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“Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump,” ABC News reports.
“It’s not immediately clear what information the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith is seeking, but it follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence’s legal team.”
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed support for privatizing Medicare and Social Security during his first campaign for Congress in 2012, giving political rivals who have pledged to protect the programs an opening to attack him ahead of DeSantis’ expected run for president in 2024,” CNN reports.
“Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith in both his investigation into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” CNN reports.
“O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him.”
“O’Brien considered resigning from his post over Trump’s response to the violence on January 6, 2021, but ultimately decided to remain in the job… The National Security Council should have been involved in the handling of classified documents at end of the Trump presidency, and O’Brien may have knowledge of how those records ended up at Mar-a-Lago.”
Wall Street Journal: “The hiring spree in everyday services shows that the sectors hardest hit in the pandemic’s first months, when 22 million jobs were lost, are continuing to recover. Those gains may prop up the broader economy enough to avoid a recession.”
New York Times: “During the midterm campaigns, Democrats spent months focused on the demise of federal abortion rights and the danger they said it posed to all Americans. In his State of the Union speech, President Biden spent roughly 42 seconds.”
“Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was charged with theft in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country in 2017 after a series of bad checks were written in his name to dog breeders,” Politico reports.
“The charge was dismissed and his record expunged after Santos claimed someone had stolen his checkbook.”
Elon Musk fired a top Twitter engineer because he was upset over the declining number of users that were apparently able to see his tweets, Platformer reports.
Said Musk: “This is ridiculous. I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”
“Employees showed Musk internal data regarding engagement with his account, along with a Google Trends chart. Last April, they told him, Musk was at ‘peak’ popularity in search rankings, indicated by a score of ‘100.’ Today, he’s at a score of nine. Engineers had previously investigated whether Musk’s reach had somehow been artificially restricted, but found no evidence that the algorithm was biased against him.”
“Musk did not take the news well.”
Donald Trump’s official Facebook and Instagram accounts have officially been restored, the Washington Free Beacon reports.
“It is unclear whether Trump will use the platform—though the former president was reinstated on Twitter last November, he has still not used his account, opting instead to use his own platform, Truth Social.”
“A Delaware man who carried a Confederate flag through the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot was sentenced to three years in prison on Thursday,” NBC News reports.
Politico: “Trump has already swallowed up a handful of prominent endorsements from South Carolina political royalty. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is generating his own buzz.”
“But the possibility that Sen. Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolinian, could launch a campaign is perhaps the trickiest hurdle for Haley to navigate. The senator is actively making calls to allies as he weighs his own run for president, according to three people familiar with those conversations.”
“Longtime Donald Trump adviser Jason Miller is joining his 2024 presidential campaign as the operation starts building out its team based in West Palm Beach, Fla.,” Politico reports.
“Miller — who worked on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 bids — is stepping down from his role as the CEO of GETTR, a right-wing social media site that was developed to rival Twitter but was often overshadowed by Trump’s own platform, Truth Social. Miller’s 2024 role will be as senior adviser, similar to the one he played in 2020, in which he provided strategic guidance for the campaign.”
“In a posthumously published book, former Japanese leader Shinzo Abe said he pushed then-President Donald Trump to take a stronger stand on North Korea but found Mr. Trump weak and overly eager for a deal,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Abe said in the Japanese-language book, published this week, that he grew worried North Korea would learn of Mr. Trump’s dovish tendencies.”
Wrote Abe: “We absolutely couldn’t let the outside world catch wind of it.”
“A U.N. aid convoy has crossed into rebel-held northwest Syria through Turkey, the first since the earthquake disaster flattened neighborhoods in both countries,” the Washington Post reports.
“The combined death toll climbed above 20,000 on Thursday, with rescuers racing against time to find survivors in the frigid cold.”
“Maybe I run, maybe I don’t.”
— New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), quoted by Politico, on a possible presidential campaign.
“President Biden focused attention on the role his staff played while packing up his papers after he left government, suggesting that documents marked classified were found in various locations that he used after leaving the vice presidency because workers didn’t do a thorough job sifting through his papers,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Biden: “As they packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done to go thoroughly through every single piece of literature that’s there.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), leaving a classified briefing on China, said that he believes the Biden administration made the right decision to wait and shoot down the suspected spy balloon — breaking with most Republicans, CNN reports.
Said Romney: “I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. But I came away more confident.”
Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) was assaulted Thursday morning in her Washington, D.C., apartment building, The Hill reports.
Her office said the attack does not appear to be politically motivated.
East Hanover, New Jersey’s elected leaders “dropped a political bombshell on Tuesday, announcing that longtime Mayor Joseph Pannullo and the entire township council had switched their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican,” the Morristown Daily Record reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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