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Biden and Trump Kick Off the General Election in Georgia

With Super Tuesday and the SOTU address now behind us, the general-election campaign is already on. It's true that Donald Trump is currently 197 delegates shy of 50% + 1 of the delegates to the Republican National Convention. Tomorrow Washington, Mississippi, Hawaii and Georgia vote, and with no opponents anymore, he will probably win all 161 delegates at stake and be within 36 of the magic 1215 number. A week later, six more states vote and Trump will be what is called the "presumptive nominee," meaning that if he is still alive in July, he will be officially nominated at the Republican National Convention. Joe Biden will also hit "presumptive nominee" status on March 19. Sorry, Jason Palmer.

There isn't much doubt that there will be a rematch between the 2020 candidates again, even if it won't be official for 8 days. This is the first rematch since 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson a second time. With the expectation of it being déjà vu all over again (sorry, Yogi), both candidates are hitting the trail already. In fact, on Saturday, both of them went to Georgia, one of the most closely contested states. As you very likely know, Trump fell 11,780 votes short there in 2020, a number that will live in infamy.

The two candidates spoke a bare 60 miles apart. Their speeches gave some clues as to how they will campaign for the next 8 months. Biden has already said he will visit all the battleground states in the next few weeks (and Trump likely will, too).

Biden is coming off a SOTU speech that got raves from Democrats due to the energy and feistiness he showed. It scared Republicans who were expecting Rip Van Winkle and got an older version of Jack Kennedy instead. Biden understands that he has some work to do with Black men. He is also aware that many Black men are unaware of what he has done that could help them, like lowering health-care costs and cracking down on price gouging, so he is going to push hard on his concrete achievements. One problem Biden has is there are no coattails to grab onto in Georgia. In 2020, now-Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) was on the ballot, which no doubt brought Black men to the polling stations. This year there is no gubernatorial or senatorial election in Georgia, so Biden has to do it on his own.

Biden also understands that Republicans are going to yell about his age until the cows come home, so he is tackling the issue head on. Here is his first general-election ad. It deals with his age up front:

The ad opens with Biden looking at the camera and saying: "Look, I'm not a young guy. That's no secret. But here's the deal. I understand how you get things done for the American people." He then talks about his achievements on the economy, health care, infrastructure, and climate change, among other things. He also mentions Trump by name, something he didn't do in the SOTU speech. The ad also contains video clips of Trump looking like a buffoon. Later in the ad, Biden says: "Donald Trump believes the job of the president is to take care of Donald Trump. I believe the job of the president is to fight for you, the American people." The ad ends with an aide off camera saying: "Can we do one more take?" and Biden says: "Look, I'm very young, energetic, and handsome, what am I doing this for?" The ad shows that Biden is taking the gloves off and will go after Trump directly and by name and show video clips of Trump that make him look like a fool, but with humor.

Meanwhile, Trump appeared in Rome, GA, in the district of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R), with the congresswoman there to cheer him on. One issue Trump will harp on in Georgia is the killing of a Georgia college student, Laken Riley, by an undocumented immigrant. Trump will blame her death on Biden's immigration policies. But focusing on immigration may not be such a key issue in Georgia, which is not a hot spot for immigrants. Also, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has not endorsed Trump and Trump hasn't made any attempt to win Haley voters.

Anyhow, this may be the first time both candidates have been in Georgia, but it certainly won't be the last time. Thank goodness the U.S. has a system where the voters of a state with 10 million people get lavished with attention while the voters of states with 20-40 million people are, outside of Florida, going to be ignored (except as piggy banks). (V)

Thirty Percent of the Government Is Now Funded

House and Senate negotiators have now done the easy part. They produced six bills that funded part of the government, but these were the relatively uncontroversial parts, including transportation, agriculture, and veterans programs. The package of bills passed the Senate 75-22. The bills passed in part because they were loaded with nearly $1 billion in earmarks, which senators love. It's not just Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) who likes to bring home the bacon, although most senators don't personally castrate the hogs in order to do it.

Funding for the rest of the government runs out on March 22, and those bills are more contentious. In particular, funding for the border, health care, labor, and education will be tough because the parties are so far apart on them. The House Freedom Caucus wants things that have no chance at all of passing the Senate, but in the end Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) seems to be willing to throw the FCers a few bones and just ignore them afterwards and pass the bills with many Democratic votes. If the Freedom Caucus wants to fire him, they are welcome to try.

The thing that could still derail the funding bills is the Democrats' wish to provide money for Ukraine and Israel. The Democrats have tried bills that do and don't have money for the border in them, as well as money for Ukraine and Israel, but the Freedom Caucus wants to block that funding, no matter what, so Johnson is not out of the woods yet.

On the other hand, if Johnson doesn't meet the March 22 deadline, Border Patrol agents and airport security workers would go unpaid. So would IRS employees, which could slow down people's tax refunds. Blocking funding for these people could backfire, as Biden could "apologize" to the country by saying: "I'm sorry your tax refund will be late, but the Republicans are blocking it." Biden is insisting that Johnson stick to the deal that Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy made a year ago. Johnson doesn't like the deal and will try to get out from under it, but Biden will insist. This could lead to a government shutdown. (V)

Katie Britt's Rebuttal Was Truly Trumpian: Based on a Big Lie

By now you have probably seen at least half a dozen pieces noting that the SOTU rebuttal given by Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) was a disaster. For a United States senator to make a major speech in her kitchen is degrading to her office and her gender, and her theatrics were just horrible. She is not a good actress. Many pundits said with that speech, she blew her chance at becoming Donald Trump's running mate.

But maybe not. The Washington Post fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, went over her speech with a microscope, as he is wont to do. The main point Britt made was extremely misleading and based on a lie. Maybe she was actually auditioning for that bucket of warm liquid after all, and knew the way to Trump's heart was to tell an enormous lie with a straight face. Here is what she said:

We know that President Biden didn't just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days. When I took office, I took a different approach. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas. That's where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoe box of a room, and they sent men through that door over and over again for hours and hours on end. We wouldn't be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden's border policies are a disgrace.

That paragraph outright claims, or strongly implies, these things:

• The border surge is Biden's fault.
• Britt visited the border shortly after her inauguration on Jan. 3, 2023, and met a victim of sex trafficking.
• That victim recently crossed the border and was trafficked by a drug cartel.
• The abuse occurred in the U.S.
• Ipso facto, Joe Biden's border policies are a disgrace.

Now for the reality. The woman in question is Karla Romero, and her mother kicked her out of the house when she was 12. She was picked up by a pimp and made to work in a brothel in Mexico, during the George W. Bush administration. There were no drug cartels involved. The men who abused her were foreign men who came to Mexico looking for a minor. Needless to say, Joe Biden's border policies did not play a role in foreign men (probably mostly American) traveling to Mexico to visit a brothel during the Bush administration.

Organizations that support victims say that there are relatively few cases of kidnappers taking victims across international borders. That is probably because the danger of the victim making a fuss in order to attract the attention of the border patrol or other law enforcement is too great. If the victim tells the police the whole story, the kidnapper is in very, very, very deep doodoo. It is a better business for coyotes to help people who want to be smuggled and know they need to keep a very low profile to avoid attracting any attention.

Kessler concludes that while Romero's story is tragic, Britt's claims were near-universally false. The current border policies have been in place for years and haven't changed because Republicans in Congress refuse to support any of the bipartisan border bills drawn up in both chambers. So Britt's rant was awarded four Pinocchios.

Saturday Night Live took a pot shot at Britt, dealing with both her presentation and the big lie in it. Here is Scarlett Johansson playing Britt in the SNL cold open:

Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy (R-TX) tried to deflect the blame for the fiasco by saying that the Republican Party had "thrown [Britt] to the wolves." According to Roy, Party leaders set her up to fail since she had never even given a speech on the Senate floor, let alone a major address on national television. Poor helpless Katie couldn't have said "no" and couldn't possibly have checked to see if the story she was going to tell was true. Worse yet, her disaster distracted everyone from the policy issues the Republicans care about.

Yesterday, Britt tried to backtrack. Watch her try to wiggle out of being caught lying and then being roasted on SNL for it. She's definitely not ready for prime time yet. (V)

Biden Raises $10 Million in the 24 Hours after the SOTU Speech

Joe Biden's fiery SOTU speech went over well with Democrats. Even Ezra Klein concedes that Biden ought to run for president. That's big of him, given that until Thursday he wanted Biden to go back to Delaware. But more importantly, Biden raised $10 million in the 24 hours after his speech. That's his biggest 24-hour haul ever. The money came in as 116,000 donations, which averages to $88 each, quite a large average donation, which means there must have been quite a few donations at or near the $6,600 maximum ($3,300 for the primary and $3,300 for the general election). The Democrats are definitely on a roll, financially. In January, the DNC and other Party groups raised $42 million. At the end of January, Biden's campaign had $56 million in the bank, compared to Donald Trump's $30 million.

Both parties and candidates will be raising money like crazy all year. Will it matter? Maybe a little bit. Biden has actually achieved quite a bit despite not having a functional majority in Congress, but not everyone knows about all the bills he signed. With $66 million on hand already, Biden can start telling people what he did so far. That could help. It is less clear what Trump will do with all his money. Tell everyone that he won the 2020 election and that Democrats are socialists? The base believes that already and it is unlikely repeating the message 20 times every evening on TV is going to bring in many converts. Of course, if both parties are smart, they will reserve a large piece of the cash for the ground war, especially getting marginal voters registered, starting now. But let's be honest, Trump is going to spend as much of that money as he can to defray his legal bills. (V)

Trump Attacks E. Jean Carroll

You are probably thinking: "Yesterday must have been a slow news day, so you guys are just rerunning some oldies but goodies." Actually, no. This is (relatively) fresh news. On Saturday, Donald Trump once again trashed former columnist E. Jean Carroll. The first time he did it, it cost him $5 million. The second time he did it, it cost him $83 million. The third time could start to be real money.

At a rally in Georgia, Trump mentioned the $91.6 million bond he had to post to keep Carroll from seizing his properties and selling them. He said: "Ninety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about. Didn't know, never heard of. I know nothing about her. She wrote a book. She said things. And when I denied it, I said: 'It's so crazy. It's false.' I get sued for defamation." Then he added: "This woman is not a believable person."

Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, probably broke out the champagne yesterday in expectation of a third—and much bigger—payday for her client and herself. This is precisely the scenario that turned a minor (for Trump) $5 million award into a serious (even for Trump) $83 million award. Trump insiders say that he is just hopping mad and can't control himself. Carroll might as well sue again, since she has a good chance of winning and there is no downside for her, since Kaplan is probably willing to take the case on a no-cure, no-pay basis in return for something like 30% of the award if she wins. Kaplan has plenty of practice so she won't even need to spend much time preparing. And if it goes to trial again, she is surely going to tell the jury: "An award of $83 million wasn't enough to get Trump to stop defaming my client, so you need to go REALLY BIG this time to get him to stop it."

If Carroll sues again, the judge will have to work around all the criminal trials Trump may yet have. But if the criminal trials are all delayed, for various reasons, another civil one will keep Trump in the news, and not in a good way. (V)

The No Labels Campaign Is on--All It Needs Is a Candidate

Would you vote for Geoff Duncan for president? You might get a chance. The No Labels group has made a decision to go forward with putting up a ticket and trying to get on the ballot in all states. The only problem is that nobody anyone has ever heard of is willing to be their candidate. The group is now grasping at straws, with the most recent name to be floated being that of Duncan, the Republican former Georgia lieutenant governor. If that is as high-profile a nominee as they can find, we suspect he won't pull a lot of votes from Joe Biden, which is the Republican funders' goal, after all. To get Democrats to vote for the ticket, No Labels is going to have to find someone Democrats have at least heard of, and preferably like. Duncan is not an election denier, but that is setting the bar extremely low.

And Duncan hasn't agreed yet, so No Labels may have to dig deeper, like some former county commissioner who served one term 8 years ago in some noncompetitive state. A veep candidate may be just as difficult, and remember, this is supposed to be a unity ticket, so the #2 person has to be willing to run with someone from the other party. Writing a platform should be a fun exercise. Most likely every plank will have to be: "We support common-sense solutions to [X]," where X is abortion, immigration, health care, Ukraine, and everything else. Right.

No Labels won't be running the only third-party candidate. The Green Party is trying to get on the ballot in every state. The Libertarian Party is already on the ballot in almost every state. The Green Party will almost certainly run Jill Stein again. She got 1.07% of the vote in 2016. The LP doesn't have a candidate yet, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking into becoming its candidate. One problem is that he isn't really in agreement with them on many issues. Another is that he is on tape saying that no vaccines are safe and effective. Take a look at this video clip of Kennedy being interviewed by CNN's Kasie Hunt. In it, he denies having said that no vaccines are safe and effective and then she plays a clip of him saying no vaccines are safe and effective. Watching him squirm after it plays is worth the price of admission. Dad was enormously charismatic. Junior didn't inherit those genes apparently.

Cornel West is also running for president, but he doesn't have a lot of money and is on the ballot so far only in Alaska, Oregon, and South Carolina. He is not likely to be much of a factor if he can't get on the ballot in any swing states—and probably not even if he does. (V)

Trump Allies Take over the RNC

Donald Trump now formally controls the Republican National Committee. Trumper Michael Whatley is the chairman and Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is vice chair and enforcer, to make sure Whatley focuses entirely on electing Trump. This new arrangement could actually help the Democrats because: (1) the RNC may now ship millions of dollars off to Trump's lawyers, (2) big donors may flee, and (3) the RNC may not put much money into down-ballot races. On the other hand, both Whatley and Trump are from North Carolina, a key swing state, and both of them presumably will go all out to try to deliver the state to Trump. Whatley has already talked about hiring poll watchers and lawyers in North Carolina in order to win the state.

Even having a Trumpy election denier as chair and his daughter-in-law as co-chair wasn't enough control for Trump, so he got the RNC to appoint Chris LaCivita, a top Trump campaign adviser, as chief operating officer. LaCivita will handle operations, strategy, and spending. Thus the RNC is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization. Maybe Letitia James can seize it and auction it to pay off Trump's judgments. If the DNC bids $1 and is the only bidder, it could get it and keep all the incoming donations.

One thing the new leadership team needs to do is focus on fundraising. As of the end of January, the RNC had $9 million in the bank compared to the DNC's $24 million. But, as noted, fundraising could be tricky if big donors are not happy with their money being funneled to Trump's defense lawyers, rather than to Republicans running for House and Senate seats.

On the way out the door on Friday, Ronna Romney McDaniel said: "We cannot put our heads in the sand and ignore abortion and the Dobbs decision." However, she didn't say what the RNC's position on abortion should be. If it is not "a zygote is the same as a baby and killing one is murder," the base will freak out. But if that IS the RNC's position, it does not play well with young people, women, or independents. (V)

Trump Supports TikTok

The social media platform TikTok is popular with young people, including some young voters. But TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, and is widely suspected of collecting as much data as possible from all its users and funneling it to the Chinese Communist Party. The U.S. government has forbidden federal employees from having the app on their government-issued phones because it is considered a security threat. For example, if a gay government employee who is in the closet watched a lot of gay-themed videos on the platform, that employee could be blackmailed. TikTok is also full of Chinese propaganda and suppresses content critical of the Chinese government.

Congress is working on a bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance sells its U.S. operations to a U.S. company. Microsoft and Oracle are known to be interested in buying the U.S. part of TikTok, if the price is right. Joe Biden has said that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk. The bill would allow the president to name certain apps as national security threats and have them banned from U.S. app stores. The app could also not use servers in the U.S. to host its videos. These measures would effectively destroy the app. Another good reason for Congress to ban TikTok is that China bans Facebook and Ex-Twitter.

TikTok has launched a counteroffensive, telling children how to contact Congress to oppose the bill. It said that Congress wants to ban TikTok. That's misleading at best, since what Congress really wants is to force ByteDance to sell the U.S. part of its business to an American company. The bill passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee 50-0 last week. The full House will vote on the bill this week. There is a good chance of it passing the full House and moving on to the Senate then.

It's interesting to see who TikTok has on its side lobbying to kill the bill, including the Club for Growth and Kellyanne Conway. Perhaps it is a coincidence that billionaire donor to the Club for Growth, Jeff Yass, owns a 15% stake in ByteDance and the Club for Growth is paying Conway for her lobbying. A girl's gotta eat, after all. But the push to force ByteDance to sell the American part of TikTok is bipartisan, with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) leading the charge.

As you might expect, if Joe Biden supports something, then Donald Trump must necessarily oppose it. What makes this complicated for Trump is that he hates China and normally does not support China against the U.S. But his hatred for Joe Biden is greater than his love of the U.S. Consequently, Trump opposes the bill because it would help the enemy: Facebook. Trump said: "If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business." Trump has also called Facebook an enemy of the people. That is not necessarily so, as the DoJ could announce in advance that if Facebook tries to buy TikTok, it will file an antitrust suit to block the sale. Trump seems to have forgotten that as president he also tried to ban TikTok. He also doesn't seem to realize that having Microsoft or Oracle buy TikTok would weaken Facebook by creating a powerful competitor to it in the social media space. There is just so much Trump doesn't know. We could mention it every day. Actually, we kind of do. (V)

Cryptoworld is Coming for Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown

The crypto industry's super PAC, Fairshake, spent $10 million trying to take down Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) in the California Senate race. She indeed went down, though it is not clear Fairshake played much of a role there. But with more than $80 million in actual money (not bitcoins) in the bank, the group is now planning to target the two most vulnerable Senate Democrats, Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

The industry wants to shape federal legislation to be favorable to crypto and is not keen on senators who say it is a scam. Brown is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and has said: "Crypto appeals to crime rings and scam artists." Tester is also on the Banking Committee and said: "Crypto hasn't been able to pass the smell test for me."

This election won't be the first one in which the crypto industry spent millions trying to influence the outcome. In 2022, then crypto-millionaire Sam Bankman-Fried spent tens of millions of actual dollars on congressional races. Then his crypto exchange, FTX, went bust and he was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. The crypto industry would like the memory of that to go away. (V)

State Attorneys General Often Try to Kill Ballot Measures

Many states, especially in the West where they don't trust no gubmint, have a procedure in which ordinary citizens can propose an initiative to pass a law or amend the state's Constitution. If it gets enough signatures (typically 5-10% of the number of people who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election), it goes on the next general-election ballot. If it gets 50% +1 votes, it becomes law or the state's Constitution is amended. This provision for citizen initiatives was included in the more recent state Constitutions because the founders of the state were Populists (note capital letter, which means "member of the original Populist Movement") who didn't trust state officials or legislatures and wanted a way for the people to make an end run around them.

Now, officials in some red states are striking back. They don't like the idea of "the people" passing laws and amendments they don't like. They especially don't like "the people" deciding that abortion should be legal and protected, when the highly gerrymandered state legislature has gone to great lengths to make sure a minority of the state's residents can ban it. This is playing out in numerous states now.

When a group of voting-rights activists tried to get an initiative to expand voting rights on the November ballot, Ohio AG Dave Yost (R) took issue and objected to the title "Secure and Fair Elections" and ruled that the title was misleading so the initiative could not begin collecting signatures. Then the group changed the title to "The Ohio Voters Bill of Rights" and Yost killed it again. So the group went to court to argue that Yost doesn't have the authority to kill an initiative he doesn't like based on the title.

In Arkansas, AG Tim Griffin (R) rejected amendments to expand the use of medical marijuana and increase government transparency. The latter was focused on Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' (R) habit of spending taxpayer money on things clearly not related to her job and then hiding the expenditures from the state's voters.

In Missouri, the AG held up an amendment guaranteeing abortion rights. In Montana another abortion amendment is being held up. Florida as well.

The same movie is showing in other states. It is always a citizens group that wants to expand voting rights, protect reproductive choice, hold government officials accountable, or something similar and it is always a Republican state attorney general that is ruling that the initiative has some technical defect that prevents it from being on the ballot. In some states, the state Constitution does grant the AG some power to vet initiatives, to prevent blatantly illegal or unconstitutional ones from being put to a vote (e.g., an amendment to make homosexuality a felony or exempt anyone with $10 million in a bank account from paying state income tax). Those provisions were written long ago on the assumption that the AGs would operate in good faith and not try to kill laws and amendments they simply disagreed with. Silly Populists.

National observers say the spate of rulings by Republican AGs is a concerted attempt to thwart direct democracy, something Republicans hate (the minority party, whichever one it is, tends to feel this way, since that party tends to lose when the majority rules). Chris Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said: "It's all part of this larger puzzle of who gets a say and who gets to participate in our democracy, and where things are popular among constituents but that does not align with whoever is in political power in that state." State AGs usually don't have veto power over initiatives and citizens' groups can resubmit a corrected proposal, but AGs can delay the process past the point where the deadline to get the initiative on the ballot has passed. Then it has to start all over next time.

Almost every state has different rules about getting initiatives on the ballot. Illinois has almost no roadblocks; if an initiative gets the required number of petition signatures, it is on the ballot. In contrast, in Florida, the title and summary must be approved by the secretary of state, AG, and state Supreme Court, any one of which can throw sand in the gears. Consequently, some initiatives are trying to reduce the power of officials to block initiatives. As you can imagine, that does not go over well with the officials whose power the initiative seeks to reduce. Consequently, increasingly, the battles are being fought in court.

Elias Sharkey of the Elias Law Group, which often defends groups trying to get initiatives on the ballot, said: "There's a constant pushback from conservatives to try to stop these measures in their tracks because they know, especially with reproductive rights, if these measures get on the ballot, they're going to win." Figueredo said: "It's ultimately about minority rule." What she means is that conservatives know that if many controversial issues are put to a vote, they will lose, so the conservatives do everything they can to prevent the people from speaking. (V)

Rosendale Will Not Run for Reelection

Freedom Caucus member Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) loves to keep people guessing. For months he dangled the idea that he would run for the GOP Senate nomination to challenge Jon Tester. Then he finally took the plunge. A week later, he changed his mind and said, no, he wouldn't run for the Senate, preferring to keep his House seat in his R+16 MT-02 district. Now he changed his mind again and said he will retire at the end of this term. What's going on here?

Rosendale claimed that he is retiring from Congress due to a death threat against him and false and defamatory rumors against him and his family. Therefore he cannot serve the people of MT-02 properly. This doesn't pass the smell test. The people who threaten public officials are nearly always very Trumpy and the officials being threatened are nearly always accused of being insufficiently Trumpy. There are probably no members of the House who are Trumpier than Rosendale except maybe Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). So something is wrong with this picture.

We understand why he dropped out of the Senate race. NRSC chairman Sen. Steve Daines, who just happens to be the other senator from Montana, didn't want him to challenge Tester because he expected Rosendale to lose, just as he did in 2018. Daines might even have asked NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) to toss some money Rosendale's way to encourage him to stay in the House. But why did Rosendale decide to give up a seat he could easily win and leave politics? FCers are not quitters.

The only thing we have seen that makes any sense is a remark made by former senator Heidi Heitkamp in which she said Rosendale had impregnated a 20-year-old staffer. If that is true and if Rosendale paid for an abortion, that would pretty much finish him, in which case he might as well get out before the staffer went public. One might think that a far-right Republican who is making $174,000/year and knows what paying for an abortion would do to his career prospects, would spend 50¢ to make sure the problem didn't arise. Maybe Heitkamp is wrong, but she is out of office and has no reason to get involved in any of this unless some young female staffer who knew her came to her and spilled the beans. (V)

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