Murphy, in State of the State, looks to 'build the next New Jersey' but pokes at DeSantis

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a term-limited Democrat with an eye on national politics, used his annual State of the State address Tuesday to sell his version of New Jersey after five years in office and draw contrast between the recent political chaos on the House floor in Washington and what happens in the Statehouse.

People “don’t want to see Washington-style dysfunction and chaos — and neither do we,” Murphy said near the start of his hourlong address to a joint session of the state Legislature.

Some national sweep was expected, Murphy is head of the National Governors Association and the Democratic Governors Association — perches others have used to run for a higher office. Murphy used the speech to elbowFlorida and its Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, saying New Jersey’s economic growth was outpacing Florida and “many of the so-called ‘business friendly’ states.”

“Some governors boast that their state is ‘where woke goes to die.’ I’m not even sure I know what that means,” Murphy said, referencing a phrase DeSantis often uses when describing his state.

But Murphy’s speech was not as nationally calibrated as DeSantis' was in his inaugural address last week.

Murphy also praised Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, who is vice chair of the NGA.

Murphy, a former ambassador to Germany who remains interested in foreign policy, opened the speech talking about the war in Ukraine. He praised “the bravery and strength of the people of Ukraine in fighting back against Russia’s barbaric aggression,” including four Ukrainian soldiers who were in the Assembly chamber for the speech as invited guests of First Lady Tammy Murphy.

Despite the pokes at national politics and international affairs sections, parochial issues largely ruled the day in the constitutionally required annual address that marks the beginning of the legislative session.

Murphy leaned heavily on talking points about “affordability,” making New Jersey “stronger” and “fairer” as well as efforts his administration has made to lower property taxes. This year, the governor added “safety” to his message, emphasizing his support for law enforcement and desire to combat crime as well as an aspiration to “build the next New Jersey” and make it “cool to be from New Jersey again.”

One of the longer sections of the speech was the governor’s plan to overhaul the state’s nearly century-old liquor law system. The new plan, first reported Tuesday morning in POLITICO’s New Jersey Playbook, would lift an existing cap on the number of licenses and allow municipalities to tack on their own local fees.

The governor also announced a deadline extension for his touted ANCHOR Property Tax Relief program allowing eligible residents to continue applying through Feb. 28. The program was one of the centerpieces of his 2022 agenda, but reports show only about half the state’s expected two million eligible residents have applied.

He also announced a plan, dubbed the Boardwalk Fund, to spend money to upgrade areas along the Jersey Shore. Murphy said he would unveil details of he plan during his budget address next month.

Murphy also promised to sign legislation to deal with car thefts, a crime that has become a major issue in the state and which he now calls a top priority.

The state will also roll out what the governor described as a “nation-leading” plan to make the life-saving drug naloxone available free and anonymously to anyone who walks into a pharmacy. The drug can treat an opioid overdose. The plan is to offer “anonymous and free access” to the drug, also known by the brand name Narcan, and could save countless lives, he said.

All of these issues will be batted around during an election year in which all 120 members of the Legislature will be on the ballot.

Tuesday's address was the first in-person State of the State Murphy has delivered since the pandemic, though he gave an in-person budget address last year.

The speech, Murphy's fifth State of the State since taking office in 2018, spent more time highlighting past wins than announcing new projects and programs.

Afterward, Democratic leaders offered something less than their full-throated endorsement.

Senate President Nick Scutari welcomed “the Governor’s continued focus on affordability and economic opportunity,” but said “we need to build upon the progress we have made in providing tax relief, affordable housing, job creation, debt reduction, credit upgrades and strategic investments that promote economic growth.”

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin said the "speech accurately captured the successes of the past five years.”

Both men committed to working with Murphy and their legislative colleagues to address policy priorities in the year ahead.

Senate Minority Leader Steve Oroho was not impressed by the speech. In a rebuttal address, the Sussex County Republican outlined some themes that his party hopes to use to retake control of the Legislature, where they are outnumbered 46 to 34 to in the Assembly and 24 to16 in the Senate.

Oroho faulted Murphy and the Democratic majority in both chambers for failing to “fix our broken unemployment and motor vehicle computer systems,” not doing enough to address “pandemic-related learning loss” in schools and signing a gun carry law which saw parts of it blocked by a federal judge yesterday.

The Republican’s remarks also nailed Murphy for double-digit increases in health insurance premiums for public sector workers and local governments.

“While they’re busy wasting billions on pet projects, they’ve failed to effectively manage the cost of benefits for hundreds of thousands of public workers,” Oroho said in a prepared speech meant to react to the governor’s address. “This year, that’s resulted in huge increases in health care premiums for local governments that will lead to spikes in property taxes across New Jersey.”

Last year, Murphy used his speech to praise New Jerseyans for their perseverance in dealing with the pandemic and pledged to sign an abortion rights bill, reaffirmed that he will not raise taxes this year and said he would send a plan to lawmakers to lower the cost of prescription drugs. He kept some of those promises, but his prescription drug plan has stalled.

But the governor ultimately viewed the State of the State as a chance to reflect as he enters the middle of the second term and heads into lame duck territory.

In contrast with other governors across the country, including DeSantis and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs who made education issues centerpieces of their inaugurals and State of the State speeches, Murphy did not spend any significant amount of time discussing education.

Without elaborating, he repeatedly asserted that “education is valued,” in the state and cited his administration’s total increase of more than $2 billion in education funding since he took office — an amount that still falls short of the constitutionally-mandated total required in the school funding formula.

This year’s budget address, which will be given in a month or so, will likely contain more announcements, keeping with Murphy’s use of the various major speeches he gives each year.

Daniel Han contributed to this report.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/7KADC4M
via IFTTT

Read More

Yellen to stay on as Treasury chief through Biden's term

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told President Joe Biden she will remain in her post for the next two years as the White House faces growing challenges including the need to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, people familiar with the matter said.

Yellen, whose decision has been the subject of internal chatter for months, agreed to a request from Biden to stay on in the administration's top economic policymaking post during a recent one-on-one meeting, said two senior White House officials, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss a personnel issue.

Speculation about Yellen's fate began circulating last year as inflation soared and the White House struggled to deliver a coherent economic message. Yellen also drew criticism for acknowledging that she had been mistaken in believing that inflation would be "transitory," a view that was shared by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and many others.

But in recent months inflation has eased, Democrats performed surprisingly well in the midterm elections and pressure to make sweeping changes on the Biden economic team waned.

People close to Yellen, the first woman to serve as both Treasury secretary and Fed chair, also said she had considered leaving for family reasons and because the Treasury job is highly political — and would become more so with Republicans in control of the House.

The question of whether she would stay has also held up other talks on possible lower-level moves on the White House team, administration officials have said.

“Janet is staying,” said one senior White House adviser. “So that’s settled.”

Another official close to Yellen said that while she weighed returning to private life, she has remained energized about the implementation of policies enacted during Biden’s first two years. These include hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits for electric vehicles and semiconductor manufacturers, and new money for Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement. She has also been the point person on the administration’s efforts to implement a global price cap on Russian oil exports.

One of her biggest fights will center on the need to raise the government's debt limit later this year. Some conservative Republicans are demanding steep spending cuts first, and they hold greater power in the House following concessions agreed to by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to secure the gavel.

“There is a lot to do and a lot of it is going to be very hard, and it’s good for the world that Janet is still going to be there to do it,” said the second official who is close to Yellen.

Yellen’s conversation with Biden about the job was first reported today by Bloomberg News.

Yellen, one of the world’s preeminent macroeconomists, joined the Biden administration in early 2021, as the initial economic gains from Congress’s pandemic-relief programs had begun to peter out and new Covid variants were pushing up cases across the country.

In choosing Yellen, Biden leaned on a well-known figure who was trusted and beloved by most Democrats, respected by many Republicans, acceptable to Wall Street and aligned with the president’s no-surprises approach. She was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate, then was instrumental in pushing Congress to approve $1.9 trillion in Covid relief spending, on top of the historic $4 trillion the government had already authorized.

But she also wielded less influence in the West Wing than her recent predecessors did in the job and sometimes found herself out of step with the White House, say people familiar with the matter.

Kate Davidson contributed to this report.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/katOUVw
via IFTTT

Read More

GOP races to suggest Trump equivalency in Biden-linked classified docs

House Republicans are racing to draw a straight line from newly discovered classified documents found by President Joe Biden's personal attorneys to the legal jeopardy enveloping Donald Trump over his own storage of top-secret material at Mar-a-Lago.

And Democrats aren't having it.

Less than 24 hours after Biden attorneys disclosed the November discovery of classified documents from his time as vice president, GOP lawmakers hustled to use their new House majority to launch inquiries into the matter — attempting to equate it to the circumstances behind last year's FBI search of the Trump residence.

Incoming House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday sought a national security damage assessment on the Biden documents, warning that the president may have violated two laws that the Justice Department cited in explaining its Mar-a-Lago search. But Democrats pushed back quickly, contrasting Trump's months-long refusal to immediately turn over his documents to the National Archives with the immediate return of the Biden-centric material by the sitting president's attorneys.

“From what I've heard so far, it seems like it's being handled properly," Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said. "It seems like they're all doing it the right way, unlike what happened with President Trump."

California Rep. Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic caucus chair, echoed that sentiment and slammed the GOP inquiries as "Republican hypocrisy at its finest. When the former president had 320 documents found at his personal residence, they said that ‘that will not be a priority.’ What President Biden did was disclose this to the Archives, let law enforcement know."

Biden's party argued that the handling of the matter — by his team, the Archives and DOJ — should increase confidence in the process. The Archives immediately referred the matter to the DOJ, just as it did when classified documents were discovered amid Trump’s files. And the DOJ quickly appointed a U.S. attorney to review the matter.

But House Republicans are eager to use their freshly gained investigative powers against the Biden administration. And the same Republicans who have clambered to defend Trump, called to defund the FBI over the search, or shrugged off the controversy about his handling of sensitive national security secrets, are now leading the charge to describe the Biden discovery as egregious.

“If then-Vice President Biden took classified documents with him, and held them for years, and criticized former President Trump during that same time that he had those classified documents … I wonder why the press isn't asking the same questions of him,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) asked reporters on Tuesday.

Cardin said he wasn’t surprised that Republicans were trying to argue that the two incidents are the same but “one person handled it right, the other person handled it wrong. … So, intent on criminal issues, particularly, [is] very important.”

The Biden White House immediately tried to emphasize the transparent handling of the records, which were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, while still being mindful of DOJ's process. And close allies quickly pushed back on GOP-led investigations, stressing the differences between Biden’s attorneys quickly turning over the documents and Trump’s refusal to cooperate.

Democratic talking points circulated on the Hill and inside the White House on Tuesday that describe analogies to Trump’s situation as akin to “comparing apples and oranges.” They also accused Republicans pushing for investigations into the matter of having “no credibility" and being "hypocrites," the same term Aguilar used.

“When former President Trump hid classified documents, the House Judiciary Committee thought it was a joke and House Oversight Chair Comer said that it was ‘not a priority,’” read the talking points, circulated by the outside group Congressional Integrity Project.

David Brock of Facts First USA, another outside group lending cover to the Biden White House, said in a statement that the GOP rush to investigate the Biden documents "is what we know to expect from the McCarthy MAGA House — the ink is barely dry on the corrupt bargain, and they're already running full speed into a false equivalency narrative designed to confuse Americans and protect Trump."

Trump’s refusal to turn over documents housed at Mar-a-Lago has loomed over his bid for a second term in the White House, and he now is facing an acute criminal threat from special counsel Jack Smith, who is probing the matter. House Republicans have warily defended the former president despite limited insight into the content of the documents or evidence that prosecutors have unearthed from Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage and witness testimony.

Some of the documents found at Trump’s Florida residence had some of the country’s highest security classification markings. And despite Trump’s frequent assertions, no evidence has emerged that he took steps to declassify the records before leaving office.

Additionally, the Archives tried and repeatedly failed to reclaim documents from Trump’s estate. It eventually had to refer the matter to the DOJ, which issued a subpoena to recover additional records. Trump’s resistance to that subpoena — and DOJ’s belief that additional documents remain unaccounted for — has led to concerns about willful retention of documents, rather than negligence, as well as the prospect of obstruction of justice.

Though much still remains unknown about the Biden documents, reports and statements so far indicate that the former vice president did not stash classified secrets at his personal residence and that his team immediately returned them without prompting from the Archives or the Justice Department. Initial reports also suggest that Trump possessed scores more classified documents than the number discovered at Biden's office, an important detail prosecutors scrutinize in criminal cases involving classified documents.

House Republicans and Senate Democrats are already taking steps to probe the Biden incident, though Democrats were predictably more restrained.

In his letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Turner warned that Biden could be “in potential violation of laws protecting national security,” including the Espionage Act and Presidential Records Act.

“Those entrusted with access to classified information have a duty and an obligation to protect it. This issue demands a full and thorough review,” he wrote.

Incoming Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) is also expected to send a letter to the Archives.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said he wants his committee to be briefed “on what happened both at Mar-a-Lago and at the Biden office as part of our constitutional oversight obligations” but drew a distinction between the two, based on what he knows so far.

“The latter is about finding documents with markings, and turning them over, which is certainly different from a months-long effort to retain material actively being sought by the government. But again, that's why we need to be briefed,” Warner said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), meanwhile, praised Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland for their handling of the situation.

“Unlike Donald Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, Merrick Garland is not acting like the President’s personal lawyer,” Durbin said.

Heidi Pryzbyla and Chris Cadelago contributed to this report.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/nXu2aUL
via IFTTT

Read More

Curious about George: House Republicans debate on Santos’ fate

House Republicans know George Santos is a problem. They're just not sure what to do about him yet.

The New York Republican landed on the Hill for his first term last week with a reputation marred by multiple public falsehoods about his past — behavior that conflicts with his party’s vocal campaign pledges to step up accountability and transparency, particularly among government officials.

The GOP conference is now deliberating over how to handle a member who’s been publicly ridiculed as a fraudster, including whether Santos should receive committee assignments. Some members are openly pushing to sideline him until internal investigations can dig through his campaign finances, and even basic biographical information.

“I don't have any historical precedent about what's appropriate here. And I do think that matters,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus. “In my mind, I wouldn't seat the guy until we have an investigation done. I think there are enough legitimate concerns out there about his behavior.”

Johnson added that while he has not spoken to Speaker Kevin McCarthy about the matter directly, he has raised it with other members. It’s not yet clear how much of the GOP conference feels the same way about Santos’ admitted fabrications, with much of members' attention still trained elsewhere. Before McCarthy's speakership battle, though, some current and former House Republicans made clear they wanted him distanced — particularly as some feared he may have violated federal laws.

Santos told POLITICO on Monday that he hasn't spoken to McCarthy about committee assignments yet, but that he expects to receive them like other members of the GOP conference.

Another member, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), told CBS on Sunday that it would be “very difficult to work with anyone who cannot be trusted.” She acknowledged: “It is a problem.”

The agita over Santos comes as McCarthy and his leadership team work furiously to move past last week’s speakership election theatrics and get to the work of governing. After 15 rounds of votes consumed the House GOP’s first week in power, Republicans are now forging ahead with setting up committees, prepping legislation and scheduling long-awaited hearings.

In a conference meeting on Tuesday morning, the mood was mostly upbeat as McCarthy and his deputies talked about their big plans for the two years ahead — from spending freezes and “balanced budgets” to symbolic floor votes on term limits and a sweeping tax bill that would eliminate all corporate taxes, abolish the Internal Revenue Service and create a national sales tax.

McCarthy has for weeks declined questions about how he plans to address Santos, whose support was crucial for the California Republican in a speakership election so tight that multiple Republicans needed to vote "present" to successfully hand him the gavel. And Majority Leader Steve Scalise acknowledged there are some “concerns,” but disclosed only that GOP leaders would tackle them "internally."

“Obviously there were concerns about what we had heard, and so we're going to have to sit down and talk to him about it," Scalise said during a press conference on Tuesday. "And that's something that we're going to deal with.”

Santos, who flipped a Long Island seat that was critical to sealing the GOP’s majority, has faced a cloud of questions after numerous reports revealed he had falsified much of his biography during his campaign, including the alleged schools he attended, businesses he worked for, and even Holocaust-surviving relatives. He has confessed to many of the reported fabrications.

More troubling for the GOP, Santos has also been accused of campaign finance misdeeds. A nonpartisan group, the Campaign Legal Center, recently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Santos had run a “straw donor campaign” that helped him evade campaign finance limits.

And two New York Democrats — Reps. Ritchie Torres and freshman Dan Goldman — filed their own ethics complaint against their Empire State colleague. The duo called on the House Ethics Committee to launch an investigation into whether Santos filed “complete and accurate” financial reports.

"The House of Representatives has an obligation to police itself, and this is just the start of our mission to hold George Santos accountable to his constituents and the American people," Goldman said in a statement.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/qcGxSsR
via IFTTT

Read More

Newsom lays out spending cuts as California budget swings from surplus to deficit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to cut billions of dollars in climate spending and delay funding of major programs to balance a $22.5 billion budget deficit if tax revenues don't rebound.

The $297 billion budget blueprint Newsom unveiled on Tuesday was a stark departure from the fiscal boom times California enjoyed as recently as last year, when an unprecedented $100 billion surplus that Newsom himself called “absurd” underpinned a record $310 billion budget. California has $29.5 billion less revenue this year.

The Democratic governor has proposed delaying $7.4 billion in planned spending and cutting items like a $3 billion payment to offset inflation.

He also proposed deferring spending billions of dollars on areas like public universities, transit, behavioral health, building decarbonization and watersheds. The budget tentatively slices some $3.9 billion that could be spent, if enough money materializes, on areas like housing, workforce development, and climate change.

Among the areas that could see the heaviest cutbacks or delays are climate change and transportation, with Newsom paring back billions in planned multiyear spending.

But Newsom is not yet proposing to uncork a budget reserve account that contains some $22.4 billion, and he is not predicting a recession this year. The Democratic governor also maintained his previous commitments to spend on ambitious programs like universal transitional kindergarten and healthcare for undocumented immigrants.

Therevenue reversal reflects the volatility of a tax system that leans heavily on the ultrarich. Tax receipts dipped sharply in the latter months of 2022, when the stock market plunged and capital gains revenue dropped.

“It’s an EKG and that sums up California’s tax structure,” Newsom said. “It sums up the boom-bust.”

The brimming reserve fund has California on firmer financial footing than during an earlier run of budget deficits. Voters created the fund in 2014 by passing a ballot initiative backed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. Voters have also enacted budget-stabilizing taxes on affluent Californians.

“Because of leadership and because of support from the voters, we’ve been able to capture a lot of that volatility” and “soften the edges of that volatility,” Newsom said.

But this lean budget cycle will test state lawmakers who have little experience negotiating from a place of scarcity. California has enjoyed a run of budget surpluses, with the exception of a projected 2020 shortfall during the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown that never materialized.

Those flush years enabled Democrats to achieve some major policy goals. While Newsom has rejected major ongoing commitments in past years, he has nevertheless committed to expensive items like expanding Medi-Cal insurance to all undocumented immigrants in California.

That program is estimated to cost $2.7 billion a year when fully implemented. Newsom is proposing $844.5 million toward that goal in the coming budget cycle, arguing prudence on other proposed spending allows California to do so.

“We’re in a position where we are today because we were not profligate,” Newsom said.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/NaZnXpq
via IFTTT

Read More

D.C. appeals court weighs its role in Trump libel suit

A District of Columbia court resisted efforts on Tuesday to draw it into a bitter legal fight between former President Donald Trump and New York writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room during the 1990s.

At issue before the D.C. Court of Appeals Tuesday was whether Trump was acting within his job as president when he denied the allegations in 2019 and said to journalists about Carroll: “She’s not my type.” Lawyers for Trump and for the Justice Department argue the comments fell under his presidential duties to answer questions from the press, and thus ought to be protected under the Westfall Act, a federal law that protects federal employees from liability in certain work-related incidents.

Carroll’s lawyers argue the comments went beyond the former president’s duties, saying Tuesday that Trump was acting with “personal motivation.” Should the court rule in Trump’s favor, it could have major implications for the power of the presidency, protecting any speech the president makes to reporters — even when that speech is false or libelous.

The en-banc oral arguments — which lasted around two hours and a half hours — were heard by all nine judges on the D.C. Court of Appeals, after the case wound its way from New York to Washington.

Last September, a federal appeals court — the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals — essentially punted the question to the D.C. court, which is the final arbiter on the meaning of D.C. law.

The D.C. judges, however, appeared hesitant to weigh in on the suit, repeatedly asking lawyers on both sides why the determination of Trump’s motivation for the comments should not be left up to a jury, and reminding them of their scope as essentially a state supreme court for D.C. “Why would you want our court to decide what the scope of the job of the President of the United States is?” Judge Catharine Easterly, an appointee of President Barack Obama, asked Trump’s counsel at one point.

Not all judges on the court made their opinions clear, and no ruling was issued Tuesday, as the judges seemed uncomfortable making a definitive ruling about Trump’s role without any fact-finding in the case. The appeal under consideration was filed before discovery, like exchange of documents and recent depositions by both Carroll and Trump.

The suit the appeals court grappled with Tuesday may no longer be the most serious legal threat Trump faces from Carroll. While her original suit alleged that Trump libeled her by denying the alleged rape and in other comments, in November Carroll seized on a recent change in New York law to file a second civil suit directly accusing Trump of rape and seeking damages for it.

Trump’s lawyers contend that the new law is unconstitutional, but the case is now pending with the same federal judge in New York overseeing the earlier libel case, Lewis Kaplan.

Tuesday’s hearing came a day after a New York federal judge delayed unsealing Trump’s deposition in the case.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/UVpE508
via IFTTT

Read More

Judge sentences 'Baked Alaska' to 60 days in jail for Jan. 6 conduct

A federal judge sentenced pro-Trump livestreamer Anthime “Baked Alaska” Gionet on Tuesday to 60 days in prison for his actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, calling his raucous conduct “shocking” amid the chaos of the mob.

U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden, a President Donald Trump appointee, said Gionet made a “mockery of democracy,” live streaming while he marauded through the Capitol, swore at Capitol Police officers trying to force him to leave and entered the private offices of two senators.

The 60-day jail term is relatively steep for the hundreds of misdemeanor defendants who have faced sentencing for their conduct at the Capitol. Many of those who simply entered and exited the building, without committing property damage or violence, have received sentences of probation. More than 900 people have been charged for their actions amid the Capitol mob, a range of criminal offenses that include simple trespassing to seditious conspiracy.

Gionet pleaded guilty last year to parading on Capitol grounds. But McFadden agreed with prosecutors that Gionet’s conduct stood out among other rioters for its brazenness. Just weeks after being charged with unrelated crimes in Arizona, Gionet came to Washington and live-streamed his trip to the Capitol, part of a DLive stream that also included a way for his viewers to send payments.

As he approached the building, viewers informed Gionet that Trump supporters had begun storming the building and were engaged in physical confrontations with police, resulting in pepper spraying. Gionet then urged crowds standing nearby to walk to the opposite side of the Capitol where the conflicts were occurring.

Once inside, Gionet entered the hideaway of Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), where he facetiously picked up a phone and pretended to dial other U.S. senators. He repeatedly suggested that he expected rioters to camp inside the building, and he said he expected Trump would be pleased that his supporters were fighting on his behalf.

It’s “pretty shocking behavior, sir,” McFadden said.

McFadden suggested that Gionet appeared to express no remorse for his actions. Though he didn’t address it, prosecutors had also emphasized that Gionet recently celebrated the fact that his case had been transferred to McFadden — who has given out relatively lighter sentences than other judges — from U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/a4buEx9
via IFTTT

Read More