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Lawmaker Starts Lobbying Firm While Still In Congress

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Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) “hasn’t left Congress yet, but the Kansas Republican has already launched a new lobbying firm,” McClatchy reports.

“Jenkins’ term in the U.S. House doesn’t officially end until the first week of January and she still faces major votes on the farm bill, homeland security budget and other legislation. But her new business, LJ Strategies, LLC, has already registered with the state of Kansas.”

“Ethics watchdogs say the situation makes a mockery of the rules restricting lawmakers from working as lobbyists until they’ve been out of office for at least one year.”

McConnell Blocks Sentencing Reform Bill

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“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reluctance to hold a vote on a popular criminal justice bill has angered top Republican senators and created an unusual rift with a longtime GOP ally, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa,” the AP reports.

“Grassley has spent years working to build a coalition around the bill and is pushing for a year-end vote. Grassley says more than two-thirds of the Senate supports it. But McConnell is refusing to bring the legislation forward in a standoff that’s dividing the Republican majority and putting President Trump on the spot.”

“For the 85-year-old chairman of the Judiciary Committee, this is not the way Senate is supposed to operate. Grassley was expecting some deference from McConnell after delivering on Trump’s judicial nominees — including two now on the Supreme Court. Trump backs the criminal justice bill, too, but McConnell says it’s divisive.”

VA Secretary Praised Confederate President as a ‘Martyr’

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Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie praised Confederate States President Jefferson Davis effusively in a 1995 speech, calling him a “martyr to ‘The Lost Cause'” and an “exceptional man in an exceptional age,” CNN reports.

Wilkie, who delivered the speech in front of a statue of Davis at the US Capitol during an event sponsored by the United Daughters of Confederacy, also said that while he was “no apologist for the South,” viewing Confederate “history and the ferocity of the Confederate soldier solely through the lens of slavery and by the slovenly standards of the present is dishonest and a disservice to our ancestors.”


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Lawmaker Says Trump Jr. Lied to Intelligence Committee

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Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN she believes Donald Trump, Jr. lied to the committee on at least two occasions, which would constitute a felony.

Said Speier: “I don’t really want to go into it at this point, but I think there’s at least two occasions where he lied to the committee.”

Harris Says He Would Support a New Election

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“Mark Harris, the Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District election, issued a video Friday saying he would ‘wholeheartedly support’ a new election if evidence emerges that criminal activity swayed the outcome of the Nov. 6 race, the Washington Post reports.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports Harris paid more than $525,000 to a political consulting firm at the center of a probe of possible absentee ballot fraud in the race.

Trump Will Pick New Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

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President Trump is expected to name Army Gen. Mark Milley to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ABC News reports.

“As the country’s top-ranking military official, Milley would replace current Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, who entered the role in October of 2015 under the Obama administration and is expected to serve until September of next year.”

Reuters: “Trump hinted earlier on Friday that he would be announcing new military leadership on Saturday when he attends the Army-Navy football game.”

Trump Keeps Close Eye on Market Turmoil

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“As the stock market churned this week, President Trump anxiously called advisers both inside and outside the White House looking for validation that his talks with China were not driving the sell-off,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Fresh off what he described as a ‘historic’ weekend meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, Mr. Trump has questioned why the markets weren’t reacting more positively to the news of his potential breakthrough with Beijing. In consulting with advisers, he remained convinced that the volatility wasn’t his own doing, but rather, the product of the Federal Reserve’s plan to raise the benchmark interest rate.”

“But investors—and many within his administration—saw it differently… Publicly, Mr. Trump has often dismissed market fluctuations as part of a natural correction, but several people close to the president say he places as much importance on the health of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for validation of his job performance as he does with his polling numbers.”

Mueller Questioned Kelly In Obstruction Probe

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“White House chief of staff John Kelly was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in recent months,” CNN reports.

“Kelly responded to a narrow set of questions from special counsel investigators after White House lawyers initially objected to Mueller’s request to do the interview earlier this summer.”

“Kelly is the latest high-ranking White House official known to provide information for Mueller’s investigation, though his interview marks a departure of sorts since Kelly didn’t join the White House until July 2017. Most of the dozens of other interviews have been with people who were associated with the Trump campaign, were part of the transition or served in the early part of the administration.”

Justice Department Still Hasn’t Said That Sessions Quit

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President Trump “may have a pick he plans to nominate to be attorney general, but his Justice Department has yet to file the required paperwork that Jeff Sessions has left the office,” BuzzFeed News reports.

“Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, the head of the Justice Department was to report the vacancy in the office of attorney general… ‘immediately.’ It’s been a month since Trump forced then-Attorney General Sessions to resign and then tweeted that Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’ chief of staff, would be the acting attorney general.”

Wisconsin Republicans Got Little for Their Power Grab

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Charles Sykes: “The Wisconsin GOP’s lame-duck power play was not the death of democracy. But it was bad enough: petty, vindictive, and self-destructive. It was, as the saying goes, worse than a crime. It was a blunder. And for what?”

“In its arrogant insularity, the Wisconsin GOP became a national symbol of win-at-all-costs, norms-be-damned politics. Cut through the overwrought rhetoric and what did the Republican legislators actually accomplish? Not really a whole lot; certainly not enough to justify the political damage they’ve inflicted on themselves. They have managed to energize the progressive base, expose themselves as sore losers, and undermine crucial democratic norms. And in return … they got extraordinarily little.”

Papadopoulos Released from Prison

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“Ex- Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos was released from prison Friday morning after serving 12 days for lying to investigators about his contact with individuals tied to Russia during the 2016 campaign,” CNN reports.

“As part of his sentence, Papadopoulos will now have 12 months of supervised release, must serve 200 hours of community service within about one year, and must pay a $9,500 fine.”

The WASP Aristocracy Wasn’t All Bad

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Fareed Zakaria: “The death of George H.W. Bush has occasioned a fair amount of nostalgia for the old American establishment, of which Bush was undoubtedly a prominent member. It has also provoked a heated debate among commentators about that establishment, whose membership was determined largely by bloodlines and connections. You had to be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to ascend to almost any position of power in the United States until the early 1960s. Surely, there is nothing good to say about a system that was so discriminatory toward everyone else?”

“Actually, there is. For all its faults — and it was often horribly bigoted, in some places segregationist and almost always exclusionary — at its best, the old WASP aristocracy did have a sense of modesty, humility and public-spiritedness that seems largely absent in today’s elite. Many of Bush’s greatest moments — his handling of the fall of communism, his decision not to occupy Iraq after the first Gulf War, his acceptance of tax increases to close the deficit — were marked by restraint, an ability to do the right thing despite enormous pressure to pander to public opinion.”

“But, and here is the problem, it is likely these virtues flowed from the nature of that old elite. The aristocracy was secure in its power and position, so it could afford to think about the country’s fate in broad terms, looking out for the longer term, rising above self-interest — because its own interest was assured.”

Trump Rage Tweets at Mueller

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If President Trump’s tweets this morning are an indication, he’s bracing for bad news in the three court filings expected to be made by special counsel Robert Mueller and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York today.

Said Trump: “Robert Mueller and Leakin’ Lyin’ James Comey are Best Friends, just one of many Mueller Conflicts of Interest. And bye the way, wasn’t the woman in charge of prosecuting Jerome Corsi (who I do not know) in charge of ‘legal’ at the corrupt Clinton Foundation? A total Witch Hunt…”

He goes on: “Will Robert Mueller’s big time conflicts of interest be listed at the top of his Republicans only Report. Will Andrew Weissman’s horrible and vicious prosecutorial past be listed in the Report. He wrongly destroyed people’s lives, took down great companies, only to be overturned, 9-0, in the United States Supreme Court. Doing same thing to people now. Will all of the substantial & many contributions made by the 17 Angry Democrats to the Campaign of Crooked Hillary be listed in top of Report.”

First Read: “Somebody is clearly worried…”

About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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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