We’ve got the backstory about the White House pressuring Democrats to drop off a bill they’d otherwise be backing.
Not all presidential ethics bills are created equal — and one bipartisan bill, hailed by Democrats and Republicans as a landmark piece of legislation, ticked off the White House enough that it pressured several House Democrats to withdraw their sponsorships the night before the bill dropped, the Washington Reporter was told.
President Joe Biden’s White House quietly scrambled to convince House Democrats to abandon a bipartisan bill put forward by Reps. James Comer (R., Ky.) and Katie Porter (D., Calif.) that would have dramatically reshaped the landscape for presidential ethics. Said bill would have required presidents and vice presidents to disclose among other things payments, loans, and loan repayments from foreign sources received by themselves or immediate family members within two years before taking office, during time in office, and for two years after leaving office.
Through the Oversight Committee, Comer has accused Biden’s family of suspicious activities in just about all of the realms the bill would have forced transparency over. Getting Porter’s sign-off on the bill, given the Biden family’s ongoing ethics investigations, was no small feat by the Kentuckian and his team.
That a Democrat like Porter would ever attach her name to something like this is a testament to what Comer and his colleagues have unveiled, but it is slightly less surprising when remembering that she has been torching her reputation with the Democratic Party after she decisively lost a Senate primary, which she falsely claimed was “rigged,” before apologizing.
Democrats who were slated to support Comer’s bill before caving to White House pressure were Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D., Ill.), Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), and Kweisi Mfume (D., Md.), the Washington Reporter was told. Porter was “quite upset,” sources say.
All three Democrats are members of the Oversight Committee — and their ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), initially tipped off the White House about the Comer-Porter bill, the Reporter was told. Raskin, coincidentally, had been working on his own piece of legislation that would prohibit the president and other officials “from accepting foreign payments without Congressional approval during the entire time they are in office and for two years after leaving office.”
By objective measures, Comer-Porter’s bipartisan bill is more serious, and more likely to pass, than Raskin’s counterpart. The three Oversight Democrats who purportedly ditched Comer’s bill — Krishnamoorthi, Khanna, and Mfume — did not respond to requests for comment.