Josh Marshall
Let me share a few thoughts on the Biden special counsel report.
First off, this is another example of the universal rule: Republican special counsels are chosen to investigate Democrats. And Republican special counsels are chosen to investigate Republicans. It may not have been a great idea for Merrick Garland to have a two-time Trump appointee investigate Joe Biden. But here we are. Robert Hur totally slimed Biden with these gratuitous comments about his mental acuity and memory, referring to him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Even if you assume they are the product of a good faith evaluation they are still wildly inappropriate.
DOJ guidelines make clear that if you’re not bringing charges you don’t bash the subject of the investigation in your announcement (a la James Comey). You certainly aren’t supposed to affirmatively attempt to demean the subject of the investigation with clearly political attacks that aren’t even related to what you’re investigating. Hur might as well have called him “Fake News Joe Biden.” It’s really that transparent and that bad.
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Why Weren’t Presidents Explicitly Included in the 14th? 
I don’t know how or whether this has any relevance to today’s proceedings and ballot disqualification. But it’s one place where history provides some guidance as to why an amendment is written the way it is. First, I don’t think it makes sense at all that the disqualification clause doesn’t apply to the President. It’s a very over-clever semantic argument that is on par with the logic behind the “independent state legislature” theory: a hyper-literal focus on text without context which has the effect of producing an outcome no one could have intended. But — and this is a significant “but” — it is true that presidents were not what the authors of the language were most concerned about. And that matter of focus may have impacted how they structured the language.
Read MoreOur team will be live-blogging today’s SCOTUS Trump ballot disqualification hearing here. The hearing is scheduled to start at 10 AM.
I wrote earlier that I doubted Speaker Mike Johnson was in any trouble. Because the kind of people who fire GOP Speakers don’t think any of this clown show is a problem. I think this is obvious. But in case you had any doubt, Freedom Caucus dead-ender Clay Higgins tweeted this afternoon that far from being a clownish failure Johnson is more like an Iron Age hero walking right off the pages of Homer. “Mike Johnson is enduring withering attacks from every faction. Iron sharpeneth iron. He’s getting stronger.”
So there you go. Mike Johnson is likely just fine.
Is Mike Johnson Toast After The 72 Hour Herky-Jerky Rake-Stomp Parade?
A number of you asked me last night and this morning if we may be coming to the end of Mike Johnson’s speakership. After yesterday’s two big fails, is he almost done? In any normal universe the combined events of the last 72 hours would likely lead to Johnson resigning if not in disgrace then in some mix of humiliation and … well, resignation. But this isn’t a normal universe. It’s the 2024 House Republican caucus. So I don’t think he’s going anywhere. I’m not sure any of the key people even think there’s a problem.
Read MoreTruly remarkable. After a year of threatening, House Republicans finally voted to impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas. And they failed. It’s just basic vote counting. And they failed. Then their standalone Israel bill failed too.
I’m a little unclear on what comes next. Steve Scalise was apparently not there because of his on-going treatment for cancer. It was unclear whether Rep. Al Green would be there but he was. He was apparently wheeled in from the hospital. I’d heard suggestions that they’ll hold another vote. But unless I’m missing something adding Scalise’s vote won’t change the result.
Doesn’t really matter. It’s the pratfalls that are the most amazing part of this.
Late Update: Apparently one additional Republican flipped from Yes to No after it became clear the impeachment would fail. This is procedural move which allows the vote to be held again. It also means that the “real” vote was 215-215, rather than 214-216. Thus Scalise returning and voting Yes would put it over the top.
Okay, this is getting … well, interesting? It’s now 100% clear the border deal is dead. In my first post an hour or so ago it was 98% dead. The ambiguity has now been removed. That’s no big surprise.
What’s at least a bit surprising is the next move. Republicans are now at least saying that Plan B is to strip out all the border stuff and leave in the aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But the key to remember is that that is how we got here in the first place. Democrats were trying to move an aid bill and Republicans said no aid without a border crackdown. Democrats at first refused linkage but eventually gave way. Then they negotiated this border deal. Now Senate Republicans, at least for the moment, are saying they’ll go back to the aid bill they refused if it didn’t address the border.
LOL.
Read MoreNew Hampshire Attorney General John Formella announced today that Deep Fake voter suppression robocalls aimed at dissuading voters from voting in last months Democratic primary have been traced to a Texas-based firm called Life Corporation, owned by a man named Walter Monk. The calls used a voice like President Biden’s and told voters not to “waste” their vote in the primary, implying that you could vote in the primary or the general election but not both.
Monk seems to have a long and pretty sordid history of low-rent robocall type operations, but at least on first pass not a clear history of involvement in politics.
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Epic Senate Border Bill Post-Mortem/Wraithing Update
The big, big news of the morning is of course the D.C. appellate decision that Donald Trump has no immunity as a former president. But I wanted to briefly revisit the half-day life of the Senate bipartisan border deal that collapsed last night in the face of Trump’s demands.
There’s a bit more to it that I wanted to walk you through. Not a lot more. But a bit more. And those bits have some significance.
After the bill was released, House GOP leaders repeatedly insisted it was absolutely positively dead in the House. The very transparent aim of these statements was that they wanted their Senate Republican colleagues to kill it in the Senate. Because the truth is that it’s not at all clear it was dead in the House if it was allowed to get a vote. So the thinking from the House GOP was: you’re going to put us in a very tough position if you pass the bill and send it to us. So kill it in the Senate first. At least for now, that’s just what their Senate colleagues did.
Read MoreI noted below that we might know tonight where the Senate GOP is going on the compromise legislation they said they wanted. Well, it’s not even 8 p.m. And we know. They’re going to filibuster it. The explanation of the evening is that voting this week is too soon. They need more time. But of course more time is just to build opposition to it. Trump was able to shut this down pretty quickly. If anything it’s now turning into a secondary effort to show Trump’s dominance over McConnell in the Senate. But that’s a topic for another post. The White House now needs to shift gears and make this a central element of its campaign. There was a bipartisan compromise to crackdown on border crossings. It included lots of what Republicans have demanded for years. But Republicans killed it because Donald Trump told them to.
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