Senate asks supreme court chief justice to testify on ethics amid Clarence Thomas revelations – as it happened

An Internal Revenue Service official alleges an investigation into the president’s son Hunter Biden has been mishandled, and is seeking whistleblower protection to inform Congress, the Associated Press reports.

The GOP has for months been trying to use the younger Biden’s legal trouble to tar the president. The US attorney in Delaware, who was appointed by Donald Trump and whom Joe Biden’s White House kept in his post after taking office, is reportedly considering charges against Hunter Biden related to lying on a gun purchase background check form and failing to report some business activities to the tax authorities.

According to the AP, the unnamed IRS employee contacted through their attorney the leaders of several congressional committees after sharing their information within the IRS, and with the justice department’s watchdog. Here’s more from their report:

Mark Lytle, the attorney for the IRS whistleblower, wrote to lawmakers Wednesday that his client has information about a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of a criminal investigation related to the younger Biden’s taxes and whether he made a false statement in connection with a gun purchase.

“Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a nonpartisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” Lytle said in a letter, obtained by The Associated Press, that was sent to the chairmen and ranking members of several House and Senate committees.

The letter states that the supervisory special agent previously disclosed the information they are seeking to share with Congress internally with the IRS and a watchdog for the Justice Department. Lytle added that his client is able to contradict sworn testimony to lawmakers “by a senior political appointee.” That appointee is not named.

The special agent also wants to disclose “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected,” the lawyer added.

Donald Trump’s legal troubles are continuing, with a civil case over an alleged rape heading to trial in New York City. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports on a clash between the judge in the case and a lawyer for the former president:

Donald Trump on Thursday was rebuked by the judge in his looming civil rape trial over a request for jurors to be told that if the former president did not testify, it would be out of concern that his presence would adversely affect New York City.

This week, a lawyer for Trump, Joe Tacopina, first tried to delay the trial then requested the jury instruction.

In a letter to Kaplan on Wednesday, Tacopina said jurors should be told: “While no litigant is required to appear at a civil trial, the absence of the defendant in this matter, by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City.

Anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has taken issue with Donald Trump’s stance that he regards abortion as an issue to be decided by the states.

Citing a statement the former president’s campaign made to the Washington Post, the group’s president Marjorie Dannenfelser hit out at Trump, who played an instrumental role in the overturning of Roe v Wade by appointing three conservative justices to the supreme court.

“President Trump’s assertion that the Supreme Court returned the issue of abortion solely to the states is a completely inaccurate reading of the Dobbs decision and is a morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate to hold,” Dannenfelser said.

“We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections.”

You can read the rest of the statement here.

Mike Lindell, who is best known outside the world of pillow enthusiasts for spreading baseless tales about the 2020 election, may now have to pay up big time after challenging a software expert to debunk data supposedly proving fraud was behind Donald Trump’s election loss. It’s an unusual story, and the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly tells it well:

Mike Lindell must make good on a promise and pay $5m to a software expert who debunked data the conspiracy theorist touted in advancing Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 presidential election defeat was the result of voting fraud, an arbitration panel decided.

In its decision, the panel said: “The data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”

Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was conclusive: by more than 7m votes and a clear margin in the electoral college.

But Lindell, who is recovering from substance use disorder and is chief executive of MyPillow, has spent millions in support of Trump’s lie.

In Florida, Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney is escalating, all while the governor appears to be moving towards announcing a run for the Republican presidential nomination next year. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe has the latest from Miami:

The Republican-dominated legislature in Florida has moved quickly to amplify Governor Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney over LGBTQ+ rights, advancing a proposal to overcome the company’s thwarting of his earlier plan to seize control of the theme park giant.

DeSantis, a likely candidate for the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nomination, was outfoxed by Disney after installing a hand-picked board of directors with oversight of the state’s biggest private employer. At its first meeting, the board discovered a last-minute deal between Disney and outgoing directors had rendered it in effect impotent.

Now, in a move Democrats say is unconstitutional, lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a measure handing the DeSantis loyalists retroactive power to nullify the agreement by amending a land use law relating to special taxing districts.

In Oklahoma, the fallout continues from revelations that local officials fantasized about killing Black people and news reporters. Here’s the latest from the Associated Press:

A county commissioner in far south-east Oklahoma who was identified by a local newspaper as one of several officials caught on tape discussing killing reporters and lynching Black people has resigned from office, the state’s governor confirmed on Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Governor Kevin Stitt, Carly Atchison, said their office received a handwritten resignation letter from the McCurtain county commissioner Mark Jennings. In it, Jennings says he is resigning immediately and that he plans to release a formal statement “in the near future regarding the recent events in our county”.

The threatening comments by Jennings and officials with the McCurtain county sheriff’s office were obtained after a 6 March meeting and reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News earlier this week in its weekend edition. They have sparked outrage and protests in the city of Idabel, the county seat.

Once they’re confirmed, supreme court justices don’t appear before Congress often. How did we get to the point where a top Democrat wants the court’s chief justice to appear before his committee? This piece from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington answers that question:

Earlier this month, the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas put out a statement in which he addressed the storm of criticism that has engulfed him following the blockbuster ProPublica report that revealed his failure to disclose lavish gifts of luxury vacations and private-jet travel from a Texan real estate magnate.

Thomas confirmed that the Dallas billionaire and Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow and his wife Kathy were “among our dearest friends”. Thomas admitted, too, that he and his wife Ginni had “joined them on a number of family trips during the more-than-a-quarter-century we have known them”.

The justice, who is the longest-serving member of the nation’s highest court and arguably its most staunch conservative, insisted he had taken advice that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” did not have to be reported under federal ethics laws. He emphasized that the friend in question “did not have business before the court”.

CBS News reports that Senate judiciary chair Richard Durbin hopes John Roberts will honor his invitation to testify before his committee, and isn’t considering sending the chief justice a subpoena:

At a press conference following the House’s passage of a measure to keep transgender athletes out of women’s sports, CNN reports speaker Kevin McCarthy made it clear he wasn’t interested in discussing conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s links to a major GOP donor:

The GOP’s offensive into so-called culture war issues – like the transgender sports ban – apparently has limits. As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell and Lauren Gambino report, Donald Trump is unconvinced that a national abortion ban is a good idea for the party to pursue:

Donald Trump considers a federal abortion ban a losing proposal for Republicans as the party prepares to enter the first presidential election since the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade – and is unlikely to support such a policy, according to people close to him.

The former president has told allies in recent days that his gut feeling remains leaving the matter of reproductive rights to the states – following the court’s reasoning in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended 50 years of federal abortion protections.

But Trump’s crystallizing stance appears to be, in essence, a recognition that a federal abortion ban could cost him in the 2024 election should he become the Republican nominee, mainly because a majority of Americans simply do not support making abortion mostly or entirely illegal.

At some point, the Senate will have to consider legislation to raise the debt ceiling, and while Democrats may control that chamber, getting all their lawmakers on board with whatever deal is agreed to is no sure thing.

A new reminder of that dynamic just arrived this morning in the form of a statement from Joe Manchin. He represents deep-red West Virginia and, should he choose to run, faces a tough re-election battle next year. He also has proven to be a thorn in the side of the Biden administration and its priorities over the past two years.

Manchin’s statement was far from an endorsement of McCarthy’s plan, but also called on Biden to negotiate with the House speaker – something the president has refused to do, saying the debt ceiling should be increased, and fiscal reforms should be discussed separately.

Here’s what Manchin said:

America is facing a historic economic crisis brought on by an abject failure to address our exploding national debt, chronic inflation, a looming recession, and the more immediate need to raise the debt ceiling. Our elected leaders must stop with the political games, work together and negotiate a compromise. Instead, it has been more than 78 days since President Biden last met with Speaker McCarthy. This signals a deficiency of leadership, and it must change. The fact is we are long past time for our elected leaders to sit down and discuss how to solve this impending debt ceiling crisis.

While it is reasonable to sincerely disagree with any specific debt ceiling approach, we will achieve a historic default, and the economic whirlwind which follows, if President Biden continues to refuse to even negotiate a reasonable and commonsense compromise. To that end, I applaud Speaker McCarthy for putting forward a proposal that would prevent default and rein in federal spending. While I do not agree with everything proposed, the fact of the matter is that it is the only bill actually moving through Congress that would prevent default. For the sake of the country, I urge President Biden to come to the table, propose a plan for real and substantive spending cuts and deficit reduction, and negotiate now. Failing to do so may score political points with the extremes of the Democratic Party, but make no mistake, it will be the American people – and our nation – who will pay the ultimate price if partisan politics continues to define our politics and policies.”

Shifting back to the debt ceiling debate, one of the biggest problems Republicans face is getting all their lawmakers to back House leadership’s proposal to raise the limit while cutting government spending.

The GOP controls the House but only by a narrow margin, and some of its most conservative lawmakers say they won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling at all. George Santos, the Republican congressman and prolific liar, is among that group, Punchbowl News reports:

That’s not all the news there is about Donald Trump today. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that a top adviser to the former president is being interviewed by the special counsel tasked with getting to the bottom of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his possession of classified documents:

Donald Trump’s senior adviser and legal counsel Boris Epshteyn is scheduled to be interviewed on Thursday by special counsel prosecutors investigating the former president’s retention of classified-marked documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and his role in the January 6 Capitol attack.

The investigation Epshteyn is being asked to talk about – potentially both – remains unclear, according to a person familiar with the matter who confirmed the meeting on the condition of anonymity. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

But the interview, which was requested by special counsel prosecutors, marks a moment of potential peril for Trump given Epshteyn has been one of his closest advisers in recent years, with more knowledge about the former president’s legal entanglements than perhaps anyone else.