Author: PolitCens

The events of the next four days on Capitol Hill will go a long way toward determining the ultimate success or failure of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, as four different legislative initiatives converge in a burst of frenetic policymaking. 

Congress must pass a budget resolution for the new fiscal year before Friday to avoid a partial shutdown of the federal government, and it must raise the limit on the Treasury Department’s authority to borrow money to avoid a catastrophic default on the country’s debts that could occur as soon as mid-October. 

At the same time, the Democratic Party is tearing itself apart internally with arguments over two additional bills that the president sees as vital to his agenda. 

“I don’t know whether everything is going to get resolved this week,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “But there’s no question about the fact that the next week or two — or maximum three — are make-or-break for the Biden administration’s legislative agenda.” 

Democratic infighting 

The first of the two bills that Democrats are fighting over is a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support. The second is a much larger $3.5 trillion bill with tax credits and social spending that would forward multiple Democratic priorities, including efforts to address climate change, expand access to health care, address inequality, and more.

The problem is that the progressive wing of the party is promising to block passage of the infrastructure bill unless the social spending bill is passed first, and moderates are balking unless the infrastructure package is passed first and the cost of the social spending bill is slashed. 

Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington research organization, said the Democratic leadership in the House is in a position similar to the Republican leadership a decade ago. At that time, with the far-right Tea Party movement ascendant, Republican leaders faced a group on the party’s ideological fringe that was willing to scuttle the broader party’s goals to achieve their own, narrower objectives.

“It has historically been the case that when the speaker and the president of the Democratic Party say, ‘We’re going to do this now,’ the party gets in line,” said Grumet. Now, he said, “There is an open question, that will be somewhat resolved in the next few days, about whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden can, in fact, maintain cohesion in a very diverse Democratic Party.” 

And that covers only the House of Representatives. For the social spending bill to pass the Senate, Democrats would have to bring along all 50 of their members, including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, both of whom have expressed serious doubts about the proposal.

Republicans filibuster funding bill 

Senate Republicans complicated the process on Monday night by using a legislative tool — the filibuster — to kill a House-passed bill that would have funded the government into December and suspended the debt ceiling restrictions on Treasury borrowing until December 2022. Their aim is to force Democrats to use a process known as “budget reconciliation,” which is immune to the filibuster, to raise the debt ceiling using only Democratic votes. 

Lawmakers in both parties dread having to raise the debt ceiling for fear of being criticized for reckless spending.

Democrats, however, want Republicans to participate in the debt ceiling vote, because the measure would help defray the costs of spending bills and tax cuts passed when the GOP held power. 

Additionally, Democrats had planned to use budget reconciliation to pass the $3.5 trillion social spending bill. But adding an urgent debt ceiling increase complicates that bill significantly and greatly compresses the time that Democrats would have to work on it. 

Filibuster as cudgel 

The stakes are particularly high because after a reconciliation bill is passed, Republicans will be in a position to block most future Democratic initiatives. That’s because budget reconciliation can typically be used only once per budget cycle, leaving Republicans able to filibuster — and thereby kill with unlimited debate — any further Democratic bills. 

Democrats, who control the 100-member Senate with 50 votes plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, would need 10 Republican senators to join them to achieve a 60-vote supermajority required to end a filibuster — a near impossibility given the sharp partisan divisions on Capitol Hill.

Failure to secure the president’s objectives now could leave Democrats with nothing to show for two years of unified control of Congress. That would make an already difficult midterm election even more challenging. 

Historically, the party of a sitting president usually loses representation in Congress in midterm elections. With their tiny majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats were already facing the likelihood of losing control of one or both chambers in 2022.

Infrastructure vote postponed 

Speaker Pelosi, a California Democrat, had promised her party’s moderates a vote Monday on the $1 trillion infrastructure package. But, late Sunday night, she announced that the vote would be postponed until Thursday. 

Over the weekend, Pelosi also said the House would vote this week on the larger domestic policy bill — a piece of legislation that hasn’t been written yet because of the extensive intraparty disagreements over what ought to be in it and the price tag. 

House Democrats were scheduled to meet Monday night to find a way forward. 

If the party fails to bridge internal divides and misses the opportunity to enact historic domestic policy, it would likely seal Democrats’ fate, political experts assert. 

“If there isn’t a path to ‘yes’ that people are prepared to take, then the Democratic Party will have failed and will be seen by the American people as having failed,” said Galston, of the Brookings Institution. “And failure, plus a president with low job-approval numbers, is a formula for a political cataclysm in the midterms.” 

 
…

The U.S. Senate failed Monday to pass measures to avert a partial government shutdown and prevent a federal default at the start of a crucial legislative week that is highlighting the challenges facing the sharply divided Congress.

Republican lawmakers voted to oppose the bills Monday evening, forcing Democrats to look for other ways to keep the government open beyond Thursday and to raise the debt ceiling before the government is expected to default on its loans sometime in late October or early November.

The near party-line vote failed 48-50. Democrats narrowly control both Houses of Congress, but under Senate rules, 60 out of 100 votes are needed to pass most legislation in that chamber.

Republicans have said they want Democrats to lift the debt limit on their own, saying they do not support the Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar spending plans.

“We are not willing to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling while they write a reckless taxing and spending spree of historic proportions behind closed doors,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Monday.

Democrats say much of the nation’s debt was incurred during the Trump administration. Historically, both parties have voted to raise the limit to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debts. 

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the Republican action is “one of the most reckless and irresponsible votes I have seen take place in the Senate” and that “the Republican Party has solidified itself as the party of default.” 

McConnell said Republicans would support a bill funding the day-to-day operations of the government, which runs out of money after Thursday. Democrats, however, do not want to separate the government funding measure from the debt limit bill. 

In addition to the impasse on those measures, Congress is also at odds over a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill as well as a $3.5 trillion Democratic social spending and climate change bill.

The House of Representatives began debate Monday on the infrastructure bill ahead of a planned vote Thursday on the measure, which is a major part of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the dates in a letter to Democratic lawmakers Sunday. In television interviews, she expressed confidence the bill would pass.

“Let me just say that we’re going to pass the bill this week,” Pelosi said on ABC’s This Week.

The Senate approved the infrastructure plan in a vote last month that saw 19 Republicans join all 50 members of the Democratic caucus.

Progressive Democrats in the House, however, have tied the infrastructure bill to the larger $3.5 trillion social spending bill, which faces more opposition, including from some Senate Democrats who say they will not support that much spending.

House progressives say they won’t vote for the infrastructure bill unless there is progress on the social spending bill, while Democratic moderates say they may not vote on the larger spending bill until the infrastructure bill passes. 

Pelosi told ABC’s This Week that the negotiations would certainly result in a lower price tag for the social spending bill, calling such a development “self-evident.”

The $3.5 trillion proposal includes plans to provide universal prekindergarten instruction, free community college classes, expanded health care for older Americans, child care funding and money to combat the effects of climate change. It would also attempt to change immigration law and lower prescription drug prices.

The infrastructure spending, with nearly half of it in new government funding, would repair aging roads and bridges and expand broadband, pay for replacement of dangerous drinking-water systems that use lead pipes, add new sewer infrastructure, expand passenger rail and transit systems, and improve airports.

Biden has been meeting with fellow Democrats to ensure his legislative agenda passes. 

When asked what legislative success would look like, he told reporters Monday at the White House, “We’ve got three things to do: the debt ceiling, the continuing resolution and the two pieces of legislation. If we do that, the country’s going to be in great shape.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
…

The U.S. House of Representatives is due to begin debate Monday on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill ahead of a planned vote Thursday on the measure that is a major part of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the dates in a letter to Democratic lawmakers Sunday, and in television interviews she expressed confidence the bill will pass. 

“Let me just say that we’re going to pass the bill this week,” Pelosi said on ABC News’ “This Week” show.

She added that she would not bring a bill to the House floor for consideration unless it has enough support to pass. 

Biden also expressed confidence when asked about the bill, telling reporters Sunday “it’s going to take the better part of this week.”

The Senate approved the infrastructure plan in a vote last month that saw 19 Republicans join all 50 members of the Democratic caucus.

The infrastructure spending, with nearly half of it in new government funding, would repair aging roads and bridges and expand broadband, pay for replacement of dangerous lead-piped drinking water systems, add new sewer infrastructure, expand passenger rail and transit systems, and make airport improvements.

Pelosi said in her letter that House leaders are also working with the Senate and White House on a separate $3.5 trillion proposal involving social safety net and climate change programs. That measure includes plans to provide universal pre-kindergarten instruction, free community college classes, expanded health care for older Americans, childcare funding, money to combat the effects of climate change, and make immigration law changes and attempt to lower prescription drug prices.

But the larger bill, which advanced in the House Budget Committee on Saturday, faces more opposition, including from some Senate Democrats who say they will not support that much spending. 

Pelosi told ABC’s “This Week” that the negotiations would certainly result in a lower price tag, calling such a development “self-evident.” 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
…

A time of intensity. That’s what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, is calling this coming week in Congress as lawmakers are expected to vote on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, but also consider the Democrat-backed $3.5 trillion sweeping social spending package, core to the Biden administration agenda. Michelle Quinn reports.   

Produced by: Henry Hernandez 
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is defending President Joe Biden’s foreign policy record as the administration faces pressure over its handling of Haitian migrants on the U.S. border, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and a nuclear submarine deal with Australia that angered France. VOA’s senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine has more. 

Produced by: Kim Weeks
…

A Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona’s largest county ended Friday without producing proof to support former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.

After six months of searching for evidence of fraud, the firm hired by Republican lawmakers issued a report that experts described as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Still, even that partisan review came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that Biden won by 360 more votes than the official results certified last year.

The finding was an embarrassing end to a widely criticized, and at times bizarre, quest to prove allegations that election officials and courts have rejected. It has no bearing on the final, certified results. Previous reviews by nonpartisan professionals that followed state law found no significant problem with the vote count in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix.

Still, for many critics, the conclusions reached by the firm Cyber Ninjas and presented at a hearing Friday underscored the dangerous futility of the exercise, which has helped fuel skepticism about the validity of the 2020 election and spawned copycat audits nationwide.

“We haven’t learned anything new,” said Matt Masterson, a top U.S. election security official in the Trump administration. “What we have learned from all this is that the Ninjas were paid millions of dollars, politicians raised millions of dollars and Americans’ trust in democracy is lower.”

‘They are trying to scare people’

Other critics said the true purpose of the audit may have already succeeded. It spread complex allegations about ballot irregularities and software issues, fueling doubts about elections, said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who oversaw the Maricopa County election office last year.

“They are trying to scare people into doubting the system is actually working,” he said. “That is their motive. They want to destroy public confidence in our systems.”

The review was authorized by the Republican-controlled state Senate, which subpoenaed the election records from Maricopa County and selected the inexperienced, pro-Trump auditors. On Friday, Senate President Karen Fann sent a letter to Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, urging him to investigate issues the report flagged. However, she noted the review found the official count matched the ballots.

“This is the most important and encouraging finding of the audit,” Fann wrote.

Trump issued statements Friday falsely claiming the results demonstrated “fraud.”

Despite being widely pilloried, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials. In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don’t comply.

None of the reviews can change Biden’s victory, which was certified by officials in each of the swing states he won and by Congress on Jan. 6 — after Trump’s supporters, fueled by the same false charges that generated the audits, stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent certification of his loss.

The Arizona report claims a number of shortcomings in election procedures and suggests the final tally still could not be relied upon. Several claims were challenged by election experts, while members of the Republican-led county Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections, disputed claims on Twitter.

“Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election,” county officials tweeted.

Election officials say that’s because the review team is biased, ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law and had no experience in the complex field of election audits.

‘The Senate’s contractors don’t understand election processes’

Two of the report’s recommendations stood out because they showed its authors misunderstood election procedures — that there should be paper ballot backups and that voting machines should not be connected to the internet. All Maricopa ballots are already paper, with machines only used to tabulate the votes, and those tabulators are not connected to the internet.

The review also checked the names of voters against a commercial database, finding 23,344 reported moving before ballots went out in October. While the review suggests something improper, election officials note that voters like college students, those who own vacation homes or military members can move to temporary locations while still legally voting at the address where they are registered.

“A competent reviewer of an election would not make a claim like that,” said Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky.

The election review was run by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, whose firm has never conducted an election audit before. Logan previously worked with attorneys and Trump supporters trying to overturn the 2020 election and appeared in a film questioning the results of the contest while the ballot review was ongoing.

Logan and others involved with the review presented their findings to two Arizona senators Friday. It kicked off with Shiva Ayyadurai, a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic who claims to have invented email, presenting an analysis relying on “pattern recognition” that flagged purported anomalies in the way mail ballots were processed at the end of the election.

Maricopa County tweeted that the pattern was simply the election office following state law.

“‘Anomaly’ seems to be another way of saying the Senate’s contractors don’t understand election processes,” the county posted during the testimony.

Logan followed up by acknowledging “the ballots that were provided for us to count … very accurately correlated with the official canvass.” He then continued to flag statistical discrepancies — including the voters who moved — that he said merited further investigation.

The review has a history of exploring outlandish conspiracy theories, dedicating time to checking for bamboo fibers on ballots to see if they were secretly shipped in from Asia. It’s also served as a content-generation machine for Trump’s effort to sow skepticism about his loss, pumping out misleading and out-of-context information that the former president circulates long after it’s been debunked.

In July, for example, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots were recorded as received but not sent. Trump repeatedly amplified the claims.Logan had compared two databases that track different things.

Arizona’s Senate agreed to spend $150,000 on the review, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July by Trump allies.

Maricopa County’s official vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand-count spot check found a perfect match.

Two extra post-election reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The county Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems. 
…

Arizona’s most populous county has confirmed that a draft report of a partisan audit of its vote count in the 2020 presidential election declares Joe Biden as the winner.

The report by Cyber Ninjas, a little known Florida-based cybersecurity company, shows Maricopa County’s result in November was correct, the county tweeted late Thursday.

“The #azaudit draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win,” it wrote.

The conclusion, which is expected to be released publicly Friday, effectively ends the discredited Republican-led bid to throw out Biden’s victory there in favor of former president Donald Trump.

Maricopa County did not publish the draft report and Cyber Ninjas did not immediately respond to an AFP request.

Biden’s victory in the key Arizona county was the first by a Democratic presidential nominee in decades.

Trump supporters and organizations who claim he was cheated out of an election win, including some who have also peddled wild conspiracy theories, funded the review to the tune of millions of dollars.

Since his crushing election defeat, Trump has resurfaced to criticize his successor.

In July, at his first campaign-style rally since leaving the White House, he repeated the lie that he won November’s election and that Biden prevailed only through fraud.

Trump, who has been booted from social media and was impeached for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, may yet seek reelection in 2024 but has not announced his plans. 

 
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The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Thursday for legislation to provide $1 billion to Israel to replenish its “Iron Dome” missile-defense system, just two days after the funding was removed from a broader spending bill. 

The measure passed by 420 to 9, with two members voting present. 

Some of the most liberal House Democrats had objected to the provision and said they would vote against the broad spending bill if it was included. That threatened the bill’s passage, with Democrats only narrowly controlling the House, because Republicans have opposed the plan to fund the federal government through December 3 and raise the nation’s borrowing limit. 

The removal led Republicans to label Democrats as anti-Israel, despite a long tradition in the U.S. Congress of strong support from both parties for the Jewish state, to which Washington sends billions of dollars in aid every year. 

Israel responded quickly. “Thanks to all members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic and Republican alike, for their sweeping support for Israel and the commitment to its security. Those who try to challenge this support got a resounding response today,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement. 

Some liberal Democrats voiced concerns recently about the United States’ Israel policy, citing Palestinian civilian casualties as Israel responded to Hamas rocket attacks in May. Israel said most of the 4,350 rockets fired from Gaza during the conflict were blown out of the sky by Iron Dome interceptors. 

“We should also be talking about the Palestinian need for protection against Israeli attack,” Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, an opponent of the funding, said during debate.

The bill, which was introduced in the House Wednesday, provides $1 billion to replace missile interceptors used during the May conflict. 

There was no immediate word on timing of a vote in the Senate.
…

The White House and congressional Democrats have agreed to a framework of options to pay for their huge emerging social and environment bill, top Democrats said Thursday. Now they face the daunting task of narrowing the menu to tax possibilities they can pass to fund President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion plan. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California announced the progress as Biden administration officials and Democratic congressional leaders negotiated behind the scenes. The package aims to rewrite tax and spending priorities to expand programs for Americans of all ages while upping efforts to tackle income inequality and fight climate change. 

Staring down a self-imposed Monday deadline, lawmakers said they would work nonstop to find agreement on specifics. Democrats’ views on those vary widely, though they largely agree with Biden’s idea of raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to fund the package.

“We certainly think it’s progress,” Biden press secretary Jen Pskai said at the White House. 

Biden has been encouraging the negotiations, inviting more than 20 of his party’s moderate and progressive lawmakers to the White House for lengthy meetings this week. He’s working to close the deal with Congress on his “Build Back Better” agenda at a time when his presidential campaign promises are running into the difficulty of actually governing.

But the party has been divided over many of the details. 

Moderate Democrats, most prominently Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, are demanding that the massive dollar total be reduced. The revenue options to pay for it — that mostly means taxes — being considered can be dialed up or down, the leaders say. The ultimate price tag may certainly slip from the much-publicized $3.5 trillion. 

Republicans are solidly opposed to the package, calling it a “reckless tax and spending spree.” So Democrats will have to push it through Congress on their own, which is only possible if they limit their defections to a slim few in the House and none in the Senate.

“We’re proceeding,” Pelosi said. “We intend to stay the course and pass the bill as soon as possible.” 

The congressional leaders huddled early Thursday with the chairs of the tax writing committees to agree to the framework, pulling from work already being done on those panels. They are intent on sticking to Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. 

Representative Richard Neal, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has already drafted his version, which would raise about $2.3 trillion by increasing corporate tax rates to 26.5% for businesses earning more than $5 million a year and increasing the top individual tax from 37% to 39.6% for those earning more than $400,000, or $450,000 for married households. 

The House panel’s bill also includes a 3% surtax on the adjusted incomes of very wealthy people making more than $5 million a year. 

The Senate Finance Committee under Senator Ron Wyden has not yet passed its bill, but it has been eyeing proposals that further target the superrich, including efforts to curtail practices used to avoid paying taxes. 

“I’m not going to get into any specific stuff today, but I’ve made it very clear as chairman of the Finance Committee a billionaire’s tax will be on the menu,” Wyden said.

Those tax goals align with the Biden administration, which is marshaling arguments that the increases are fundamentally about fairness at a time of gaping income inequality. 

According to a new analysis released Thursday by the White House, the wealthiest 400 families worth more than a billion dollars paid an average tax rate of just 8.2% between 2010 and 2018. Treasury Department tables show that is lower than the average tax rate of families with an income of roughly $142,000.

The analysis suggests two clear reasons why billionaires pay a lower rate than the upper middle class: They derive income from stocks, dividends and other assets that are taxed at lower rates, and they can permanently avoid paying tax on certain investment gains that by law are excluded from taxable income.

Without divulging a framework, Wyden indicated he is in agreement with the House’s plans for certain retirement savings accounts used by the wealthy to shield liabilities. 

Targeting “Mega IRAs,” Democrats hope to correct what they see as a flaw in the retirement savings system enabling billionaires to amass millions in independent retirement accounts without ever paying taxes. Under some proposals, individuals earning beyond $400,000 would be barred from contributing to their IRAs once their account balances top $10 million. 

The Biden administration has also shown interest in one climate change tax, a so-called pollution importer fee, which would essentially impose a tariff on goods coming from countries without certain emissions controls. The tax is seen as a way to pressure China.

Gaining less traction seems to be a carbon tax that could fall on households and stray from Biden’s pledge not to tax those earning less than $400,000. 

Another big unknown: whether Democrats can coalesce around a plan to rein in prescription drug costs, which could save the government hundreds of billions that could be used for Biden’s goals 

Thursday’s sudden announcement of framework options caught key lawmakers off guard, including Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent and the chairman of the Budget Committee, and others playing leading roles in assembling one of the biggest bills Congress has ever attempted.

Schumer later acknowledged of the emerging framework, “It’s hardly conclusory, but it was a good step of progress.” 

Yet the framework could help the congressional leaders show momentum as they head toward crucial deadlines and start to address concerns raised by Manchin and other moderates who want a more clear-cut view of what taxes are being considered before they move forward, aides said. 

On Monday, the House plans to begin considering a separate $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects as a first test of Biden’s agenda. That public works bill has already passed the Senate, and Pelosi has agreed to schedule it for a House vote to assuage party moderates who badly want that legislation passed but are leery of supporting the larger $3.5 trillion measure. 

But progressives are threatening to defeat the public works bill as inadequate unless it is partnered with the broader package. To make sure both bills can pass, Democratic leaders are trying to reach agreement on the bigger bill.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate remain at a standstill over a separate package to keep the government funded past the Sept. 30 fiscal year-end and to suspend the federal debt limit to avert a shutdown and a devastating U.S. default on payments. Senate Republicans are refusing to back that House-passed bill, despite the risk of triggering a fiscal crisis. 
…

Bipartisan talks in the U.S. Senate to reform policing that began after a spate of police killings of unarmed Black citizens in 2020 have collapsed, dealing at least a temporary setback to President Joe Biden’s vow to address police brutality.

The negotiations started nine months ago following the high-profile police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and the deaths of other Blacks that drew less attention.  

Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee for more than nine minutes in an incident captured on cellphone video by a bystander. His death in police custody   inspired global protests of institutional racism and police practices, particularly in the United States, where Blacks are disproportionately the victims of deadly encounters with police. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted on murder and manslaughter charges.

Blacks in the U.S. were more than two-and-one-half times more likely to have been killed by police than whites during a five-year period ending in May 2020, according to a Yale University study.

Democratic Senator Cory Booker announced the collapse of the talks on Wednesday, citing a failure to garner Republican support for Democratic proposals to make officers personally responsible for abusive conduct, to raise professional standards and to gather national data on police agencies’ use of force.

“It was clear that we were not making the progress that we needed to make,” Booker said.

In a statement, Republican Senator Tim Scott said he was “deeply disappointed” that Democrats left agreements on the negotiating table banning chokeholds, limiting the transfer of military equipment to police agencies and increasing mental health resources.

“Crime will continue to increase while safety decreases, and more officers are going to walk away from the force because my negotiating partners walked away from the table,” Scott said in a statement. Both senators are African American.

Declaring Floyd’s murder “a stain on the soul of America,” Biden said in a statement that Republicans were to blame for the failed talks.

“Regrettably, Senate Republicans rejected enacting modest reforms, which even the previous president had supported, while refusing to take action on key issues that many in law enforcement were willing to address,” Biden said in a reference to his immediate predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

Biden also said he would continue to pursue police reform through Congress and through “potential further executive actions.” Biden noted his administration had previously announced new policies on chokeholds, no-knock warrants and police body cameras.

Earlier this year, Biden called on lawmakers to reach a bipartisan agreement by May 25, the anniversary of Floyd’s death. But Biden’s appeal and lobbying trips to Washington by victims’ families failed to provide enough momentum among lawmakers, leaving attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, who have represented victims’ families, feeling “extreme disappointment.”

“We cannot let this be a tragic, lost opportunity to regain trust between citizens and police,” the attorneys said.  

Crump and Romanucci said the Senate should vote anyway on the Democrats’ policing bill. They said Republicans would likely defeat the bill, but that would allow voters to “see who is looking out for their communities’ best interests.”

Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are facing what may be the most politically fraught moment since they took unified control of Washington in January.

Lawmakers are battling to avoid a potential government shutdown and a default on the national debt at the same time that Democratic infighting is endangering two pieces of legislation meant to further the party’s key priorities.

The stakes, for both the U.S. economy and President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, could scarcely be higher.

A combination of a few missteps or delays in passing a budget resolution and raising the amount of money that the Treasury Department is allowed to borrow could have catastrophic economic impacts on the United States and the world economy. An estimate by Moody’s Analytics found that the worst-case scenario, in which the U.S. defaults on its debts, could result in a loss of 6 million jobs and destruction of as much as $15 trillion in household wealth.

If House Democrats are unable to muster the votes to pass a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that has been approved by the Senate and a $3.5 trillion bill that would lock in spending on social services, climate change mitigation and other party priorities, they will face voters in 2022 with little to show for two years of Democratic control of Washington.

Likely outcomes unclear

For sure, there are few experts in Washington who expect the battle over the budget and debt limit to actually end in a government default. Lawmakers have gone down this path many times, and have always pulled back at the last minute.

On the spending bills so important to the Biden administration, expectations are not so clear. Wednesday afternoon, Biden brought Democratic lawmakers to the White House to try to hammer out an agreement.

“This is where the rubber meets the road — when it comes to how he can get them together,” said Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. “Can he be the same dealmaker that united progressives and centrists throughout the [presidential] campaign? He has to do that same thing now in the White House.”

Budget problems

The most immediate problem facing lawmakers is that the federal government will lose the authority to spend money on many of its key functions unless a new budget resolution is passed before a September 30 deadline.

The federal government has shut down before, but never in the midst of a pandemic, and it is unclear just how damaging a significant halt in federal operations would be to the country’s public health response to the coronavirus.

Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night passed a “continuing resolution” that would allow the government to continue operating until December, giving lawmakers time to pass separate budget bills for different parts of the government.

However, Republicans in the Senate are expected to block that bill by denying Democrats the 60 votes they will need to end debate. The reason is that Democrats have attached it to legislative language that would waive enforcement of the debt ceiling until December 2022.

Debt ceiling

Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have said that they will not supply any votes to raise the debt ceiling — even votes to cut off debate so that Democrats can pass the bill on their own.

McConnell has publicly said that the debt limit must be raised and that the government must not be allowed to default. However, he is demanding that the Democrats take full responsibility for making that happen — historically a politically onerous task — by using a budget reconciliation bill, which is immune to the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold.

Democrats are refusing to use budget reconciliation for the debt limit because they believe Republicans should share responsibility for raising the debt limit, which will help pay for measures adopted and signed when Republicans had united control of Washington just a few years ago.

Battle lines firm

On Wednesday, six former Treasury secretaries wrote a letter to congressional leaders warning them that legislative brinkmanship might push the country into default, even accidentally, with dire consequences.

“Even a short-lived default could threaten economic growth,” they wrote. “It creates the risk of roiling markets, and of sapping economic confidence, and it would prevent Americans from receiving vital services. It would be very damaging to undermine trust in the full faith and credit of the United States, and this damage would be hard to repair.”

On Tuesday night, McConnell said he had introduced a continuing resolution of his own that would fund the government through December, but that “removes the debt limit language [which waives enforcement until December 2022] that Democrats have known since July will not receive bipartisan support from Senate Republicans.”

On Wednesday morning, however, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it would be the House bill, not McConnell’s, that he brings to a vote in the Senate.

“That’s the bill that will be on the floor,” he said. “Those who will vote yes will vote to avoid default, to avoid a government shutdown. Those who vote no will be saying, ‘We’re OK with default and we’re OK with the government shutdown.’ To say, ‘Do it another way,’ that doesn’t cut it. This is what’s on the floor.”

Democratic squabbling

At the same time that lawmakers are trying to navigate around a government shutdown and potential default, Democratic leaders are working to avoid a derailment of the Biden administration’s domestic policy agenda.

Early in his term, Biden had insisted that Democrats in Congress find a way to compromise with Republicans on an infrastructure bill. As a result, the Senate passed a bipartisan $1.5 trillion bill funding infrastructure basics like roads, highways and bridges. That allowed Biden to claim that he had kept his campaign promise to work across the aisle.

However, the Senate bill left out an enormous number of provisions that Democrats wanted and on which Biden had campaigned, including increased social spending, funding to fight climate change and more.

As a result, progressive members of the House of Representatives announced that they would not support the $1.5 trillion Senate bill until the House and Senate both passed a separate $3.5 trillion package that contained all of the Democrats’ other priorities — something they expected to accomplish by using a budget reconciliation bill to bypass the filibuster.

Centrist Dems revolt

In both the Senate and the House, more centrist members objected to both the progressives’ tactics and their demands. House centrists demanded and received assurances from Democratic leaders that the $1.5 trillion bill would get a vote no later than September 27.

Months ago, it seemed at least possible that the larger $3.5 trillion bill could be passed by that date. However, in the Senate, Democratic lawmakers Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that they would not support the larger bill, blocking progress.

Now, without the $3.5 trillion bill in hand, Democratic progressives are threatening to withhold support for the $1.5 trillion bill, raising the possibility that the Biden administration could be left with neither.

Losing bills ‘deadly for Biden’

Some experts are still expecting that the Democrats will find some sort of agreement, if only because the alternative is so bad.

“My assumption all along has been that Democrats know losing these bills is deadly for Biden, and for them,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

“My sense of it is that in the end, reluctantly, they’ll find something to agree on, because the alternative is so disagreeable,” he said. “The compromise may not be tasty, but the alternative is poisonous.”
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Two members of the U.S. Congress instrumental in the passage of anti-hate crime legislation this year are pressing the Department of Justice to step up enforcement of the measure, warning that reinstatement of pandemic-related restrictions is likely to provoke more attacks — particularly on Asian Americans. 

The new law seeks to accelerate the Justice Department’s reviews of alleged hate crimes reported to federal authorities. 

“As the pandemic wears on and COVID-19 variants cause states, localities, or private entities to reinstate restrictions or public safety mandates, frustration with the virus will undoubtedly resurface,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat of Hawaii, and Representative Grace Meng, a New York Democrat, wrote Monday in a letter directed to Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

“We fear the impact this could have on perpetuating hate-based violence against people,” they added. “Full implementation of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act will help stem the tide against further violence.” 

Advocates for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community blame rhetoric from political leaders, especially former president Donald Trump, who relentlessly blamed the coronavirus pandemic on China, for driving up anti-Asian bias during the pandemic. 

Hate crimes rose sharply in 2020 

The letter comes not long after a report that hate crimes in the United States spiked sharply in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, rising by about 14% to 8,305, the highest level since 2001 and the third-highest since the Justice Department began tracking bias crimes. 

The rise was driven by sharp increases in bias crimes against Asian and Black individuals and was far higher than the Federal Bureau of Investigation originally reported when it released 2020 crime statistics late last month showing only a 6% increase. 

The discrepancy in the numbers, reported by the Washington Post, was blamed on a technical problem that incorrectly under-reported data from the state of Ohio.

Anti-Black bias most prevalent 

Black people are far and away the most common victims of bias crimes in the United States. Including the updated information from Ohio, there were nearly 2,900 recorded incidents of bias crimes against Blacks in 2020. That’s an increase of more than 45% from the previous year. Hate crimes resulting from anti-Black bias accounted for about 35% of all hate crimes in the U.S. in 2020. 

Asians in the U.S. experienced the highest percentage increase in hate crimes last year. Between 2019 and 2020, the number of crimes rooted in anti-Asian bias jumped by 70%. The roughly 274 anti-Asian crimes reported in 2020 reflected about 4% of the country’s total. 

Hate crimes targeting White people make up the second largest total category measured by the FBI, at about 10% of the total. Crimes against Jewish people made up about 9%.

Reporting system deeply flawed 

It is important to recognize that there are significant flaws in the reporting system that combine to significantly understate the extent of the problem.

In addition to the fact that many bias attacks are never reported to law enforcement in the first place, nearly one in five of the 18,623 law enforcement agencies in the country do not report hate crime statistics to the FBI. 

Further, there is a strong likelihood that even many of those that do report statistics to the FBI are undercounting the real prevalence of bias crimes. In any given three-month period, a large majority of law enforcement agencies that do participate in tracking hate crimes report that there were none in their jurisdiction during that time period. In 2020, 64 jurisdictions with populations of more than 100,000 people reported not a single hate crime.

“The fact that so many law enforcement agencies did not participate is inexcusable, and the fact that 64 jurisdictions with populations over 100,000 affirmatively reported zero hate crimes is simply not credible,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a statement when the FBI data was released. 

“Data drives policy and without having a complete picture of the problem, we cannot even begin to resolve the issues driving this surge in hate and violence,” Greenblatt added. 

COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act 

The law that Hirono and Meng helped pass, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, is meant, in part, to remedy the poor reporting of hate crimes in the U.S. The bill directs the Department of Justice to issue guidance to law enforcement agencies around the country on how to establish effective hate-crime reporting regimes. 

It also tells the FBI to recommend that local agencies keep track of bias “incidents,” such as racially motivated verbal abuse, that do not rise to the level of a crime.

“While these actions are unlikely to rise to the level of a hate crime, the impetus for these actions are the same—fear and xenophobia. In order to meaningfully address the root causes of this bias and hostility, we need a clear and full picture of the scope of the problem. Data on hate crimes alone is insufficient,” Hirono and Meng wrote. 
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The U.S. House voted Tuesday night to fund the government into early December, suspend the federal debt limit, and provide disaster and refugee aid, setting up a high-stakes showdown with Republicans who oppose the package despite the prospects of a looming fiscal crisis.

The Democratic-led House passed the measure by a vote of 220-211, strictly along party lines. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to falter because of overwhelming GOP opposition.

The federal government faces a shutdown if funding stops on Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, midnight next Thursday. Additionally, at some point in October the U.S. risks defaulting on its accumulated debt load if its borrowing limits are not waived or adjusted. 

“Our country will suffer greatly if we do not act now to stave off this unnecessary and preventable crisis,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said shortly before the vote.

The package approved Tuesday would provide stopgap money to keep the government funded to Dec. 3 and extend borrowing authority through the end of 2022. It includes $28.6 billion in disaster relief for the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and other extreme weather events, and $6.3 billion to support Afghanistan evacuees in the fallout from the end of the 20-year war.

While suspending the debt ceiling allows the government to meet financial obligations already incurred, Republicans argued it would also facilitate a spending binge in the months ahead.

“I will not support signing a blank check as this majority is advancing the most reckless expansion of government in generations,” said Representative Dan Meuser, a Republican.

Backed by the White House, Democratic congressional leaders pushed ahead at a time of great uncertainty in Congress. Democrats are also trying to gather support for President Joe Biden’s broad “build back better” agenda, which would have a price tag of up to $3.5 trillion over 10 years.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he was not about to help pay off past debts when Biden was about to pile on more. He said since Democrats control the White House and Congress, it’s their problem to find the votes.

“The debt ceiling will be raised as it always should be, but it will be raised by the Democrats,” McConnell said.

In the 50-50 Senate, Democrats will be hard-pressed to find 10 Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.

“This is playing with fire,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

The Treasury Department has been using “extraordinary measures” to fund the government since the last debt limit suspension expired July 31, and projects that at some point next month will run out cash reserves. Then, it will have to rely on incoming receipts to pay its obligations, now at $28.4 trillion.

That could force the Treasury to delay or miss payments, a devastating situation.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, warned if lawmakers allow a federal debt default “this economic scenario is cataclysmic.” 

In a report being circulated by Democrats, Zandi warned that a potential downturn from government funding cutbacks would cost 6 million jobs and stock market losses would wipe out $15 trillion of household wealth. 

Once a routine matter, raising the debt ceiling has become a political weapon of choice for Republicans in Washington ever since the 2011 arrival of tea party lawmakers who refused to allow the increase. At the time, they argued against more spending and the standoff triggered a fiscal crisis.

Echoing that strategy, McConnell is refusing to provide Republican votes, even though he also relied on Democratic votes help raise the debt ceiling when his party had the majority. He explained his current thinking to senators during a private lunch Tuesday.

Still, some Republican senators might have a tough time voting no.

Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana, whose state was battered by the hurricane and who is up for election next year, said he will likely vote for the increase. “My people desperately need the help,” he said. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that “in our view, this should not be a controversial vote.” Psaki said Congress has raised the debt ceiling numerous times on a bipartisan basis, including three times under President Donald Trump.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, the Democratic chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, was forced to introduce another version of the bill Tuesday after some within the Democratic caucus objected to the inclusion of $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, which uses missiles to intercept short-range rockets fired into the country.

The Israel defense issue splits Democrats, but DeLauro assured colleagues that money for the weapons system would be included in the annual defense spending bill for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Hoyer went a step further and said he would bring a bill to the floor this week to replenish the Iron Dome system.

Republicans were highly critical of the change and vowed to stand as allies with Israel. 

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Democrats were negotiating among themselves over Biden’s big “build back better” package as the price tag likely slips to win over skeptical centrist lawmakers who view it as too much. 

Publicly, the White House has remained confident the legislation will pass soon, despite sharp differences among progressives and moderates in the party over the eventual size of the package and a companion $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

There has been a flurry of outreach from the White House to Democrats on Capitol Hill, and Biden himself was given a call sheet of lawmakers to cajole, even though his week was dominated by foreign policy, including his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. 

The president has been talking to a wide number of lawmakers beyond his recent meetings with Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two key centrist votes, according to a White House official familiar with the calls and granted anonymity to discuss them.

Biden’s big initiative touches almost all aspects of Americans’ lives. It would impose tax hikes on corporations and wealthy Americans earning beyond $400,000 a year and plow that money back into federal programs for young and old. It would increase and expand government health, education and family support programs for households, children and seniors, and boost environmental infrastructure programs to fight climate change.

With Republicans opposed to Biden’s vision, Democrats have no votes to spare in the Senate, and just a few votes’ margin in the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised a Sept. 27 vote on a companion bill, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill of public works projects that enjoys widespread support from both parties in the Senate, though House Republicans mostly oppose it.

Even though that bipartisan bill should be an easy legislative lift, it too faces a political obstacle course. Dozens of lawmakers in the Congressional Progressive Caucus are expected to vote against it if it comes ahead of the broader Biden package. And centrists won’t vote for the broader package unless they are assured the bipartisan bill will also be included.
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Democrats can’t use their $3.5 trillion package bolstering social and climate programs to give millions of immigrants a chance to become citizens, the Senate’s parliamentarian said late Sunday, a crushing blow to what was the party’s clearest pathway in years to attaining that long-sought goal. 

The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan interpreter of its rules, is a setback for President Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and their allies in the pro-immigration and progressive communities. It badly damages Democrats’ hopes of enacting — over Republican opposition — changes letting several categories of immigrants gain permanent residence and possibly citizenship.  

MacDonough’s decision was described by a person informed about the ruling who would describe it only on condition of anonymity. 

The parliamentarian decided that the immigration language could not be included in an immense bill that’s been shielded from GOP filibusters. Left vulnerable to filibusters, which require 60 Senate votes to defuse, the immigration provisions have virtually no chance in the 50-50 Senate. 

MacDonough rejected Democratic language that would have opened a doorway to citizenship for young immigrants brought illegally to the country as children, often called “Dreamers”; immigrants with Temporary Protected Status who’ve fled countries stricken by natural disasters or extreme violence; essential workers; and farm workers. 

Estimates vary because many people can be in more than one category, but the liberal Center for American Progress has estimated that 6 million people could be helped by the Democratic effort. Biden had proposed a broader drive that would have affected 11 million immigrants. 

Democrats and their pro-immigration allies have said they will offer alternative approaches to MacDonough that would open a doorway to permanent status to at least some immigrants.  

The overall legislation would boost spending for social safety net, environment and other programs and largely finance the initiatives with tax increases on the rich and corporations. Moderate Democrats want to water down some of the provisions, including shrinking its price tag, but progressives oppose trimming it. 

Party leaders are still working on finding a compromise on the sweeping legislation that would satisfy virtually every Democrat in Congress. They can’t lose any Democratic votes in the 50-50 Senate and can lose no more than three in the House. 

Under the special process Democrats are using to shield the overall bill from a filibuster, language in such legislation is considered “extraneous” and is supposed to be removed if its budget impact is “merely incidental” to the provision’s overall policies.  

MacDonough said the budget impact of Democrats’ immigration proposal was outweighed by the policy impact it would have. Democrats have said that according to an unreleased estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the immigration provisions would have increased federal deficits by more than $130 billion over the coming decade, largely because of federal benefits the immigrants would qualify for.  

Democrats and a handful of GOP allies have made halting progress during the past two decades toward legislation that would help millions of immigrants gain permanent legal status in the U.S. Ultimately, they’ve been thwarted each time by broad Republican opposition. 

The House has approved separate bills this year achieving much of that, but the measures have gone nowhere in the Senate because of Republican filibusters. Bipartisan talks have yielded no middle ground. 
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Congressman Anthony Gonzalez, one of 10 US House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in January, said Thursday he would not seek reelection, citing the “toxic” atmosphere in a party that remains enthralled by the former president.

The two-term back-bencher from Ohio stressed that family considerations played a substantial role in his decision, but he acknowledged the difficult political scenario, one in which he would have had to face a Trump-endorsed primary challenger next year.

“While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” he said in a statement.

Gonzalez was more blunt in an interview in Thursday’s New York Times, assailing Trump as “a cancer for the country” for inspiring his supporters to launch the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

“I don’t believe he can ever be president again,” he told the daily.

Gonzalez, a 36-year-old conservative, is the first among the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump to retire rather than endure what is undoubtedly a brutal season of primaries ahead.

Trump, who remains hugely influential in the party, has made clear he will work tirelessly to help defeat those Republicans who sought to oust him.

They include Liz Cheney, who lost her House Republican leadership position when she refused to tone down her criticism of the former president.

Trump has already announced his support for a former Trump aide, Max Miller, running for Gonzalez’s seat.

Several House Democrats tweeted out their appreciation of Gonzalez after his announcement.

He and the other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump “are paying a price for doing the right thing,” congressman Brendan Boyle said. “But they will be vindicated by history.” 
…

A growing number of Republicans, including state governors, have vowed to mount legal challenges against President Joe Biden’s sweeping measures to compel workers and federal employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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The prosecutor tasked with examining the U.S. government’s investigation into Russian election interference charged a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on Thursday with making a false statement to the FBI. 

The case against the attorney, Michael Sussmann, is just the second prosecution brought by special counsel John Durham in 2½ years of work. Yet neither case brought by Durham undoes the core finding of an earlier investigation by Robert Mueller that Russia had interfered in sweeping fashion on behalf of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and that the Trump campaign welcomed that aid.

It lays bare the wide-ranging and evolving nature of Durham’s investigation. In addition to having scrutinized the activities of FBI and CIA officials during the early days of the Russia probe, it has also looked at the behavior of private individuals like Sussman who provided the U.S. government with information as it scrambled to determine whether Trump associates were coordinating with Russia to tip the election’s outcome. 

Suspect worked with Clinton campaign

The indictment accuses Sussmann of hiding that he was working with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during a September 2016 conversation he had with the FBI’s general counsel, when he relayed concerns from cybersecurity researchers about potentially suspicious contacts between Russia-based Alfa Bank and a Trump organization server. The FBI looked into the matter but found no connections. 

Sussmann is a former federal prosecutor who specializes in cybersecurity.

Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, said their client is a highly respected national security lawyer who had previously worked in the Justice Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations. They said they were confident he would prevail at trial and “vindicate his good name.” 

“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they said in a statement. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented, and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work.” 

The Alfa Bank matter was not a pivotal element of the Russia probe and was not even mentioned in Mueller’s 448-page report in 2019. Still, the indictment may give fodder to Russia investigation critics who regard it as politically tainted and engineered by Democrats. 

Sussmann’s former firm, Perkins Coie, has deep Democratic connections. A then-partner at the firm, Marc Elias, brokered a deal with the Fusion GPS research firm to study Trump’s business ties to Russia. That work, by former British spy Christopher Steele, produced a dossier of research that helped form the basis of flawed surveillance applications targeting a former Trump campaign official, Carter Page. 

Firm accepts resignation

A spokesman for Perkins Coie said Sussmann, “who has been on leave from the firm, offered his resignation from the firm in order to focus on his legal defense, and the firm accepted it.” 

The Durham investigation has already spanned months longer than the earlier special counsel probe into Russian election interference conducted by Mueller, the former FBI director, and his team. The investigation was slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and experienced leadership tumult following the abrupt departure last fall of a top deputy on Durham’s team. 

Though Trump had eagerly anticipated Durham’s findings in hopes that they’d be a boon to his reelection campaign, any political impact the conclusion may have once had has been dimmed by the fact that Trump is no longer in office. 

The Durham appointment by then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 was designed to examine potential errors or misconduct in the U.S. government’s investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was conspiring with Russia to sway the outcome of the election. 

A two-year investigation by Mueller established that the Trump campaign was eager to receive and benefit from Kremlin aid and documented multiple interactions between Russians and Trump associates. Investigators said they did not find enough evidence to charge any campaign official with having conspired with Russia, though a half-dozen Trump aides were charged with various offenses, including false statements. 

Until now, Durham had brought only one criminal case — a false statement charge against an FBI lawyer who altered an email related to the surveillance of Page to obscure the nature of Page’s preexisting relationship with the CIA. That lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation. 
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