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Jeff Sessions Is Not Appointing A Second Special Counsel Now, But Internal Reviews Continue

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not appointing a second special counsel at this time to look into allegations that the FBI has abused the FISA warrant process, as some Republicans have sought.

In addition to the inspector general's investigation of those matters, which Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced on Wednesday, Sessions told congressional leaders in a letter on Thursday that US Attorney John Huber, in charge of the District of Utah, has been tasked with overseeing the effort to determine what additional steps — including the possibility of the appointment of a second special counsel — are necessary.

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Stormy Daniels Accuses Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Of Defamation

Stormy Daniels

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Stormy Daniels expanded her pending lawsuit against President Donald Trump and associates, adding a claim alleging that longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen defamed her earlier this year.

Daniels filed the lawsuit earlier this year seeking to have the 2016 settlement agreement she signed with Cohen — which led to her being paid $130,000 in exchange for her silence — tossed out.

On Monday, though, Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, expanded the suit, adding a defamation claim against Cohen based on a statement he made regarding the payment.

"Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage," Cohen said in a mid-February statement. "I will always protect Mr. Trump."

Avenatti points to that statement as the basis for the defamation claim, stating in the amended complaint, "It was reasonably understood by those who read or heard the statement that Mr. Cohen’s defamatory statement was about Ms. Clifford."

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Trump Brings "Christmas For Neocons"

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The Republican officials who brought you the Iraq War — and whom Donald Trump campaigned against in 2016 — are celebrating the revival of the early Bush administration in a trio of key foreign policy appointments.

The elevation of CIA Director-designate Gina Haspel, National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo represents a return to a point of view not seen since the early 2000s: eagerness to use American armed force, comfort with torturing terror suspects, and a central focus on counter-terror policy.

It is, one prominent neoconservative told BuzzFeed News, “Christmas for neocons.”

There is no indication that Trump was thinking deeply about history, ideology, or even policy when he made these moves. He has an unusual level of personal comfort with Pompeo; he liked how Bolton sounded on TV; and he was simply hard up for candidates to lead the CIA, one top Republican foreign policy official noted.

But the upshot of his decision is striking: Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador, represented the bleeding edge of Bush-era unilateralism, Haspel destroyed evidence in a torture investigation. And Pompeo, who served in the first Gulf War, is newer to Washington but has fought hard against the Iran nuclear deal, the central focus of neocon ire, as well as that of other Republican hawks. Their appointments represents the revival of a school of foreign policy that seemed to have vanished even from Republican politics during the Obama years, and which lost further relevance when Trump ran claiming (falsely) to have opposed the Iraq invasion.

Scott Jennings, who served as a political aide in the Bush White House, said Trump’s team is “learning what it’s like to operate in this world as the president” after a campaign that was hardly hawkish.

“I’m glad the president has people there with clear eyes about who we’re dealing with,” Jennings said. “I think it’s exactly the right message: That we’re serious. And when you appoint people like Bolton, they know you’re serious.”

A decade ago, there was a bitter divide between neoconservatives, who spoke idealistically of exporting democracy, and more nationalistic Republican hawks like Bolton, whose attention ran more straightforwardly toward oil and power. But those differences have largely been elided inside actual Republican politics — and Trump’s appointments revive in particular the ideology of the key figures of the early Bush years, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“Rumsfeld’s a huge Bolton fan,” said one former Bush administration official, who said the former secretary (who didn’t respond to an email inquiry) sees Bolton as “steely-eyed.”

Rumsfeld’s old internal rivals among the neocons feel the same way.

“Maybe he’s not for democracy promotion, but what’s the difference? He’s our boy, he loves us, we love him; the difference has evaporated,” said the prominent neoconservative. “Even if Marco Rubio was president, would we have had these people in these national security positions? I sort of doubt it.”

Haspel has also drawn lavish praise from a wing of the party that seemed, until fairly recently, to be on the margins.

“Gina Haspel has spent her career defending the American people and homeland,” Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the former vice president’s daughter and political successor, wrote recently, amid a string of tweets furiously attacking Haspel’s critics. “The Enhanced Interrogation Program saved lives, prevented attacks, & produced intel that led to Osama bin Laden.”

Former Bush aides aren’t entirely sure what to make of Trump’s new team. After all, the president used the Iraq legacy to tear down the former president’s brother, Jeb. “I don’t think Trump has put that much thought into any of this,” one noted.

(Bolton declined to comment on his views of the Cheney-Rumsfeld era. “I recommend you read the Axios piece from last night,” Bolton spokesperson Garrett Marquis told BuzzFeed News in response to an inquiry, sending on the party line that Bolton intends to be an “honest broker.”)

Bush’s old critics, though, are intensely alert to the revival of ideologies they thought Trump had finally killed off.

“We are repeating the mistakes of the past by allowing the failed foreign policies of Neocons to infiltrate our government,” libertarian-minded Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Monday in an emailed statement. “These are the same people who eagerly await the next opportunity for war. Undoubtedly, it will result in a world with far more enemies than stability or peace.”

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It's A Former NFL Player Vs. A Donald Trump Acolyte In A Battle For The Soul Of The Republican Party In Ohio

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This spring, a primary for the open House seat here in Ohio’s 16th congressional district will help shape the Republican Party’s future — pitting the old and new versions of what it means to be a conservative against each other.

At first glance, the two main candidates don’t look so different: They’re young and ambitious and would qualify as reliably conservative. Both are part of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s recruitment program for top prospects. Both would vote for President Trump’s agenda most of the time.

But by the standards of the Trump era — where style and identity overshadow ideology and policy, and where the lengths you go to to present yourself as a Trump loyalist often matter more than your voting record — there are sharp differences between Anthony Gonzalez and Christina Hagan.

Gonzalez, 33, was a star wide receiver at Ohio State and a first-round draft pick in the NFL, where he caught passes from Peyton Manning. He later earned an MBA from Stanford and worked as a top executive with an education technology company in Silicon Valley.

Gonzalez speaking to the Portage County Tea Party on January 30, 2018.

PortageTEAParty / YouTube / Via youtube.com

His first television ad? Packed with reminders of his football career. A recent fundraiser? Headlined by Jim Tressel, the former Buckeyes head coach who remains beloved and influential in the state. Gonzalez is counting on this hometown hero image to carry him against his more-seasoned opponent and to make up for his dry and cerebral personality on the campaign trail. (“I was told once never to give process answers,” he confessed to an audience recently, before launching into a process answer to a question about the national debt.)

Hagan, 29, has been a state lawmaker since her senior year at Malone, a tiny Christian university just outside the district. She holds her father’s old seat, was married in a statehouse ceremony, and has fast become a career politician despite positioning herself as an outsider in Trump’s mold. She emphasizes her family’s small plumbing and heating business and serves up other homespun anecdotes — peeling potatoes in the back of a local diner, waiting tables even after winning a seat in the legislature — as proof of her working-class cred.

"California and New York elites are coming for our guns right here in Ohio"

Her first ad showed how comfortable she is dishing out the kind of red meat Gonzalez seldom touches. (“California and New York elites are coming for our guns right here in Ohio,” she says in the spot as she loads a shotgun.) Her fundraisers have been headlined by pro-Trump figures of varying celebrity, from YouTube duo Diamond and Silk to former White House advisers Sebastian Gorka and Anthony Scaramucci.

“I think we have two completely different candidates,” Gonzalez said last month while speaking at a Republican club meeting in the Cleveland suburb of Rocky River. “People are going to have a very clear choice, which is always good.”

Christina Hagan in Medina, Ohio on February 22, 2018.

Ty Wright for The Washington Post / Getty Images

Asked who he would look to as a congressional role model, Gonzalez gushed about Sen. Ben Sasse, the conservative and Trump critic from Nebraska: “My wife says I have a man crush on the guy.” Hagan dodged when offered the same question: “I am going to go and uniquely be myself.” It’s not difficult, though, to picture where she would fit among her colleagues. She recently scored an endorsement from fellow Ohioan Jim Jordan, a founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and one of Trump’s most pugnacious defenders in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Gonzalez, meanwhile, has the backing of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and is excited about a recent donation from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill.

Gonzalez gushed about Sen. Ben Sasse... "My wife says I have a man crush on the guy"

Gonzalez never explicitly draws the contrasts. “I don’t think about the messaging coming out of the other side at all,” he told BuzzFeed News in an interview.

Hagan is eager to do so. She frames Gonzalez as a political neophyte with West Coast values who came home to fly the establishment flag in a campaign built around his football glory days and a highbrow education she incorrectly describes as Ivy League. “Anthony’s supporters,” she said in an interview after the Scaramucci event, “probably have touted him for being a Stanford graduate, and [believe] this is something we should all connect with and understand. But also, not that many folks in Northeast Ohio have graduated with a college degree, let alone an Ivy League degree.”

The stakes here are even higher now that Democrats have scratched out a special election win in Pennsylvania — by beating a pro-Trump Republican with a youthful candidate in a suburban Pittsburgh district that favored Trump by 20 points and had been in GOP hands for 15 years. At least one midterm forecaster has moved the Ohio 16th, up for grabs because incumbent Jim Renacci chose to run for Senate, from “safe Republican” to “likely Republican.” The crowded Democratic primary lacks a big-name candidate, though Marine Corps veteran Grant Goodrich, recently endorsed by influential Rep. Marcia Fudge of the Cleveland area, has begun to stand out.

The district itself offers a wide array of voters: There’s blue-collar suburbia, white-collar exurbia, and a slice of farm country. Up north, just outside Cleveland, a General Motors factory cranks out auto parts. Down south, cars share the road with the Amish and their horse-drawn buggies. Trump won here by 16 points, but allegiance to him might suddenly be a tricker proposition.

He is more famous, has the business background, and has much more cash. She is more charismatic and more experienced.

When it comes to the Trump calculus, the differences between Gonzalez and Hagan cut both ways. He is more famous, has the business background, and has much more cash in his campaign account. She is more charismatic and more experienced. And in a year when a record number of women are running for Congress, Hagan rated a Washington Post style section profile by being an unabashed supporter of a president who’s been repeatedly accused of harassing women.

Hagan also acknowledges she needs “to be a little more gutsy” when asking for money, and she says has been disappointed that so many party insiders have told her that it’s “not your turn.” If she wins, she would be the youngest woman ever elected to the House, beating Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, by a few months.

She clearly is the candidate most in sync with the Trump aesthetic. She staged her February fundraiser with Scaramucci — the Mooch, as Trump’s exiled and very much in-on-the-joke White House communications director is known — at a McMansion in exurban Medina. Inside, a cocktail lounge pianist noodled away at “Heart and Soul” and “Piano Man.” Guests circled through a dining room and kitchen, munching on light hors d'oeuvres and sipping wine, Heineken, and local craft beer. Hagan’s father, the former state lawmaker, held court in one corner, closely scanning the names of hosts on an invitation someone had snagged for an upcoming Gonzalez event.

“It’s good to see that I do have a fellow black brother in the house with me,” warm-up act Kareem Lanier, a member of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, told the all-white audience. “My good brother Anthony Scaramucci is black. I won’t tell you guys which half of him is black. But he is a black man, for sure.”

The Mooch gave the donors almost everything they came for: self-deprecating humor and some colorful tales from his time with Trump. (“Hey, Mooch, what do you want from Burger King? I’m buying!”) But if all of this is meant to put the Trump imprimatur on Hagan’s bid, there’s something missing: Trump himself. It’s not as if the president is shy about picking favorites in other tough primaries, though there has not been reliable polling on the Ohio 16th. When one supporter asked if Trump would visit before the May 8 vote, Scaramucci deflected, assuring the audience that he is close with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and that they are aware of Hagan’s campaign.

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci speaks to a group of supporters for Christina Hagan in Medina, Ohio on February 22, 2018.

Ty Wright for The Washington Post / Getty Images

“Let’s say maybe,” he continued, teeing up a quip about his 11-day tenure at the White House. “If I was the communications director for 12 days, I could have said definitely.”

Gonzalez shows no such interest in cozying up to Trump World.

And his meeting with Republicans in Rocky River was far less flashy than Hagan’s evening with The Mooch. Speaking to about 30 local activists gathered in a tiny room at the neighborhood library, Gonzalez hardly mentioned Trump. Instead he mixed mild boilerplate — he nonchalantly established himself as pro-gun and anti-abortion — with the story of how his grandparents fled Cuba during Fidel Castro’s uprising. Gonzalez, whose father runs a Cleveland-area steel company, also mourned manufacturing’s decline. “What we should all agree on,” he said, “is that the next 25 years are going to be a heck of a lot more disruptive than the previous 25 years.” His most direct reference to Trump came late in the hour, when someone asked for his thoughts on immigration reform. “I think the president’s proposal is spot on,” he said, endorsing Trump’s push to complete a wall along the Mexican border.

During an interview the following week at a Panera, Gonzalez said he was “very happy with the result” of the 2016 election. But he sighed audibly and paused for nearly 10 seconds when asked why he thought Trump won. “You know, I think … that’s a good question,” he said finally. “I think he gave voice to something that had been largely ignored or had sat below the surface for a while. You can call it the silent majority. I think that’s a fine term. But who was that? It was all of us who felt like one way or another this country just stopped working for the everyday person.”

Hagan is far less circumspect, not only when it comes to praise for Trump, but also when it comes to policy. A guest at the Mooch fundraiser proudly told the crowd how Hagan once received an AR-15 for Mother’s Day. (Hagan has a 2-year-old daughter and announced recently that she is pregnant with twins. Gonzalez is expecting his first child in April.)

The same style of gun had been used a week earlier in the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida. In the interview after the fundraiser, Hagan expressed deep skepticism about gun control proposals now being debated in Washington and suggested using local tax dollars “to ensure we have armed personnel on staff at every school.” Gonzalez said he has no personal problem with the AR-15, and he backed into an answer on arming teachers and other school staff by calling himself a “big states’ rights, kind of federalist guy” who would leave such decisions up to local school boards.

Chris LaCivita, his top political consultant, later intercepted a question about whether Gonzalez owns a gun: “That’s no one’s damn business.”

"I’ve had people say, ‘You’re never gonna get a guy named Gonzalez through a primary in that district.'"

Hagan also uses hotter rhetoric on immigration — and in one instance many are convinced she also used Gonzalez’s Hispanic last name as a dog whistle to racist voters. In a Feb. 11 tweet, Hagan highlighted a Fox News segment on undocumented immigrants and an Ohio heroin ring. She singled out only one of the three suspects by name: Armando Gonzalez-Rosas — and left out the “Rosas.”

The move drew a rare rebuke from Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken, who asked Hagan to delete the tweet. Hagan refused.

She also does not deny that she was calling attention to her opponent’s ethnicity.

“This is a tough business,” Hagan told BuzzFeed News. “If they do not like the context of the tweet, which was entirely factual, that’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t make it less factual.”

Nonetheless, it has cost her. Republican leaders in Cuyahoga County, which accounts for the largest chunk of GOP votes in the district, grumbled about the tweet last month before the county party endorsed Gonzalez. And despite Hagan’s strong anti-abortion credentials, Ohio Right to Life, one of the state’s most influential conservative groups, backed Gonzalez after its president criticized the tweet, according to cleveland.com. Some Republicans are sensitive to questions about whether a candidate named Gonzalez can win in the Ohio 16th, especially against a familiar ballot name like Hagan.

“We have had a dominant congressional delegation over the years, but other than Deb Pryce and Jean Schmidt for a hot minute, it’s been all white guys,” said Matt Borges, the former state party chair and a devout Ohio State fan who was an early Gonzalez supporter. “I’ve had people say, ‘You’re never gonna get a guy named Gonzalez through a primary in that district.’”

To Hagan, all of this is more fodder for her anti-establishment pitch. For example, Timken officially is neutral. But her husband Tim, the CEO of a major steel company in the Ohio 16th and one of the state’s most generous GOP donors, is behind Gonzalez — a relationship that Gonzalez’s family ties to the Northeast Ohio steel industry helped forge. “In a way, it is an honor to not have that type of support,” said Hagan, “but it never becomes … less frustrating or disappointing that you could fight for a community for seven years and still see the door closed in your face.”

Gonzalez, indeed, is commanding the money race. The latest campaign finance reports showed him with $742,000 in cash on hand, plus a $40,000 personal loan. (Manning, his former Indianapolis Colts teammate, is among the top donors.) Hagan had $199,000.

“We’re the campaign, in my opinion, with the energy, and the excitement, and the real base,” Hagan said. “Our opposition has a very stagnated type of support that’s maybe correlated more so to a football-type of environment. I’ll never capture that, because I’m not a football player.”

Republican observers attribute Gonzalez’s fast start to strong first impressions. One activist recalled how Hagan bolted early from a local party function, but Gonzalez hung around after it was over to talk to everyone. And even before the results in Pennsylvania, many viewed the Trump-cautious Gonzalez as more electable.

“Anthony made the case over these last few months, by being present at every meeting, that he has the passion and work ethic to get things done,” said Rob Frost, the Cuyahoga County GOP chair. “And he made case at our meeting that he’s best candidate to win in November.”

But first, Republican voters in Ohio will answer a question about what works best in 2018: running like Trump never existed, or running just like him. ●

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Atlanta Will Bid To Host The 2020 Democratic National Convention

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Atlanta plans to bid to host the 2020 Democratic National Convention when the DNC's request for proposal goes out this spring, the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party told BuzzFeed News.

"We're actively looking forward to making a bid for the 2020 Democratic National Convention," said DuBose Porter, the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party.

Porter said that he, along with Nekima Williams, the first vice chair of the party, and Dan Halpern, the DNC's deputy national finance chair, met in Atlanta with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms just before the DNC's spring meeting to discuss the topic of bringing the convention to Atlanta. Bottoms, he said, was 100% behind the effort and wants to partner in the effort.

"We have the facilities, we have the infrastructure, and we feel like we can get the resources," Porter said. When the request for proposals goes out, he said Atlanta will meet logistical requirements, such as airport capacity, and adequate hotel accommodations.

Privately, national Democrats that spoke with BuzzFeed News this week expressed excitement that Atlanta — in a state that Democrats eventually hope to turn blue — would be in the running with other cities. (Milwaukee, for instance, has announced that it will bid; Wisconsin is one of the key Midwestern states that Democrats hope to win again after Hillary Clinton's loss there in 2016.)

"Atlanta tells a better story," said Porter, explaining the city's advantage over other cities. He noted Atlanta's status as the cradle of the civil rights movement and is home to Rep. John Lewis, an icon in the fight for access to equal justice. "The history of Atlanta tells a story about the Democratic Party" that would make the convention meaningful, he said.

Porter said the timing of the convention could coincide with Georgia turning blue, a point of concern for Democrats focused on shifting demographics around the country. He said statewide races are winnable, but asked about Georgia's heated Democratic governor's primary — between Stacey Evans and Stacey Abrams —Porter said the party had a pair of great candidates, but that his job "is to bring everybody together after it's over."

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Lessons From Tech's Last Political Crisis

Penn in the spin room for Hillary Clinton in 2008.

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Politics and tech have long occupied uneasy, parallel worlds. Politicians are painfully clueless about the basics of technology; technologists are, as we are seeing, painfully naive about politics. Companies born in the 00s and that grew up in the 10s were, until recently, often under the blissful impression that what happened in politics didn’t much matter as long as regulators stayed away. That’s changed.

One of the first big league political operatives to cross that divide was Mark Penn. He went to work for Microsoft during the last great confrontation of government and tech, the 1990s antitrust battle. He was Hillary Clinton’s 2008 strategist and after that defeat — he returned to Microsoft full time, and brought with him all the aggression he’d been talked out of directing at Barack Obama: From 2012 to 2014, he ran the company’s marketing and directed a political assault on their core rival, Google, under the characteristically subtle moniker, “Scroogled.”

“They read your mail!” he still points out.

Today the crisis of tech and politics has hit a new peak for Google, Twitter, and — especially — Facebook, and so I asked Penn what he’d advise the embattled and largely silent social media giant do.

First, he said, it’s not clear what Facebook actually stands for.

“I think it's a problem kind of like Microsoft had,” he said. “I don't think it fundamentally undermines their platform — but it's a very, very serious hit for their image. Their company is built on openness and authenticity. If they believe in openness they better defend it. And if they believe in authenticity I think the better they better make sure their accounts are real.”

But he also suggested a deeper problem: A company so totally identified with its founder that the two rise or fall together.

“The Facebook image is driven largely by both Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl [Sandberg,” he said. “Microsoft is not uniquely identified with Bill Gates.”

“Part of what they need is to create a long lasting image of the company built on principles that they articulate and they execute,” he said.

Penn is now fully in the private sector, running the Stagwell Group, a holding company for, among others, digital political operations that’s funded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

(In that capacity he heard a pitch last year from a firm that was boasting of its crucial role in Trump’s election. The company was Cambridge Analytica. “It was really weird,” he recalled. ”What they had to say just didn’t make sense.”)

Penn had come up to New York to sell his new book, Microtrends Squared, and we spoke over breakfast under what he described as the “Bob Woodward rules — it’s off the record as long as it’s not very interesting.”

In his new book he adds depth and a darker tone to his 2007 book Microtrends. Then, he advanced a cheery vision of a society happily splintered by infinite choice into a kaleidoscope of subgroups; the new vision is less cheerful, but similarly paints a society best influenced through groups like Bikers To Work, Pro-Proteiners, and Second-Fiddle Husbands.

“We expected that the advances in our ability to customize goods and services would open us all up to a new world of never ending experimentation,” he writes. “A decade later, exactly the opposite has occurred, and our society has become increasingly polarized, with people finding the ochies they like and picking them over and over again.”

Some of those choices have come in the information economy, and Penn offered a prescription to get Facebook out of that business.

“Facebook never should've gotten into News, that was a huge mistake,” he said. “The only way out of it,” he said, is to treat the platform as the federal government does the airwaves. “Auction off 10 channels, agree to promote 10 channels equally, let people choose, and get out of the news publishing and sorting business.”

In the short term, though, Facebook is more or less Scroogled, “trying to row against the narrative that — whether it’s true or not — is almost impossible to row against.”

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Staffers At A Top, Bernie-Backed Progressive Firm Have Unionized

Bernie Sanders at a rally for Randy Bryce last month. Sanders alums at the firm Revolution Messaging and Bryce staffers have each formed unions.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

On Monday morning, a sudden wave of cheers sounded through the offices of the progressive digital consulting firm behind Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

The staffers at Revolution Messaging had just formed their own union.

Ahead of this year’s midterm elections, a growing number of Democratic campaign workers are now moving to push the party that champions fair labor rights to apply the same standards to its own employees in an industry where the hours are long, the work is transient, and power dynamics and murky reporting structures can leave staffers with little recourse to address problems of misconduct and discrimination.

So far this year, staffers on at least nine 2018 campaigns have unionized, ratifying collective bargaining agreements on wages, work hours, benefits, housing, and new policies surrounding sexual harassment and workplace misconduct.

Revolution Messaging, the Washington-based company that helped run Sanders’ digital strategy, is one of the first political firms to see its staffers form a union.

Employees at Revolution Messaging notified the firm's management of its decision to form a union with a local chapter of the News Guild-Communications Workers of America, part of the country's largest communications and media labor union.

“As progressives who care deeply about the work that we do, we feel that it’s time to illustrate our pro-labor values by organizing ourselves," members of the union wrote in its letter to the firm's senior staff.

"Unionizing Revolution Messaging will allow us to truly become the progressive beacon we have always strived to be. Our union will allow everyone at Rev to have a voice on the job and a seat at the table, which will undoubtedly help retain current and future employees, bolster our recruitment efforts moving forward, and attract business from clients who seek out unionized firms. At the end of the day, unionizing will only be better for business and for everyone who works here.”

Later that morning, founder and CEO Scott Goodstein recognized the union, offering words of support. “This is great news!” he wrote. “As most of you know, we fought on behalf of dozens of labor unions since our inception, and it is part of our DNA. We believe in workers’ rights, labor rights, women's rights and human rights.”

The firm is expected to enter into negotiations with staffers and representatives at the NewsGuild-CWA.

In a Huffington Post report last month, employees at Revolution Messaging outlined a number of complaints about the internal culture at the firm, including management’s handling of a late 2015 incident in which a female employee said she had been physically assaulted at a company party by one of the company’s partners. (The firm fired the partner, according to Huffington Post, but staffers also said that the woman had also been forced out, potentially in an act of retaliation, prompting employees to draft a letter to management about the incident.)

Members of the Revolution Messaging Union, reached by email, did not respond to questions about the terms they will be pushing for, or the impetus for their decision to unionize.

The recent unionization push by Democratic campaign staffers has been led in large part by a new nationwide union, formed about a year ago, called the Campaign Workers Guild.

The CWG, led by 16 volunteers across the country, has helped organize political staffers across nine races, from campaigns for county council (Chris Wilhelm in Maryland), to attorney general (Renato Mariotti in Illinois), governor (Erin Murphy in Minnesota), and Congress (Randy Bryce in Wisconsin, Jess King in Pennsylvania, Andy Thorburn in California, Brian Flynn in New York, Dan Haberman in Michigan, and Marie Newman in Illinois).

The labor union is currently facilitating contract negotiations with as many as 25 more campaigns and campaign-adjacent organizations, according to Meg Reilly, a former Sanders campaign staffer who now serves as CWG’s vice president.

“It doesn't show any sign of stopping,” Reilly said, describing the campaign workers’ movement as the first “really serious concerted effort” by political staffers to collectively bargain.

In the fast-paced start-up world of campaigns, young staffers and organizers work long, rigorous hours for little pay, all in service of a cause or candidate they believe in. And efforts to fight campaign leadership for better conditions are often, as Reilly put it, pushed off “for the sake of the greater good.”

The same mindset, one where the candidate’s public perception is an inherent priority, has also made it historically difficult to address complaints of workplace harassment and misconduct, particularly when campaigns lack clear reporting structures. Ahead of 2016, staffers at a Hillary Clinton super PAC, said they didn’t know how to come forward against their boss because there was no human resources department. Another said they believed harassment was simply something you had to be “tough enough to endure” to work in politics.

The political operatives who founded the CWG say that collective bargaining on campaigns is one way to set better grievance and harassment procedures. In some of the contacts they’ve already negotiated, Reilly said, they’ve mandated that campaigns designate a third-party neutral investigator to handle complaints.

The CWG did not work with the Revolution Messaging Union, but Reilly said they expect staffers at more consulting firms to move toward forming their own unions.

At the Sierra Club, the largest environmental group in the country, staffers have already formed two unions, an Oakland-based Sierra Employee Alliance and the Progressive Workers’ Union, or PWU, which represents about 215 Sierra Club employees across the country. The PWU is about five months into contract negotiations with the Sierra Club, according to the union’s president, Larry Williams Jr.

As described by Williams and CWG members, the ongoing unionization push is linked in fundamental ways to the pro-labor stance widely espoused on the left. Every year, Democratic campaigns and causes depend on labor unions — for their support, their volunteers and organizers, their millions of dollars in contributions.

“If the labor movement falls," said Williams, "then so does the progressive movement."

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The Supreme Court Won't Stop A New Pennsylvania Congressional Map Favored By Democrats From Going Into Effect This Year

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf

Lisa Lake / Getty Images

Pennsylvania will have a new congressional map for this year's elections, after the US Supreme Court declined a request to halt the maps — issued by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court earlier this year — from going into effect.

The Monday afternoon order from the US Supreme Court, with no opinion and no noted dissents, followed a more extensive ruling earlier Monday from a three-judge district court panel reaching a similar conclusion. The pair of rulings appeared — absent an unexpected development — to end Republicans' hopes to stop the maps from taking effect for the 2018 midterms.

Under the map that was tossed out earlier this year by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, only five of the state's 18 congressional districts are represented by Democrats — despite the fact that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the swing state. The new map is expected to bring that number closer to the parity that would be expected in the state.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued the new map itself in mid-February after the Republican-led state legislature and Democratic governor could not agree on a new congressional map. The redrawing process followed an order from the state high court that the state's earlier map was a partisan gerrymander that violated the state's constitution.

Because the ruling was based on the state's constitution and not the US Constitution, the options for opponents to challenge it were limited. Pennsylvania Republicans tried to get federal courts to halt the new map from going into effect by claiming that the state supreme court's ruling violated the US Constitution's "elections clause," which states that "[t]he Times, Places and Manner of
holding Elections for Senators and Representatives" are to be set "in each State by the Legislature thereof."

With Monday's rulings, however, it appeared that the effort was unsuccessful and that the new map would control the 2018 elections — further news to buoy Democratic hopes at retaking the House this fall.

Supreme Court

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Carolyn Maloney: Suraj Patel’s Campaign Donors Include “A Huge Amount Of The Name Patel”

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney downplayed her challenger Suraj Patel’s fundraising in an interview on Thursday, saying his campaign disclosures contained a large number of people from his home state of Indiana, and “a huge amount of the name Patel.”

Ahead of this summer’s New York primary, Patel — a young businessman running as a progressive — has so far out-raised Maloney, the long-time incumbent in a New York City district that has been redrawn in recent years to include trendier parts of Brooklyn. He announced last month that he had raised more than $550,000.

“Well, it’s mainly from Indiana, where he’s from,” said Maloney when asked about Patel’s fundraising success. She added, “mainly a huge amount of the name Patel, which is his name.”

Maloney’s campaign has made an issue of Patel’s being from Indiana and raising money from outside New York. He serves as the president of the Indianapolis-based SUN Group, which acquires and develops hotels in the United States and is owned by his family. Last month, his campaign told Politico that four immediate family members and 10 other family members have donated to his campaign. (“He cannot depend on his wealthy Indiana family indefinitely and he will need a lot more than that to create an identity, record, and reputation to sway the people,” a Maloney spokesman told Politico. “No one knows him and everyone knows Carolyn’s record for fighting for the district.”)

Asked what Maloney meant by the remark, on Saturday, Maloney spokesperson George Arzt told BuzzFeed News in a statement that Patel “is pretending like he's running a local grassroots campaign, but the truth is only 1.3% of the half-million dollars he's raised comes from the district.”

Maloney made the fundraising comments in an interview about a range of topics, including the launch of a commemorative coin by the U.S. Mint to increase breast cancer research. The last two times Maloney has been challenged by a Democrat, she’s won by more than 50 points. “I’ve been to a lot of events where I’ve gotten continuous support from people I [either] actually represented or worked on their problems or tried to help in some way,” said Maloney.

Patel, 34, worked on both of Barack Obama’s two campaigns as an advance staffer, and currently lectures on business at NYU.

Asked about Maloney’s comments about his fundraising, Patel responded sharply, saying he wanted Maloney to know that not all people with the last name Patel are related.

“I guess I didn’t realize Rep. Maloney hired Steve Bannon as her campaign strategist,” he said.

Patel said he welcome a debate on campaign contributors, mentioning that Donald Trump has previously donated to Maloney. (The donations were made prior to 2010; Trump infamously also gave to the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats during that general period.) “Let’s let New York decide whether it’s more offensive to raise money from Patels and real people like I do or from corporate PACs and Donald Trump like she does,” he said.

“I’m a proud first-generation Indian-American,” he said, “and grateful to have the support of Americans of all backgrounds who believe we need new energy and new ideas in Washington.”

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Andrew McCabe, The Fired Former No. 2 At The FBI, Wrote Memos About His Interactions With Trump

Andrew McCabe

Pete Marovich / Getty Images

Andrew McCabe, the fired former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, kept personal memos detailing his interactions with President Donald Trump, as well as what happened during the time period when the president fired former FBI director James Comey, a source familiar with the situation told BuzzFeed News.

McCabe no longer has the memos, the source noted, detailing that they are the same kind of memos that were kept by Comey.

The Associated Press first reported the existence of the McCabe memos on Saturday afternoon, following Attorney General Jeff Sessions decision on Friday night to fire McCabe due what he wrote was an "unauthorized disclosure" to the media and a lack of candor with investigators.

The Comey memos have been the subject of litigation and were a key reference point in his Hill testimony in June 2017. Comey said outright that he made the detailed memos because he was afraid Trump would "lie" about their private conversations.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates or follow BuzzFeed News on Twitter.

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A #MeToo Fight Erupts Between Two Democrats

Monica Almeida / Reuters

The news arrived without warning, on Thursday at 2 p.m., in a tweet: “Today, I am calling on Gavin Newsom to step down from his position as lieutenant governor.”

Over the next 15 minutes, a 21-point thread unfolded on Twitter, citing the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment statistics, and a list of politicians recently stripped from power — before making the case that Newsom, the leading Democrat in the California governor’s race, has exhibited “a pattern of misusing his power in the workplace,” based on publicly reported details about two relationships from more than a decade ago.

“It is time for violators in the workplace to step down. Or be forced out.”

The warning from Amanda Renteria, a 43-year-old Democratic operative who entered the governor’s race last month, left California political circles bewildered and transfixed — an unexpected and contentious turn in one of 2018’s biggest races, pitting rival Democrats against one another in the complicated political arena of the #MeToo movement.

Renteria’s case against Newsom drew on the experiences of two women in 2005 and 2006. Newsom’s camp has since responded in blunt terms, accusing Renteria of exploiting the #MeToo phenomenon for political gain. The effort is one they describe as a “self-serving political stunt” that “cheapens” and “degrades” the movement.

Almost overnight, amid tense Democratic primaries across California, the Renteria incident has turned the state’s gubernatorial race into a staging ground for complex questions about how candidates talk about the #MeToo movement and tell the stories of other women, when their campaigns may stand to benefit.

Renteria, a former congressional candidate who served as Hillary Clinton’s national political director in 2016, joined the crowded California governor’s race last month. Her decision to run statewide — after just one failed congressional bid, in a field with nationally known candidates like Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa, and just days before the party’s state convention — came as a shock to friends and former colleagues. Her campaign, a small operation based in Menlo Park, has remained quiet for much of the last month. Up until this week, a good number of Democrats believed she could be a plant for Newsom, to siphon off votes from Villaraigosa.

That theory fell apart when the Renteria for Governor campaign unveiled its new offensive. “I'm totally fired up,” said Renteria said afterward. “These are the kind of conversations that change the future. We've got to call out character for what it is.”

Since Thursday, however, no prominent Democrats have voiced support for the Newsom push. In California, other campaigns steered clear of the story. And in Newsom’s camp, aides and supporters came forward to openly question Renteria’s intentions.

“This kind of brazen and self-serving political stunt doesn’t even deserve a response,” said Nathan Click, Newsom’s communications director.

Women in the state who support Newsom also offered biting criticism for Renteria’s resignation effort. “Even by campaign standards,” said state Sen. Toni Atkins, incoming leader of the California Senate, “it’s a preposterous suggestion that unfortunately distracts from the real importance and urgency of the #MeToo movement.”

Buffy Wicks, a longtime Newsom supporter now running in a crowded race for state assembly, said, “#MeToo is a critical movement for women’s equality. Transparent efforts to use this for political gain cheapen and do a disservice to this movement.”

As Renteria sees it, she’s raising legitimate questions about “judgment” and “character.”

Her case against Newsom details two relationships from his time as mayor of San Francisco: a 2005 affair with his former staffer, Ruby Rippey Gibney, married at the time to Newsom’s friend and campaign manager; and a 2006 relationship, at age 38, with a 19-year-old model, Brittanie Mountz, who once made local headlines when photographers saw her with a glass of wine at a gala that Newsom also attended.

Renteria said she did not attempt to contact Rippey Gibney or Mountz.

Multiple California Democrats raised concerns about any political effort making reference to women and their experiences without first consulting with them.

“#MeToo is about ownership of our experiences because we all have stories that are ours alone to tell,” said Shawnda Westly, the California Democratic Party’s former executive director. “Instead, Amanda has chosen to degrade the movement for her own political purposes by manipulating someone else’s story for her gain.”

As she’s made her push for Newsom’s resignation, Renteria has cited details from both of these relationships — while also invoking the #MeToo movement and working to depict a “pattern” of workplace misconduct or misuse of power in the workplace.

“I tried my best to not actually make it about the individuals,” she said.

Renteria noted that her tweets do not mention Rippey Gibney or Mountz by name. (The tweets do include links to news articles that refer to both women by name, however.)

“I guess maybe I’m curious as to why people think we shouldn't talk about the underage drinking stuff, that we shouldn't be talking about what kind of workplace people set, that we shouldn't be talking about setting a higher bar in general in the place,” she said.

Last month, in a Facebook post expressing support for the #MeToo movement, Rippey Gibney said she is “doubtful” that her relationship with Newsom applies. “Yes, I was a subordinate,” she wrote, “but I was also a free-thinking, 33-[year]-old adult, married woman, and mother.”

Rippey Gibney and Mountz did not return requests for comment.

Newsom has also addressed the #MeToo movement, apologizing again for the 2005 affair at a POLITICO forum last month. “I would say the same thing that I said [then] to the voters in San Francisco. That I acknowledged it. I apologized for it. I learned an enormous amount from it,” Newsom said. “I am every day trying to be a champion and a model, not just for women and girls, but to deal with the issue that we need to focus on, which is the crisis with men and boys in this state and in this country.”

The topic of “marital infidelities” came up last month at a Republican primary debate, when GOP candidates argued that legitimate questions of “moral character” surrounded both Newsom and Villaraigosa. (Villaraigosa, the other leading Democrat in the race, had an affair with a TV reporter while he served as Los Angeles mayor.)

Renteria is the first Democrat gubernatorial candidate to bring up the issue.

“It’s actually surprising to me that it hasn’t been raised,” she said.

LINK: The Job Nobody Wanted: Kamala Harris And Gavin Newsom Decide On Senate

LINK: So Many Democrats Are Running For Office They Might Run Themselves Out Of The Race

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In The Tense Georgia Democratic Primary, Stacey Abrams Made A Hard Appeal For Black Lawmakers' Support

Chris Aluka Berry / Reuters

Stacey Abrams' campaign for governor this week issued a "time-sensitive" push to pick up endorsements of black lawmakers as the campaign weathered one of its tougher weeks.

Reports surfaced detailing Abrams' personal finances and business affairs, and BuzzFeed News reported Tuesday that an endorsement by Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta's popular new mayor, was imminent and widely believed to be for her opponent.

The email was sent by Abrams deputy campaign manager Chris Smith and was reportedly sent to top aides of the Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday, two people briefed on the matter said.

Abrams wanted "to make sure you all know that we appreciate all of the help and the support” of the campaign, adding she was writing "to see if your member is willing to publicly endorse Minority Leader Stacey Abrams for Governor of Georgia and willing to let the campaign use their name as a public endorser?" The note also mentioned that Abrams was eager to hit the campaign trail with members of Congress.

Abrams is vying to make history by becoming the first black woman to win her state's Democratic nomination for governor. If successful, she would also become the first black woman to be governor in US history. Her opponent, Georgia-born Stacey Evans, an attorney and former fellow legislator, has the support of much of the state's Democratic establishment. Abrams enjoys support from the likes of Our Revolution Georgia and EMILY's List, looking to reverse a spate of Democratic statewide losses by expanding the electorate to include more infrequent, hard-to-reach voters.

It's not clear if this week's effort was a success, but Abrams has previously been a fixture in Washington and is already backed by Rep. Marcia Fudge and Barbara Lee, David Scott, and Hank Johnson. Rep. John Lewis endorsed Abrams last July, calling her candidacy "a model for our nation."

In a statement Friday night, LaDavia Drane, senior aide to New York Rep. Yvette Clarke, said there was an endorsement effort underway for Abrams. "Members of the CBC have been excited about Stacey Abrams since the launch of her campaign and have been working with her in various ways for months,” she said, “including for an endorsement rollout."

"We're grateful for the growing support for this campaign," Abrams spokesperson Priyanka Mantha said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “Since the beginning, we've been reaching out to Georgians to hear about the challenges they face. It is clear that Stacey Abrams is the only person in the race who both understands their struggles first-hand, and has a bold vision and real plans to find solutions that will help families thrive."

This week, amid the appeal for support from Washington, reports surfaced that Abrams owed more than $50,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, and almost $170,000 more in student loan and credit card debt.

She detailed some of her personal problems in a Medium post last month, saying that her lack of financial literacy led her to make poor decisions with credit cards as a college student. Later, after Hurricane Katrina hit her family's community, she said she had “rearranged my financial life and stretched every penny I had.”

On Medium, Abrams said she was proposing policies to protect economically vulnerable Georgians. “For my family, for me, and for countless others across Georgia today, it’s not simply lack of access to economic mobility, it’s that we are rarely taught the tools to help us get there. Instead, we fumble our way through, making mistakes that haunt us, sometimes grappling with shame because we wish we could do better."

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Trump's Lawyer Says He Wants The Mueller Probe Shut Down After McCabe's Firing

John Dowd.

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

President Donald Trump's personal attorney said on Saturday he prays that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein shuts down special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe in the wake of the firing of former FBI director Andrew McCabe.

"I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd told BuzzFeed News via email.

Dowd first gave the statement to the Daily Beast, who ran a story headlined, "Trump’s Lawyer: It’s Time to Fire Robert Mueller." (The website later changed the headline to, "Trump’s Lawyer: It’s Time to End the Mueller Probe".)

The Daily Beast also reported Dowd told them he was "speaking on behalf of the president, in his capacity as the president’s attorney."

When contacted by BuzzFeed News about whether he and the president wanted Mueller fired, and if so why, Dowd said, "NO! Not fire. Just end it on the merits in light of recent revelations."

When asked what "recent revelations" he was referring to, Dowd said, "House, Senate Intel, the texts messages of CI [counterintelligence] agents."

CNN later reported that "a person close to the president" said that Dowd was speaking for himself and not the president.

Robert Mueller.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Sessions fired McCabe, a 21-year FBI veteran who became a frequent Trump target on Twitter, on Friday night after an internal report concluded McCabe made "an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions."

McCabe, who had been set to retire on Sunday, said he was in order to demean his integrity as a witness in the special counsel's probe.

"I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey," McCabe said in a statement. "This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally. It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work."

LINK: Jeff Sessions Fires The Former No. 2 At The FBI Two Days Before His Scheduled Retirement

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Jeff Sessions Fires The Former No. 2 At The FBI Two Days Before His Scheduled Retirement

Andrew McCabe, then-acting FBI director, speaking during a news conference on July 20, 2017.

Aaron P. Bernstein / Reuters

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fired Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department announced late Friday night.

"Pursuant to Department Order 1202, and based on the report of the Inspector General, the findings of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility, and the recommendation of the Department’s senior career official, I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately," Sessions said in a statement.

McCabe, a career agent who briefly served as the acting director of the FBI after President Trump fired James Comey from the job last year, was scheduled to retire on Sunday after 21 years of working at the agency.

"I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey," McCabe said in a statement. "This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally. It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work."

A spokesperson for McCabe wrote that McCabe learned of his firing "from a press release."

A little more than two hours after the news broke, Trump himself weighed in an a late-night tweet, calling the firing "[a] great day for Democracy."

President Trump had previously questioned why Sessions hadn't replaced McCabe in the FBI's leadership and has been harshly critical of McCabe — questioning his objectivity given campaign contributions his wife had gotten from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clintons, during her unsuccessful Virginia state Senate campaign.

McCabe's firing, indirectly, came out of the Justice Department inspector general's investigation into the handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state.

Communications from the inspector general’s office regarding McCabe's candor to investigators about a news report involving the Clinton Foundation prompted a disciplinary review from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility initiated a disciplinary review. That review, in turn, resulted in a recommendation that McCabe be fired.

That led to further review from the top officials in the Justice Department, leading to Friday's decision from Sessions.

Full Statement From Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

When news of the Office of Professional Responsibility's recommendation broke earlier this week, DOJ spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said only, "The department follows a prescribed process by which an employee may be terminated. That process includes recommendations from career employees, and no termination decision is final until the conclusion of that process. We have no personnel announcements at this time."

McCabe was a “career employee” — not a political appointee, who can be removed at will — and had substantial, though not absolute, job protection because of his high rank.

On Thursday, asked about the recommendation from the Office of Professional Responsibility that he be fired, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the decision was up to Sessions — but then added, "[W]e do think it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor and should have some cause for concern."

President Trump's Tweets About Andrew McCabe:

The firing could have severe ramifications for McCabe — whose pension could be affected as a result of the firing — as well as for the larger discussion of Trump’s attempts to influence the actions of the Justice Department.

The firing came at the end of a long career that spanned three decades at the FBI. McCabe joined the FBI in 1996, as a special agent assigned to the New York Field Office. A decade later, McCabe was promoted and moved to Washington, serving as a supervisor in the Counterterrorism Division at FBI Headquarters. Over the next decade, McCabe moved back and forth between increasingly senior jobs at the FBI's Washington Field Office and its headquarters, resulting in his promotion to deputy director of the FBI in the beginning of 2016.

Prior to his promotion, his wife, Jill, had run for a state Senate seat in Virginia in 2015. The funds that Trump and outside conservatives have criticized came from the Virginia Democratic Party and McAuliffe's political action committee. The campaign, which she lost, was over before McCabe was promoted to deputy director.

At the time of his wife's campaign, McCabe had no oversight of any Clinton investigation and recused himself from investigations relating to Virginia politics. After McCabe was promoted to the deputy director post, he oversaw the Clinton investigation until a report about the contributions in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election led him to recuse himself.

When Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017, McCabe served as acting director of the FBI and was interviewed by Trump as a possible candidate to be Comey's successor. He served as acting director until Trump's eventual nominee, current FBI Director Chris Wray, was confirmed for the role and assumed office on Aug. 2, 2017.

At that time, McCabe returned to the deputy director job until the end of January, when he announced his retirement plans. Although he stepped down as deputy director, he remained on the department’s payroll pending his scheduled retirement.

Full Statement From Andrew McCabe:

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Trump Joins Legal Fight In Stormy Daniels' Lawsuit To End Her "Hush Agreement"

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

President Donald Trump has joined the legal fight over whether a woman is bound by an agreement she signed in 2016 to keep quiet about their alleged affair.

Stephanie Clifford, the adult film performer and director known as Stormy Daniels, sued Trump and the company set up by longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in 2016 to pay Clifford to keep quiet.

Lawyers for that company, Executive Consultants, LLC (EC), filed a notice Friday afternoon in California to remove her case from state court to federal court and asserted that, under the 2016 agreement, they could seek damages of at least $20 million.

Charles Harder, an attorney best known for representing Hulk Hogan in his legal fight against Gawker, filed a notice on behalf of Trump joining in the removal. "Mr. Trump intends to join in EC’s anticipated Petition to Compel Arbitration under the Arbitration Agreement," he announced.

In Clifford's lawsuit, her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, claims that the settlement agreement and therefore its confidentiality provisions — which they call a "hush agreement" — were never valid because Trump did not sign the agreement. He also argues that the agreement should be found to be invalid as counter to public policy.

"This is simply more of the same bullying tactics from the president and Mr. Cohen. They are now attempting to remove this case in order to increase their chances that the matter will ultimately be decided in private arbitration, behind closed doors, outside of public view and scrutiny," Avenatti told BuzzFeed News. "To put it simply — they want to hide the truth from the American people. We will oppose this effort at every turn."

In its removal notice, EC makes clear it will defend the validity of the agreement and its requirement that any dispute be settled by arbitration.

"EC is aware of at least twenty (20) violations by Clifford of the confidentiality provisions of the Settlement Agreement," Brent Blakely, the lawyer for EC, wrote. Due to a provision in the agreement that each breach of the confidentiality provisions could lead to $1 million in damages, Blakely argues that "EC and/or Defendant Trump have the right to seek liquidated damages against Clifford for her numerous breaches" in the arbitration for an amount "approximated to already be in excess of twenty million dollars ($20,000,000)."

Regarding that claim, Avenatti told BuzzFeed News, "The fact that a sitting president is pursuing over $20 million in bogus 'damages' against a private citizen, who is only trying to tell the public what really happened, is truly remarkable. Likely unprecedented in our history. We are not going away and we will not be intimidated by these threats."

Earlier this month, Clifford sat down with Anderson Cooper for an interview, which 60 Minutes plans to air later this month.

LINK: Trump Lawyers Are Considering A Challenge To Stop "60 Minutes" From Airing A Stormy Daniels Interview

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A Congressman Accused of Sexual Harassment Is Now Definitely Not Running for Reelection

Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Nevada Rep. Ruben Kihuen, a House Democrat accused of sexually harassing multiple women, will not run for reelection.

Kihuen, a first-term congressman, had previously said he wouldn’t seek office once his term ended. But earlier this month, he began having conversations about running again.

Kihuen waited until the last moment to decide he wouldn’t run; the deadline was 5 p.m. PST Friday. As late as Thursday Kihuen told The Nevada Independent he still hadn’t made up his mind on whether he would run again.

Kihuen lost support of Democratic leadership and many of his House colleagues after BuzzFeed News reported the first allegations from a woman, Samantha, who worked on his campaign during the primary and said he repeatedly harassed and made sexual advances toward her.

Another woman, a female lobbyist, also told the Nevada Independent that Kihuen touched her without consent multiple times and showed the paper hundreds of suggestive messages from Kihuen.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan immediately called on him to resign after the first allegations came out. But asked directly whether she still thought Kihuen should resign earlier in March, Pelosi wouldn’t answer, saying that she didn’t want to “speculate” on something that may not happen.

Kihuen’s district is a competitive one, and several Democrats and Republicans, including one Democrat and one Republican that previously held the seat, have filed to take it over.

A former Nevada Democratic operative predicted it would be “really, really hard” for Kihuen to find friends if he chose to run, and said he believed Kihuen wasn’t a viable candidate. “I don’t see a path in which Ruben decides to run and he can find a way to weave to his way through the primary and into the general,” the operative told BuzzFeed News before it was clear whether Kihuen would run.

“It’ll only be more stories and it will only drag him down further.”

LINK: She Says She Quit Her Campaign Job After He Harassed Her. Now He’s In Congress.

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This Is B-A-D: Some Democrats Are Sick Of A DIRE Email Strategy

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Millions of Americans routinely receive desperate emails from campaigns, perpetually on the edge of catastrophe and asking for just one more dollar to help bring the campaign back from complete ruin before an ominous midnight fundraising deadline.

And nobody does it like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the true artists of the dire email fundraiser.

“If we let Trump and his Republicans bury us, our chance of winning this election is absolutely gone. Will you help us close the gap before midnight?” the DCCC pleaded in and email titled ‘URGENT’ before the presidential election.

Increasingly, though, Democratic strategists argue that there is a cost to the “churn-and-burn” fundraising strategy that outweighs the extra dollars it brings in. The cost of the spammy, fear-based communications, they say, is depressed and alienated voters and the public impression of the Democratic as just another arm of a cynical, dishonest establishment.

“Constantly screaming about doom, we’re going to lose — it may raise money for them, clearly they do it because it raises money for them,” said Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, “but it does not create an environment where Democrats are eager to fight and win, because nobody wants to fight for a team they know is going to lose.”

“The approach they’ve used with alarmist language in their fundraising emails has become pervasive,” said Matthew McGregor, a former Democratic digital strategist, who worked for the Obama campaign. “What does this say about us about our values and how we value our supporters?”

For voters who probably don’t often interact with the national party, the strategy can be disorienting. In the days leading up to to Pennsylvania’s special election, for instance, the DCCC piled on an array of mixed messages on the state of the race:

“Conor Lamb DEFEATED?!”

“Conor Lamb WINS?!”

“Gut-wrenching loss”

“CONOR. LAMB. WINS!!!”

Fundraising has massively changed during the last several presidential cycles, especially in the wake of Barack Obama’s campaigns’ success in raising money through small-dollar email blasts. Over the last five years, especially, the national party committees — everyone from the Republican National Committee to the DCCC — have emphasized a never-ending series of impending monthly or quarterly fundraising deadlines.

That’s long frustrated some Democrats, but especially now, when anti-Trump fervor has fueled new candidates in newly competitive districts, and when many Democrats have become reenergized around a variety of issues, from gun control to representation for people of color and women.

“I think the DCCC’s email strategy is a wasted opportunity for Democrats. They have this expansive email list that they could be using to cultivate and motivate voters to flip congressional seats in 2018,” said Laura Olin, a Democratic digital strategist who’s worked with a host of progressives including Barack Obama’s digital team.

“The thing is that fundraising campaigns from Obama, Warren, and Bernie showed us that we don’t need to use those scare tactics to raise money and those tactics don’t make us lose our values by being inclusive, engaging, and honest rather than being alarmist and misleading,” said McGregor.

The current energy has helped drive a number of online-based national efforts outside of the traditional party apparatus, like Swing Left (which raises money for Democratic nominees) or any number of massively viral fundraising drives for nominees in special elections.

Party committees have a wider set of spending demands, and no one can say the strategy hasn’t been effective in pure fundraising terms. Just last week the DCCC said they had raised more than $50 million dollars online. “Small dollar, grassroots donations have propelled the DCCC to record-breaking online fundraising this cycle. It’s clear that the base of our party is unified around the goal of taking back the House,” said DCCC spokesman Tyler Law.

That, people agree on.

“Does it raise a bunch of money for candidates? Hell yeah, [Jon] Ossoff raised a shit ton of money. But at what cost?” asked one operative. “It’s run in the model of the DCCC created back in 2013 and its exhausting our voters. There’s not an infinite pool of people to pull from and their strategy is going to turn people off from supporting Democratic causes.”

But party strategists want to see the DCCC treat Democratic voters like “actual adults” that don’t need to tricked into supporting the party with misleading headlines.

“They have this relentless fucking strategy that seems to overwhelm and deceive their supporters,” one former Democratic digital strategist told BuzzFeed News. “The desperation and outright lies placed in these emails are going to be bad for the party. The DCCC is so prevalent that it sets itself up as the de facto face of the party by the sheer force and volume [of its emails] that can’t be distinguished from the rest of the party.”

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Omarosa: Conservative Think Tank President Blocked From Administration “Because She Hates Donald Trump”

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

On Wednesday, the new president of the Heritage Foundation said that she’d been blocked from a White House appointment — by Omarosa Manigault Newman.

In response, Manigault Newman says the reason that Heritage’s Kay Coles James wasn’t offered a position in the administration is “because she hates Donald Trump.”

James, the first black president at the conservative think tank, told Politico on Wednesday that Manigault Newman had treated her role in Trump’s universe like it was The Apprentice. “So she looked around Washington and said, 'OK, who do I need to get rid of first?'” James said.

Manigault Newman insists that's not the case, saying James, a veteran political operative, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush, was flagged early in the transition process as a Never Trump Republican who was known to be "disgusted" by the president.

Manigault Newman said she was taken aback by James’ comments. “When I met with her, she was very explicit that she hated Trump, but she loved the Republican Party's agenda," she said, adding that James told her she was open to working with the administration but that she would have to "hold her nose while doing it” with Trump as the leader of the party.

"Kay Cole James is trying to scapegoat me instead of dealing with the fact that Reince [Priebus] and the rest of the transition team did not want her within a mile of the White House," said Manigault Newman.

James did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Thursday.

Manigault Newman, who was recently was a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother, in which she threw several barbs about White House dysfunction, including a bit about her former boss’s use of Twitter, also characterized James' use of The Apprentice to make her point about as “insulting” to Trump.

"By insulting The Apprentice, she is essentially insulting President Trump," she said. "The Apprentice was his brainchild. He was the star of the show and was very proud of it. Utilizing the show in that way is not only an insult to the president, but she is continuing to show her hand as a Never Trump Republican by trying to trivialize its success.”

James supported Jeb Bush in the primary. As late as May 2016, James was part of a group of prominent black conservative activists who were strategizing ways to work with Trump, even as they remained highly skeptical of his style of campaigning and prospects for winning.

Black conservatives’ agenda remains sharply focused on issues like expanding economic opportunity, especially increasing access to capital for small businesses. Many have also sought to work with principals like Sens. Mike Lee and Rand Paul on big projects like a criminal justice overhaul. In Trump, James told Politico she saw a potential ally.

“If he was serious about getting those things done — and I believed him to be, and I still do believe that he is — then I saw an opportunity to do things that perhaps hadn’t existed in a Republican administration before,” said James, according to Politico. “I was very looking forward to an opportunity to serve in that White House in some capacity to help maybe on domestic policy, maybe in the Office of Public Liaison — in any of those capacities to get the job done.”

In a profile of Manigault Newman last year, BuzzFeed News reported in detail on her role in Trump’s orbit. Some of her portfolio seemed informal in nature, such as spearheading the administration’s efforts focused on black Americans — or keeping senior official abreast of operatives who had not been sufficiently loyal to Trump during the campaign at bay.

According to Manigault Newman, James lobbied Priebus for a period of time after the election to appoint her to a high-profile position in the White House. James joined Trump’s transition team, which was all but forced to hire experienced hands, regardless of whether they had been loyal to Trump.

The question is not if she blocked James from an appointment, Manigault Newman said, but “why her appointment wasn’t made by Reince.”

“Why wasn’t she appointed like everybody else? Did she help on the campaign, or with any events? Did she do any outreach or engagement? How much money did she raise for the campaign?

Regardless of her status inside the White House, James’ appointment to Heritage Foundation president was a big deal; she is the first black woman to be named to the post, and it was widely viewed as a coup for the black conservative movement, which has been processing various stages of a prolonged identity crisis. Issues of race and inclusion have only exacerbated by the Trump movement’s nationalist, anti-immigrant leanings, activists say.

LINK: Omarosa Is Out At The White House

LINK: Omarosa Manigault Is Very Powerful — And A Lot Of Black Republicans Don't Like It

LINK: Why Omarosa Really Won Big Brother

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Atlanta’s New Mayor Is Endorsing In Georgia’s Democratic Primary And Black Democrats Aren’t Happy About It

Tami Chappell / Reuters

Keisha Lance Bottoms plans to endorse in Georgia’s Democratic primary for governor “in the near future,” her office told BuzzFeed News, ending weeks of speculation over whether the newly-elected and enormously popular Atlanta mayor might get involved in the most hotly-contested intra-party statewide race in the South.

Her office did not say which candidate she would endorse, but her intention to do so provides yet another layer of intrigue leading up to the May 22 primary between Stacey Abrams and Stacey Evans. The candidates hold contrasting views on how to expand the voter base in Georgia for Democrats as the party tries to capitalize on President Trump’s unpopularity. The fact that, if elected, Abrams would be the first black woman governor in US history has added to the race’s significance and complicated the intra-party politics.

Democrats in the state have long speculated Bottoms will endorse Evans, a 39-year-old former state legislator, and lawyer — not least because Evans endorsed Bottoms in her mayoral bid over Mary Norwood, a white 65-year-old businesswoman. A source close to Evans said when the endorsement was made there was no “quid pro quo” expectation for Bottoms to endorse back. An Evans adviser told BuzzFeed News Evans had indeed “stuck her neck out” for Bottoms, but that the campaign hadn’t banked on a returned favor.

At the time of Evans’ mayoral endorsement, Bottoms, touting their similarities as the products of single mothers with young children, said she still had a race to run, but “you can glean from us standing together how I feel about Stacey and how I feel about her campaign for governor, and when the time is appropriate I look forward to standing with her as well.” (Asked if Bottoms would officially endorse Evans, Anne Torres, a spokesperson for the Bottoms administration, told BuzzFeed News she couldn’t comment beyond saying an endorsement was coming.)

Bottoms is also a staunch ally of former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, an Abrams adversary dating back in part to when Abrams ran a mayoral campaign against him when he sought re-election. “No one here was ever expecting Keisha to endorse Abrams,” an Atlanta-based political strategist told BuzzFeed News.

Still, if Bottoms does endorse Evans, it will ruin the hopes that some black Democrats have harbored: Bottoms and Abrams working in tandem in the state’s most powerful executive offices, as Democrats are hoping to turn Georgia blue in 2020.

Keisha Lance Bottoms basked in her mayoral victory last December.

John Bazemore / AP

Republicans still control the state legislature, but the movement to turn Georgia blue is strong. A young Democrat, Jon Ossoff, nearly peeled off a key Congressional seat once widely-believed to be safely Republican in a 2016 special election. Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old who was shot to death by a white man later convicted of murder, is running for the chance to take on Rep. Karen Handel. Hillary Clinton performed better than Barack Obama in 2012 by more than 100,000 votes.

“It would be foolish, if not career suicide, for Bottoms to endorse Stacey Evans.”

Black Democrats are bracing for the fallout. “If Abrams wins despite a Bottoms endorsement, I can see it as being an even more toxic and counterproductive than the relationship between Bill de De Blasio and Andrew Cuomo in New York,” said one national Democratic strategist who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because she is an admirer of both women.

And Team Abrams — an organized web of political operatives, donors, and progressive activists — readily acknowledge that if Bottoms endorses Evans, it would hurt their candidate, and are arguing it would be bad for Bottoms to do so.

Steve Phillips, a pro-Abrams Democratic donor and political strategist who argues that a seismic demographic shift means the Democratic Party has to double down on its efforts to invest in communities of color in order to win, said when black voters have the opportunity to make history by electing someone from their community to a higher office, the endorsements of a few black elected officials are all but rendered irrelevant.

“It would be foolish, if not career suicide, for Bottoms to endorse Stacey Evans,” said Phillips in an email to BuzzFeed News. “From Harold Washington in Chicago to the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, black voters ignored elected officials and embraced inspiring black candidates. That's what's going to happen in Georgia, where African Americans are the majority of voters.”

In private, pro-Evans Democrats like to argue that Georgia voters aren’t swayed by a candidate’s race, and say that voters are especially suspect of national forces playing in their state’s politics. (Abrams’s national donor-base, for instance, has been the source of criticism of her campaign.) These Democrats don’t have a particularly high opinion of the $10 million New Georgia Project, an Abrams-led effort to help identify some of the 1.5 million unregistered voters in Georgia, saying it didn’t register as many people as it aimed. “I don’t believe nor did I believe that the New Georgia Project is the model,” then-Mayor Reed told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “I think that you have professional organizations that are experts at building the voter database in states, and I think that they should be a part of the overall political campaign.”

Abrams also started an institute to train young people how campaigns are run. Her supporters say they believe Abrams’s status as a builder of the party in Georgia earned her the right to campaign for the nomination, and they argue people like Bottoms benefited from her party-building efforts. “Ironically so [has] Evans,” said Stefanie Brown James, the co-founder of Collective PAC, a new national group backing black candidates in races this year. “She will benefit from the same black voter support that Abrams has worked to empower.”

Brown James told BuzzFeed News the Bottoms-Abrams dynamic is unique. “It would be a bad sign to America as a whole for Mayor Bottoms to endorse Evans,” said James. “It’s important to know that as black people we are not a monolith. But to me, it would be problematic for Mayor Bottoms to endorse Evans over Abrams not just because they're both black women, but more importantly, Abrams is more qualified than Evans. And as a leader you don’t want to put yourself in a position to make a decision that isn't in the best interest of your community.”

Abrams promises to have plenty of support outside of Georgia, including the recent endorsement of Our Revolution, the Bernie Sanders-aligned group run by Nina Turner, a prominent black voice in Democratic politics. She also has the support of Rep. John Lewis, a legendary figure in Atlanta.

But Bottoms has showcased an independent streak as a candidate that also earned her admirers. “This will not be a third term for Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed,” said Bottoms last year, pushing back at criticism was being controlled by Reed. “I will not be controlled by anyone when I become mayor of the city. We need to put to bed this conversation because the mayor is not responsible for me. I’m not a pixie dust candidate. I’m an independent candidate with an independent mind.”

LINK: Stacey Abrams Wants To Be The First Black Woman Governor. But First She Has To Win The Nomination.

LINK: Democrats Are Starting To Worry About The Georgia Governor’s Primary

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