President Joe Biden is set to attend the Democratic National Convention’s winter meeting in Philadelphia as the party considers overhauling the 2024 presidential primary calendar. The proposed lineup would move South Carolina’s primary before New Hampshire’s, which angered party leaders in the state.
Here’s what else is going on in politics:
- Another FBI search: Federal authorities are negotiating searches of former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home and Washington office for additional classified documents.
- Second Amendment rights: A federal appeals court ruled that a law barring people who are the subject of a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm is unconstitutional.
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FBI expected to search Pence locations for govt records
Federal authorities and representatives of Mike Pence have been discussing voluntary searches of the former vice president’s Indiana home and a Washington, D.C., office for additional classified records, according to media reports.
The anticipated action comes after the FBI searched President Joe Biden’s Delaware vacation home Wednesday, the third Biden location where authorities have sought additional government records.
No classified documents were recovered at Biden’s Rehoboth Beach residence, but the FBI took some handwritten notes dating to his time as vice president, the president’s lawyer said.
Plans for a Pence-related search, first reported Thursday by the Wall Street Journal, follow the discovery last month of a small number of documents bearing classified markings at the former president’s Indiana home.
CNN also reported that authorities are expected to search a Washington office linked to Pence.
– Kevin Johnson
From office to beach house:Timeline of investigation into Joe Biden classified documents
House GOP launches another investigation
The House Judiciary Committee is deepening its investigation of political bias with a new focus on Charles McGonigal, a former FBI special agent who pleaded not guilty last week to charges of money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions in connection to a Russian oligarch.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., requested documents, personnel records and communications related to McGonigal by Feb. 16.
McGonigal, who led the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York for 22 years until 2018, is accused of working for Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
– Candy Woodall
Law barring guns for people with domestic violence restraining orders is unconstitutional, court rules
A federal appeals court Thursday ruled that a law barring people who are the subject of a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm is unconstitutional in a case likely headed to the Supreme Court.
A three-judge panel of the Louisiana-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said the federal law may have been based on “salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society,” but that it still conflicts with the Second Amendment.
The ruling from the judges – two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump and a third by former President Ronald Reagan – is a result of the Supreme Court’s major guns ruling last year, in which a 6-3 majority said that in order to pass constitutional muster a gun regulation must be consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
– John Fritze
Story Credit: usatoday.com