Elections
Sen. Collins to vote against Biden’s OMB nominee
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) will not be supporting President Joe Biden’s nominee, Neera Tanden, to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), according to a statement released on Monday.
“The Director of OMB is responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of the federal budget and plays a significant role in any Administration’s fiscal and regulatory agenda,” Collins said Monday. “Congress has to be able to trust the OMB director to make countless decisions in an impartial manner, carrying out the letter of the law and congressional intent.”
“Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency. Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend,” Collins added.
The senator also said Tanden’s “decision to delete more than a thousand tweets in the days before her nomination was announced raises concerns about her commitment to transparency.”
The aforementioned tweets were demeaning of Republicans and Senator Bernie Sanders, D-VT. For example, she once called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “Voldemort.” At the time of the tweets, Tanden held a position with The Center for American Progress.
Earlier this month Tanden told the Senate Budget Committee that if confirmed she wouldn’t take such stances as those of her past tweets. “And I would say social media does lead to too many personal comments, and my approach will be radically different,” she said in response to Sen. Sanders’s question regarding her tweets.
“Should Congress need to review documents or actions taken by OMB, we must have confidence that the Director will be forthcoming,” she said.
“The OMB needs steady, experienced, responsive leadership. I will vote against confirming Ms. Tanden.”
Last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) also said that he would oppose Tanden’s nomination to head the White House budget office.
“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin said in a statement. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”
The Senate is divided 50-50 between the parties. With Manchin and Collins’s opposition, Democrats will need at least one GOP vote to confirm her on the Senate floor. Democrats would only have 49 votes for Tanden if all Republican senators and Manchin oppose her.
Biden has said he does not intend to pull Tanden’s nomination and that he believes she will be confirmed. “I think we are going to find the votes to get her confirmed,” Biden said Friday.
On June 20, Special Counsel John Durham will testify appear before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door briefing. The next day, he will testify in front of the Judiciary Committee about his 300-page reportdetailing his investigation into the FBI probe of alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials.
The news broke Friday that Durham will be testifying on the report, which found the Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Instead, the agencies began their Crossfire Hurricane investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” the report said. “Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.
The report also confirmed that the FBI did not give due consideration to the possibility that the Steele Dossier, which was used to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, was Russian disinformation.
FBI leaders displayed “serious lack of analytical rigor,” according to Durham, and they relied significantly on. “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents,” referring to staffers and allies of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose campaign funded the Steele dossier through its law firm Perkins Coie.
National Review reminds readers, “The dossier was created by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele and accused Trump and his campaign aides of collaborating with Kremlin officials.”
Durham released his report nearly four years after then-attorney general Bill Barr tasked him with investigation the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
The FBI responded to the report in saying that the “conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time.”
“Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented,” the bureau said. “This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”
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