House Republicans & White House Prepare for Political Battle

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Good morning everyone,

The good: It’s a 4-day work week.

The bad: Summer is unofficially over.

The ugly: What the %*# happened at Burning Man this weekend?!

Here’s the deal: Torrential rain on Friday night left nearly 73,000 people trapped in a remote stretch of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where the avant-garde arts and music festival is held every year.

The storm turned the desert sand into a thick mud, leaving attendees stranded in swamp-like conditions. They were told to conserve food and water with no escape (unless you’re a celebrity, of course).

The event officially ended last night with the tradition of lighting the “burning man” on fire. It came as the ground dried up and authorities finally allowed attendees to leave.

Mosheh, Jill, & Courtney

🎙The Mo News Podcast: A new poll shows a Biden & Trump rematch would be THIS CLOSE; Why more mothers with young kids are working than ever before; and It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere— remembering Jimmy Buffett.

Listen Now

🗞 DC READIES FOR AN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

The push by House Republicans to impeach President Biden has been under consideration even before the party won the House majority last fall. And the drumbeat has continued this year.

The Biden White House is taking the threat seriously and has reportedly been building up an army for months to fight the GOP’s potential impeachment probe. The administration has built a team of about two dozen lawyers and adviser tasked with strategizing their defense.

But do House Republicans have the evidence and the votes to make this happen?

GOP MOVES CLOSER TO IMPEACHMENT
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told GOP lawmakers last week that an impeachment inquiry is "the natural progression from our investigations that have been going on” and suggested the House would vote to open one this month.

The House returns from its six-week summer break on September 12.
Launching an impeachment inquiry will be discussed within the Republican caucus as Congress also looks to strike a deal to fund the government. Preventing a government shutdown as soon as September 30 is priority one.
Democrats believe the Biden impeachment talk is meant to distract voters from the four Trump criminal indictments, and simply an act of revenge by House Republicans trying to curry favor with the former president.

HOW IMPEACHMENT WORKS
If the House votes to open an inquiry, that would then trigger an investigation by the House Republican-led committees, culminating in likely articles of impeachment. It is the first step in a formal process to remove a president from office. The full US House would then vote on the articles of impeachment. A majority vote on any of the articles officially impeaches the president.

Impeachment then proceeds to the Senate — currently controlled by Democrats — where a two-thirds majority is necessary for conviction and removal. No president in the prior four impeachments (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump x 2) has ever been convicted. That won’t change, given the Senate is led by Biden’s own party.

THE GROUNDS
House Republicans are running several active investigations into the President and his son Hunter over allegations of bribery and questionable foreign business deals that they believe could be grounds for impeachment.

Bribery allegations:

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released an FBI document recently with unverified allegations from an anonymous source that accuses the Biden family of accepting millions of dollars in bribes. This goes back to the Ukrainian energy company called Burisma, which Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board of while his father was VP (prior to 2017). Then-VP Biden was among the foreign leaders pressuring Ukraine to remove a government official in charge of investigating corruption into Burisma.
- Republicans have not yet been able to verify any bribe payments or a direct link to the VP’s office after several years of investigations.
A former Hunter Biden business associate testified in private to a House Committee with evidence that Joe Biden was more involved in his son's business dealings while he was Vice President than he has admitted to, including joining business conference calls.

Investigation into Hunter Biden:

Justice Department ethics: Republican lawmakers believe the plea deal struck between Hunter and his father’s Justice Department (that deal has since fallen apart) was a “sweetheart deal” that let him off the hook for serious crimes that others have faced years in prison for, and is calling for an investigation into politicization of the DOJ. This is based on multiple whistleblowers who say the Biden White House effectively handcuffed investigators at the IRS and FBI. A reminder on those Hunter charges:
- Felony gun charge: The charge states that Hunter bought a handgun in 2018, despite being on cocaine at the time (it is a felony for an illegal drug user to possess a firearm). The count carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
- Failing to pay taxes: Hunter plead guilty to evading more than $100,000 in taxes on over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018. These charges carry a maximum penalty of one year in prison.

*AP Photo/Julio Cortez: Hunter Biden leaving his court appearance last month*

HOW EVIDENCE IS STACKING UP
Republicans insist they are gathering up hard evidence, but have not revealed any of it yet. In the mean time, there is a split in the GOP caucus between the far-right and the moderates.

On one end is the Freedom Caucus and Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told her constituents that her vote to keep the government running beyond September 30 will be directly tied to an impeachment inquiry.

On the other end are moderate GOP members from swing districts, who are still not entirely convinced their party has enough evidence to accuse the President of high crimes and misdemeanors — the threshold for an impeachment.

The math for McCarthy: With Republicans’ slim House majority, they can only lose 4 votes.

IMPEACH AT YOUR OWN RISK
Back to the concern among moderate Republicans. There is fear that there is a political price that comes with an impeachment inquiry.

In the 1998 midterm elections following the impeachment inquiry into then-President Bill Clinton, Republicans ultimately retained control of the House, but a stunning Democrat resurgence cost them a number of seats — leading the party to capture the smallest majority in 40 years. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich said that House Republicans today still have some work to do to convince Americans that Biden’s impeachment is “inevitable.”
It runs the risk of turning independent and swing voters against the GOP in 2024 if they perceive it’s a waste of time amid a number of urgent issues the country is facing, or if they feel it’s simply being used as political payback for impeaching Trump twice.

WHITE HOUSE PREPARES FOR BATTLE
“Comparing this to past impeachments isn’t apples to apples or even apples to oranges; it’s apples to elephants,” a White House aide said. “Never in modern history has an impeachment been based on no evidence whatsoever.”

Nonetheless, President Biden’s aides are reportedly studying the Clinton White House’s 1998 impeachment response in their defense prep, ultimately hoping it’ll be a spectacle that backfires on Republicans.

✔︎ Mo News Reality Check: Given that Democrats control the US Senate, impeaching Biden ends with the House vote. The question is whether Speaker McCarthy can find a path regarding impeachment that appeases his far-right flank, his moderate members and also helps his party win over voters next fall, so he can have a more workable majority than his current slim margin.

Quick history: Three of the four impeachments in American history all took place in the last 25 years. Bill Clinton (1998) and Donald Trump (2019, 2021). None ended in conviction in the Senate.

Either way, impeachment used to be something presidents feared (Nixon resigned so he wouldn’t be impeached) and Congress was reluctant to just toss around. No longer.

⏳ SPEED READ

🚨NATION

📌 Jimmy Buffett died of a rare form of skin cancer (NY TIMES)

📌 First lady Jill Biden tests positive for Covid-19; President tests negative (CNN)

📌 Chinese gate-crashers at U.S. bases spark espionage concerns (WSJ)

📌 “This is abnormal.” Labor Day Weekend gas prices reach historic highs (ABC)

📌 Former Presidential candidate and New Mexico Gov Bill Richardson, champion of Americans held overseas, dies at 75 (NY TIMES)

🌎 AROUND THE WORLD

📌 North Korea’s Kim Jong Un plans to travel to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin to discuss the possibility of supplying Russia with more weapons (NY TIMES)

📌 A Gabon military coup leader is sworn in as interim president, promising elections (NPR)

📌 The first Africa Climate Summit opens as hard-hit continent of 1.3 billion people demands more say and financing (AP NEWS)

📌 India’s moon rover completes walk, put into ‘sleep mode’ (AL-JAZEERA)

📱BUSINESS, SCIENCE & TECH

📌 Smoke alarm: Marijuana may be harming developing brains (SCIENCE)

📌 Musk threatens to sue Anti Defamation League after blaming it for X (Twitter) ad sales slump (AXIOS)

📌 Invasive species are costing society more than $423 billion a year according to new UN report (THE HILL)

📌 Return-to-Office Is a $1.3 trillion problem few have figured out (BLOOMBERG)

🎬 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT

📌 Priscilla Presley addresses 10-year age gap, meeting Elvis at 14: 'I never had sex with him' (FOX NEWS)

📌 Rolling Stones announce ‘Hackney Diamonds,’ first studio album in 18 years (VARIETY)

📌 ‘Dream Weaver’ singer Gary Wright dead at 80 after health battle (TMZ)

📌 Steve Harwell, former lead singer of Smash Mouth, dead at 56 (NPR)

📌 It’s not quite autumn yet, but peak fall foliage will be here before you know it… and windows to view the bright hues might be trickier to predict as climate change impacts when leaves change (AXIOS)

🗓 ON THIS DAY: SEPT 5

1946: Freddie Mercury, the lead vocalist and pianist of Queen, was born.

1960: American boxer Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) won the gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
1972: Palestinian terrorists attacked the Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany, during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympic Games, taking hostages and eventually killing 11 members of the Israeli team.
1975: Lynette (“Squeaky”) Fromme tries to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in 2009.
1986: Paul Simon releases his hit song, ‘You Can Call Me Al.’