JUST POSTED — “George Santos lied to a judge in 2017 bid to help a ‘family friend’ charged with fraud,” by Jacqueline Sweet: “GEORGE SANTOS lied to a Seattle judge about working for Goldman Sachs while speaking at a 2017 bail hearing for a ‘family friend’ who later pleaded guilty to fraud in an ATM skimming scheme, according to an audio recording of the proceeding and court records.”
Audio: George Santos lies to Seattle judge in 2017 testimony.
The exchange: “‘So what do you do for work?’ King County Superior Court Judge SEAN O’DONNELL asked Santos at the May 15, 2017, arraignment of defendant GUSTAVO RIBEIRO TRELHA. ‘I am an aspiring politician and I work for Goldman Sachs,’ Santos replied. ‘You work for Goldman Sachs in New York?’ the judge asked. ‘Yup,’ Santos responded.”
The context: “Santos appeared at the 2017 hearing on behalf of Trelha using his full name, George Anthony Devolder Santos. He told the judge he would secure ‘a long extended-stay apartment through Airbnb’ in Seattle during the case if the defendant was released on bail.
“‘How do you know this man?’ the judge asked. ‘We’re family friends. Our parents know each other from Brazil,’ Santos said. Trelha was ultimately deported to Brazil in early 2018 after serving seven months in jail and pleading guilty to felony access device fraud.
“In a telephone interview, Trelha said Santos lied about their relationship, too. Trelha, through a translator, said he met Santos in the fall of 2016 on a Facebook group for Brazilians living in Orlando, Fla., and that his mother died in 2012. Trelha eventually moved into Santos’ Winter Park, Fla., apartment in November 2016, according to a copy of the lease viewed by POLITICO.”
TOP-ED — “Mike Pence’s Dangerous Gambit,” by J. Michael Luttig in NYT: Former VP MIKEPENCE’s “decision to brand the Department of Justice’s perfectly legitimate subpoena as unconstitutional is a far cry from the constitutionally hallowed ground he stood on Jan. 6.”
INFLATION TICKS UP — After months of signals that inflation was abating, January figures bring a reminder that we’re not out of the woods yet.
The topline summary: “Inflation remains stubbornly elevated and unexpectedly picked up in January, a fresh reading of the Fed’s preferred index showed, underscoring the daunting challenge facing central bankers as they try to wrestle price increases back to a normal pace,” NYT’s Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman write.
The deets: “[T]he Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 5.4% in January from a year earlier, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Friday. In December, prices rose 5.3% annually. In January alone, prices were up 0.6% from the prior month, a higher monthly gain from December’s increase of 0.2%,” CNN’s Alicia Wallace writes.
What it means:“All of the numbers suggest inflation accelerated to start the new year, putting the Fed in a position where it likely will continue to raise interest rates. The central bank has pushed benchmark rates up by 4.5 percentage points since March 2022 as inflation hit its highest level in some 41 years,” CNBC’s Jeff Cox writes.
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BIPARTISAN BEGINNINGS — Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY is moving to create a “a bipartisan task force to set parameters for when a lawmaker can be kicked off a committee, with McCarthy reaching out to members to ask them to serve on it,” WaPo’s Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer report. “Democrats plan to participate and House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-N.Y.) is expected to submit the names of Democratic members to serve on the bipartisan group, according to a senior leadership aide.” The move comes after Republicans kicked Rep. ILHAN OMAR (D-Minn.) off the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month.
2024 WATCH
JAMES PASSES ON SENATE RUN — “GOP Rep. John James won’t seek Michigan’s open Senate seat,” by AP’s Joey Cappelletti: “Republican Rep. JOHN JAMES filed paperwork Friday to run for reelection to his Detroit-area House seat, opting against a campaign for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat DEBBIE STABENOW in 2024. James, a 41-year-old first-term representative and rising star in the party, had been considered one of Republicans’ most promising potential Senate candidates. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate twice before, losing to Stabenow in 2018 and to Democratic Sen. GARY PETERS in 2020.”
NOT-SO DEEP IN THE HEART — “Tired of Texans running for president? 2024 may be reprieve,” by AP’s Will Weissert and Paul Weber: “The Texas-size hole in the field will be on stark display Friday at a closed Republican donor event outside the state capital, Austin, featuring the likes of former Vice President MIKE PENCE, who is expected to mount a campaign, and former South Carolina Gov. NIKKI HALEY, who announced her bid last week.”
While AP notes that some Texans (looking at you, TED CRUZ, GREG ABBOTT and WILL HURD) could still jump into the race, “if none of them seeks the White House, it’d be the first time since 1972 without at least one major candidate who rose to public prominence in Texas or lived in the state while running for or holding office.”
CONVENTIONAL THINKING — A group of high-profile New York Democrats are pitching President JOE BIDEN to pick the Empire State as the location for the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Punchbowl’s Max Cohen and John Bresnahan scooped. The letter is signed by the likes of Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Jeffries and Rep. JERRY NADLER, and it comes as Chicago and Atlanta continue their own lobbying pushes for the location. Read the letter
TRUMP CARDS
DOCU-DRAMA — “How a box with classified documents ended up in Trump’s office months after FBI searched Mar-a-Lago,” by CNN’s Katelyn Polantz, Paula Reid and Jeremy Herb: “People familiar with the Trump legal team’s efforts to locate documents describe a confusing chain of events that delayed discovery of the box, including having its contents uploaded to the cloud, emailed to a Trump employee, and moved to an offsite location before finally ending up back at a Mar-a-Lago bridal suite that is now Trump’s office – the very place that the FBI had searched just weeks earlier. …
“One person who described the box’s movements and the special counsel’s inquiry into it described federal investigators as suspecting a ‘shell game with classified documents.’ The person said Trump’s daily movements and instructions to staff are a core part of prosecutors’ questions as well.”
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VANCE’S VIEWPOINT — “East Palestine Crisis Tests a Trump-Backed Senator,” by NYT’s Jazmine Ulloa: “While a fight brews between Democrats and Republicans over the role of the federal government in the derailment’s aftermath, [Sen. J.D.] VANCE, 38, has been at the center of it all. Some of his actions have been the conventional response of any seasoned politician. He has drafted letters calling on federal officials for more oversight and met with some of the residents most affected by the derailment and chemical spill. But he also has joined far-right Republican figures in depicting the deep-red village in northeastern Ohio as a forgotten place, taking a page from Mr. Trump’s grievance-politics playbook.”
STORM WARNING — “New storm brings threat of blizzards, floods to California,” by AP’s Robert Jablon: “California and other parts of the West girded Friday for floods and blizzards from the latest winter storm to pound the U.S., while thousands of people in Michigan shivered through extended power outages wrought by one of the worst ice storms in decades. The National Weather Service warned of a ‘cold and dangerous winter storm’ that began Thursday and was expected to linger through Saturday in California.”
JUDICIARY SQUARE
HEADS UP — “A federal judge may rule as soon as Friday on a lawsuit seeking to block the use of medication abortion nationwide, in the biggest abortion-related case since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year,” CNN’s Devan Cole writes. “The lawsuit, filed in November by anti-abortion advocates against the US Food and Drug Administration, targets the agency’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, the first drug in the medication abortion process. US District Judge MATTHEW KACSMARYK, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, has extended the briefing deadline in the case until Friday. He could then issue a ruling at any time on a motion by the plaintiffs to temporarily block use of the medication.”
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YELLEN YELLING — “Yellen Confronts Russian Officials at G20 Meeting,” but NYT’s Alan Rappeport: “Treasury Secretary JANET L. YELLEN directly confronted senior Russian officials during a meeting of finance ministers of the Group of 20 nations on Friday, calling it a ‘moral imperative’ to end the war in Ukraine. … Her condemnation of the war was a rare direct interaction between American and Russian officials.”
TALE OF TWO LEADERS — “‘It’s Complicated’: How Biden and Zelensky Forged a Wartime Partnership,” by NYT’s Peter Baker and Andrew Kramer: “The two leaders have been on a remarkable journey together since the invasion one year ago on Friday, forging a partnership that is critical to the future of the international order but that at times has been fraught with friction. … Mr. Biden has secured $113 billion in military and other aid to be delivered to Ukraine, but in their telephone calls it has never been enough for Mr. Zelensky, who presses for more, more, more, faster, faster, faster. It took months to develop a better understanding of each other and smooth over hard feelings.”
FOR YOUR RADAR — “Chinese Jet Fighter Shadows U.S. Aircraft Over South China Sea,” by WSJ’s Alastair Gale: “A Chinese J-11 jet fighter, armed with four air-to-air missiles, appeared at the rear of an American P-8 patrol aircraft, passed above and settled a few hundred feet from the wing of the U.S. Navy plane.
“‘American aircraft, this is the PLA air force. You are approaching Chinese airspace. Keep a safe distance or you will be intercepted,’ a Chinese military ground station broadcast to the P-8, using the abbreviation for the People’s Liberation Army. Encounters such as the one on Friday over the South China Sea are now a near-daily occurrence, and they are becoming more dangerous, U.S. officials say.”
VALLEY TALK
FOLLOW THE MONEY — “Gmail creates online fundraising “apocalypse,” by FWIW’s Kyle Tharp: “Last fall, Google’s Gmail created a special program allowing political fundraisers to bypass spam filters if they met certain qualifications and adhered to a set of industry standards. When that program ended on January 31st, the major campaigns that were enrolled saw their email deliverability plummet and online fundraising shrink.”
THE BRAVE NEW WORLD — “The right’s new culture-war target: ‘Woke AI,’” by WaPo’s Nitasha Tiku and Will Oremus: “The new skirmishes over what’s known as generative AI illustrate how tech companies have become political lightning rods — despite their attempts to evade controversy. Even company efforts to steer the AI away from political topics can still appear inherently biased across the political spectrum. It’s part of a continuation of years of controversy surrounding Big Tech’s efforts to moderate online content — and what qualifies as safety vs. censorship.”
TRANSITIONS — Jeff Ventura is now VP of comms at the Council for Responsible Nutrition. He previously was director of comms for HHS. … Danny Jativa is now comms adviser and press secretary for Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). He previously was comms director and foreign policy adviser for Rep. Carlos Gimenéz (R-Fla.). …
… Mitch Heidenreich is now senior legislative assistant for Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii). He previously was a legislative analyst with the American Council of Life Insurers. … Luis Reyes is now military legislative assistant for Rep. John James (R-Mich.). He most recently was deputy legislative assistant for Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
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