Tag: freedom caucus
Speaker Sparks New GOP Civil War Over Rogue Intel Picks

Speaker Sparks New GOP Civil War Over Rogue Intel Picks

House Speaker Mike Johnson has enraged fellow Republicans yet again by putting two Freedom Caucus troublemakers—Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Ronny Jackson of Texas—on the key Intelligence Committee. Johnson justified passing over more qualified members for the plum spots by telling critics that convicted felon Donald Trump told him to do it, according to The Washington Post.

Johnson’s decision did more than just anger his caucus with the move: He’s embedded Trump moles in the sensitive committee. Even former Speaker Kevin McCarthy didn’t play games with the Intelligence Committee, working with Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to keep politics at a minimum in their choices. Because it’s a select committee rather than a standing committee, the speaker and minority leader choose its members.

“[Johnson] has reversed course on this committee, and has now made it political again. He has reversed all the advances, which could harm America’s preparedness,” one high-ranking Republican told the Post. “This is not a place to play games. This is not a place to appease somebody. This is where you got to do the real work.”

“I think we’re letting the executive branch, in this case, compel the speaker of the House and legislative branch to fill two critical spots that we have, frankly, more qualified people for,” another GOP panel member said.

Johnson didn’t even consult with committee chair Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio before adding the members to the panel, according to sources who spoke toPolitico last week.

“There’s a lot of pissed [off] people. A lot of angry people. … It’s a coveted spot, and a lot of people who have worked hard to be good team players feel like they are getting passed over,” one GOP member said, adding that Johnson is “rewarding bad behavior.”

And the behavior of these two has been particularly bad. Perry is under investigation for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election results and was a key conspirator in January 6 who was deeply embedded in the Trump team’s efforts. Perry’s attempts to elevate Jeffrey Clark to Trump’s acting attorney general in the weeks following the 2020 election sparked the investigation.

Jackson (also known as Johnson to a confused Trump) is a former White House doctor and Navy rear admiral who was demoted to captain after a Pentagon report was released about his inappropriate behavior as a White House physician. He pushed pills, including sedatives and stimulants, to “potentially hundreds of ineligible White House staff and contractors” and failed to manage dangerous drugs like fentanyl. Jackson is also a notorious Trump sycophant who fudged Trump’s height and weight statistics in his exams to keep him just out of the obese category.

Both Perry and Jackson are favorites of Trump. That’s how they got the nod from Johnson, yet another Trump toady.

Johnson is again doing Trump’s dirty work by putting his allies in a place where they could conceivably do real damage to our national security.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Bob Good (R-VA)

Probing Contradictions In 'Freedom Caucus' Chair's Financial Disclosure

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is competing in a tough primary race against a Republican state senator endorsed by former President Donald Trump. And now he's facing additional scrutiny over financial disclosure reports that are raising more questions than they're answering.

According to a Friday report in NOTUS, the Virginia Republican has been cagey in his answers about what he did with his significant amounts of money invested in various stocks and mutual funds. The publication reported that previously, Good had anywhere between $200,000 and $1.7 million (financial disclosure forms only require a range, not an exact number) in roughly 100 different stocks and mutual funds. But in his most recently available financial disclosure forms, all that he has listed is an IRA and a Roth IRA, with anywhere between $275,000 and $550,000 entirely held in cash.

In a statement, Good said that he transitioned his investments to a single mutual fund for simplicity's sake.

"Before being sworn into office, I moved my assets to a mutual fund which does not require reporting of individual stock trades," he stated. "Not only is this less cumbersome for financial reports, but it also avoids any appearance of impropriety of trading stocks based on insider information."

However, NOTUS' Katherine Swartz noted that Good's net worth remains "mysterious," and that his explanation "contradicts multiple years of financial disclosures, which only show two retirement funds held in cash." She also wrote that he ended up contracting himself in a separate follow-up statement that omitted any mention of a mutual fund.

"Before being sworn into office, I moved my assets to avoid any appearance of impropriety with stock trades," the congressman stated on Thursday. "I have submitted my required financial disclosure reports for 2021 and 2022, and to the best of my knowledge am in full compliance with the reporting requirements."

In the period between January of 2018 and December of 2019, Good had an 11-page filing showing all of his stocks valued between $1 and $1,000, $1,000 and $15,000 and a mutual fund $15,00 and $50,000. And since then, he hasn't publicly disclosed the sale of any stocks, despite his 2022 filing — which is the most recently available — showing just the two IRAs.

Jodan Libowitz, who is a spokesperson for the anti-corruption watchdog group Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told NOTUS that Good's explanation effectively posits two separate realities.

"“He has to tell you what the mutual fund is. But if what he says on his filing is true, there are no mutual funds,” Libowitz said. “So his office is telling you, ‘he moved it all into mutual funds.’ And he’s saying, ‘I didn’t, I got rid of everything from mutual funds.’ These two things cannot both be true."

Good is battling for his political life in Tuesday's primary, in which Virginians will choose whether they want Good on the general election ballot or Republican state senator John McGuire. Trump has endorsed McGuire, and is even participating in a virtual town hall for McGuire on Monday, right before Republicans in the Old Dominion State cast their ballots.

The embattled Freedom Caucus chairman's rift with Trump stems from his early endorsement of Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential primary, before DeSantis even officially declared his candidacy. Good has since endorsed Trump, and even traveled to Manhattan to praise him outside of the courthouse where he stood trial, but Trump has still not relented in his attacks on the congressman. In fact, Trump attacked him on his Truth Social platform just last month.

""Bob Good is BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA,” Trump wrote. “He turned his back on our incredible movement, and was constantly attacking and fighting me until recently, when he gave a warm and ‘loving’ Endorsement – But really, it was too late. The damage had been done!”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Matt Gaetz

GOP Caucus Explodes With Accusations And Obscenities Over Shutdown

A House Republican caucus meeting went off the rails after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) attacked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for contributing $5 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee and key members to bolster their funding for re-election in 2024, Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman reported on Thursday.

"How much of that is from FTX or Sam Bankman-Fried?" shot back Gaetz, referencing the cryptocurrency trading platform entrepreneur who, after donating money generously to both political parties, was arrested and charged with stealing clients' money to funnel into his own personal investment schemes.

Rep. French Hill (R-AR), a close associate of McCarthy, then barked out, "Oh, f--k off."

Gaetz, a key figure in the far-right House Freedom Caucus has for months been escalating a fight with McCarthy, who was only narrowly elected Speaker over the initial objections of much of the Freedom Caucus after making a number of concessions.

Earlier this week, he said he's ready to call a motion to vacate the chair, a procedure that could strip McCarthy of the Speakership.

All of this is occurring against the backdrop of a number of disputes within the House Republican caucus, including whether and how to move forward with an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, and how to pass the funding to avert a government shutdown, which now appears all but certain to happen on the weekend.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kevin McCarthy

With Republicans In Revolt, McCarthy Fails On Defense Bill Again

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suffered yet another loss on Thursday, one that no speaker should ever experience. Five of his Republican colleagues rebelled against sending the defense appropriations bill to the floor, and blocked it. Again. These things aren’t supposed to happen in the House. Speakers don’t put a bill on the floor when they don’t have the votes locked up. A controlling bloc of the majority doesn’t vote against leadership. Republicans don’t vote against defense spending.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is right: As speaker, she didn’t lose any rule votes—the procedural vote that kicks off consideration of a bill—because she didn’t put them on the floor without knowing she had the votes locked up. In fact, until McCarthy, it had been more than two decades since a rule vote failed on the floor. McCarthy has managed to do it three times in four months, and twice just this week.

Last week, McCarthy intended to put both the defense appropriations bill and a stopgap government funding bill on the floor in tandem. That quickly fell apart when the extremists in his raucous caucus made it clear they wouldn’t sign on, and he was forced to pull both from the floor—the smart thing to do.

The not-smart thing to do was to come back this week and try to put defense appropriations back on the floor without having worked out a plan with his hard-liners on government funding—or anything else. Which is exactly what McCarthy did Tuesday. He lost when GOP Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Ken Buck of Colorado, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Matt Rosendale of Montana all voted no.

The really not-smart thing to do was to try it again just two days later. This time around, it was Biggs, Bishop, and Rosendale again, joined by Reps. Eli Crane of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia (so much for her being McCarthy’s ally). Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairman of the Rules Committee, also voted no in a process move so that he can bring the bill to the floor in the future.

Greene drew a new line in the sand on the bill: All funding in it that might go to Ukraine has to be split out. Now, if McCarthy wants to get Greene back on board, leadership has to go back to the Rules Committee and rewrite it, stripping out anything to do with Ukraine aid. Even doing that is no guarantee that McCarthy can get everyone else on board—or even get enough votes to let the defense bill pass.

Again, this is defense spending. Republicans are hating on the troops. This is the House McCarthy built. House Republicans can’t even fund the military.

At this point, the hard-liners are toying with McCarthy just because they can. Unless he gets wise—and soon—a government shutdown is inevitable. It’s all they will allow. McCarthy’s only option to stop them is to work with Democrats.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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