“Treasury Department officials are considering rolling back a tax rule aimed at preventing American companies from moving money offshore to avoid U.S. taxes,” Bloomberg reports.
“Treasury could narrow regulations aimed at preventing U.S. firms from lowering their U.S. tax bills by borrowing from an offshore branch of the company. The department is also contemplating repealing them entirely to replace them with something more business-friendly.”
A White House official listening to President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president described the call as “crazy” and “frightening” and was “visibly shaken,” ABC News reports.
“Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos faces potential sanctions or a finding she’s in contempt of court for continuing to collect on the debt of former students at bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc., going so far as seizing their tax refunds and wages,” Bloomberg reports.
Said U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim: “I’m not sure if this is contempt or sanctions. I’m not sending anyone to jail yet but it’s good to know I have that ability.”
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Hillary Clinton responded to President Trump’s tweet suggesting she should enter the 2020 presidential race: “Don’t tempt me. Do your job.”
Chris Ruddy, a confidante of President Trump, told CNN that he believes Trump is “overreacting” by preventing U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland from testifying before Congress.
Ruddy said the impeachment inquiry is “a mortal threat to his presidency, and he certainly should treat it that way.”
“I must confess that I was dumb. I should have listened to those symptoms.”
— Sen. Bernie Sanders, quoted by CBS News, saying he ignored symptoms in recent weeks that suggested he had heart problems.
The White House has reached out to outside lawyers for impeachment counsel, CNN reports.
One of the lawyers they reached out to is Trey Gowdy, a former congressman and an ex-federal prosecutor.
Jonathan Chait: “Most voters are locked in to one of the parties. The swing vote tends to be low-information voters with a hazy grasp of the issues. Impeachment is a signal to those voters that Trump has done something seriously wrong. It’s not a magic trick that works against every president — there needs to be misconduct people can easily understand, and which the news media covers as a serious scandal. This easily qualifies.”
“If Trump has any political strengths, it is that he is a low-information voter himself, and grasps how the political narrative plays out in snippets of cable-news chyrons drifting across screens in bars and airports. Trump has confided to allies that impeachment ‘looks bad on his résumé.'”
“Because his victory surprised so many people, Trump has a way of psyching out his opponents sometimes. There’s no real political magic here. Having the news dominated by a scandal even many Republicans can’t defend, with a constant drip of damning new details, is extremely unhelpful for the president.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Elizabeth Warren leading the Democratic presidential field with 29%, followed by Joe Biden at 26%, Bernie Sanders at 16%, Pete Buttigieg at 4%, Kamala Harris at 3% and Andrew Yang at 3%.
No other candidate tops 2%.
In general election match ups, Warren beats Trump, 49% to 41%, Biden leads 51% to 40% and Sanders is ahead 49% to 42%.
CNN: “The scramble and fallout from the call, described by six people familiar with it, parallels and expands upon details described in the whistleblower complaint. The anxiety and internal concern reflect a phone conversation that deeply troubled national security professionals, even as Trump now insists there was nothing wrong with how he conducted himself. And it shows an ultimately unsuccessful effort to contain the tumult by the administration’s lawyers.”
“At least one National Security Council official alerted the White House’s national security lawyers about the concerns… a detail that had not been previously disclosed. Those same lawyers would later order the transcript of the call moved to a highly classified server typically reserved for code-word classified material.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee released its bipartisan report on Russia’s use of social media to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and concludes the Kremlin sought to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by spreading disinformation.
From the report: “The Committee found, that the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.”
The report also called on the Executive Branch to “reinforce with the public the danger of attempted foreign interference in the 2020 election.”
A person with knowledge of the situation confirms to NBC News that Ambassador Gordon Sondland spoke by phone with President Trump on September 9 before responding to acting Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor’s text about it being “crazy” to link Ukraine assistance to help with a political campaign.
U.S. officials and others with knowledge of their relationship also say that Sondland is part of a small cadre of ambassadors who enjoy direct and frequent access to Trump. They say the two speak frequently by phone and have spoken extensively about Ukraine in the past.
Also: “Kurt Volker, Sondland and Taylor used WhatsApp in addition to regular text messages to communicate about Ukraine… The use of WhatsApp has raised questions about problems it poses for complying with federal record-keeping requirements.”
“The House of Representatives may be considering articles of impeachment against President Trump that go further than the Ukraine issue, including obstruction of justice and interference with federal elections,” CNN reports.
Said the top House lawyer said in federal court: “I can’t emphasize enough, it’s not just Ukraine.”
“China has rejected President Trump’s call to investigate his Democrat rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son, saying Beijing had no intention of intervening in U.S. domestic affairs,” the South China Morning Post reports.
Said a foreign ministry spokesman: “China has long pursued the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. We have no intention of intervening in the domestic affairs of the United States. Our position is consistent and clear.”
“President Trump’s campaign helped orchestrate rule changes at party conventions in dozens of states, including Georgia, to weaken a potential GOP insurrection before it can start,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“Three senior Trump campaign officials said on a conference call Monday that they pressed party officials in 37 states to make it harder for a Republican primary opponent to emerge at the nominating convention in Charlotte in August 2020.”
A new Emerson College primary poll in the Louisiana race for Governor finds Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) leading with 48%, followed by Eddie Rispone (R) at 25% and Ralph Abraham (R) at 19%.
If no candidate reaches 50% in the Saturday jungle prinary, a general two-candidate election will be held on November 16 with the top two finishers.
After he was directed to not testify, the House committees leading an impeachment probe into President Trump issued a subpoena to Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, the Washington Post reports.
“A day after threatening Turkey with economic ruin if it goes too far in invading northern Syria, President Trump said Tuesday that he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet at the White House next month,” the AP reports.
“The announcement came one day after Trump publicly warned Turkey it would be in ‘big trouble’ if any American troops in Syria are injured during a military operation Turkey is preparing to launch against Kurdish fighters who had been allied with the United States against Islamic State militants.”
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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