TUESDAY 1/24/23
Pence Gets Ahead of the Story – Show of hands. Who among ex-presidents and ex-veeps did not take classified documents home? An attorney for Mike Pence says a search instigated by the former vice president found “a small number” of documents in his Indiana home bearing classified markings, The Washington Post reports. Pence is a likely candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
WaPo’s story quotes a letter to the National Archives by Gregory Jacobs, a designated representative for Pence’s vice-presidential records, who said the FBI collected the classified documents from his home last Thursday, January 19. In the letter, Jacobs said he would deliver the documents to the National Archives on Monday, June 23.
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Ex-FBI Agent Indicted – Former FBI spy hunter Charles McGonigal was indicted in a Manhattan federal court Monday of taking $225,000 to try to get Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska off a U.S. sanctions list, while he was investigating the close confidant of Vladimir Putin, The Washington Post reports. McGonigal, now 54, retired from the FBI in September 2018. He was indicted on charges of money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions, and other counts from his alleged ties to Deripaska, whose indictment of sanction violations was unsealed last September.
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All the Best Golf Buddies – How well does Donald J. Trump know Philadelphia mob boss Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino? The former president’s 2024 presidential campaign won’t say in response to a photo that turned up in The Philadelphia Inquirer showing Trump and “Skinny Joey” giving the thumbs-up, along with an unidentified friend of Merlino. The newspaper published a “slightly blurry” photo from an unidentified source showing a hatless Merlino posing for the camera with Trump and the unidentified friend, both wearing red MAGA hats, early in January at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
One of the three, “Skinny Joey,” has served a decade in prison for a 2001 racketeering conviction and reportedly works as a maitre d’ in a Boca Raton Italian restaurant named for him, according to the Inquirer.
--TL
MONDAY 1/23/23
Gallego to Challenge Sinema in ’24 – Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) has announced he will run against incumbent Sen. Krysten Sinema in 2024 (per The Guardian). Progressive Democrat Gallego, who has served his Phoenix-area district since 2015, had been hinting at the run at least since Sinema left the party to become an independent after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) won a runoff last December for a full term resulting in a Democratic Party net gain of one Senate seat after the midterms.
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Zients to Replace Klain as Chief of Staff -- Jeff Zients, who led the Biden administration’s pandemic response until last April, will replace Ron Klain as the White House chief of staff, likely after the president’s February 7 State of the Union address, according to multiple news outlets. The White House has not confirmed the reports, which were backed by statements from unnamed sources.
Zients returned to the White House last autumn to help Klain prepare for staff turnover following the midterms, according to The Washington Post, which notes that few staff members have left the administration. Klain, who will be the first of Biden’s inner circle to leave, assigned Zients various projects to prepare him for the chief of staff job, sources told WaPo.
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This Week – The Senate is in session Monday through Friday. The House is in session Tuesday through Friday.
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ICYMI, More Confidential Docs – It’s not easy to keep track of the number of separate searches for confidential documents found in President Biden’s possession, but we’ll try. Last Friday, the FBI conducted a search of Biden’s sprawling Wilmington, Delaware home to find additional confidential documents dating back to his vice presidency (2009-2017), and even earlier, when he was senior senator from the state. NPR’s Morning Edition referred to this as the “drip, drip” of such documents discovered, and it marks the fourth time since November that classified documents have been found at one of Biden’s properties, CNBC says.
The Difference, Again … Between Biden’s mishandling of confidential government documents and ex-President Trump’s stash at Mar-a-Lago is that Trump appears to have absconded with a stash of papers from Biden’s inauguration day, and he continuously told the Justice Department and National Archives he had returned everything. This culminated in a search warrant allowing the FBI to comb through Mar-a-Lago some 18 months after Biden’s inauguration. The FBI’s 13-hour search of Biden’s home last Friday reportedly was “consensual.”
But: Revelations of the initial discovery, just before last November’s midterms but not revealed until CBS News reported on the confidential papers earlier this month has exposed Biden to criticism from Republicans and right-wing media, while at least partially deflating the case against Trump. --Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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