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DRIVING THE DAY
THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF CHATTER in the Trump-aligned White House world that House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY should dump a bunch of members of the House Intelligence Committee -- the panel holding the public impeachment hearings next week -- and swap in people like Reps. MARK MEADOWS (R-N.C.) and LEE ZELDIN (R-N.Y.), two staunch Trump allies that have been the public-facing defenders of the president during the closed deposition phase of impeachment. Rep. JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio) is already being swapped in.
THE THINKING in Trump world is that President DONALD TRUMP could use his strongest allies because he needs as much backup as he can get in the high-profile hearings that begin Wednesday.
BUT WE ARE TOLD this big-time committee lineup change is not in the cards. There are nine Republicans on the panel -- including DEVIN NUNES (R-Calif.), the ranking member. Adding Jordan, Meadows and Zeldin would mean dumping a third of the committee’s GOP roster.
THERE ARE A FEW people who sources say are all but untouchable on the committee: Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe (close to Trump, considered the best questioner), Texas Rep. Will Hurd (has intel background), New York Rep. Elise Stefanik (the only woman, and an emerging power center internally in the House Republican Conference) and Nunes.
GIVEN THAT, adding three people would mean turning over three remaining Republicans -- a heavy lift given internal caucus politics. Not to mention, the committee has spent months on this topic, so a bunch of members are not going to be willing to just jump off when the topic gets hot.
PLUS, if Republicans try to swap out a huge chunk of the panel, they could get crosswise with Democrats, who could potentially cause procedural problems.
SO … Jordan will get his moment during these hearings -- and that’s sure to please the Trump circles. AND … the House rules also dictate that MCCARTHY himself can jump onto the panel, should he want.
JUICY READ … TIM ALBERTA: “Who Will Betray Trump?”: “The administration, working in concert with its allies on Capitol Hill, has been hard at work identifying potential turncoats in the party and monitoring their activities to catch any sign of slippage. Believing that a unified party-line vote is needed in the House to prevent any narrative of Republicans abandoning Trump when action moves to the Senate, the president’s allies are determined to stay one step ahead of any lawmaker who might be going soft, gaming out scenarios for who could desert and why.
“It amounts to a preemptive game of political whodunit, with Trump’s enforcers seeking to solve a mystery of political betrayal before it occurs. Naturally, there is no bigger fan of this game than the president himself.” POLITICO Magazine
THE NEW GOP TALKING POINT? -- “House GOP looks to protect Trump by raising doubts about motives of his deputies,” by WaPo’s Karoun Demirjian and Rachael Bade: “House Republicans’ latest plan to shield President Trump from impeachment is to focus on at least three deputies — U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and possibly acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — who they say could have acted on their own to influence Ukraine policy.
“All three occupy a special place in the Ukraine narrative as the people in most direct contact with Trump. As Republicans argue that most of the testimony against Trump is based on faulty secondhand information, they are sowing doubts about whether Sondland, Giuliani and Mulvaney were actually representing the president or freelancing to pursue their own agendas.” WaPo
FWIW … TRUMP held a fundraiser for Senate Republicans at the Trump Hotel on Thursday night, and said nothing about the Alabama Senate race, which JEFF SESSIONS just entered. The president is apparently still angry about how Sessions, when he was A.G., recused himself from the Russia probe.
SESSIONS told FOX NEWS’ TUCKER CARLSON on Thursday night that he has not yet spoken with the president about supporting his Senate bid. CARLSON: “He has your strong support. Do you have [the president’s] strong support?” SESSIONS: “Well, I hope so. I think he will respect my work. I was there for the Trump agenda every day I was in the Senate. No doubt about it; I was the first Republican -- first senator to endorse him.”
-- ON TALKING WITH TRUMP ABOUT HIS BID … SESSIONS: “Well, I do -- I will, and I look forward to having that opportunity. It hasn't been provided at this moment, but I would like to be able to go to the people of Alabama and tell them, with all honesty, ‘I believe in this agenda.’ I was for this agenda before President Trump announced.” Full interview, including his new ad … More from James Arkin, Alex Isenstadt and Marianne LeVine on Sessions
-- BUT KEEP AN EYE ON THIS: Will Trump take either TOMMY TUBERVILLE or Rep. BRADLEY BYRNE (R-Ala.) to the LSU-Alabama game Saturday in Tuscaloosa? Neither went to Alabama -- Byrne went to Duke, but returned to Alabama for law school, and Tuberville is an Auburn guy.
TRADE WARS -- REUTERS’ JEFF MASON in Washington and YAWEN CHEN in Beijing: “China, U.S. agree tariff rollback if phase one trade deal is completed”: “China and the United States have agreed to roll back tariffs on each others’ goods in a ‘phase one’ trade deal if it is completed, officials from both sides said on Thursday, sparking division among some advisers to President Donald Trump.The Chinese Commerce Ministry, without laying out a timetable, said the two countries had agreed to cancel the tariffs in phases.
“A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the rollback would be part of the first phase of a trade agreement that is still being put to paper for Trump and President Xi Jinping to sign.” Reuters
Good Friday morning. HAPPENING TODAY -- IVANKA TRUMP is sitting down with the AP’s Darlene Superville in Morocco for her first interview since the impeachment inquiry started.
NEW … ANOTHER BOOK FOR SUSAN GLASSER and PETER BAKER! … The New Yorker’s SUSAN GLASSER and the NYT’s PETER BAKER are writing a book about “impeachment and the transformation of Washington,” which they see as a marriage of the sequel to Baker’s first impeachment book, “The Breach,” and Glasser’s “Letters from Washington” in The New Yorker.
THE BOOK will be published in 2021 by Doubleday, which published Baker’s “Days of Fire” about the George W. Bush White House. Doubleday will also publish the long-awaited “The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III” in May. Rafe Sagalyn -- who represented Baker on “The Breach” two decades ago -- handled this book as well.
2020 WATCH -- NYT’S ALEX BURNS: “Michael Bloomberg Actively Prepares to Enter 2020 Presidential Race”: “Michael R. Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline, people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans said.
“Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.
“Mr. Bloomberg and his advisers called a number of prominent Democrats on Thursday to tell them he was seriously considering the race, including former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the retired majority leader who remains a dominant power broker in the early caucus state. Aides to Mr. Bloomberg also reached out to Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.” NYT
-- WAPO’S MATT VISER and MICHAEL SCHERER: “The move marks a major reversal for Bloomberg, who announced in March that he would not run for president, and also serves as a public rebuke of the performance so far of former vice president Joe Biden, who has attempted to build a coalition of the same moderate Democrats that Bloomberg would court.” WaPo
-- ELIZABETH WARREN clapped back on Twitter, welcoming Bloomberg to the race and linking to her “calculator for billionaires.”
‘ANONYMOUS’ LEAKS … WAPO’S PHIL RUCKER: “Book by ‘Anonymous’ describes Trump as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation”: “Senior Trump administration officials considered resigning en masse last year in a ‘midnight self-massacre’ to sound a public alarm about President Trump’s conduct, but rejected the idea because they believed it would further destabilize an already teetering government, according to a new book by an unnamed author.
“In ‘A Warning’ by Anonymous, obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release, a writer described only as ‘a senior official in the Trump administration’ paints a chilling portrait of the president as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation he was elected to lead.” WaPo … NYT’s review … NBC
IMPEACHMENT CLIP PACKET …
-- “Impeachment Inquiry Tests Ties Between Barr and Trump,” by NYT’s Peter Baker, Katie Benner and Maggie Haberman: “For a while at least, he seemed to have found his Roy Cohn, a lawyer to defend him against his accusers and go after his enemies. But the relationship between President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr may be growing more complicated with the rising threat of impeachment.
“Rather than publicly join the fight against House Democrats pursuing the president, Mr. Barr has remained out of the fray, resisting requests by intermediaries from Mr. Trump to go before the cameras to say no crime had been committed. While Mr. Barr exonerated the president in the spring at the end of the Russia investigation, he has been more reticent in the current matter.
“The reluctance hints at a new distance between the two men, according to people who have spoken with them. Mr. Trump, angry with his coverage, is aggravated with Mr. Barr for urging him to release a reconstructed transcript of the telephone call with Ukraine’s president at the center of the impeachment drive. For his part, Mr. Barr was bothered that Mr. Trump on that call lumped him together with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s private lawyer, like interchangeable parts of his personal defense team.” NYT
-- THE LATEST TRANSCRIPT -- “The words Trump had to hear: Investigations, Biden, Clinton,” by AP’s Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker: “There were three words President Donald Trump wanted to hear from the Ukraine president: Investigations, Biden, Clinton. That’s according to the transcript, released Thursday, of an impeachment inquiry interview with career State Department official George Kent.
“‘Potus wanted nothing less than President Zelenskiy to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,’ Kent testified. ‘Basically there needed to be three words in the message, and that was the shorthand.’” AP
-- “Impeachment investigators subpoena Mick Mulvaney,” by Kyle Cheney: “House impeachment investigators late Thursday subpoenaed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, demanding that he testify about his knowledge of President Donald Trump’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine.
“Mulvaney had already signaled he would probably refuse lawmakers’ demands to testify, and the White House has issued a blanket order against cooperating with the impeachment inquiry. But Mulvaney’s Oct. 17 news conference in which he said Trump withheld aid in part to get Ukraine to initiate investigations against his political rivals — a comment he later walked back — has fueled Democrats’ impeachment push.” POLITICO
TRUMP’S FRIDAY -- The president will leave the White House at 9:45 a.m. en route to Marietta, Ga. He will travel to The Whitley hotel in Atlanta, where he will hold a roundtable with supporters at 12:45 p.m. Afterward, he will speak at a fundraiser. Trump will then head to the Georgia World Congress Center. He will speak at a “Black Voices for Trump” coalition event at 3 p.m. before returning to Washington.
PLAYBOOK READS
SUNDAY SO FAR …
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“Fox News Sunday”: Panel: Karl Rove, Donna Edwards, Josh Holmes and Mo Elleithee. Power player of the week: The U.S. Army Old Guard’s Caisson Platoon.
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“State of the Union”: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Panel: Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.), Linda Chavez, David Urban and Karine Jean-Pierre.
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“Face the Nation”: Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) … Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). Panel: Stephen Hayes, Margaret Talev, Jeffrey Goldberg and Antjuan Seawright.
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“This Week”: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.
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“Inside Politics”: Panel: Julie Pace, Mike Shear, Abby Phillip and Jackie Kucinich.
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“Meet the Press”: Panel: Yamiche Alcindor, Hugh Hewitt, David Ignatius and Hallie Jackson.
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“America This Week”: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) … Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) … Hogan Gidley … James Rosen.
-- CBS will also air Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Nikki Haley on Sunday. O’Donnell tweeted out a clip Thursday.
DANIEL LIPPMAN: “EPA chief of staff under investigation in document destruction, sources say”: “The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general is investigating whether chief of staff Ryan Jackson was involved in destroying internal documents that should have been retained, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“The IG's office is asking witnesses whether Jackson has routinely destroyed politically sensitive documents, including schedules and letters from people like lobbyist Richard Smotkin, who helped arrange a trip for then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to Morocco when he was in office, according to one of the sources, a former administration official who told investigators he has seen Jackson do that firsthand.
“The previously unreported allegations add to the controversy around Jackson, a former aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) who has been at EPA since the early days of the Trump administration. EPA’s internal watchdog accused Jackson earlier this week of refusing to cooperate with other ongoing investigations.” POLITICO
-- “Betsy DeVos at risk of subpoena after refusing to testify before House education panel,” by Bianca Quilantan and Nicole Gaudiano: “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is refusing to testify before the House Education and Labor Committee about her department's collection of student loan debt from former Corinthian Colleges students, despite a threat of a subpoena from House Democrats.
“‘Secretary DeVos has declined to testify and we are reviewing our options, including a subpoena,’ a committee aide told POLITICO Thursday night. Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) had given DeVos until Thursday at 6 p.m. to respond to the committee's request that she appear.” POLITICO
OOF -- “Trump boasts that his landmark law is freeing these inmates. His Justice Department wants them to stay in prison,” by WaPo’s Neena Satija, Wesley Lowery and Josh Dawsey: “The president has repeatedly pointed to the First Step Act as one of his administration’s chief bipartisan achievements and one for which he is personally responsible. But cases like [Gregory] Allen’s expose a striking rift between the White House allies who supported the law and the Justice Department officials now working to limit the number of inmates who might benefit from it.” WaPo
CNN’S PAUL LEBLANC: “Lawyer for Ukraine whistleblower sends White House cease and desist letter to stop Trump’s attacks”
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION -- “U.S. diplomatic cables expose divide over immigration,” by AP’s Joshua Goodman: “U.S. ambassadors from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti sent urgent cables to the White House in the early days of the Trump administration, pleading with them to abandon plans to send hundreds of thousands of migrants back to their home countries.
“The cables, made public Thursday, expose the divide between career diplomats and a new administration eager to push through major hardline immigration policies even as it apparently weighed possible fallout on the 2020 presidential race.
“Facing legal challenges, the Trump administration later backed down from its hardline position and last month it extended protections for at least a year as U.S. courts work through the disputes.” AP
SCOOP … NANCY SCOLA in Menlo Park, Calif.: “Facebook considering limits on targeted campaign ads”: “Facebook is considering restricting politicians ability to use highly detailed demographic and personal information to narrowly target would-be voters with ads, policy chief Nick Clegg confirmed Thursday in an interview with POLITICO — in a sign of potential softening of the social network's broadly permissive policy on political advertising.
“The possible reining in of political ‘microtargeting,’ part of a broader reassessment of Facebook's policies around campaign messaging, comes just weeks after CEO Mark Zuckerberg made two trips to Washington to defend the company against attacks from Democrats who say its hands-off approach distorts democracy. Google is also considering changes to its political-ad policy, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, while Twitter last week angered Republicans by announcing it's ending political advertising on its platform altogether. …
“Democrats have been especially harsh on the company's refusal to fact-check political candidates' ads, which Zuckerberg has called a matter of free expression. The company is standing by that approach. But it's actively discussing making other tweaks to its political ads policy, said Clegg, Facebook's head of policy and communications.” POLITICO
MEDIAWATCH -- Leah Askarinam is joining National Journal as editor of the Hotline and Hotline’s Wake-Up Call. Askarinam, who most recently was at Inside Elections, replaces Kyle Trystad.
-- WaPo’s Carlos Lozada and The New Yorker’s David Remnick are joining the Pulitzer board. Announcement
-- SPOTTED at the International Center for Journalists’ 35th anniversary dinner Thursday night: Kurt Volker.
-- “CNN host Fareed Zakaria was set to interview Ukrainian President until scandal took shape,” by CNN’s Caroline Kelly: “‘We had been negotiating with President Zelensky and his office for a while, for months, to try to get an interview with him anyway, ever since he was elected President,’ Zakaria, host of ‘Fareed Zakaria GPS,’ told [anchor Brooke] Baldwin. Once news of the whistleblower's complaint surfaced, ‘it became clear to us that the interview was off.’” CNN
PLAYBOOKERS
Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at politicoplaybook@politico.com.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK -- Jose Maheda last week left DHS, where he was acting press secretary on detail, and has returned back to doing strategic communications in the Tucson sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Washington Examiner reported in July that the Border Patrol tried to fire him in the 1990s for “faking a crime against himself” when he allegedly lied about accidentally leaving his loaded gun in his vehicle. But he kept his job and has had a career working for the Border Patrol.
TRANSITIONS -- “Earl Matthews, a senior National Security Council official who attended several of the meetings now at the center of the congressional impeachment inquiry, will depart from his job on Friday,” via Meridith McGraw: POLITICO
-- Brad White will lead the transition for Mississippi Gov.-elect Tate Reeves. He is currently COS to Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), where he will be replaced by Doug Davis.
WEEKEND WEDDING -- Molly O’Toole, an immigration and security reporter for the L.A. Times, and Timothy Bowden, a senior project engineer at Robert Silman Associates Structural Engineers, got married Saturday in Leesburg, Va. They met over a decade ago on the college track team, and were close friends for years before dating. Pic
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Weston Loyd, White House director of regional communications. A fun fact about him: a fun fact that people in Washington might not know about you? “I once invited SEC Nation -- Tim Tebow, Kaylee Hartung, Paul Finebaum and Marcus Spears -- to my house in college to trick or treat. It was the night before the Kentucky-Tennessee football game, and they actually showed up. Kentucky lost that game, but I’m always looking forward to basketball season. Cats by 90!” Playbook Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: “ABC World News Tonight” anchor David Muir is 46 … Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) is 55 … ABC’s Shushannah Walshe … Casey Hernandez (h/t husband Paul Rosen) … Anthony Reedy … WaPo’s Tory Newmyer … Peter Kadzik, partner at Venable, is 65 (h/ts Tim Burger) … Karen Sherman, president of the Akilah Institute (h/ts Jon Haber) … POLITICO’s Roger Jeannotte … Jackeline Luna … Erin Galloway … Lucy Bradlow, VP at the Glover Park Group … Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight (h/t John Jones) … Matt Sandgren … Erin Cohan, COS and VP at CAP … Jay Nelson, director of government affairs at the Council of State Governments Justice Center (h/t Ed Cash) … Rich Taylor … Ira Magaziner is 72 …
… Wayne Berman, Blackstone senior managing director and head of global government affairs … Ashley Balcerzak, staff writer at The Record in North Jersey … Michael D. Brown … John Hishta, senior VP for campaigns at AARP (h/t Chris Lapetina) … Kelsey Suter, VP of communications at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner … Carolyn Walser ... Frank Jimenez … POLITICO Europe’s Ivo Oliveira ... Courtney Stamm … Nicholas Swails ... Tom Connors … Charlie Posner ... Samantha Sher ... Latham and Watkins’ Christopher Martin is 38 ... Gail Shea Nardi … Bob Jones, co-chair of the federal government law and policy practice at Greenberg Traurig … Richard Socarides is 65 … Laurie Moskowitz ... George Twigg ... Beth Bernard (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) … Katt Riley (h/t Alice Lloyd)
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