Bennie Thompson: ‘I chose Liz Cheney over party’

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the man who for nearly 18 months anchored the House investigation into the events that led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, says he sees parallels between the attacks on his committee’s work and the skepticism levied at the Manhattan district attorney.

Alvin Bragg, a first term district attorney, made history earlier in the week when he announced 34-felony counts against former President Donald Trump. It is the first time in the nation’s history a former president has been criminally charged. At his arraignment in New York on Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Soon after those charging documents were made public, critics, including those who normally would be expected to support Bragg’s case, bemoaned the legal theories he is employing in pursuit of a conviction. As POLITICO highlighted earlier this week, Bragg’s case, which stems from hush money payments to silence a porn star from speaking publicly about an alleged affair, appeared to embolden Trump’s most ardent defenders.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Thursday subpoenaed a former prosecutor who worked in the Manhattan DA’s office — a move Bragg characterized as an “attempt to undermine an active investigation” and “an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation.”

None of this is a surprise to Thompson, the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.

“I expect nothing less from my colleagues on the other side,” Thompson said during an exclusive interview with POLITICO for The Recast Power List 2023.

“I've been in Congress almost 30 years and I've never seen a congressional committee attack a state official who's doing his job. Basically crossing the line – from Bennie Thompson's standpoint – intimidating an official not to do his job.”

In an 845-page report, Thompson’s own committee concluded at the end of last year that there is enough evidence for the Department of Justice to convict the former president on charges including obstruction of an official proceeding and assisting and providing aid and comfort to an insurrection.

In the interview, Thompson weighed in on the allegations that the myriad investigations Trump is at the center of — including two headed by special counsel Jack Smith at the DOJ and one by the Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney — are politically motivated. He also talked about why he opened the Jan. 6 hearings by connecting that attack to America’s long history of racism and slavery and explains the flak he received for picking former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as the committee’s vice chair.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Booker: I want to jump into our conversation starting with what happened in Manhattan (this week) seeing the former president into a Manhattan courthouse and be charged with 34 felony counts in connection to a hush money payment to silence a porn star. I want to get your overall thoughts about what this says about where we are in our quest to uphold American democracy.

Rep. Thompson: Well, I think the best phrase that we hear from some circles is: It proves that no one is above the law. In America, you can be President of the United States, but you are tasked with the responsibility of the rule of law, and when you don't do that, you're subject to the penalties and other things that are associated with it.

So I allow that process to work itself [out]. Clearly, a group of citizens, in the form of a grand jury, heard evidence and ultimately made a decision to come forth with indictments. Now we'll look at our system of justice in this country to see if, in fact, Donald Trump will be proven guilty or innocent.

Booker: I just want to note that the former president pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Now, obviously, the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, has to convince a jury that Mr. Trump committed these alleged crimes. But, as someone who worked on the January 6th committee, are these legal proceedings of a former president, someone who is a leading candidate on the GOP side, good for American politics? You’ve talked about nobody's above the law, but certainly there are allegations being levied on the right that all of these investigations, these legal probes, are politically motivated.

Rep. Thompson: Well, I expect nothing less from my colleagues on the other side.

Donald Trump is the titular head of the [Republican] Party. They have a fundamental right to defend that individual, and that's what they're doing. My concern is, in defense of it, they're attacking the rule of law, and the rule of law in this country is clear. We have separation of powers in our Constitution.

I've been in Congress almost 30 years and I've never seen a congressional committee attack a state official who's doing his job. Basically crossing the line — from Bennie Thompson's standpoint — intimidating an official not to do his job.

I think that's unfortunate.

The other thing associated with the comment is my work on January 6th.

Some of the conversation and vitriol that we're hearing, we heard before January 6th. It's very dangerous language. So before January 6th, people would say, "Oh, this would never happen in the greatest democracy on Earth."

Well, it did.

And it happened because there were certain forces at work. Those forces were orchestrated — based on the work of our committee — by, at that time, the President of the United States and some other individuals.

I would think that our committee made the case. We utilized primarily people who worked in the administration, people who identified with the party of the administration, but they chose patriotism and democracy over party. I thank them for that.

But even with that, some of the individuals who are talking now are very critical of people in their own party for coming forth. This is our great democracy, we have an opportunity to speak our opinion, but sometimes we have to be cautious of what we say because others are listening, others are watching, and they, in many instances, interpret it a different way.

Booker: Well, let me just follow up on this one point here. A CNN poll out this week indicated that 60 percent of those surveyed said they approved of the Trump indictment.

But when broken down by race, 75 percent of those who identify as a person of color approved of the indictment, versus just 51 percent of white respondents who said they approved of this indictment.

Why do you think there's such a wide gulf in how white Americans and how people of color view this indictment of the former president?

Rep. Thompson: Well, one of the things I've experienced over my political career is there's a fundamental belief by the majority of African Americans that they actually believe in our system of government. They believe in the rule of law. So whatever it is that they have to do to demonstrate it, they do it on a regular basis.

When elections go wrong, the majority of the Black people who lose elections don't act like Donald Trump and his people. They basically will go to court. If they lose, then they'll get their act together and come back next election.

Donald Trump has taken losing an election to the worst level possible, and that worst level is deny, deny, deny and, ultimately, … go into a system of violence.

I take myself, for instance. I've been in elective office for quite a while. When I first started, we had problems registering people to vote; we had problems having people go in polling places to help, even though it was the law. But at no point did we ever think about taking the law into our own hands. We made the law work based on what it said. And so I see that attitude right now in that CNN poll.

People of color really want this system of government to work for all the people. And so they will, by and large, defend it. But I see a lot of white Americans who are somehow intimidated because of this growing minority, and the language that Donald Trump is saying, and his supporters, that we have to “make America great again.”

Some of those code words are really creating havoc in the white community because of the gun laws that are being passed around the country. The underlying element in those gun laws is race. It's not Second Amendment. It's all about how we have to defend our communities, why we have to defend our schools, even though, by and large, those rationales for the defense are hollow.

And so I'm comfortable in saying, even in the south, racial bloc voting occurs more among whites than it does Blacks. Black people in the South have voted, historically, at a greater percentage for white candidates than white voters have voted for Black candidates. So we have made some of that adjustment, and I think that poll reflects the maturing of the attitudes in the Black community toward defending the system.

Booker: At The Recast, we focus on the intersection of race and identity and how it's shaping American politics. Part of the reason why you were selected by a committee of my colleagues to be on this year's Power List is how you placed race right at the center of the January 6th investigation.

In your opening remarks in the first committee hearing ... I'm going to read your quote back to you just to get your reaction to it because it was so powerful, it stuck out to me.

You said: "I'm from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I'm reminded of that dark history today as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021."

Please break down why you wanted to start the conversation about the investigations into the attack on the Capitol with race.

Rep. Thompson: Well, I think, as a country, we have to continue to reflect on our history.

Even though we are the greatest country in the world, there have been some issues associated with our growth and maturity that we can't overlook. So to remind people of that history is important.

I think it was symbolic that an African American chaired the January 6th Committee, [whose] ancestors were brought to this country in the belly of ships, who for a number of years, toiled, building public courthouses and city halls all over this country for free, even our United States Capitol.

What happened on January 6th was that sole reminder that, even though we are the greatest country in the world, we have to maintain vigilance in keeping it … otherwise, the potential for what occurred on January 6th could very well happen again.

So I wanted to frame it [in that context and] I chose Liz Cheney as my vice chair. I didn't have to. I could have picked anyone, but I think it was for the country. I chose Liz Cheney over party. And some of us, my friends, they took issue with it

Booker: Really?

Rep. Thompson: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

But it was, more or less, "Why did you do it? You were in charge. You could have done a lot of things," and I said, "Well, this was more than party. This was country."

And while my country has not always treated Bennie Thompson or my ancestors properly, I think there are some times you have to look beyond party and race to get to the next level, and so I've tried to do that.

But I can still be truthful in the process. I don't have to gloss over it, just be straightforward, and so my opening comments, truthful, straightforward. Some people might not [have understood] the place of it, but you have to set the tone for the seriousness of your hearing, and I thought that went a long ways toward establishing the tone.

Booker: I wanted to ask a couple of questions since you are home in your district right now in the Jackson area. One, before the end of the year, Congress voted on an omnibus, allocating about $600 million to address the Jackson water crisis.

I'd like to get an update on that from you about how that is progressing. And last week, President Biden was in your state, touring the devastation from natural disasters. If you could, give me a brief update about how the recovery efforts are going in that regard.

Rep. Thompson: As most of you know, the Jackson water crisis was an ultimate culmination of a flooding event on our water system that really knocked out everything.

But, as we started to look at it, there was a history of lack of state support toward the largest publicly-owned water system in the state. Part of that was associated with the fact that Jackson had become a majority African American city. And so, over time, that neglect led to a system that could no longer be maintained.

The flood that occurred on that system, however, allowed us an opportunity to call on the federal government to help. We had a disaster declaration declared, and, ultimately, we looked at the omnibus disaster package. That provided money for wildfires in the West and flooding in the West also, as an opportunity to do the same thing for Jackson, Mississippi. And that's what we did.

The initial installment is 600 million. Not enough. It'll take several years to spend the money, but the system, pardon the pun, was on life support, so we’re working through it. But, in order to work through it, we established a third-party manager who will run that system, and we are in the process of going through that and I thank everybody for their support.

Unfortunately, 10 days ago, a tornado went through five counties in my district. We lost 13 in the city of Rolling Fork, Mississippi. We're struggling. Those cities and counties, under the best of circumstances, were vulnerable. There's no public transportation. In two of the counties, there's no hospital. So we're challenged in that respect, but our friends all over the country have stepped up. But there are still some vestiges of inequity.

One is, the white kids attend an all-white segregated academy. Believe it or not, some of the resources for the community were sent to that all-white segregated academy where Black folk don't go, and so we had to turn that around.

The Biden administration has talked about equity and making sure that the response to whatever it is, education, housing, agriculture, is looked at through a colorblind lens. We fixed that.

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State Dept. should've done more to prepare for worst-case scenario of Afghanistan withdrawal, Blinken says

“More could and should have been done” by the State Department to prepare for a worst-case scenario in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his staff Thursday, stating that the agency he leads wasn't fully primed for the swift fall of Kabul and the Afghan government.

The secretary spoke to a group of officials in a hastily organized event at Foggy Bottom following the release of the White House’s after-action report on the Afghanistan withdrawal. POLITICO gained access to the private online session, during which Blinken alternated between chief consoler of the department he leads and Cabinet member defending the administration and his own conduct.

Blinken said the department was in the process of delivering its own review to Congress in the hour-long meeting. But he didn’t commit to releasing the report publicly, stating that he preferred the department look forward instead of creating a “fixation” on the past.

The State Department declined to comment on the private workforce engagement.

During his opening remarks, Blinken highlighted five lessons the department gleaned during the review led by Ambassador Dan Smith, which spanned the time period from January 2020 to August 2021.

The first was that State should have more urgently planned and prepared for a worst-case scenario in Afghanistan. A lack of planning muscle at the department — especially for the most dire circumstances — has long been a complaint of some U.S. diplomats.

The department didn’t foresee the Afghan government’s rapid collapse as the Taliban swiftly took over the country. “This was seen as a very low probability, but obviously, potentially very high impact event and more could and should have been done to prepare for it,” Blinken said.

Another was that State’s own contingency plans were “inhibited” by a concern that such open preparation “might send the wrong signal to Afghans and to the government that we'd lost confidence in it and precipitate exactly what we hoped to prevent, which was its collapse.”

Other findings included a lack of clear authority of who led the evacuation operation, “competing and conflicting guidance” from Washington on evacuation priorities and a lack of clear tracking of Americans in Afghanistan.

“Even though there were things that we got right, things that we got wrong, things that we could do better, it's really important to me that no matter what, this country knows and appreciates the fact that you all served with incredible dedication and incredible distinction,” Blinken said.

The secretary then faced questions from the in-person and online audiences, some of whom interrogated the handling of the withdrawal and treatment of officials upon return from a brutal assignment.

One person asked whether Blinken would provide Congress with a copy of a July 2021 dissent cable that warned of Kabul’s collapse following an American military withdrawal. House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) subpoenaed the State Department for the document.

Blinken said he likely would not do so, adding that handing over the cable would have a “chilling effect” on speaking truth to power within the department. Engaging in dissent “is a vital principle that we need to uphold,” Blinken said to applause.

“This principle of protecting that channel overrides other considerations that are real and relevant in terms of making the cable available."

The dissent channel is a long-standing official avenue for State Department employees to voice alternative opinions on policy and other matters. The submissions are generally kept private to allow people to feel free in offering what can be unpopular views.

Toward the end of the session, a woman urged Blinken to release the after-action report so that State and U.S. government officials — as well as the American public — could have a chance to review its contents.

Not releasing the report leads to a sense of “disillusionment” within the department, especially those who were in Kabul during the withdrawal, she said, because it feels “like there’s more concern about blowback than interest in being transparent.”

Blinken said one reason he wanted to keep the report under wraps was so others couldn’t “see some of the vulnerabilities and deficiencies that we have, which is information that would not be good to share in a broad way, even as we work, of course, to correct those.”

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

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Former Michigan House speaker charged with accepting bribes for cannabis licenses

Rick Johnson, a former Republican Michigan House speaker turned cannabis regulator, received more than $110,000 in bribes in exchange for supporting companies seeking medical marijuana licenses, alleges a federal charging document filed in federal district court Thursday.

Johnson was charged alongside three defendants: John Dalaly, a business owner charged with paying bribes; and Brian Pierce and Vincent Brown, lobbyists charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.

All four defendants signed plea deals admitting guilt to the charges.

“[The marijuana industry has] been held out as an equalizing opportunity,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten said at a press conference Thursday. “Yet what we’ve learned today is that one of its key leaders … acted corruptly and did so at a moment that mattered most for those who want to get ahead in this industry.”

The background: Johnson served as a state representative from 1999 to 2004, including three years as House speaker. After leaving office, he ran a lobbying firm in Lansing, before serving as the chair of the Michigan marijuana licensing board from 2017 to 2019, according to court documents.

Johnson was “at the heart of this corrupt scheme,” Totten said, outlining cash payments and other perks like private chartered flights through Dalaly’s companies.

The investigation, which started in 2017, was spearheaded by the FBI.

“Rooting out corruption is exceptionally difficult,” FBI special agent Jim Tarasca told reporters. Tarasca thanked forensic accountants and computer forensic examiners who helped determine the money trail and digital evidence to support the charges.

For years, the FBI has been warning states about the threat of public corruption posed by the cannabis industry. Local officials have been charged with similar crimes from California to Massachusetts, and corruption allegations targeting state officials in Arkansas and Missouri have been swirling for years.

More details: Dalaly operated a company that was seeking a medical marijuana license from the board. Pierce and Brown lobbied on behalf of another company that was seeking a license. Johnson not only voted in favor of those companies obtaining licenses, but also provided “valuable non-public information about the anticipated rules” surrounding the medical marijuana program, court documents allege.

Pierce and Brown attempted to hide payments to Johnson by funneling them through various companies that Johnson controlled, Totten explained. These payments came out of their client’s retainer fees, according to court documents.

David Griem, an attorney for Brown, said his client cooperated with the FBI “like a good citizen” before even hiring a lawyer and that he didn’t “know any of the big fish in this case.”

Attorneys for the other defendants did not immediately return requests for comment.

What’s next: All four defendants are expected to be arraigned and have plea hearings in the next one to two weeks, Totten said.

The investigation is ongoing, and Tarasca asked any members of the public who have information related to the charges to contact the FBI.

The four defendants pledged to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.

Johnson and Dalaly face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

In his plea deal, Johnson agreed to forfeit the $110,000 in bribes and the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed not to oppose his request for a reduction in offense level, which would impact his sentencing.

Pierce and Brown face a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

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The Trump Cable News Coverage Was Good, Actually

A minor sidebar to the Donald Trump arraignment on Tuesday was a chorus of raspberries from members of the press complaining about the overload of coverage by cable news.

“The Trump Show is back,” the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer wrote, criticizing “the minute-by-minute broadcasting of his private plane arriving in New York” and “blanket coverage of his speech.” The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi rang the same bell. “On a day the news media constantly described as ‘historic,’ it didn’t actually look like much,” he wrote. My former boss Susan Glasser, now at the New Yorker, went to Twitter to heave her scorn on the spectacle: “Worn out already by breathless incremental coverage of Trump today: He’s walking! He might talk, oh he didn’t talk! He’s in a motorcade, it’s x cars long! Seriously???” New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo joined her: “ok, person sitting with me in the studio, tell us what’s happening in the courtroom now. OK, what about now? How about now? What is he thinking now? Where’s the judge sitting? OK, what’s happening now?” Former CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter called the coverage “interminable.”

That the coverage was monotonous, tail-chasing, incremental, repetitive and droning cannot be denied. The ratio of reportable news to airtime might have broken the record at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Some segments made Andy Warhol’s film Empire — a single, unchanging, eight-hour view of the Empire State Building — look like a riveting drama in comparison as the reporters and commentators struggled to find something noteworthy or original to say.

But what the critics overlooked was that cable news coverage isn’t supposed to be viewed nonstop like a news version of Empire — the way most of them were watching — but sporadically. That’s especially true of dominant stories like the arraignment of a former president who happens to be a candidate for reelection. That the story was news, nobody will deny. Every newspaper in the country put the Trump arraignment on Page One above the fold and published supplementary pieces galore about the legal and political ramifications of the criminal charge, yet you don’t hear anybody talking about print overkill.

Cable news was designed from its beginning in 1980, when Ted Turner started CNN, to deliver saturation coverage of major breaking news events like elections, catastrophic weather, wars, riots, school shootings, major criminal trials, impeachments, and now, arraignments like Trump’s, as they happen. When a big story breaks, the cable networks expect — rightly — that casual viewers beyond the core audience will tune in solely to learn the latest. These viewers come in waves, wanting to partake, however distantly, in the story that’s dominating the news. They tune in until their curiosity is sated and then tune out as other viewers arrive.

Because the networks understand that their audience is cycling through, they do their best to find new ways to keep telling it and to have something to share, even if it’s a kind of rerun when new viewers join. This system isn’t perfect. Often, when there’s no new breaking news to report, the reporters and commentators “dribble,” that is, keeping the news ball moving but not taking any shots because there are no shots to take. But even dribbling can be defended if it serves incoming viewers.

Cable news producers never expected anybody to watch 12 hours straight, and practically nobody does, just like nobody read every story the New York Times published about the Trump arraignment. The last time the Pew Research Center analyzed the cable news audience, it found the average viewer tunes in for only 25 minutes a day. Even the heaviest cable news viewers last for an average of only 72 minutes on the medium.

Like most drug users, cable news viewers have learned to titrate their dose before suffering the insulin shock of boredom that overwhelmed so many members of the commentariat this week. However many viewers suffered through all the coverage, there can’t be many aside from the journalists who had to tune in for their jobs or their own perverse addiction, so keep your pity in reserve. The most popular shows on cable news rarely get more than 3.3 million viewers a night.

If you were crazy enough to watch the coverage into the night, at which point reporters had actually read the formal charges against Trump, you would have learned something the daylight hours didn’t report: That district attorney Alvin Bragg appears to have a weak case. So there’s that.

In a perfect world, nobody would ever waste time watching breaking news on TV, waiting anxiously for something important to happen. Every moment would top the last as new revelations poured in. But news has its limits, as the BBC admitted on the evening of April 18, 1930, after the news well went dry one day. The announcer didn’t dribble, he came clean. “There is no news,” he said, and cut away to piano music for 15 minutes until the next scheduled program started.

******

The news is often like a meringue. It needs to be whipped into something worth consuming. Send news recipes to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed likes pie. My Mastodon account has cut the cord. My Post account wants to be booked on Jake Tapper’s show. My RSS feed says, “Kill your TV.”

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‘Win-win’: Washington is just fine with the China-brokered Saudi-Iran deal

As Washington denizens look toward the Middle East and see China brokering diplomatic deals between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the surprising general response has been: One less thing for us to worry about.

Top diplomats for Saudi Arabia and Iran were in Beijing on Thursday to finalize a deal that would reopen embassies, resume direct flights between their two nations and restart security and trade agreements. It’s the latest sign that Beijing is not content with being solely a regional behemoth, but rather a major global power.

But the Biden administration, which has openly worried about China’s growing clout in the Middle East, has met this development with a shrug. And while some in Washington, D.C. fear that China is filling a vacuum left by the United States, most see only upside to Beijing’s regional foray.

“Not everything between the U.S. and China has to be a zero-sum game,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel. Plus, he said, better relations between Riyadh and Tehran means that there will be less conflict in the region, which would lower the chance of the United States getting dragged into a fighting in the Middle East. “I don't know why we would perceive there to be a downside to de-escalation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

Others provided reasons stretching from the grand strategic to the tactical.

At the highest level, a more-involved China means the United States can focus on its national security priorities, namely defending Ukraine against Russia and deterring China from invading Taiwan. Friendlier ties between Riyadh and Tehran also mean that the Saudi-led coalition’s eight-year war on Yemen could soon come to an end, a key goal for the Biden administration. And there’s the fact that the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Iran, meaning Washington couldn’t have brokered the rapprochement.

“The United States should see China's mediation of a Saudi-Iran agreement as a win-win for American interests,” said Martin Indyk, who served as the special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from 2013 to 2014. And if the deal falls apart, “the blame for the failure will be on China's back and its foray into Gulf diplomacy will be seen to be much ado about nothing.”

This is generally the argument Biden administration officials make in public and private, despite President Joe Biden’s push for competition with China in the military, economic and technological arenas.

A Democratic Senate aide, who like others was granted anonymity to detail sensitive discussions and diplomacy, said lawmakers express mixed feelings when briefed by senior figures on the deal.

“It’s good in that it reduces the threat of nuclear escalation and conflict in the region,” the staffer has heard lawmakers say, but others argue “it gives China too much influence and positions them in the Middle East, where they have never really been engaged, as a political power.” The good-or-bad arguments don’t fall neatly on party lines, the aide noted.

But there’s no real evidence that China’s role in the Saudi-Iran deal means the United States has somehow removed itself from the Middle East. Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, called Saudi Arabia’s chief of defense Thursday to discuss security cooperation and the military partnership. Col. Joe Buccino, a CENTCOM spokesperson, said the conversation wasn’t tied to diplomacy in China. “Frankly we didn't even think of that," he said.

It shows that Beijing is involved in one aspect of the Middle East’s politics, but hasn’t usurped America’s place in all facets. Among other things, the U.S. is working with Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, partnering in cyberspace and maritime security operations, investing in Riyadh’s infrastructure goals and developing advanced telecommunications networks. And Washington remains the kingdom’s most important security partner, sending billions in weapons to help defend against regional threats — mainly from Iran — and stationing 3,000 troops in the kingdom.

“It's not like Iran's Shia militias have quieted down on threats or propaganda,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian proxies.

China’s maneuvering, of course, has raised eyebrows in Washington and around the world. It shows Beijing’s willingness to make nice with distant partners, like Iran, and a possible desire to play the long game so that the region eventually tips in China’s favor.

“The U.S. is perceived as leaving the Middle East, and China fills the void,” gaining more influence in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, a Middle East official said. “China becomes the winner here.”

After saying “the Saudi-Iran thing isn’t that big a deal,” a GOP congressional aide added that the “Chinese capitalized on U.S disengagement...We will see others play upon our absence even more in the months ahead.”

There’s also the fear that Riyadh, upset that Biden once vowed to make the kingdom a “pariah,” might leverage China’s clout to extract more support from the United States. It’s why Biden traveled to Jeddah last year to mend relations with Saudi Arabia and box China out of the region.

But in the immediate term, Washington is chalking up China’s work on the Saudi-Iran deal as a win for the United States, not a loss.

“Anything that reduces the chances of conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a good thing, regardless of who brokered it,” said Matthew Duss, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ former foreign policy adviser now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Joe Gould contributed to this report.

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IRS releases plan to spend $80 billion windfall — with critical details missing

The IRS released a much-anticipated report on Thursday outlining how it will spend new funding on ambitious hiring plans and increased enforcement aimed at wealthy taxpayers and big corporations — but left a long list of questions unanswered, which is bound to aggravate lawmakers.

The report describes the agency’s objectives for the $80 billion cash infusion that was provided by Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, including plans to create “world-class” customer service for taxpayers seeking assistance; develop data management systems so IRS employees can have a 360-degree view of a taxpayers’ information; and hire specialized lawyers and accountantswho can help audit the most complex corporate and partnership returns.

Democratic lawmakers and newly appointed IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel say the agency’s transformation will help bring in an estimated half-trillion dollars that the government misses out on every year due to tax evasion, all the while making it much easier for Americans to file their taxes every year. Republicans fiercely oppose the expansion, contending the agency will unleash an army of auditors against average Americans and small businesses.

But the vaguely worded report, which was delivered more than a month later than the deadline Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen set, answered few of the questions that lawmakers have been lobbing at Yellen and IRS officials for months about specific budget forecasts and department hiring.

The IRS, which counted around 78,700 employees in 2021, says in the report that it plans to bring on nearly 30,000 new employees by the end of fiscal year 2025. That would include 8,782 hires in enforcement and 13,883 in taxpayer services and surely offset some attrition in the agency's ranks from retirements.

The agency intends to spend $2.8 billion of the funding in 2023 and $5.4 billion in 2024 and, over a 10-year period, allot a hefty sum of $41.7 billion alone to scrutinizing the most sophisticated, high-income taxpayers.

However, the IRS did not provide essential information sought by lawmakers on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, such as how many employees the agency would like to hire long term for enforcement; how exactly the IRS will comply with a pledge by Yellen not to increase audits on those making less than $400,000; and what the agency forecasts to spend on operations, enforcement and customer service from fiscal years 2025 through 2031.

Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo defended the limited budget forecast in a call with reporters Thursday, saying technology advancements such as digital scanning of paper returns and automated phone services will improve agency productivity. That creates uncertainty around how many employees the IRS will ultimately need to hire, Adeyemo said.

“I hope that we can get better at forecasting, but I just think it’s good management and leadership practice” to refrain from projecting beyond fiscal year 2024, Werfel added.

Still, those omissions could be no coincidence with Republicans primed to pounce on any details of the IRS’ bulked-up enforcement. When Treasury first asked for new money for the IRS, the department specified exactly how many workers the IRS would hire to crack down on tax cheats: 86,852.

Republicans have been using that figure ever since as grist for attack ads on Democrats.

Democrats have fired back that the agency has been starved of resources to fairly enforce the tax code — with audit rates for millionaires and corporations falling by 77 percent and 44 percent, respectively, from 2010 to 2017 — and that much of the new hiring is needed to replace the two-thirds of the IRS workforce that will be eligible to retire in the next six years.

Here’s a look at what the report says about key elements of the IRS strategy:

ENFORCEMENT

The agency says it wants to leverage data analytics and technology to audit complex tax returns and plans on hiring the first waves of specialists focused on big companies, partnerships and high-income individuals in fiscal year 2023. The IRS will increase enforcement activities on cryptocurrencies and in areas where audits have declined significantly over the years, such as in estate, gift and employment taxation.

That will involve increasing staff in the Office of Chief Counsel, the legal adviser to the IRS based at the Treasury Department, to help litigate cases and issue clear guidance on tax laws. The agency insists ramped-up enforcement will apply to only those making more than $400,000.

“People who get W-2s or Social Security payments or have a small business should not be worried about some new wave of IRS audits. We’re taking that off the table,” Werfel said.

In a nod to lawmakers’ concerns about a Stanford study published earlier this year finding that Black taxpayers are three to five times more likely to be audited by the IRS, the agency also said it will create a team in fiscal year 2024 to look at whether enforcement activities disproportionately burden certain groups and address any disparities in tax administration according to gender, race and age.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

The IRS wants to create online business accounts where taxpayers can let the agency know what communication methods they prefer — whether digital, phone or in-person — and hire more representatives to operate the phone lines and staff Taxpayer Assistance Centers.

Under the modernized system, the IRS said taxpayers will be able to access their entire account history, including notices and returns; make payments; and get status updates for their filings, all online. They would also receive personalized alerts from the IRS to better understand their tax obligations and eligibility for credits and deductions.

The IRS launched a new tool this filing season that allowed taxpayers to respond to the nine most common notices online, and the agency plans to add 72 more notices online by the end of fiscal year 2024.

“For many, letters from the IRS in the mail could be a thing of the past. For the first time, the IRS will help taxpayers identify potential mistakes before filing,” Werfel said.

The agency says it wants to make it easier for employees to review tax returns by implementing full digital scanning of paper forms — which National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins has called the “kryptonite” that jammed up the IRS during the pandemic — in the next five years and make that data easily accessible to employees in a centralized case management system.

TECHNOLOGY

The IRS is looking to replace old programming language in its aging computer systems and consolidate information on the cloud while improving cybersecurity to protect taxpayer privacy. Machine learning could be used to extract data and do advanced analytics on complex tax returns, the agency says.

PERSONNEL

The agency insists its hiring successes will not only depend on the prospects of higher pay for specialized employees, but also a cultural shift that gets workers excited about the IRS’s mission. It will prioritize recruiting from diverse and underrepresented talent pools and streamline the hiring process, which frequently gets bogged down in bureaucratic hurdles and discourages candidates from joining the IRS.

The agency will consider allowing employees to work from more locations around the U.S. to attract top-tier talent and employ gig workers on an as-needed basis. The IRS adds that it wants its employees to become far more data-savvy.

Brian Faler contributed to this report.

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Defense Department detains hotel guest in training mix-up

BOSTON — Participants in a Department of Defense training exercise at a Boston hotel entered the wrong room Tuesday and mistakenly detained a hotel guest instead of the individual assigned the role of the person to be detained, according to the FBI.

The incident occurred about 10 p.m. with the Boston Division of the FBI assisting the U.S. Department of Defense in conducting the Defense Department exercise.

The exercise was meant to simulate a situation that personnel might encounter during an actual incident.

“Based on inaccurate information, they were mistakenly sent to the wrong room and detained an individual, not the intended role player,” an FBI said in a written statement. “Thankfully nobody was injured.”

A call to the Department of Defense was not immediately returned.

The Boston Police Department was called and responded to the scene to confirm that the incident was indeed a training exercise, officials said.

“Safety is always a priority of the FBI, and our law enforcement partners, and we take these incidents very seriously,” the FBI statement added. “The Boston Division is reviewing the incident with DOD for further action as deemed appropriate.”

A spokesman for Delta Air Lines said the airline was looking to see if anyone from the airline might have been mistakenly caught up in the incident.

“We are looking into reports of an alleged incident in Boston that may involve Delta people,” the spokesperson said in a written statement. “We have nothing further to share at this time other than to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the safety and well-being of our people.”

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