Congressional Hall Monitor

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed a special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia probe, will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 3, the panel announced on Wednesday. The open hearing will be the first to be held as part of the committee’s sweeping review of the FBI’s investigation and surveillance of the Trump campaign. Sen. Lindsey ...

House Democrats urged the Trump administration Wednesday to stop all deportation flights, arguing that these repatriation contribute to the spread of coronavirus in Latin America. In a letter sent Wednesday, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf to discontinue deportation flights amid the coronavirus pandemic, and release ...

A Senate committee voted along party lines Wednesday to subpoena a Democratic consulting firm that worked for Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company linked to Hunter Biden. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee authorized the subpoena for Blue Star Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting and lobbying firm owned by Karen Tramontano and Sally Painter, two former Bill Clinton ...

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton announced legislation Tuesday that would prevent state and local governments from using public funds to make coronavirus assistance payments to individuals living in the United States illegally. Cotton plans to introduce the No Bailouts for Illegal Aliens Act, an amendment to the CARES Act that would restrict any future payments to states or municipalities until they certify they’re ...

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on June 4 whether to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony from more than 50 current or former government officials, including James Comey and John Brennan, as part of the panel’s investigation into abuse of the surveillance process during Crossfire Hurricane. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary panel, said that the committee ...

IB Times – An attempt to block an extraordinary expansion of federal surveillance failed in the U.S. Senate by one vote on Wednesday, enabling the Justice Department to collect personal data such as browser history without a warrant. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s amendment to the Patriot Act expansion, now unchallenged, limits attorneys’ ability to question the FBI’s reasoning for surveillance. The amendment proposed ...

The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin holding hearings in early June to review the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and issues related to Michael Flynn, Sen. Lindsey Graham announced Thursday. “The Judiciary Committee will begin holding multiple, in-depth congressional hearings regarding all things related to Crossfire Hurricane starting in early June,” Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary panel, said in a ...

An outgoing Republican lawmaker says he will buck his party to vote for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s coronavirus stimulus package, a bill that includes a slate of progressive measures. New York Rep. Peter King confirmed to The Hill that he plans to vote for House Democrats’s HEROES Act, a $3 trillion relief package for Americans suffering financially from the coronavirus ...

The FBI seized Sen. Richard Burr’s cell phone Wednesday night after serving a search warrant as part of an investigation into whether the Republican made illegal stock trades based on insider information about the coronavirus pandemic, a law enforcement official told The Los Angeles Times. The Times reported that FBI agents served the warrant on Burr at his home in the ...

The $3 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill House Democrats introduced Tuesday includes provisions that would provide a safe harbor for banks to provide loans and other services to “cannabis-related legitimate businesses.” The measures would prohibit federal banking regulators from taking adverse actions against financial institutions that provide services to businesses that cultivate, produce, manufacture, sell, transport, display or purchase cannabis products ...

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released transcripts of 53 interviews conducted as part of the panel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Chairman Adam Schiff released the documents, which total more than 6,000 pages, after an intense pressure campaign from House Republicans and Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence. The committee had voted in September ...

Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz has introduced legislation that, if signed into law, would require all illegal aliens under U.S. custody to be deported when the government declares a national emergency due to a communicable disease. “It is unconscionable that at a time when we should be working together as Americans, Democrats are working to socially engineer our country and ...

A group of nearly 30 Senate Democrats is calling on the U.S. Department of Education to allow college students who entered the country unlawfully obtain coronavirus aid provided by the federal government. In a letter addressed to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, 28 Democratic senators on Monday demanded the Trump administration “reverse” a decision to bar college students enrolled in the ...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham is asking the Justice Department to turn over records related to a key source for Christopher Steele who undercut allegations made in the salacious Trump dossier. “The Primary Sub-source substantially undercut Steele’s election reporting, calling into question the accuracy and reliability of any of Steele’s reports,” Graham wrote in a letter to Attorney General ...

Nearly 100 Democrats in Congress are urging the Trump administration to halt construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall during the coronavirus pandemic. A total of 91 Democrats in the House and Senate have signed onto a letter addressed to key members of the Trump administration, requesting that “all border wall construction halt immediately.” Not only has border construction continued amid ...