A Road Map for Hunter Biden: What will it take to get him in office before the 2020 election? Counting Cases in the House of Representatives
After voting concludes Tuesday, look for the dominoes to start falling on a scramble of investigations from the Department of Justice and Republicans in the House of Representatives.
CNN’s justice team says that investigations related to former President Donald Trump could burst to life because they were quiet prior to the election. A special counsel could potentially be appointed to oversee things in an effort to silo matters away from the Biden administration.
If the Department of Justice wants to indict Trump before he officially kicks off his campaign, they will need to act fast. He could announce his candidacy a week after Election Day on November 14, sources told CNN, although that date could change.
If the GOP wins on Election Day, Trump wants to take the lead in the primary field so he can claim credit before other Republicans.
If American voters choose the Democrats for a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, it will lead to more attention being paid to the troubled son of the president.
The public inquisition Republicans have been pursuing against the president’s son, will go into full swing when the House closes on January 6.
GOP lawmakers do not have a detailed inflation plan, the issue driving many voters to the polls. But after years on the case of investigating Hunter Biden, who has struggled with substance abuse and made a career dealing with foreign nationals, they have prepared a 1,000-page road map they plan to present to the FBI and Department of Justice. The subject of a federal investigation in Delaware, Hunter Biden is not being charged with a crime.
It’s false to equate GOP efforts to investigate Hunter Biden’s business activities with the January 6 committee’s efforts to document the insurrection and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
But it’s with a lingering taste of the January 6 hearings and also two Trump impeachment efforts – one of which was kicked off by Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate none other than Hunter Biden – that Republicans are planning to use the subpoena power of the House majority.
Anticipating they’ll win a majority in Tuesday’s election, Republicans on Capitol Hill won’t wait to take control in the House in January. The likely new chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, told CNN he’ll resend a letter to the Treasury Department demanding any suspicious bank activity reports linked to Hunter Biden, with the hope the threat of newfound subpoena power gets more attention.
That’s the nugget at the top of a dizzying report by CNN’s Melanie Zanona, Manu Raju and Annie Grayer that ticks off all the things Republicans have promised or teased they will investigate about the Biden administration.
The majority of bills will not be able to survive a veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to raise the national borrowing limit, though they will have to pass legislation to fund the government.
The results of the Senate can’t be decided. But Republicans appear likely to control the House of Representatives. And that means Biden’s ambitious legislative agenda essentially will come to a standstill.
“I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,” he told reporters the day after the election. “The American people have made clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well.”
The opposing party can make an appeal to the other side to get help if there’s enough players on the other team.
Mari Urbina is the Managing Director of Indivisible, a progressive organization that says it is difficult to see where things like improving peoples’ lives and securing their rights come from.
But he didn’t make clear what those potential areas of consensus could be. The president has previously spoken about opioids, cancer, mental health and veterans issues as a “unity agenda” where Republicans and Democrats might find common ground.
Biden also recently expressed hopes for a continued bipartisan approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine, though in recent months, some Republicans have begun voicing concerns over the large sums of money being given to the Ukrainian government.
Biden was more explicit about areas where he will not compromise. He said he will veto any attempts to create a federal abortion ban, or to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act — the signature climate and healthcare bill Democrats passed this summer. He has also said he won’t accept major cuts or changes to Social Security or Medicare, a proposal put forth by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.
With divided government, “his conversation with the American public gets a lot easier in some ways, politically” said Faiz Shakir, a long-time adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt. “You can say, ‘This is what I want to do. This is the agenda I want to pass. Republicans in the House stand in my way.
The last two years have seen Democrats control both the House and the Senate, but disagreed on policy, giving the contrast an easier edge.
With legislation stalled, the president is more likely to try to advance his domestic policy using executive actions, much like his predecessors who have dealt with split government.
A face to face meeting with China’s President in the aftermath of the G-20 in Indonesia was the highlight of Biden’s departure Thursday. One of the main priorities for the White House will be to manage the war in Ukraine, and it is also important to navigate competition with China.
Biden’s veto powers allow the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act to be symbolic. But they could try to squeeze the president on their priorities by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless he agrees to some of their initiatives.
It’s very easy for a new majority to think it was important to them when Congress is kicked out, because people don’t like what they’re doing. It’s not necessarily a validation of the new party,” Buck said.
Going too far could cause backlash from voters in the next election. “That’s what we’ve seen over the last two years,” Buck said. In the 2010 midterms, Republicans gained a whopping 63 seats in the House, only to see then-President Barack Obama win reelection two years later.
“I’m sorry, I know, but I’m afraid I can’t do that”: An interview with Galston, the Brookings Institution
“It’s payback,” said Bill Galston, a former domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House who now serves a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. They are angry about the investigations that they believe have been done to them.
Biden has brushed off the threat of investigations, including threats of impeachment. The American people are going to look at all of that, for what it is. He said it was almost comedy.
Biden has faced questions about his approval ratings and whether he should run for a second term. A majority of Democrats are not enthusiastic about Biden running for reelection.
“This is going to diminish whatever pressure there might have been from within the Democratic party for President Biden to stand down in favor of a fresh face,” said Galston.
There would have been a lot of behind-the-scenes pressure if there had been a big victory. I don’t believe that will happen right now, he said.