Biden’s Insistence on Staying in Race Is Making Some Democrats Cry

Ahead of a private House Democratic Caucus meeting Tuesday, a smaller group of Democratic lawmakers from swing districts met to discuss President Joe Biden’s candidacy—and were apparently more than a little depressed.

“There were actual tears from people, and not for Biden,” one anonymous lawmaker told Axios, who explained that the group of lawmakers was “pretty much unanimous” that Biden has “got to step down.”

Biden has repeatedly insisted that he will not drop out of the presidential race, despite criticism from his party. While only six lawmakers have outright asked him to drop out, it seems the dissatisfaction has spread throughout the party.

Another lawmaker simply called the meeting “intense,” according to Axios.

Democrats at the morning’s main meeting seemed far less in agreement about what the president ought to do, but the vibe was reportedly also disconsolate and frustrating. One lawmaker said it “felt like a funeral,” while another said that notion was “an insult to funerals.”

Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t like where the contempt resolution against Attorney General Merrick Garland is going, and is trying to get the MAGA representative behind the effort, Anna Paulina Luna, to back down.

Johnson reportedly told Luna in the Republican conference Tuesday to back off of introducing a resolution this week, but she’s refusing.

Earlier, Luna told the conference that she would introduce the contempt resolution on the House floor Wednesday, with an amendment that it wouldn’t be to arrest Garland but to fire him. Johnson said he is also concerned about the attorney general, but the House’s lawsuit to enforce the congressional subpoena against Garland is enough, sources told Politico’s Olivia Beavers.

Last month, the House voted along party lines, with only one Republican against, to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over audio of a privileged interview between President Biden and special counsel Robert Hur about the classified documents found in his former office. Despite an obvious double standard, Johnson claimed last month that Garland’s refusal to answer a congressional subpoena is not comparable to the House Republicans who ignored subpoenas from the House January 6 committee, saying, “There couldn’t be a more clear contrast.”

It’s clear that Republican attempts to target Garland are a politicized attempt to take revenge against the Justice Department for pursuing criminal cases against Donald Trump. The convicted felon and his GOP allies, like the now-imprisoned Steve Bannon, have made no secret of their desire to enact retribution against Trump’s enemies. Trump was reportedly upset at a lack of action on his behalf from Republicans after his conviction.

With Trump now effectively above the law after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, he will be able to target whoever he wants if he wins in November. His team is already creating an enemies list of federal employees, and Trump himself has already suggested throwing his political opponents in jail. He has an army of right-wing lawyers waiting in the wings as soon as he enters the Oval Office.

Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden are asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to assign a special prosecutor to investigate complaints of potential ethics and tax law violations against conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The Democratic senators sent a letter to the Justice Department last week demanding action and detailing various gifts Thomas received from Republican billionaires that Thomas failed to disclose until after they were made public by ProPublica and other news outlets.

“The scale of the potential ethics violations by Justice Thomas, and the willful pattern of disregard for ethics laws, exceeds the conduct of other government officials investigated by the Department of Justice for similar violations,” the letter, dated July 3, reads. “The breadth of the omissions uncovered to date, and the serious possibility of additional tax fraud and false statement violations by Justice Thomas and his associates, warrant the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate this misconduct.”

Whitehouse is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, while Wyden is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Their letter argues that Thomas’s pattern of failing to disclose luxurious gifts from conservative billionaires is a violation of the Ethics in Government Act and raises concerns that neither Thomas nor his billionaire benefactors are in compliance with federal tax-reporting requirements.

The letter points to an investigation led by the Senate Finance Committee and Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts into a loan given to Thomas by Anthony Welters to purchase a luxury motor coach. According to Whitehouse and Wyden’s letter, Thomas never repaid the principal on that loan and only paid interest until collections on the loan stopped in 2008. Welters told The New York Times in August 2023 that “the loan was satisfied” without detailing whether that meant it was paid in full or forgiven.

“The evidence assembled thus far plainly suggests that Justice Thomas has committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws and raises significant questions about whether he and his wealthy benefactors have complied with their federal tax obligations,” the letter continues.

A ProPublica investigation in April 2023 revealed Thomas received luxury vacations from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, which had not been disclosed by Thomas in accordance with mandatory financial disclosure rules. Soon after ProPublica’s April reveal, Thomas submitted amended disclosure forms to include the gifts from Crow exposed by ProPublica. In August 2023, ProPublica revealed even more undisclosed gifts—at least 38 vacations and 26 private jet flights given to Thomas from an array of right-wing billionaires—which ProPublica described as “certainly an undercount.” In September 2023, Thomas submitted more disclosure forms to acknowledge some gifts he received in 2022, which he used to explain failing to disclose gifts he received in previous years. According to NPR, the use of the 2022 form to justify previous lapses in disclosure suggested Thomas wouldn’t be retroactively submitting disclosures for the past 20 years of luxurious treatment from his billionaire friends. Last month, Thomas acknowledged that he should have reported luxury vacations, travel, and hotel stays paid for by Crow.

“Appointment of a Special Counsel would serve the public interest. The public must have confidence that the judiciary and the Department of Justice execute their responsibilities fairly, impartially, and without respect to political expedience or partisan interests,” Whitehouse and Wyden wrote in their letter requesting an investigation into Thomas’s lavish gifts, which they estimate to be “potentially worth millions of dollars.”

The request follows similar promises by congressional Democrats ahead of the Fourth of July holiday break to hit back at the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently stated her intention to file unspecified articles of impeachment following the Supreme Court’s ruling that vastly expanded Trump’s presidential immunity.

Donald Trump is expected to take a hatchet to any potential “mini-trials” shooting off of the effectively dead D.C. trial, using the legal system to block any potential ramifications from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The sudden move to suppress any potentially damaging efforts would be the final nail in the coffin for special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president, after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump’s presidential immunity argument last week.

That decision opened the door for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold evidentiary hearings to determine which acts in the indictment can survive the high court’s new legal parameters for the case.

But those expanded powers could challenge a sizable portion of the witness pool, according to The Guardian, which noted that if Smith attempted to call former Vice President Mike Pence or White House officials to testify during the hearings, Trump’s legal team could potentially claim executive privilege and shut it down. That would radically limit the scope of who could challenge the former president—and what they might be allowed to say.

A Trump campaign spokesman declined to comment on the potential legal strategy to The Guardian, but in a statement commented that “the entire January 6th case has always been just a desperate, un-constitutional attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election. The only thing imploding faster than the Biden campaign is Deranged Jack Smith’s partisan hoaxes.”

Smith’s case has already been kneecapped by the Supreme Court ruling. The case hinges on the allegation that Trump knew he had lost the election but still tried to subvert the results, as proven by conversations he had with Pence and his lawyers. But the court ruled that those conversations could be considered official acts and are therefore inadmissible as evidence.

One of Donald Trump’s appointed judges is stepping down after lying about engaging in an inappropriate relationship, as well as creating a hostile work environment.

U.S. District Judge Joshua M. Kindred was asked to resign by the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit in Alaska over misconduct allegations that he had an “inappropriately sexualized relationship” with a law clerk, even after she became an assistant U.S. attorney in the state.

“We conclude that Judge Kindred’s misconduct was pervasive and abusive, constituted sexual harassment, and fostered a hostile work environment that took a personal and professional toll on multiple clerks,” the council wrote, citing an incident in October 2022 where Kindred kissed the U.S. attorney and groped her after asking her out for drinks. The council made its recommendation after interviewing clerks and judicial employees and reviewing hundreds of pages of text messages.

Kindred was also accused of “putting his hands on me” by the law clerk, and he urged her to join him at an associate’s apartment and then performed oral sex on her, the council’s report stated. The allegations get worse from there. The judge is alleged to have lied to investigators when questioned about his actions, despite speaking openly about his “romantic preferences,” his sex life, the sex lives of his clerks, and numerous other inappropriate subjects in a professional environment.

Kindred was appointed by Trump at age 41 despite a low rating from the Alaska Bar Association, and was confirmed by the Senate 54–41 in a party line vote in 2020. After he abruptly submitted his resignation letter to President Biden last week, observers wondered why a young federal judge with a lifetime appointment would resign after only four years. It quickly became clear on Monday after the Judicial Council released its report.

Biden now has another judicial vacancy to fill, the second one in Alaska’s Ninth Circuit. He started his administration appointing and confirming judges on a faster pace than Trump and has continued that pace this year. However, Trump still had the more consequential appointments, placing three conservative justices on the Supreme Court who may have just saved him from legal prosecution. With Biden facing a Democratic Party divided on whether he should be on the ballot for a second term, he might help himself by pointing out his ability to get new federal judges who aren’t in the mold of Trump.