South-Carolina
House Republicans prepare to hold Attorney General Garland in contempt
The Republican-led House of Representatives is expected to vote Wednesday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, escalating a tug-of-war over audiotapes of President Biden’s interview with a special prosecutor.
That federal criminal investigation ended this year with no charges against Biden for mishandling classified information, in part because special counsel Robert Hur concluded a jury would likely view the president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Read the special counsel’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents
Top Republican leaders worked Tuesday night to count votes to ensure the measure could pass in the narrowly divided chamber. If Republicans are successful, Garland will become the third attorney general to be reprimanded by the House for defying a congressional subpoena. But the consequences are likely to end there, since Biden has asserted executive privilege over the tapes, giving Garland legal protection from any further investigation.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told NPR that he expected the House to approve the contempt resolutions and said he hasn’t heard any reservations about them from fellow Republicans.
Democrats pointed out that Jordan, who is a chief advocate of holding Garland in contempt, declined to cooperate with the House January 6 committee’s investigation in 2022. He publicly admitted that he was discussing a plan to contest the electoral votes in several states with the Trump White House. Jordan told NPR that he never told the committee he wouldn’t appear and maintained he negotiated with it. “This is different — Merrick Garland says you ain’t getting it,” referring to the audiotapes, adding, “There’s no negotiating whatsoever.”
He and other House Republicans argued Tuesday that the Justice Department waived privilege over withholding the tapes once it gave the committees the transcripts of the interviews with Biden.
Democrats and the Justice Department reject the premise of the contempt proceedings
The attorney general has said he engaged in extraordinary accommodation with lawmakers. Special counsel Hur provided five hours of congressional testimony about his findings. And the Justice Department turned over written transcripts of Biden’s interview, as well as correspondence with lawyers for Biden and the White House.
Garland sought to cast the contempt proceedings as part of a series of attacks against the Justice Department and its career employees by partisans intent on making political points.
“Disagreements about politics are good for our democracy,” Garland wrote in an opinion piece this week. “They are normal. But using conspiracy theories, falsehoods, violence and threats of violence to affect political outcomes is not normal. The short-term political benefits of those tactics will never make up for the long-term cost to our country.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, furthered that argument Tuesday in a hearing on the contempt measure.
“This isn’t really about a policy disagreement with the DOJ. This is about feeding the MAGA base after 18 months of investigation that have produced failure after failure,” Nadler said.
Nadler also maintained that the audiotapes of the president could be easily manipulated by House Republicans, pointing to a case of a witness who appeared before the panel last year that resulted in threats.
Asked whether Democrats will be unified against the contempt resolution, Rep Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, told NPR that he expected the “overwhelming majority” of Democrats to vote no. He called the effort “frivolous, unconscionable, unnecessary and un-American.”
Republicans say Garland must provide more information
But leaders of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees said they had legitimate reasons to demand the tapes of Biden’s interview, reasoning that it could help advance a stalled impeachment probe against Biden and assess the need for new legislation to protect sensitive or classified materials.
The tapes also would help make their case that Biden, 81, is losing his faculties, a pillar of the Republican case against Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
“If the attorney general wants to defy Congress and not produce the audio recordings, he will face consequences for those actions,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., declared recently.
Biden’s decision to invoke executive privilege not only insulates his attorney general from a criminal contempt probe but also prevents the audio from appearing in campaign ads.
“Quite frankly, the White House has every reason to be concerned about the audio being released, because it could be chopped up and used in various ways in a political campaign in an election year to make the president look and sound bad,” George Mason University political scientist Mark Rozell told NPR.
Biden blocks the release of recordings of his classified documents interview
The Heritage Foundation and several media organizations are suing for access to those tapes under the Freedom of Information Act, but it’s not clear they will meet with success before the November election.
Copyright 2024 NPR
(WPDE) — A social media post from U.S. Rep. William Timmons is drawing attention to a South Carolina election-law scenario that could shape whether some members of Congress decide to run for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s open U.S. Senate seat.
Under the timeline outlined, a sitting member of Congress could win reelection to the U.S. House and also win the open U.S. Senate seat on Election Day, Nov. 3. Because a person cannot serve in both offices, the lawmaker would have to choose.
If the member chose the Senate seat, the change would take effect when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. At that point, the person would leave their House seat to serve in the Senate.
Unlike a U.S. Senate vacancy, a U.S. House seat cannot be filled by appointment. Instead, a special election would be required to choose a new representative. Until that special election is held, the House seat would remain vacant.
Timmons said the temporary vacancy could matter because the House elects its speaker when the new Congress begins on Jan. 3. With Republicans expected to hold a narrow majority, Timmons argues that even one temporary vacancy could make it more difficult for Speaker Mike Johnson to secure enough votes to keep the speaker’s gavel.
The next step in the process comes Tuesday, when candidate filing for the special Republican primary opens. Filing closes July 28.
Observers will be watching whether the issue affects who files for the race and whether any lawmakers propose changes to the election process.
Less than 72 hours after the sudden passing of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, his sister was sworn in to finish his term.
Darlene Graham Nordone took the oath on Tuesday, saying it’s what her brother would have wanted.
Having served in the Senate for almost two and a half decades, Senator Graham was well-liked by his Republican colleagues, generally well-respected by Democrats, and well-known across the country.
Taking the oath on the Senate floor, Darlene Graham Nordone, the younger sister of Lindsey Graham, officially became his successor. A ceremonial swearing-in followed in the old Senate chamber.
Senator James Lankford (R-OK) prayed for Graham’s family Monday as he remembered his friend.
“He’s a person that loved his body, loved the country, and loved the people of South Carolina. And it showed,” said Lankford.
Senator Alan Armstrong (R-OK), who went through a similar selection and swearing-in process just a few months ago, told Bloomberg TV he had come to respect Graham during their brief overlap.
“People knew him for somebody that would speak his mind and was clear and convincing in his argument,” said Armstrong.
As a strong backer of Ukraine, one of Graham’s final acts was to get White House backing for a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill.
Greenville County budget passes with key funding shifts
Greenville approves $473M budget with $44.6M going to public safety, $27.5M to roads, $3.5M for Greenlink while cutting affordable housing to $1M.
South Carolina has been operating under a temporary spending measure for the past two weeks after a small committee of House and Senate members has yet to finalize the budget.
After another day of stalled discussions, Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, said lawmakers have three options to keep the government funded. One of those options is operating under a continuing resolution, a temporary funding measure that keeps state agency funding the same as the previous financial year, until next year.
The General Assembly’s budget conference committee, a six-member group — three each from the House and Senate — met for a brief budget discussion on July 14. The committee decided quickly to adjourn until 2 p.m. on July 15 after failing to make progress on a spending plan.
Conference committee members are struggling to come to an agreement on property tax relief and earmarks, which are budget allocations set aside for specific projects. The committee most recently met on June 30, the day before fiscal year 2027 was set to start, and decided to push its next meeting out two weeks to give staff the time to collect information on the main differences between the Senate and House budgets.
The committee reconvened on July 14, facing the same challenges as it did during the meeting in late June. Though the legislature has not finalized a budget for fiscal year 2027, state agencies are being funded at last year’s levels due to a continuing resolution.
However, the state will not be able to allocate funds for state employee raises and teacher salary bumps if lawmakers don’t pass a new budget.
“It’s important for the people of South Carolina to remember that government is open,” Davis said. “This is not a situation like in Washington, D.C. where state government is shutting down.”
Davis told his fellow committee members that he thinks they have three options: keep operating under a continuing resolution for the next year, pass a budget without property tax cuts or earmarks, or decide which earmarks can be removed to include some measure of property tax relief.
“Mr. Chairman, I think those are the three options in front of us right now,” Davis said.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Bruce Bannister, R-Greenville, said he thinks the state can have a budget and that relying on a continuing resolution is an “absolute failure of this conference committee to do their job.”
“In the next couple of days, we’re obviously going to be working hard,” Bannister said. “I’d like to do that in good faith.”
According to Davis, the House budget includes about $315 million in earmarks while the Senate version has about $130 million. He added that the Senate has $240 million in its budget for a property tax cut, which the House does not have.
The senator from Beaufort also said that there are rules in place that restrict how the conference committee can negotiate. He said for many of the earmarks, the committee either has to approve all funding for a specific project or no funding. The House also had not passed a property tax bill, limiting the committee to using a budget proviso to pass the funding.
“It becomes difficult for the House to agree to a property tax cut via proviso,” Davis said. “The rules constrain them in that regard.”
The conference committee will resume budget discussions on July 15 at 2 p.m. Davis said he hopes the committee can come to an agreement by the end of the week. The budget would still need approval from the House, Senate and governor before it is final.
Bella Carpentier covers the South Carolina legislature, state, and Greenville County politics. Contact her at bcarpentier@gannett.com.
-
California2 minutes agoCalifornia DMV orders 11,000 drivers to retake exams due to suspected cheating
-
Colorado8 minutes agoCPW implements voluntary fishing closures on stretches of the Rio Grande
-
Connecticut14 minutes agoConnecticut Technical Education and Career System under investigation by U.S. Department of Education
-
Delaware20 minutes agoDelaware man identified after fatal pedestrian crash
-
Florida26 minutes agoCyclosporiasis cases in Florida, US could be undercounted, health expert says
-
Georgia32 minutes agoCreated in a small Georgia town, a cup has become 1 of the World Cup’s biggest souvenirs
-
Hawaii38 minutes ago
Kilauea eruption’s Episode 51 begins
-
Idaho44 minutes agoIdaho AG warns Idaho renters about growing scam targetting home seekers
