A senior State Department official told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that in May, he was directed during a meeting organized by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to "lay low" when it came to Ukraine policy, as it was now being handled by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) told reporters.
The official, George Kent, is the deputy assistant secretary responsible for Ukraine. Connolly said Kent testified that he was ordered to focus on the other countries in his portfolio because Perry, Sondland, and Volker — who called themselves the "three amigos" — were taking over for career diplomats on Ukraine. Kent said the meeting was held on May 23, just a few days after Marie Yovanovitch was removed from her position as ambassador to Ukraine and two months before President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked him to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
Last week, Yovanovitch testified before lawmakers that Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was behind the campaign to get her recalled. Documents the State Department inspector general sent to Congress earlier this month show that Kent first said in March that he believed Yovanovitch was the subject of a "classic disinformation campaign," The Washington Post reports, and he wanted his superiors to stand up for her. Catherine Garcia
Democrats have a reasonable chance of sweeping Georgia's Senate and presidential races this Election Day.
Georgia has two U.S. Senate seats up for grabs this fall, and as a New York Times/Siena College poll out Tuesday revealed, Democratic candidates are winning one and tied in the other. Meanwhile in the faceoff between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, candidates are tied at 45 percent support in the typically red state.
Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) is up for re-election this fall, and is tied with Democratic challenger Jon Ossof at 43 percent support, the poll showed. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat looking to fill the seat vacated by retired Sen. Johnny Isakson, meanwhile has 32 percent support over current Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R). Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who is also looking to fill the spot, has 17 percent support, the poll shows.
But it's not as if the Republican faceoff could spoil the party's chances of winning. If no one in the three-way race of Collins, Loeffler, and Warnock gets a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will have a runoff election. Still, Warnock led both Collins and Loeffler, 45-41, in a hypothetical runoff, the poll found. Warnock's 46 percent favorability rating was the highest of any candidate on the poll.
The New York Times and Siena College surveyed 759 likely voters in Georgia from Oct. 13–19, with a 4.1 percentage point margin of error. Kathryn Krawczyk
Melania Trump has a cough.
That's the reason the first lady won't make her first post-coronavirus appearance Tuesday night, Melania's chief of staff Stephanie Grisham said Tuesday. Melania was supposed to rejoin President Trump on the campaign trail in Erie, Pennsylvania, but to be cautious, she'll stay home until she recovers fully.
The president and first lady tested positive for COVID-19 about three weeks ago. Trump was hospitalized for three days, while Melania stayed at the White House and recovered from her light symptoms there, the White House said. Trump returned to the campaign trail less than two weeks after he first reported having a positive COVID-19 test. The White House has refused to reveal the last time Trump and the first lady tested negative for the virus before their positive results. Kathryn Krawczyk
Hello, Democrats.
Seinfeld stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander and creator Larry David are set to reunite for a virtual event on Friday to fundraise for Texas Democrats, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The event has been dubbed "A Fundraiser About Something," and fans can watch a live stream after donating any amount of money to the Texas Democratic Party. It will be hosted by Late Night's Seth Meyers and feature "exclusive behind-the-scenes stories" from the show; the announcement also teased some "special guests."
"Texas is a battleground state, period," Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander, and David said in a statement. "We knew that we had to reunite for something special and the movement on the ground for Texas Democrats up and down the ballot is the perfect opportunity to do just that."
This will be the latest star-studded Democratic fundraiser to take place in recent weeks. Louis-Dreyfus herself previously participated in a Veep reunion for Wisconsin Democrats, and on Monday, a Happy Days reunion that will also support Wisconsin Democrats was announced. Outside of TV, the cast of Hamilton recently reunited in a fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and Avengers stars like Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson on Tuesday are set for a Biden fundraiser that they're calling "Voters Assemble."
The Seinfeld reunion also comes after Wayne Knight, who played postal worker Newman on the show, reprised the role in an ad encouraging viewers to vote while blasting President Trump's "systematic, premeditated assault on the U.S. mail." Brendan Morrow
North Carolina could be in for a blue wave.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday showed Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Trump with a statistical tie in the state that's gone red in the past two presidential elections. Also on Tuesday, Sabato's Crystal Ball slid Iowa's Senate race into Democratic territory, leaving North Carolina the only tossup on the map.
In a poll of 646 North Carolina likely voters taken Oct. 12-17, Biden received 49 percent support to Trump's 48 percent, the Post and ABC News found. The poll's 4.5 percent margin of error prevents either candidate from having a distinct advantage, though it mirrors several other polls taken over the past month that all put Biden slightly ahead. The Post/ABC News poll also showed Democrat Cal Cunningham at 49 percent support to Sen. Thom Tillis' (R-N.C.) 47 percent.
Sabato's Crystal Ball, which projects race outcomes across the country, meanwhile made a big change in its Senate projection on Tuesday. It suggested Sen. Joni Ernst's (R-Iowa) seat would likely go to Democrat Theresa Greenfield, predicting a gain of four seats for Democrats and a loss of one in Alabama. That leaves North Carolina the only tossup on the map, and a critical race if Democrats want a Senate majority. If Sabato's projection pans out, Democrats would nab 50 seats, with North Carolina remaining the difference between a tie and blue advantage. Kathryn Krawczyk
The Department of Justice is reportedly about to file a lawsuit accusing Google of violating antitrust law.
The DOJ in a lawsuit that will be filed on Tuesday will accuse Google of "illegally maintaining its monopoly over search through several exclusive business contracts and agreements that lock out competition," The New York Times reports. The news was confirmed by several other outlets including Bloomberg, which described the lawsuit as the "most significant monopoly case to be filed in the U.S. in decades."
Google's parent company, Alphabet, had been a subject of an antitrust investigation that the Justice Department opened in 2019 examining its search and advertising practices, and last month, reports suggested charges were close to being announced. Tuesday's lawsuit, The Washington Post wrote, "marks the start, not the end," of the Justice Department's case against Google, as "it could take years for a federal court to resolve" it.
The Times previously reported that the DOJ during the course of its investigation had "amassed powerful evidence of anticompetitive practices" on the part of Google, but also that Attorney General William Barr was pushing a September deadline on DOJ officials and had "overruled career lawyers who said they needed more time to build a strong case." Brendan Morrow