30 days after the election.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, the Secretary will have no choice but to complete statewide canvass by December 8 without Cochise County’s votes included,” her lawyers added.

If votes from this Republican stronghold somehow went uncounted, it could flip two races to Democrats: the contest for state superintendent and a congressional race in which Republican Juan Ciscomani already has been projected as the winner by CNN and other outlets.

In a recent opinion piece published in The Arizona Republic, two former election officials in Maricopa County – said the courts were likely to step in and force Cochise to certify the results.

But Republican Helen Purcell, a former Maricopa County recorder, and Tammy Patrick, a Democrat and the county’s former federal compliance officer, warned that “a Republican-controlled board of supervisors could end up disenfranchising their own voters and hand Democrats even more victories in the midterms.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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US

Trump criminal probes will proceed — even as he’s candidate

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s early announcement of his third White House bid won’t shield the former president from the criminal investigations already confronting him as an ordinary citizen, leaving him legally and politically exposed as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination.

The Justice Department is pushing ahead with its probes. And with the midterm elections now mostly complete and the 2024 presidential campaign months away from beginning in earnest, federal prosecutors have plenty of time to continue their work even as Trump hits the campaign trail.

“I don’t think the department is going to hesitate as a result of Trump nominating himself and anointing himself as the first candidate in the 2024 election,” said former Justice Department prosecutor Michael Weinstein. “I just think they will see that as him trying to game the system as he’s done very successfully in the courts,” and they’re prepared for his “blowback.”

Trump enters the race facing federal investigations related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and into the hoarding of top-secret government documents at his Florida estate — plus a separate s tate probe in Georgia. The Mar-a-Lago investigation has advanced especially swiftly, with prosecutors this month giving a close Trump ally immunity to secure his testimony before a federal grand jury. Justice Department lawyers in that probe say they have amassed evidence of potential crimes involving not only obstruction but also the willful retention of national defense information.

It remains unclear if anyone will be charged, as does the timetable for a decision. But former officials say the best way to ensure the outcome is seen as above reproach is to conduct a by-the-book investigation showing no special favor or ill treatment because of Trump’s former high office.

“The public will have the most faith in what you’re doing, and you will get the most successful results, if you treat Donald Trump like any other American,” said Matthew Miller, who served as Justice Department spokesman under former Attorney General Eric Holder.

Current Attorney General Merrick Garland has suggested as much, saying last summer in response to questions about Trump and the Jan. 6 investigation that “no person is above the law.” Asked in a July television interview how a potential Trump candidacy might affect the department, Garland replied: “We will hold accountable anyone who is criminally responsible for attempting to interfere with the transfer — legitimate, lawful transfer — of power from one administration to the next.”

Investigating any elected official, or candidate for office, almost always invites political speculation. Justice Department protocol cautions prosecutors against taking overt action in the direct run-up to an election, but that’s more a standard convention than a hard-and-fast rule. And the 2024 presidential contest is two years away.

Still, it’s not easy to investigate a former president or current candidate. That’s especially true in the case of Trump, who spent his presidency assailing his own Justice Department and haranguing attorneys general he himself had appointed. He has already lambasted the FBI for searching Mar-a-Lago in August, using the episode to raise funds from supporters.

Now, with his candidacy official, he and his supporters will try to reframe the narrative of the investigation as political persecution by a Democratic administration that fears him for 2024.

In fact, one risk for Democrats is that Trump — who during his announcement Tuesday declared himself “a victim” — could galvanize his supporters anew with that argument. On the other hand, the results of last week’s midterm elections suggest he may be more politically vulnerable than many had thought, including in his Republican Party.

What about past investigations of a presidential candidate? There is a recent precedent, though under different circumstances.

In 2016, the Obama administration’s Justice Department investigated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state. Despite the efforts of the law enforcement officials who worked the investigation to remain above the fray, the probe became repeatedly mired in presidential politics — in ways that may not have been foreseen when it began.

Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch expressed regret over a chance encounter she had with Bill Clinton in the final days of the investigation. Former FBI Director James Comey was blamed for harming Clinton’s candidacy by making a detailed public explanation of why the bureau was not recommending charges and then for reopening the probe 11 days before the election.

David Laufman, who supervised that investigation for the Justice Department as chief of the same section now running the Mar-a-Lago probe, said there’s a “surreal disconnect” between the political maelstrom that accompanies politically freighted investigations and the heads-down mentality of a prosecutor determined to just do the work.

“Here we were, conducting a criminal investigation with national security undertones in a way that was practically splashed on the front page of every newspaper every fricking day,” Laufman said. “And all we could do was to continue to do what we knew had to be done — to obtain all the relevant facts needed to make judgments about whether it was appropriate to recommend criminal charges.”

He said he believed the investigators working Mar-a-Lago have been the same way, praising their professionalism amid pressure from the public and even concerns about their personal safety.

In the Clinton case, Comey has said he considered recommending a separate special counsel to direct the investigation, though he ultimately did not. The option of a specially appointed prosecutor who would report to Garland exists here as well, just as the Trump-era Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to lead the investigation into potential coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

It’s not clear how seriously Garland would consider that. A department spokesman declined to comment.

Politics aside, in making the decision whether to bring an indictment, much will ultimately depend on the strength of the Justice Department’s case.

“If the government’s case is exceptionally strong, I think the rule of law will have a predominant weight in the attorney general’s calculus,” Laufman said.

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Follow Eric Tucker at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

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More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump



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US

Mitch McConnell wins secret-ballot election to continue leading Senate Republicans

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CNN
 — 

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell has won a secret-ballot leadership election after days of finger-pointing over the Republican election losses, putting him on pace to become the longest-serving Senate party leader in US history.

McConnell defeated Florida Sen. Rick Scott, his first challenger in his 15 years atop his conference.

McConnell won the leadership vote 37-10-1, according to two senators. One senator voted present.

Senate Republican Conference chairman, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming formally announced the slate of GOP leadership positions following the elections, including that Republican Sen. John Thune would continue as whip.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines will replace Scott as the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm.

For Democrats, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that their caucus leadership elections will be December 8, according to a source familiar at the Senate Democrats’ lunch on Wednesday.

After a tense meeting Tuesday that lasted several hours – the first in-person meeting for the Republican conference since the midterms – Scott told reporters he planned to challenge McConnell for the top job.

“I’m running for leader,” the Florida Republican told reporters. “I’m not satisfied with the status quo and so I think we ought to have an option.”

He added: “I still think we ought to delay the election.”

Throughout this year, Scott and McConnell have had a long-simmering conflict over messaging, outlook and how to spend resources this election cycle. The two have disagreed over the quality of their candidates, whether to engage in GOP primaries, whether to put forward an agenda or keep the focus on President Joe Biden, and where to compete.

Wednesday’s vote comes after Scott, as well as a handful of conservative senators, called for a delay in the leadership elections until after the Georgia runoff, underscoring Senate Republicans’ frustration with the outcome of the 2022 elections. That effort to push back the vote failed during the closed-door meeting, though 16 GOP senators voted to delay the GOP leadership elections, according to a source familiar.

And while Scott has little chance of succeeding in his bid to be leader, his declaration is seen as a protest vote. He’ll become the first challenger McConnell has faced in his time as GOP leader.

During the closed-door hearing with his Republican colleagues, Scott engaged in a tense back-and-forth with McConnell where they criticized each other.

“Sen. Scott disagrees with the approach that Mitch has taken in this election and for the last couple of years, and he made that clear and Sen. McConnell criticized Sen. Scott’s management of the NRSC,” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told reporters about the exchange.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said he was eager to get past the divisions with his Republican colleagues after emerging from the closed door meeting on Tuesday and hold the leadership elections.

He said he believed Republicans’ focus should be on helping Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker in his December 6 runoff against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.

“I think the best thing we can do is get this behind us,” Cornyn told CNN. “Because you guys will keep writing about it for the next three weeks and it will distract from the Georgia runoff, which I think should be our undivided focus.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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Sports

Charles Barkley reacts to Kyrie Irving and Dave Chappelle – CNN

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  1. Charles Barkley reacts to Kyrie Irving and Dave Chappelle CNN
  2. Stein: Kyrie Irving ‘itching to get back on the floor’ but situation remains ‘fluid’ Nets Daily
  3. Charles Barkley Has Brutally Honest Admission On ‘Free Speech’ The Spun
  4. NBPA VP Jaylen Browns takes aim at Joe Tsai over Kyrie Irving ban: ‘It’s time for a larger conversation’ New York Daily News
  5. Mark Cuban on Kyrie Irving and Kanye West anti-Semitic comments – “You’d just assume they’re crazy and keep on walking” Basketball Network
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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US

Congress returns for lame duck with long to-do list

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CNN
 — 

Lawmakers are set to return on Monday after being away for several weeks campaigning for the crucial midterm elections.

They face a jam-packed legislative to-do list before the new congressional session begins in January.

With that in mind, Democratic leaders are eager to bring several bills to the floor for votes during the lame duck session – the period after the midterms and before the new Congress begins.

The busy agenda includes: Funding the government to avert a shutdown before the end of the calendar year, passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the annual must-pass legislation that sets the policy agenda and authorizes funding for the Department of Defense, a vote in the Senate to protect same-sex marriage and possible consideration of other key issues.

While the House is able to pass legislation by a simple majority, Democrats in the Senate face an uphill climb given their narrow majority. With a 50-50 partisan split in the Senate, Democrats lack the votes to overcome the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold – and do not have enough support within their party to abolish the filibuster, as many are anxious to do. Therefore, major priorities for liberal voters – like the passage of legislation protecting access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – are expected to remain out of reach for the party for the foreseeable future.

Democrats, who currently control both chambers, are returning with a new reality in the wake of Tuesday’s election they did not expect: Key races that will determine the balance of power in the House have not been called, and CNN has not yet projected who would control the House. While Republicans still appear likely to win enough seats to control the chamber, it would likely be with a narrower margin than originally anticipated.

On Saturday, CNN projected that Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada will win reelection, meaning the Democrats will continue to control the Senate once the news session of Congress starts in January. But with a runoff election set for Georgia’s US Senate seat set for December 6, the final make-up of the chamber won’t be known until at least then.

At a news conference Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of a busy lame-duck session, promising “heavy work” and “long hours,” though he declined to get into specifics, saying he first needs to talk to his caucus about their agenda.

Congress passed a short-term funding bill in September that is set to expire December 16, making funding the government the number one priority for Congress when they return from recess.

Because the legislation must be passed, it could attract additional measures that Democrats want to clear during the lame duck session. For example, additional financial support for Ukraine as it continues to defend itself against Russia. While that funding has bipartisan support, some conservatives – such as Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican who is expected to become speaker if his party eventually wins the chamber – are balking at the pricey contributions and are vowing to scrutinize more closely additional requests from the Biden administration, a dynamic that is dividing Republicans.

Democrats also want more funding for the Covid-19 pandemic, but Republicans are not likely to support that request. Democrats may also seeking more money for the Department of Justice investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Congress also has to pass the defense bill. Consideration of the wide-ranging bill could spark debate and a push for amendments over a variety of topics, including whether to punish Saudi Arabia for its recent decision to cut oil production.

Senate Democrats will also continue confirming judges to the federal bench nominated by President Joe Biden, a key priority for the party.

A Senate vote on codifying same-sex marriage is also on tap. In mid-September, the chamber punted on a vote until after the November midterm elections as negotiators asked for more time to lock down support – a move that could make it more likely the bill will ultimately pass the chamber.

The bipartisan group of senators working on the bill said in a statement at the time, “We’ve asked Leader Schumer for additional time and we appreciate he has agreed. We are confident that when our legislation comes to the Senate floor for a vote, we will have the bipartisan support to pass the bill.” The bill would need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster.

Schumer has vowed to hold a vote on the bill, but the exact timing has not yet been locked in. Democrats have pushed for the vote after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, sparking fears that the court could take aim at same-sex or inter-racial marriage in the future.

Votes are likely on bipartisan legislation that would make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, a response to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to block the 2020 election results, which led to the siege of the Capitol. It is supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. If the bill passes the Senate, it would also need to clear the House, which in September, passed its own version of the legislation.

Meanwhile, it’s not yet clear when exactly the nation will run up against the debt limit and it appears unlikely for now that Congress will act to raise it during the lame-duck session, especially as other must-pass bills compete for floor time. But political battle lines are already being drawn and maneuvering is underway in Washington over the contentious and high-stakes issue. Democrats are insisting it would be irresponsible to cause a damaging default over paying for bills already accrued. While Republicans are digging in and insisting that they will only approve a debt limit hike if Democrats agree to cut spending moving forward.

At his news conference Sunday, Schumer vowed to “look at” the issue over the next few weeks, but said he needs to talk to the other members of leadership and see where the makeup of the House ultimately lands.

“The debt ceiling, of course, is something that we have to deal with. And it’s something that we will look at over the next few weeks,” Schumer said. “I have to talk to the leadership first. We don’t know where the House is going to be.”

Congress does not need to raise the nation’s borrowing limit until sometime next year, but there’s been some internal debate over whether Democrats should try to raise before the end of this year, especially if Republicans wind up in control of the House.

McCarthy thrust the issue to the forefront with comments last month that echoed those of several colleagues.

“If people want to make a debt ceiling (for a longer period of time), just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, OK, we’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior,” he said in an interview with Punchbowl News.

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar summed up the busy work period ahead in an interview with “CNN This Morning” on Thursday.

“In Washington, we have a bunch of things on our plate, including getting the defense bill done with Ukraine right before us and the strides that (Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky) is making against Vladimir Putin,” she said. “On our plate is the end-of-the-year budget bill to make sure we get that right, As you know the Electoral Count Act, an effort that I’m leading with (Maine Republican Sen.) Susan Collins and (West Virginia Democratic Sen.) Joe Manchin and others, so we don’t have January 6 happen again. All of that is immediately when we get back.”

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Biden: The ‘Red Wave’ didn’t happen

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CNN
 — 

President Joe Biden is addressing reporters Wednesday after appearing to withstand historic and political headwinds in the midterm elections, staving off resounding Republican wins even as his presidency is now likely entering a new period of divided government.

The results, he said, are a sign US democracy is intact, despite coming under threat over the past several years.

“We had an election yesterday,” Biden said during a post-Election Day news conference. “And it was a good day, I think, for democracy.”

“Our democracy has been tested in recent years, but with their votes, the American people have spoken and proven once again that democracy is who we are,” he said, adding that “while the press and the pundits are predicting a giant red wave, it didn’t happen.”

“I know you were somewhat miffed by my incessant optimism,” Biden told reporters in the room, “but I felt good during the whole process.”

The results were neither the “thumping” George W. Bush described during his own post-midterms press conference in 2006 nor the “shellacking’” Barack Obama said Democrats endured in 2010.

Instead, the failure of a so-called “red wave” to materialize Tuesday night had Democrats, including those inside the White House, feeling enthused and vindicated following an election season where Biden’s political aptitude was questioned.

“While any seat lost is painful … Democrats had a strong night. And we lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic president’s first midterm election in the last 40 years,” Biden remarked.

“We have defied historical trends,” a senior Biden adviser told CNN. “It’s pretty extraordinary if you think about it.”

The results appeared more likely to prompt soul-searching among Republicans than Democrats, as former President Donald Trump teases an imminent announcement that he is running for the White House again. Many of the candidates Trump endorsed in toss-up races lost or were locked in contests that were too early to call.

Still, Biden and his team still face the prospect of a difficult two years of governing should Republicans seize control of the House of Representatives. The President’s agenda would likely be sharply curtailed without a Democratic majority. And Republicans have promised investigations into Biden’s administration and family.

Exit polls also indicated still-simmering dissatisfaction among voters at the country’s economic health. Around three-quarters of voters nationally said the economy is “poor” or “not good,” and the same share said that inflation has caused them severe or moderate hardship. About two-thirds said that gas prices have been causing them hardship.

Voters have a dour view about the way things are going in the country generally, with more than 7 in 10 saying they are “dissatisfied” or “angry.”

For the president, improving the country’s pervasive dark mood will be an ongoing challenge despite Democrats outperforming expectations Tuesday. Without a majority in the House, his tools to accomplish that will be more limited.

Biden spent most of his campaign season focused on economic issues, including areas he’d taken action to reduce costs. But he drew some criticism, including from some Democrats, for expanding his closing message to including abortion rights and a defense of democracy.

Heading into Tuesday, Biden advisers were prepared to defend the tactic and were prepared with historic data showing Democrats faring better this year than in previous midterm cycles, which typically result in losses for the sitting president’s party.

Ultimately, however, Biden is likely to avoid the finger-pointing and second-guessing. Even with the House losses, this year’s results are among the best for the party in power in recent memory.

By comparison, Democrats lost 54 seats in 1994, when President Bill Clinton was in office. And Obama’s first midterm election saw his party lose 63 seats.

Whether the results alter Biden’s thinking about running for a second term also remains to be seen. The president has said he intends to run for reelection, and members of his team have begun early preparations ahead of a final decision.

But a decision isn’t likely to come until next year after he has discussed the matter with his family over the holidays.

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