Closing summary
The federal government once again avoided a shutdown hours before it was to start after the House passed a short-term funding bill, which now goes to Joe Biden’s desk. The president is back at the White House after attending the investiture of justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joins a supreme court that a poll indicates is losing its public trust.
Here’s what else happened today:
Ginni Thomas spoke to the January 6 committee, but two of its members say the wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t appear to be involved in a wider plot to overturn the 2020 election.
You might think Joe Manchin would enjoy all the power the 50-50 split in the Senate gives him, as a pivotal Democratic vote. You would be wrong, apparently.
The White House hit back against Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, describing it as illegal and announcing new sanctions.
Nancy Pelosi nixed an effort to impeach Donald Trump the evening after the January 6 insurrection, according to a new book that suggests a more immediate effort could have resulted in his conviction by the requisite two-thirds of the Republican-held Senate.
Barack Obama worried about the justice department under Trump, but was convinced the country could make it four years with him in the White House, according to a meeting transcript obtained by Bloomberg.
For a fee of $3 million, Donald Trump hired a former Florida solicitor general to help him deal with the justice department’s investigation into government secrets at Mar-a-Lago, but has ended up squabbling with the attorney instead.
That’s the conclusion reached by a piece in The Washington Post that looks into the work of Christopher Kise, whom since joining Trump’s legal team has counseled him that the justice department just wanted to make sure no classified documents were at his Florida resort, and he’d be wise to try to reach a deal with them.
Kise has found himself frustrated, the Post reports, as other lawyers on Trump’s team advocate a more aggressive approach that may get all involved into trouble. Here’s more from the story:
A Wednesday night court filing from Trump’s team was combative, with defense lawyers questioning the Justice Department’s truthfulness and motives. Kise, whose name was listed alongside other lawyers’ in previous filings over the past four weeks, did not sign that one — an absence that underscored the division among the lawyers. He remains part of the team and will continue assisting Trump in dealing with some of his other legal problems, said the people familiar with the conversations, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private talks. But on the Mar-a-Lago issue, he is likely to have a less public role.
It is a pattern that has repeated itself since the National Archives and Records Administration first alerted Trump’s team 16 months ago that it was missing documents from his term as president — and strongly urged their return. Well before the May 11 grand jury subpoena, and the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, multiple sets of lawyers and advisers suggested that Trump simply comply with government requests to return the papers and, in particular, to hand over any documents marked classified.
Trump seems, at least for now, to be heeding advice from those who have indulged his desire to fight.
