The Morning Briefing: Contempt-o-Palooza 48 Hour Marathon Continues

U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, in Anchorage, Alaska. = (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Good Wednesday Morning.

Here’s what is on the president’s agenda today:

  • The president receives his intelligence briefing
  • The president and first lady participate in the arrival of the president of the Republic of Poland and Mrs. Kornhauser-Duda
  • The president and first lady participate in a 2:2 bilateral meeting with the president of the Republic of Poland and Mrs. Kornhauser-Duda
  • The president participates in an expanded working lunch with the president of the Republic of Poland
  • President Trump participates in a joint signing ceremony with the president of the Republic of Poland
  • The president participates in a joint press conference with the president of the Republic of Poland
  • The president and first lady attend the Polish-American reception
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Important: Daily Caller News Foundation Defeats FBI’s Bid To Shield Docs Surrounding Comey Ally

Andy McCarthy will testify today 9amET: House Intelligence witnesses ready to talk Russia

Don Jr. to testify behind closed doors in the Senate Intel Committee

Don Jr. is going to show up today and testify before the Senate Intel Committee. The appearance will be brief according to a source. “It’s not going to go on for three hours,” the source said.

Trump Jr. has already provided more than two dozen hours of testimony before Congress. He previously spoke with the intelligence committee staff in 2017, when he also sat for an interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The latest meeting comes after the committee’s Republican chairman, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, subpoenaed him as part of the panel’s Russia investigation. Burr received considerable blowback from some of his GOP colleagues for the move, but he told fellow senators that Trump Jr. had backed out of an interview twice, forcing the committee to act.

Rep. Matt Gaetz made a good point on Twitter:

Sitting down with the committee for an unspecified time period was a real sticking point for Jr., and he was prepared to refuse to appear. The committee agreed to limit the time for Don Jr. to testify but would not agree to the topics. I am sure they will ask him about the Trump Tower meeting with Fusion GPS client and RUSSIAN Natalia Veselnitskaya and a Trump building project in RUSSIA. How is this relevant now that Mueller has cleared Jr., in his report? Who knows, but we have a narrative to perpetuate, people!

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Related:

LOL. No. Never going to happen. Nadler Expects Mueller To Testify ‘Way Before’ The End Of Summer

Sad! House Dems lament: Why didn’t cable TV broadcast our John Dean stunt live?

Double whammy: contempt all the things!

Yesterday, the House voted to hold former White House counsel Don McGahn and Attorney General Bill Barr in civil contempt for WHATEVER.

The vote, 229-191, will offer another avenue for House Democrats if the administration continues to stonewall on giving the House access to any underlying documents from Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation or compelling testimony from McGahn about his role in the Russia investigation.

Barr is legally constrained from releasing grand jury information and some of the information they claim to want is available in a secured location, but no Democrats have bothered to see it. Former WH counsel McGahn is shielded under executive privilege, something the same Democrats had no problem with when Eric Holder pulled the same card.

But there’s more! The House Oversight Committee will vote today to hold A.G. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt because WHATEVER.

“Both Secretary Ross and Attorney General Barr are refusing to comply with duly authorized subpoenas from Congress,” the committee’s chairman, Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, said on Monday in a statement. “Because they are in contempt of Congress, on Wednesday, the Committee will vote to move forward to enforce our bipartisan subpoenas,” he said.

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The committee is going after Ross and the DoJ because they want information related to the proposed additional census question on citizenship.

In a statement, Ross called the planned vote an “empty stunt” and said he had cooperated with the committee, providing 14,000 pages of documents and testifying for nearly seven hours.

Critics of the additional citizenship question say that it will “scare immigrants and Latinos into abstaining from the survey.” Really, why?

90% of asylum seekers at the border do not show up for their court hearing

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a pilot program showed 90% of asylum seekers do not show up for their hearings after they have been released into the U.S.

“We see too many cases where people are not showing up,” McAleenan said, referring to the program.

“Out of those 7,000 cases, 90 received final orders of removal in absentia, 90 percent.”

Democrats place the blame on the Trump administration. How so? The current U.S. immigration policy incentivizes people to come to the border and claim asylum and then disappear into the interior of the country. Congress won’t fix the system so that legitimate claims of asylum can be processed without hundreds of thousands of people clogging up the system because they just want to move the U.S.

Other morsels:

ACLU Sues Trump Administration for Totally Distorting the Concept of ‘Discrimination’

Hong Kong delays debate on extradition bill amid intensifying protests

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Unease grows in Hong Kong about eroding freedoms

Jon Stewart lays into members of Congress for not reauthorizing 9/11 fund, skipping hearing

House GOP Leader: Congress Should ‘Look at’ Cost of Living Raises for Lawmakers

Jury couldn’t decide if Arizona activist broke law helping migrants

Israeli researchers: Hezbollah launders millions by overseeing the European drug trade

Oh. Omar’s joint tax filings draw scrutiny

Seattle Yoga Teacher Offers ‘Undoing Whiteness’ Class

Newsom calls on racetrack to halt races until further inspection following 29th horse death

‘Empire’ Director Lee Daniels Says He’s ‘Beyond Embarrassed’ About Jussie Smollett Case

NYT Contributor Calls Out Dan Crenshaw For Not Sponsoring 9/11 Victim Fund — There’s Only One Problem

Trump arms sales to Saudis unlikely to be blocked by Congress

Tech elites dismiss breakup threats from Washington

Supreme Court rejects atheists’ attempt to scrub ‘In God We Trust’ off US currency

OH COME ON. US women’s World Cup team comes under criticism for celebrating goals in blowout

CNN’s Jim Acosta says he works ‘on behalf of the American people,’ network doesn’t ‘spin’ coverage

Eek! ‘Zombie snakes’ in North Carolina are a lot less scary than they sound

University of Alabama says its refusal of donor money was about academic integrity and not the abortion law

Many breakfast cereals still contaminated by weed killer, environmental group says

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Kim Jong Un’s assassinated half-brother had contacts with CIA: Report

And that’s all I’ve got, now go beat back the angry mob!

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