NEW: President Biden regularly convenes his crew of senior advisors in huddles for "small strategy group" discussions. It's an exclusive White House invite reserved for the president's inner circle. By @ngaudiano & @rbravender@thisisinsider ($) businessinsider.com/joe-biden-top-…
The roster includes mostly longtime Biden consiglieres, but also a few relative newcomers to BidenWorld who have gained clout with the president.
They represent a tiny fraction of the more than 300 staffers who work for the Executive Office of the President.
It's a crew that's tight-knit but also tight-lipped about relationships inside BidenWorld. It's a stark contrast to TrumpWorld, where reports of staff's internal bickering and power struggles regularly spilled into public view.
One staffer on the list is Mike Donilon. "The most understated and overlooked advisor to the president" is how Moe Vela, an aide to Biden during his vice presidential years, described Donilon to @thisisinsider
"I call him the president's secret weapon. He's very quiet, very low profile, very low key, not ever wanting to be in front of a camera," Vela added.
There's also Jennifer O'Malley-Dillon, Biden's 20 campaign manager. Her role as a senior advisor is so broad "it's honestly tough to even pinpoint her involvement because what she says and does touches on everything, providing critical advice to the president," a WH aide said.
And there's Cedric Richmond, the former congressman w/ an expansive role in the WH. Said one aide: "He's one of the people that the president turns to most often to ask his opinion, & if he's not in the room, the president will say 'Can somebody get Cedric?' or 'Where's Cedric?'"
NEW: Donald Trump's hot vax summer is officially lit.
Since decamping to New Jersey from his Mar-a-Lago resort, the former president is filling his days with endless rounds of golf & emailed tirades against enemies. ($) @thisisinsider by @tomlobianco
Trump is likewise in entertaining mode, hosting a fundraiser for his super PAC last weekend at his Bedminster club. He also may be plotting a '24 comeback: issuing candidate endorsements, making quick NYC side trips, & planning campaign-style rallies over the coming month.
Nothing, it seems, will prevent Trump from doing Trump during his COVID-carefree summer: not even the massive legal storm clouds gathering on the horizon of Trump's gilded Garden State stomping grounds, nor the prosecutorial heat emanating from New York.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson is unsealing and releasing documents from the Paul Manafort case this AM. Here's one doc she just released with fewer black boxes than when it first came out back in December 2018.
Here's a side-by-side of the two versions and what was previously redacted re. Manafort's lies about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik:
New version on left released today; old version on right released back in Dec 2018:
Among the many exclusive nuggets in this story is a 7+ minute video of @mtgreenee speaking to her constituents at the 14th District Republican Convention in Dalton on May 15. She recounts her run-in a few days earlier with @aoc - who she dubs "Alexandria Ocrazyo-Cortez."
Greene on the AOC incident: "She stopped, turned, & threw her hands in the air, & then she kept going. Well the press that was present said that I was screaming at her & that I had behavior that's not becoming of a member of Congress."
Insider traversed Greene's congressional district over two weeks in May, including attending two GOP events in Dalton: a Patriots Unite Rally graced by the election conspiracist and lawyer Lin Wood, as well as the 14th District Republican convention where @mtgreenee spoke.
Wood’s speech focused on Gov. Brian Kemp and Sec of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused to play ball when Trump was seeking to overturn the presidential election. "Put them in front of a firing squad, and send them straight to hell," the attorney told the crowd.
NEW: The next two election cycles in America could be a roller-coaster ride for Republicans as Donald Trump and his namesake company face the prospect of criminal charges. A team effort from the @thisisinsider DC bureau ($) businessinsider.com/trump-indictme…
Political insiders are only starting to grasp this increasingly real possibility after NY AG Letitia James' recent statement confirming she's now linked up with the Manhattan DA who has been digging into Trump's financial records after securing that authority from SCOTUS.
Interviews with more than a dozen members of Congress and political operatives this week elicited incredulous looks, knee-jerk reactions, and wild speculation about what prospectively sidelining Trump would mean to the political world.
NEW: Black conservatives are not a monolith. Or unicorns. Or traitors. "I am just a good, old-fashioned American who happens to be Black," is how Sen. Tim Scott summed things up to @thisisinsider at the US Capitol. by @WARojas ($) businessinsider.com/being-a-black-…
The folksy demeanor doesn't stop opponents from lambasting Scott every chance they get. He doesn't need to open Twitter for the hate, as he tends to catch hell any time he voices an unpopular opinion, be it on the Senate floor, the campaign trail, or rebutting President Biden.
"I get called Uncle Tom & the n-word by progressives, by liberals," Scott said in his response to Biden's joint address to Congress.
That same night Texas Democratic Party official Gary O'Connor posted a message on Facebook describing Scott as "an oreo with no real principles."