The Democratic chairmen of the House Judiciary, Oversight, Intelligence, Financial Services, Ways and Means, and Foreign Affairs committees have written a letter to Attorney General William Barr requesting that he submit the full Mueller report to Congress by April 2.
What they're saying: "Your four page summary of the Special Counsel's review is not sufficient for Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, to perform [our oversight activities]. The release of the full report and the underlying evidence and documents is urgently needed by our committees to perform their duties under the Constitution ... To the extent that you believe applicable law limits your ability to comply, we urge you to begin the process of consultation with us immediately in order to establish shared parameters for resolving those issues without delay."
Former Texas congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke has hired former Obama top aide Jennifer O’Malley Dillon to serve as his campaign manager, CNN reports.
"I’m so excited to join the [O'Rourke] team and get to work building a campaign that will lift people up and unite them to meet our challenges. .... I firmly believe primaries make our party stronger. Hardest part is having friends I admire deeply on all sides, working for the many *great* candidates in this race. But I’m absolutely confident we’ll all be back together in time, united in our most important goal for 2020."
Details: Per the New York Times, O’Malley Dillon is a data expert who served on former President Obama’s 2012 re-election team as deputy campaign manager.
President Trump asked advisers in February to find a way to limit hurricane relief funds for Puerto Rico because too much money has gone to the territory already, senior administration officials told the Washington Post. "He doesn’t want another single dollar going to the island," one official said, and he wants current funds to be used only to help fortify the electric grid.
The big picture: As Axios' Jonathan Swan reported in November, Trump has privately claimed, without evidence, that the island’s government is using federal disaster relief money to pay off debt. At least a third of Puerto Ricans rely heavily on food stamps following Hurricane Maria in 2017, but the local government has been cutting the program as it waits for the federal government to hand over billions in hurricane relief, per the Post.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham told CNN on Monday that when Sen. John McCain was presented with the controversial Steele dossier alleging a Trump-Russia campaign conspiracy in December 2016, Graham urged him to hand it off to the FBI.
Why it matters:President Trump last week renewed his attacks on McCain, claiming that the senator was responsible for pushing the dossier’s narrative into the public eye. Graham, now a Trump loyalist, said that he was "very direct" with the president about McCain's involvement while they were golfing this past week: "I understand that, clearly people are in the McCain world that did some things inappropriate but it was not John McCain," Graham said. "John McCain did not give it to anybody in the press."
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) announced Monday that he won't seek re-election in 2020 after two terms in office, saying he hopes to "get so much more done to help reverse the damage done to our planet, end the scourge of war, and to stop [President Trump's] assault on our democracy and our communities."
The state of play: Udall's retirement comes at a "pretty ideal" moment for the Democratic Party, tweets the Washington Post's Dave Weigel, who notes that Democrats' success in the state over the last few election cycles means the race "starts as a likely D hold."
Since May 2017, 533,074 web articles have been published about Russia and Trump/Mueller, generating 245 million interactions — including likes, comments and shares — on Twitter and Facebook, according to data from social-media analytics company NewsWhip.
Quick take: Now, think of how much cable time the coverage consumed.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi looks clairvoyant for urging Democrats to drop the impeachment talk — and start obsessing about a 2020 election verdict.
The state of play: Now, the speaker must stare down members, donors and activists hell-bent on administering some Trump punishment, even after Mueller took a pass. "Our primary focus is on getting the underlying documents," a Pelosi aide said. "We think there's a lot there that helps inform these other investigations."
The number of immigrants arrested or turned away at the southern border has continued to climb to levels not seen for years, according to new Department of Homeland Security data obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: The surge has been driven by an influx of migrant families and unaccompanied children, according to a DHS official. "At the moment, we have the closest thing to an open border that we've had," saidLeon Fresco, an immigration attorney and member of a Homeland Security advisory committee formed by DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen several months ago.
Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation drew immediate praise from top Republicans, who declared vindication for President Trump after Mueller found no campaign conspiracy or coordination with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Yes, but: House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler was quick to point out that Barr’s letter was not the end of the inquiry, noting that Barr wrote in his summary that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." In a tweet, Nadler added that his panel “will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify” in the near future.
Following the release of Attorney General Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller report, House Judiciary chairman Jerrold Nadler tweeted Sunday that Democrats plan to call on Barr to testify before the committee.
"In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before @HouseJudiciary in the near future."
Attorney General Bill Barr's letter to Congress today detailed the vast effort by special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in 2016.
After taking the weekend to pore over the Mueller report, Attorney General William Barr has sent Congress his summary of the "principal conclusions" from the special counsel's 675-day investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.
The bottom line:
"[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr writes that while Mueller's report "does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
Barr says he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that the evidence "is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense," noting that the government would have to prove such a case "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Corruption comes in many forms: cheating, bribery, nepotism, cronyism, embezzlement, fraud, state capture. Donald Trump's nomination of Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve board falls neatly under the heading of "cronyism."
The big picture: Moore has few apparent qualifications for a seat on the Fed board. Instead, he is being rewarded for his work on Trump's election campaign and for his gushing praise of Trump in places like his "Trumponomics" book.
Here's something that ought to catch Democrats' attention: Swing voters at a recent focus group in Wisconsin hadn't heard of either the Green New Deal or "Medicare for all."
Why it matters: These are Democrats' biggest policy staples heading into the 2020 presidential election. They're talking about them all the time, and the ideas are even being weaponized by the right to label the entire Democratic Party as socialists. But none of that is breaking through in this key battleground state.
President Trump has publicly boasted that he could beat any of his 2020 Democratic challengers. But privately, several members of the Trump campaign see a few who could pose a threat to his re-election, and are in the early stages of building out their strategy for attack.
The bottom line: The three candidates that seem to concern the Trump campaign most are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke. That's in no particular order, and you’ll get a different answer depending on who you talk to.
House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that even if the Mueller report does not recommend any new indictments — as has been reported — that does not necessarily rule out impeachment for President Trump.
Sure, the market for Democratic presidential candidates is getting a little saturated. So why are some Democrats still thinking of jumping in? Because there's almost never a downside to running.
Data: Axios research; Chart: Harry Stevens and Aïda Amer/Axios
Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg's foreign language skills proved a big talking point on a campaign visit to South Carolina during which he opened up about his same-sex marriage Saturday.
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