What the Hell Is Indicted Bob Menendez Doing at a Classified Briefing?

Senator Bob Menendez was spotted at a classified briefing on Ukraine on Wednesday, despite having been indicted on multiple bribery charges and accused of acting as an agent to a foreign government.

When asked to explain his presence at the meeting, Menendez brushed off the felony charges.

“Bottom line is, I’m a United States senator. I have my security credentials. And an accusation is just that. It’s not proof of anything,” Menendez told CNN’s Manu Raju.

Menendez has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him and has refused calls for his resignation—even going so far as to suggest he may run for reelection in 2024. He was, however, forced to resign as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Senate Democrats’ bylaws, which forbids members from serving in leadership roles if they’re charged with felonies.

He was also notably absent from a classified briefing on Israel last month after some of his colleagues expressed national security concerns regarding his presence, reported The Washington Post.

The New Jersey Democrat and his wife stand accused of acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, and other flashy gifts in exchange for his “power and influence to protect and enrich” the businessmen and government of Egypt.

It’s the latest in a seeming history of corruption charges for Menendez. In 2017, another corruption case involving the senator and a wealthy eye doctor convicted of Medicare fraud ended in a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a verdict on whether Menendez had traded political favors in exchange for trips on a private jet and lavish vacations.

Altogether, Menendez faces the possibility of up to 45 years in prison on combined conspiracy charges brought against him in September, according to a DOJ indictment, with the possibility of an additional two years, according to a law cited in the October indictment.

The House GOP’s quest to trade $14.3 billion in IRS cuts for $14.3 billion in emergency aid to Israel has an updated price tag, and surprise, surprise: It’s much steeper than it anticipated.

Instead of decreasing the deficit, the multibillion-dollar slash to the IRS proposed by newly minted House Speaker Mike Johnson would actually cost the government more than $26 billion in lost revenue by 2033, according to a Congressional Budget Office report issued Wednesday. The result would add nearly $12.5 billion to the national deficit over the next 10 years, the CBO predicted.

Some officials estimate that the true number could be even higher.

IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel believes the damages may be more to the tune of $90 billion in lost revenue over the next decade and that the cuts would reduce the government’s ability to audit large corporations and the wealthy, reported The Washington Post.

“All of those funds go to increased scrutiny on tax evasion going on at the highest wealth, and that is millionaires and billionaires and large corporations and large complex corporations,” Werfel told the Post. “When you reduce those audits, you reduce the amount of money that we can collect and return to the Treasury for other priorities.”

Ultimately, Republicans’ plan to “offset” funding for Israel with cuts to the IRS would backfire quite badly.

At stake is an already-approved $80 billion expansion to the IRS that is projected to cut the deficit by more than $100 billion by way of improved tax collections, operations support, free filing for taxpayers, an office of tax policy, and tax court. The Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly warned that cutting IRS funding will encourage tax cheating and increase the deficit, though that didn’t stop Johnson from attempting to chip some money off the arrangement.

“If you put this to the American people, and they weigh the two needs, I think they are going to say standing with Israel and protecting the innocent is in our national interest, and a more immediate need than IRS agents,” Johnson told Fox News on Tuesday.

Lindsey Graham doesn’t care how many innocent Palestinians die; he doesn’t think the U.S. should call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

On Tuesday night, Graham was a guest on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip, where he was asked what it would take for the U.S. to ask for a cease-fire in Palestine.

“Is there a threshold for you, and do you think there should be one for the United States government in which the U.S. would say let’s hold off for a second in terms of civilian casualties?” Phillip asked.

“No,” Graham said, shaking his head.

“Somebody asked us after World War II, ‘Is there a limit to what you would do to make sure that Japan and Germany don’t conquer the world? Is there any limit to what Israel should do to the people who are trying to slaughter the Jews?’ The answer is no, there is no limit.”

He went on to say that we should attempt to limit civilian casualties and give humanitarian aid in “areas that protect the innocent.” On Tuesday, the Israeli military conducted an airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, killing at least 50 people. On Wednesday, there were reports of a second strike on the same camp, allegedly injuring and killing dozens.

“Hamas is creating these casualties, not Israel,” Graham said. Palestinian health officials estimate Israeli airstrikes have killed 8,525 Palestinians in Gaza, 40 percent of whom were children.

The hard-line conservative Federalist Society attorneys who worked for Donald Trump are apparently no longer extreme enough for the former president.

Trump allies have been working overtime to stock Trump’s potential second term with staff even further right on the political spectrum, reported The New York Times. The effort is intended to stifle any political dissent amongst Trump’s top legal aides, who at times objected to harsher immigration policies or the former president’s desire for a tighter grip on the Justice Department, according to the outlet.

Leading the effort are Stephen Miller and John McEntee, both of whom advised Trump during his last presidency and are expected to play key roles should Trump reclaim the Oval Office. McEntee, in particular, has prior experience rooting out obstructive staffers—in 2020, he was appointed to sniff out those working against Trump’s agenda, as Trump’s personnel chief.

Trump’s administration turned to the Federalist Society to staff executive branch legal roles in the opening days of his presidency—but that will no longer be the case. Instead, his allies are looking for a new style of lawyer to serve as executive branch gatekeepers, turning to different recruitment pipelines to supply Trump with more radical voices should he win a second term.

The Federalist Society, a conservative standby baked into the crust of D.C., was infamously behind the Supreme Court’s hard-right turn. Five of the high court’s current justices were part of the organization, with its co-chairman, Leonard Leo, behind the nomination and confirmation of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Other members include Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young.

Leo is also under investigation by the D.C. attorney general for transferring funds to the tune of $73 million from his nonprofit groups to one of his for-profit companies.

House Speaker Mike Johnson makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but apparently does not have a bank account, a new report revealed Wednesday.

Johnson was first elected in 2016 and has served on the Hill ever since. In all seven financial disclosure forms he submitted for those years, he has not mentioned holding a single bank account, The Daily Beast reported.

The House Ethics Committee requires members of Congress to disclose all of their household’s bank accounts if the accounts each hold at least $1,000 and have a combined value of more than $5,000. Johnson has made at least $174,000 per year from the combination of his representative salary and any additional payments he received, such as from a teaching appearance. Johnson’s wife has two streams of income, from two different employers.

But on his financial disclosures, Johnson has listed only one asset: a retirement account. In 2016, he listed a state government Fidelity account valued between $1,000 and $15,000. He transferred those savings to a Thrift Savings plan, a federal program, the following year. Johnson appears to have cashed out the entire account in 2021, because he lists no assets at all on his 2022 form.

Johnson’s disclosure forms are remarkably sparse. He lists almost no travel reimbursements or gifts, and relatively little external income.

But Johnson does owe a lot of money. Every year, he has listed a mortgage on which he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars and a personal loan on which he owes tens of thousands. In 2019, he opened up a home equity line of credit, also worth tens of thousands of dollars.

It is, of course, possible that Johnson really has no bank accounts and just keeps all his money in sacks of cash hidden under his mattress. Another explanation could be that he has selective amnesia and has forgotten to disclose his assets for seven years. But several ethics experts offered another reason: Johnson is terrible at managing the money he makes and may be in massive debt.

“He owes hundreds of thousands of dollars between a mortgage, personal loan, and home equity line of credit, so where did that money go?” Jordan Libowitz, the communications director for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast. “If he truly has no bank account and no assets, it raises questions about his personal financial wellbeing.”