Mark Sandy, a White House official working in the Office of Management and Budget, will testify in the impeachment inquiry if served with a subpoena by House investigators, his lawyer Barbara Van Gelder told the Washington Post Thursday.
Why it matters: Sandy would be the first OMB employee to break the White House's blanket non-cooperation policy and could shed light on the motivation behind the Trump administration's decision to freeze nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
The Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into freshman Rep. Ross Spano (R-Fla.) over possible campaign finance violations, the House Ethics Committee announced in a news release Thursday.
What's happening: The Ethics Committee unanimously voted to "defer consideration" of the issue from its own inquiry to the Justice Department, per the release. Spano has denied wrongdoing, writing in a statement that he plans to cooperate fully with the investigation and that mistakes his campaign made with respect to loans were "completely inadvertent and unintentional."
The Senate on Thursday voted 51-41 to confirm Steven Menashi, President Trump's nominee for a federal appeals court, despite bipartisan criticism over his record and refusal to answer questions about his tenure with the Trump administration, the Washington Post reports.
The big picture: While serving as acting general counsel under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Menashi helped craft a plan to use private Social Security earnings data to deny debt relief to people who had been scammed by for-profit colleges, according to reporting by the New York Times.
Julián Castro has failed to qualify for the November debate stage, just weeks after threatening to drop out over waning fundraising.
Driving the news: In late October, the former HUD secretary told supporters in an email that if he did not qualify for the fifth Democratic primary debate, he would not be able to continue his candidacy into the Iowa caucuses.
Former President Bill Clinton called into CNN on Thursday to discuss the school shooting in California, and ended up criticizing President Trump for refusing to work with Congress on things like gun control due to the ongoing House impeachment inquiry.
Deval Patrick announced on Thursday morning that he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination, months after announcing he wouldn’t. Dan and Axios' Alexi McCammond talk about how Patrick — a former civil rights lawyer, two-term Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital businessman — will be received.
The State Department improperly retaliated against a career diplomat based on her "perceived political views, association with former administrations, and perceived national origin," according to a report from the Office of Inspector General.
The big picture: The inspector general report into alleged political retaliation against career diplomats comes as President Trump faces an impeachment inquiry "whose elements involve the mistreatment of career diplomats, in particular those dealing with Ukraine," per Politico.
Deval Patrick made it official this morning, announcing that he'll run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination — and he also formally resigned from Bain Capital, sources say.
The state of play: He joined the firm in 2015 to launch and lead a platform focused on "social impact investing." That group, called Bain Double Impact, is in the midst of raising its second fund. Prospective investors tell Axios' Dan Primack that Patrick had assured them he wouldn't run for president in 2020, although left the door open for the 2024 race.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman again unloaded on Sen. Elizabeth Warren in an interview Wednesday with CNBC, a month after sending her a five-page letter.
Why it matters: His comments came in response to Warren's latest TV ad, which is titled “Elizabeth Warren Stands Up to Billionaires,” and will begin running on the network soon.
Several of the seats reserved for members of Congress who aren't on the Intelligence Committee were vacant — and more Republicans than Democrats sat in the Ways and Means hearing room that hosted yesterday's impeachment hearing.
The big picture: C-SPAN's cameras only captured the main action, failing to capture the scope of the room and how those in the audience reacted during the marathon hearing.
An Oval Office meeting yesterday with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took a dark turn when Erdoğan pulled out his iPad and made the group watch a propaganda video that depicted the leader of the primarily-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces as a terrorist, according to three sources familiar with the meeting.
Why it matters: The meeting hosted by President Trump included five Republican U.S. senators who've been among the most vocal critics of Turkey's recent invasion of Syria and attacks on the U.S.'s Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS.
Congress can seek eight years of President Trump's tax records, according to a federal appeals court ruling on Wednesday.
Why it matters: It's a major setback for Trump, who's tried to block every attempt to make his tax returns public and plans to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
After leaked emails indicated White House senior adviser Stephen Miller shared white nationalist content to Breitbart, leading Democrats are calling for him to resign, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasion-Cortez (N.Y.) — who's started a petition.
Why it matters: Per Axios'Rashaan Ayesh, Miller plays a role in shaping the Trump administration's immigration policy, and the leak to Hatewatch, a branch of nonprofit the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), shows over 80% of some 900-plus emails Miller sent to former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh related to race or immigration in some manner.
MSNBC raised eyebrows just before Wednesday's impeachment hearing with a special guest commentator: conservative lawyer George Conway, the husband of counselor to President Trump, Kellyanne Conway.
Why it matters: His association to the president has made him "a liberal sensation by emerging as an unlikely critic of the president," per the New York Times. But despite having previously written a Washington Post op-ed, Conway hadn't appeared on television before Wednesday's MSNBC cameo.
The U.S. budget gap grew to $134.5 billion in October, up roughly $34% from the same time last year, Bloomberg reports.
The big picture: The federal government ended the 2019 fiscal year with the biggest deficit — $984.4 billion — we've seen in seven years. The widening gap comes as a result of continued spending increases and dwindling receipts. The deficit marks the largest October shortfall since 2015. Income also dropped by 2.8% last month from a year earlier.
The House committees investigating President Trump and Ukraine have scheduled closed-door depositions for David Holmes, an official working at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, and Mark Sandy, an official working in the Office of Management and Budget, later this week, according to a schedule distributed to committee staff and reviewed by Axios.
Why it matters: The depositions signal that the fact-finding phase of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry is still not over, despite the first public impeachment hearings kicking off on Wednesday.
