Mark the Date! Garland’s DOJ Actually Takes a Stand on Something?

Despite threats by Representatives James Comer and Jim Jordan to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, the Department of Justice said Monday it will not turn over the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur regarding his storage of classified documents, bringing bad-faith Republican impeachment efforts (or whatever was left of them) to a screeching halt.

In a letter to Jordan and Comer obtained by The New Republic, Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte effectively thwarted Republicans’ meritless effort to impeach Biden. “Neither branch [of Congress] has any constitutionally-based authority to seek conflict for conflict’s sake,” Uriarte wrote, identifying the politically motivated nature of the disastrous impeachment inquiry, which yielded more indictments of the GOP’s own star witnesses than actual evidence of the president’s wrongdoing.

“The Department is concerned that the Committees’ particular focus on continuing to demand information that is cumulative of information we already gave you—what the President and Mr. Hur’s team said in the interview—indicates that the Committees’ interests may not be in receiving information in service of legitimate oversight or investigatory functions, but to serve political purposes that should have no role in the treatment of law enforcement files,” continued Uriarte.

In a February 12 letter to Attorney General Garland, Comer and Jordan requested the audio of Biden’s interview with Hur, which made news when Hur, who did not recommend charges for the president, editorialized in his report, including “gratuitous” details about Biden’s poor memory and inability to recall details about his life. Critics have called the report a “partisan hit job.”

It’s become clear that, in demanding the audio, Comer and Jordan were scrambling at potential ammunition against Biden, who has faced questions about his age since his 2020 victory, to use in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Comer himself has already begun to back away from impeachment in the absence of evidence. Having all but admitted defeat, audio of Biden’s interview might have represented the last chance to squeeze some value out of a smear campaign that never even had enough Republican support to bring to a vote. For once, however, Garland’s Department of Justice did not cave.

It is the eleventh hour for Donald Trump in his bid not to stand trial in his criminal hush-money case. So he’s planning a new, frantic measure: suing the judge.

Trump’s legal team is expected to file a lawsuit against Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who has reprimanded the former president’s lawyers for their conduct in court. The team’s latest genius move is to file an Article 78 action against Merchan, effectively asking an appeals court to throw out the gag order issued by Merchan against Trump and, crucially, to push a potential trial back until after the 2024 presidential election.

Trump, with the backing of Fox News, has previously attacked Merchan and his daughter. Now he’s attempting to have Merchan removed. The action, described by The New York Times as “unorthodox,” is reportedly unlikely to succeed. The lawsuit is not yet public, but sources familiar with the matter confirmed to the Times that the legal team will likely file on Monday.

The hush-money case is Trump’s first criminal trial on the calendar—expected to begin later this month. The news of the lawsuit comes not long after it was revealed that the surety company backing Trump’s $175 million bond in his civil fraud case does not have the funds to do so, and may not have legally promised to pay the penalty if his appeal is unsuccessful.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been described as a spoiler candidate for president by supporters of Joe Biden, and even by Kennedy himself. But the Kennedy campaign’s New York director is taking it a step further.

In a meeting with Republicans in the Empire State, Rita Palma said that “our mutual enemy is Biden.”

“The only way that Trump can even, remote possibility of taking New York is if Bobby is on the ballot. If it’s Trump versus Biden, Biden wins. Biden wins six days, seven days a week. With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen,” Palma said on video of the meeting, dated Friday and viewed by CNN.

The video, which was posted to YouTube before being taken down, showed Palma arguing for Kennedy’s candidacy as a way to block Biden from being reelected.

“The only way for him, for Bobby, to shake it up and to get rid of Biden is if he’s on the ballot in every state, including New York,” she said.

Palma even told people to go to Pennsylvania, a swing state, to knock on doors for Trump, saying that she had done so in 2016 and 2020.

She described the scenario of neither Biden nor Trump getting the required 270 electoral votes to win the 2024 election. If that were to happen, the House of Representatives would decide who will be the next president of the United States. Palma argued that Kennedy winning blue states like New York could make that happen.

“Who are they going to pick? If it’s a Republican Congress, they’ll pick Trump. So we’re rid of Biden either way,” she said.

It can be argued Kennedy’s supporter base draws from both the left and right, as many environmentalists, anti-vaxxers, and new age enthusiasts attend his fundraisers. But it remains to be seen if Democrats have anything to worry about at the polls, even as Kennedy continues to produce outrageous sound bites and make dangerous statements.

A rift is emerging in the Republican Party between the pro-Russia right and a group of senior GOP Congress members warning against those pushing Kremlin messaging on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Ohio Representative Mike Turner, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is one of those Congress members. Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, Turner railed against members of his own party who oppose funding Ukraine for repeating the Russian line that the invasion of Ukraine is a dispute over NATO expansion.

“We see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” Turner said.

Turner is not the only Republican to criticize Republicans’ parroting of Kremlin propaganda. Last week, Texas Representative and chair of the House Foreign Services Committee Michael McCaul warned that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

To whom are McCaul and Turner referring? A faction of Republicans opposed to the passage of any aid for Ukraine, most likely. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday described the conflict as a “war on Christianity,” applauding Russia for “protecting” Christianity from supposed Ukrainian attacks. She has also promised to hold aid hostage by threatening to hold a vote to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson from the speakership if a bill sending aid to Ukraine is put on the table.

Senators Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville have repeated the “NATO expansion” canard to which Turner made reference, and expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin before voting against a military aid package. Disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson visited Russia for a fawning interview with Putin.

But if Turner and McCaul are looking for the source of this authoritarian apologia, they ought to look at their leader, Donald Trump. The former president, who was impeached for holding promised aid over the head of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskiy in exchange for damaging information on then-candidate Joe Biden, has certainly trafficked in the kind of pro-Russian messaging Turner criticized. Trump has also promised to end all aid to Ukraine if he is elected president in 2024.

The rot infecting the GOP, as described by Turner and McCaul, is coming from the top of the party. But will their colleagues give them a hearing? Don’t count on it.

The Foreign Press Association slammed Israel on Monday for preventing international journalists from accessing Gaza, suggesting that Tel Aviv was trying to prevent the rest of the world from seeing the extent of the destruction.

Israel’s brutal war in Gaza has killed at least 33,175 people in the last six months, including 13,000 children. Images and reports from the territory show vast areas filled with rubble, horrific images of corpses, and bombing survivors nursing grief over their loved ones as well as their own serious injuries.

And that’s with Israel barring any journalists from entering Gaza independently.

“The barring of independent press access to a war zone for this long is unprecedented for Israel,” the Foreign Press Association said in a statement. “It raises questions about what Israel does not want international journalists to see.”

The group is calling for Israel to grant international media “expanded and unfettered access to Gaza.”

The gruesome reports the world has seen have come from Gazan journalists on the ground, who have to balance their own safety—as well as that of their families—with the duty of documenting the attacks, atrocities, and daily life as the war continues into its sixth month. A small amount of media has been allowed into the territory under military escort, but it is subject to Israeli military censorship. Gazan journalists, such as Motaz Azaiza, Plestia Alaqad, Bisan Owda, Hind Khodary, and others have had to rely on viral social media posts to get their uncensored reports out.

It stands to reason, then, that foreign journalists would expose even more horrific effects of Israel’s military attacks, as U.S. officials have reportedly said anonymously. Last week, British radio host James O’Brien drew the same conclusion on Leading Britain’s Conversation.

At least 95 journalists and media workers are among the dead as a result of the war to date, according to preliminary investigations from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Not all of the dead are from Gaza, either: Among the confirmed media casualties are 90 Palestinians, two Israelis, and three Lebanese.

In addition, 16 journalists were reported injured, four were reported missing, and 25 were reportedly arrested, according to the CPJ. And that doesn’t include threats and censorship against journalists in the region. For example, Israel’s Knesset passed a law last week giving the country’s senior ministers the ability to shut down any news outlet deemed a security risk, a move that was widely seen as targeting one of the few international outlets with correspondents inside Gaza, Al Jazeera.