A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate work through Democrats’ loss in the Virginia gubernatorial race and what it means for reconciliation.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
How These Ultrawealthy Politicians Avoided Paying Taxes
This article was originally published in ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
As a member of Congress, Jared Polis was one of the loudest Democrats demanding President Donald Trump release his tax returns.
At a rally in Denver in 2017, he warned the crowd that Trump “might have something to hide.” That same year, on the floor of the House, he introduced a resolution to force the president to release the records, calling them an “important baseline disclosure.”
But during Polis’ successful run for governor of Colorado in 2018, his calls for transparency faded. The dot-com tycoon turned investor broke with recent precedent and refused to disclose his returns, blaming his Republican opponent, who wasn’t disclosing his.
Polis may have had other reasons for denying requests to release the records.
Continue reading “How These Ultrawealthy Politicians Avoided Paying Taxes”Dems Finally Making Real Progress On Reconciliation Impasse
In a flurry of statements following Senate Democrats’ lunch this afternoon, we finally saw some substantial movement on reconciliation negotiations — more tangible movement toward an actual deal than we’ve seen in months at this point.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that members had reached an agreement on the drug pricing provision in the bill, a puzzle piece that has been a sticking point for not just the typical holdouts, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), but also a few other members of Schumer’s caucus.
Within minutes of that announcement, Sinema released a rather snarky statement confirming she did in fact support the plan. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) put it, just minutes before Sinema released her statement of support, all eyes on are now on Manchin.
“Is this the last piece of the puzzle? Ask Manchin,” he said.
Follow our live coverage below.
Being a Whiny Little B Isn’t Good For Your Soul
Yesterday CNN headlined that President Biden returned to a Democratic “nightmare”. The Times Peter Baker said Biden was returning to a “different country”. There’s no doubt Democrats had a rough night. They lost a close governor’s race in Virginia, a state they have come to see increasingly as home turf. They also narrowly lost control of the state House of Delegates which they first took control of in 2019. And while Democrat Phil Murphy won in New Jersey, Republicans made a very close race of it, in large part by a big drop off in Democrats showing up to vote.
As I wrote Tuesday night, this isn’t a surprising result. The President’s popularity is underwater. Polls say the public sees the country going in the wrong direction – a reality regardless of whether you or I think it is an accurate perception. But let’s also get real: the incumbent President’s party has consistently lost these two governorships every cycle for more than 30 years. The one exception was Terry McAuliffe in 2013. Murphy’s victory in New Jersey sees the first Democrat reelected governor in that state in 44 years.
Continue reading “Being a Whiny Little B Isn’t Good For Your Soul”Russian Analyst Who Contributed To Steele Dossier Indicted For Lying To FBI In Durham Probe
Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who contributed to the so-called Steele dossier, has been arrested as part of the probe by special counsel John Durham. According to the indictment released on Thursday, Danchenko was charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI.
Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele had hired Danchenko as his primary researcher in compiling his famed dossier. Steele’s dossier broadly alleged that the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia in the 2016 election, but many of the specifics were unconfirmed and some were later debunked.
Danchenko’s arrest comes several months after Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the origins of the FBI’s 2016 Russia probe, secured an indictment of cybersecurity attorney Michael Sussmann, whose firm has represented the Democratic National Committee. Sussman was indicted for allegedly lying to the FBI about not working for anyone when he told the feds about allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
The new indictment alleges that Danchenko made false statements to the FBI in five separate interviews in 2017.
In Count 1, the indictment alleged that Danchenko was not truthful in an interview with the FBI on or about June 15, 2017 when he denied speaking to a person identified as “PR Executive-1” about the material in the dossier. PR Executive-1, who is not named in the indictment, had a long and ongoing involvement in Democratic politics which made their involvement in the dossier highly relevant and material, the indictment alleged.
Counts 2-5 allege that Danchenko lied to the FBI in four separate interviews – on March 16, May 18, Oct. 24 and Nov 16, 2017 – when he claimed to have had communications from ”Chamber President-1.” The indictment doesn’t name ”Chamber President-1,” but the Washington Post identified him as Sergei Millian, who was then the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Durham’s probe has long been controversial, seen as Barr’s politically motivated response to the repeated claims by President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI’s Russia investigation was a politically motivated hit job to sabotage his campaign and his presidency.
Read the indictment below:
Once-Wary Dem Now Supports Nuking Filibuster For Voting Rights Legislation
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), who previously withheld support for gutting the notorious filibuster, signaled a significant shift on his stance in the face of persistent GOP obstruction, particularly with voting rights legislation.
Continue reading “Once-Wary Dem Now Supports Nuking Filibuster For Voting Rights Legislation”Time To Update 130-Year-Old Law Trump Tried To Use For 2020 Theft, Nervous Observers Say
As then-Vice President Mike Pence hid for his life during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the lawyer who’d been advising Donald Trump on his efforts to steal a second term denounced Pence in an email, saying that he should have used a 130-year-old law to reject the will of millions of voters.
Continue reading “Time To Update 130-Year-Old Law Trump Tried To Use For 2020 Theft, Nervous Observers Say”Smartmatic Slaps OAN And Newsmax With Defamation Lawsuits
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
Pass The Popcorn
Smartmatic, the voting tech company at the center of Trumpland’s 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories, is now suing both OAN and Newsmax, two pro-Trump media outlets that gleefully trafficked in those conspiracy theories as the ex-president tried to steal the election.
- Smartmatic is accusing the outlets of deliberately spreading misinformation about the company in pursuit of pro-Trump viewers who’d given up on Fox News (after all, Trump whined repeatedly how Fox wasn’t sufficiently sucking up to him during the election).
- OAN was sued in federal court in Washington, D.C.; and Newsmax was sued in Delaware state court.
- Newsmax claims the lawsuit is a “clear attempt to squelch the rights of a free press.”
- The two new lawsuits add to the veritable avalanche of Smartmatic’s suits against various Trump cronies, including: Fox News, Fox Corporation, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro
- Dominion Voting Systems has already filed defamation suits against OAN, Newsmax, Fox News, Giuliani and Powell.
So it looks like these totally-not-panicked disclaimers didn’t work:
Dems Narrowly Avoid Defeat In New Jersey
Incumbent New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has been declared the winner in his re-election bid against Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli in a nailbiter of a race.
- Murphy won 50.2 percent of the vote to Ciattarelli’s 49 percent with 90 percent of the votes counted, according to the Associated Press.
- Murphy is the first Democratic governor in New Jersey to be reelected in 44 years.
- Ciattarelli has not conceded.
Manchin’s Takeaway From Virginia
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), one of the key holdouts on passing Biden’s Build Back Better plan, said yesterday that his takeaway from Democrats’ defeat in the Virginia gubernatorial race was–yet again–they need to pump the brakes on passing reconciliation.
- Manchin told Fox News last night that the lesson from Virginia was that his Democratic colleagues need to “kind of slow down and take a breath,” which was essentially the same take he’d offered earlier yesterday.
- Manchin was using the Virginia results to double down on his repeated push for a “strategic pause” on reconciliation.
More Than Half A Dozen Jan. 6 Rally Attendees Were Just Elected
At least eight Republicans who went to the pro-Trump Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse were elected to office on Tuesday.
- Three of them won seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. The other five were elected to local positions, including city and town council, in Idaho, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
- On the other hand, at least five candidates who went to the rally lost on Tuesday.
- At least 57 Republican state and local officials were at the pre-insurrection rally at the Capitol, according to the Huffington Post.
A New Grim COVID-19 Milestone
The U.S. has now reached 750,000 deaths from COVID-19 as of yesterday.
2 Dems Vote Against Confirming Rahm
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday approved former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s nomination as ambassador to Japan, but Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Ed Markey (D-MA) voted against him.
- Progressives have slammed Emanuel’s nomination, pointing to his handling of Black teen Laquan McDonald’s death–specifically the fact that the then-mayor refused to released footage of white police Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting McDonald.
- Merkley hinted at Emanuel’s shoddy civil rights record as the reason for his “no” vote.
- But Emanuel’s nomination isn’t dead thanks to the public support of a handful of Republican senators.
Must-Read
“He’s the youngest Chief in his First Nation’s history. Now he’s leading their fight against climate change.” – The Washington Post
Eating Hundreds Of Pizzas To Own The Libs
Disgraced Papa John’s founder John Schnatter told Bloomberg that he’s eaten 800 Papa John’s pizzas in the past 18 months to prove the quality of the pies has dropped after what he called the “progressive elite left” pushed for his ouster as the company’s chair.
- In case you forgot, Schnatter resigned in 2018 after using the N-word during a conference call.
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A View From Central Virginia
From a longtime TPM reader:
Continue reading “A View From Central Virginia”I live in Madison County in Central Virginia, about 80 miles southwest of DC. Charlottesville and Albemarle County excepted, this is industrial-strength Trump country. … Yesterday’s election unsettled me, a lot. Despite decisive wins across the board a palpable, consuming rage drives Republican energy here, a rage that mere victory will not sate.
‘Dems Are Doomed’ Punditry Floods Capitol Hill After Virginia Loss
Like clockwork, the takes are rolling in after Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe lost the Virginia governor’s race to Republican Glenn Youngkin. People’s hypotheses for why McAuliffe lost vary from Youngkin’s dressing up of white grievance to Democrats sucking at messaging to congressional gridlock to historical precedent to schooling amid a pandemic and beyond. But a general conclusion among pundits, bolstered by the extremely tight governor’s race in New Jersey is: this was a bellwether, and Democrats are screwed.
The biggest threat to Democrats in the immediate aftermath of this election is not that these doom-and-gloom predictions about the 2022 midterms will come true. It’s that congressional moderates, imbued with huge power due to slight margins in both chambers, will be shaken by the takes and distance themselves from the party. If they decide to throw up new roadblocks to passing Democrats’ two-pronged legislative agenda, they have the power to sink it — ironically, probably robbing Democrats of their best weapon against the political headwinds, President Biden’s dismal approval numbers and the omnipresent COVID-19 pandemic that threaten their future elections.
Some congressional Democrats are using the loss as further evidence that they need to pass the two bills as soon as possible to staunch the bleeding. Some are hoping that the grim night will light a fire under the slow-moving Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). We’re watching it all.