The lawmakers requested the probe into Chao, who is married to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
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The OIG referred its findings to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which declined to open a criminal investigation. The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section also declined to open an investigation.
DeFazio said in a statement that he was “disappointed” that the OIG didn’t finish the investigation while Chao was in office, and that DOJ declined to take up the investigation.
“Public servants, especially those responsible for leading tens of thousands of other public servants, must know that they serve the public and not their family’s private commercial interests,” he said.
“I believe and I believe my caucus believes that we need big, bold action, and we’re going to figure out the best way to get big, bold action on a whole lot of fronts,” Schumer said, vowing that “people are going to be forced to vote on them.”
But the White House on Tuesday sought to avoid the issue in some ways: Biden didn’t take questions from Democratic senators on Tuesday during a brief, eight-minute call to their weekly luncheon.
The call ended up serving as a pep rally ahead of the vote this week on the relief measure, but by taking no questions, Biden also avoided hearing from liberal senators about the filibuster or the push for a $15 minimum wage, which was included in the initial COVID-19 relief bill passed by the House early Saturday morning but is now on ice.
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Republicans hope they can persuade a centrist Democrat to flip on Becerra just as Manchin did on Tanden because of her harsh criticism of fellow senators on Twitter.
A group of Republican senators led by Sen. James Lankford
The ad running in West Virginia calls the Becerra vote “a big test for Joe Manchin,” hitting him over Becerra’s stance on guns and coal, two big issues in the state.
The ad’s narrator says the nominee “thinks guns are a health crisis and wants to ban them” and “is against coal” and “tried to ban it from California ports.”
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Tanden withdrew from consideration Tuesday night as her path to confirmation remained extremely narrow, with only a few senators yet to publicly state how they would vote on her nomination.
But the timing of the decision raised questions after Sen. Lisa Murkowski I’m not going to get into the details of who was or wasn’t against her or for her or was or wasn’t going to vote for her or against her, Psaki said. We can leave that to members of the Senate to speak to on their own. But it was recognition that Neera Tanden made.