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In a September interview with CBS’ SCOTT PELLEY for “60 Minutes,” President JOE BIDEN blasted DONALD TRUMP for taking sensitive classified materials with him to Mar-a-Lago. When he learned the news, Biden said he instantly wanted to know “how that could possibly happen.” He worried that the documents contained information “that may compromise sources and methods.” He was flummoxed how “anyone could be that irresponsible.”

Now, four months later, those same pointed reactions are aimed at Biden after the revelation yesterday that a trove of classified documents were discovered in the garage at his home in Wilmington, Del. — prompting AG MERRICK GARLAND to appoint former U.S. Attorney ROBERT HUR as special counsel to probe Biden’s handling of classified documents.

For the White House, it’s a burgeoning political nightmare that comes just as Biden tries to draw a contrast with the new House Republican majority, which the administration is eager to cast as chaotic and irresponsible.

For the GOP, it’s a belated Christmas gift, and Republicans are positively giddy. While the White House has done its utmost to distinguish Biden’s and Trump’s situations — both in terms of the breadth of documents as well as the manner in which both men cooperated with investigators (or not, in Trump’s case) — Republicans are confident they can chalk up those up to semantics.

They’re already adding this new line of inquiry to their mountain of “must-probe” leads — and alleging that Trump is being held to a “double standard” when compared to the justice system’s treatment of Biden.

“Where’s the raid?” new House Judiciary Chair JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio) tweeted yesterday.

While sitting presidents can’t be charged with a crime — thanks to an obscure DOJ rule that we all become familiar with during the Trump years — Democrats privately concede that this isn’t looking good for Biden. As our colleague Christopher Cadelago reports, some Dems quietly admit that the situation gives the “president’s critics a chance to denounce him as negligent, hypocritical or careless right at a time when things were moving Biden’s way.”

“I think it takes the whole Trump scandal off the table,” one Democratic operative told Chris.

BURNING QUESTIONS — We suspect that you have some burning questions about this still-unfolding situation. (We do, too!) So we turned to our legal-brainiac colleagues Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein to unpack what all this means:

Question: What are the risks for Biden of having a special counsel rummaging around the West Wing? 

Answer: “No one ever does — or should — feel good about having a special counsel examine their activities,” Kyle and Josh tell us. “By their very nature, the probes are accorded more freedom from day-to-day management of the Justice Department, which means they are not subject to typical layers of review by career DOJ officials.

“But Robert Hur isn’t going to swerve too far in unexpected directions and won’t have free rein to rummage around every corner of the Biden White House (or Wilmington residence or think tank). Modern special counsels are bound by scope memos that outline their purpose; the notion of roving special counsels — which largely originated with the now-obsolete BILL CLINTON-era ‘independent counsel’ — isn’t really applicable today.” Good background on Hur, via NYT’s Glenn Thrush, Adam Goldman and Luke Broadwater

Question: The White House has been doing its best to draw a contrast between Biden’s and Trump’s situations. What is the difference? Are they meaningfully distinct? 

Answer: “While it’s bizarre to have a current and former president both scrutinized for alleged mishandling of classified info at their personal residences, the publicly known evidence about these cases makes clear they’re not comparable, for now,” write Kyle and Josh.

“The FBI searched Trump’s residence after months of demanding the return of classified records and meeting resistance, obfuscation and receiving evidence that Trump’s team may have been obstructing their efforts. The volume of documents recovered from Trump’s residence — as well as the extraordinary sensitivity of the records, which included signals intelligence and human-source derived info — have laid bare the acute urgency behind DOJ’s actions.

“The Biden matter is still littered with unknowns — we don’t know the degree of sensitivity of the records or how and when they were transported. (Some initial reporting suggests the documents include TS/SCI-level material.) We don’t know whether they might have been accessed by anyone without appropriate clearances or whether Biden himself had any awareness the records were in his possession.”

Question: Will it be harder for the DOJ to charge Trump with a crime related to mishandling classified documents if Biden faces the same headache? 

Answer: “In terms of a potential Trump indictment, the distinctions between the two cases may be large enough that it’s not a deterrent to the special counsel probing Trump’s handling of these documents, JACK SMITH,” Kyle and Josh tell us. “But DOJ has the hurdle of showing why charges in one case, and not the other, are warranted — and make that case in an environment in which the former president has already been whipping supporters into a frenzy, proclaiming himself the target of a DOJ ‘witch hunt.’

“And it’s important to note that not only is a Biden indictment an extraordinarily remote possibility — it’s also not possible, as a matter of Justice Department internal policy, while he’s in office.”

Happy Friday the 13th. Thanks for reading Playbook. What do you make of the special counsel appointment? Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.

BURNS NOTICE — Our colleague Alex Burns today launches Tomorrow, a new POLITICO column taking a broad lens to examine politics and policy. His first piece, reported from Atlanta, is a look at Republican Georgia Gov. BRIAN KEMP, who “has emerged as a curious figure on the American right: a conservative hardliner whose enthusiasm for tax cuts and guns is matched by his passion for charging stations and battery recycling.”

“While national Republicans are bereft of a positive vision — still reeling from the chaos of the Trump presidency and the misery of a disappointing midterm election — Kemp is a rare actor in his party trying something shrewd and new. Where many Republicans have ignored climate as an issue or ridiculed people who care about it, Kemp has moved aggressively to claim the economic opportunities associated with fighting climate change and then take credit for them on the campaign trail. …

“Kemp’s energy agenda … represents the opening of a path for Republicans who want to adopt a more modern set of ideas on climate and energy, perhaps sparing themselves the worst punishment from voters who increasingly see suffocating emissions as an urgent threat.”

SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN — “House GOP tempts fall government shutdown with impossible spending demands,”by Caitlin Emma and Connor O’Brien

THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW: MICHAEL PODHORZER — Amid rampant predictions of a “red wave” in 2022, AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer consistently challenged that conventional wisdom in off-the-record conversations and private emails. He argued that the pundits focusing exclusively on the fundamentals of the race — Biden’s approval rating and the dismal economic indicators — were missing the bigger picture. Yes, presidents usually lose an average of some two dozen House seats in similar circumstances, but that wasn’t the whole story.

Podhorzer insisted that 2018 had changed things. A massive surge of new voters flooded the electorate that year to oppose Trump. They came out again in 2020 to make sure that Trump was not reelected.

Democrats, he insisted, were likely to keep much of that anti-MAGA coalition intact once again in 2022 — as long as they reminded voters of the stakes. While many analysts, pointing to a plethora of polls to support them, argued that inflation would be more important than the diffuse issue of “democracy,” Podhorzer said that was myopic. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the work of the Jan. 6 committee and the constellation of MAGA candidates — like Pennsylvania’s DOUG MASTRIANO and Arizona’s KARI LAKE, who proudly ran as Trump clones — could help Democrats defy history and secure an electoral threepeat.

He was much more right than wrong.

Podhorzer has now left the AFL-CIO after 25 years and is able to speak freely. We sat down with him in his kitchen in Takoma Park for his first wide-ranging interview. We talked about what everyone got wrong about 2022, his critiques of the media’s coverage of the right, his ongoing battles with the so-called popularists in the Democratic Party and why he already thinks the presidential election of 2024 is headed for a dangerous endgame. Listen here

IT’S DAVOS PLAYBOOK TIME — Our colleagues Alex Ward, Erin Banco and Ryan Heath will be on the ground in Switzerland for this year’s World Economic Forum next week. They’ll put everything you need to know about this year’s global power confab into your inbox every morning, Sunday through Friday. Among the D.C. players they will be following: JOHN KERRY, USTR KATHERINE TAI, DNI AVRIL HAINES, FBI Director CHRISTOPHER WRAY and Sens. JIM RISCH (R-Idaho), JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) and KYRSTEN SINEMA (I-Ariz.). Sign up for Davos Playbook

PHOTO OF THE DAY

ALL POLITICS

THE RED WAVE THAT WAS — Gallup tallied up all its 2022 polls and found that last year, 45% of Americans identified as Republican or GOP-leaning, compared to 44% who called themselves Democrats. That’s striking because Democrats usually hold a multiple-point edge: 2022 was the first time since 1991 that Republicans were higher.

THE NEW DEMS — Gallup also saw the share of Democrats who call themselves “liberal” jump from 50% to 54% last year, an all-time high. “Conservative” Democrats dropped to 10% of the party, an all-time low. And “moderates” ticked down to 36%.

BATTLE FOR THE HOUSE — Rep. ADAM SCHIFF (D-Calif.) hasn’t even said yet whether he’ll run for Senate in 2024, but another Democrat is already jumping into the race for Schiff’s seat: NICK MELVOIN, an LA school district board member, has filed for the campaign, Rob Pyers flags.

PULL UP A CHAIR — “Republican Jewish leaders endorse Ronna McDaniel in reelection bid for RNC chair,”by the Washington Examiner’s Cami Mondeaux

THE WHITE HOUSE

WHERE BIDEN IS WINNING — Japanese PM Fumio Kishida’sWhite House visit today puts an exclamation point on his country’s moves closer toward the U.S. — one of several allies with whom Biden’s stronger ties are “delivering in an area where Donald Trump’s sharp-elbowed approach largely failed to achieve results,” Eli Stokols, Phelim Kine and Jonathan Lemire report. Japan and Germany are both significantly increasing defense spending in historic shifts. “With little progress around a broader trans-Pacific trade agreement, the meetings [today] are likely to focus on defense issues and technology, specifically limiting exports of semiconductors to China. They also could center on Japan’s concerns about regional stability.”

— One of Biden’s big priorities: urging Japan to get on board with American restrictions targeting Chinese semiconductors, Reuters’ Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom write.

— One of Kishida’s big priorities: getting Biden to show support for his new security strategy, Bloomberg’s Isabel Reynolds reports.

“Biden recalls ex-Defense chief Ash Carter as ‘force of nature’ at memorial service,”The Hill

CONGRESS

KNOWING JOSH GOTTHEIMER — “How Josh Gottheimer Went from Pariah to Power Player,”by Sarah Ferris in POLITICO Magazine: “All the attention may be on the Freedom Caucus and its ideologues, but the Problem Solvers chiefs insist that the only path to notching big wins in this Congress will run right through them. … Which means that after a Congress of persistently frustrating his own colleagues, Gottheimer’s ability to translate between warring factions has effectively rebooted his reputation. A lot of that stems from the trust he’s painstakingly built among very different lawmakers in both parties.”

THE ASCENDANT FAR RIGHT — “The Brain Trust Behind the McCarthy Mutiny,” by RealClearPolitics’ Philip Wegmann

A DIFFERENT KIND OF ‘McCARTHY ERA’ — “New House Investigation Panel Stirs Memories of an Earlier McCarthy,”by NYT’s Carl Hulse and Adam Goldman: “Democrats and historians see darker historical parallels. They liken the Republican zeal to pursue nebulous allegations of deep-state conspiracies to the ‘red scare’ days of a McCarthy from an earlier era … Republicans reject such criticism and try to justify the panel by pointing to conservative causes célèbres … They say conservatives have been subjected to a double standard of justice, from former President Donald J. Trump on down, and they intend to prove it.”

— Democrats don’t plan to cede the panel to Republicans: They’ll put members on it too, in a different strategy from how the House GOP handled the Jan. 6 committee in the last Congress, CBS’ Scott MacFarlane reports.

TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL — ADAM KINZINGER blasted the new speaker on Charlie Sykes’ podcast: “Kevin’s a piece of shit. And let’s just be honest about this, because he will say whatever he needs to say to stay in power. I’m not even saying that gratuitously to be mean to him. It’s just a fact.”

THE TALENTED MR. SANTOS — House GOP leadership stood by him yesterday, but Rep. GEORGE SANTOS (R-N.Y.) continued to face more calls for his resignation from fellow Republicans: Reps. MIKE LAWLER (R-N.Y.) and MARC MOLINARO (R-N.Y.) said Santos should step aside. Notably, so did Rep. MAX MILLER(R-Ohio) — no moderate or stranger to controversy himself. Miller, one of the only Jewish Republicans in the House, in particular called out Santos’ claims about his family’s experience in the Holocaust.

JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

WHAT KEVIN McCARTHY GAVE UP — To win the speakership, McCarthy acquiesced to the holdouts’ demand that he’d release the whole trove of Jan. 6 security camera footage from the Capitol, Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) confirmed to CNN’s Melanie Zanona.

JUDICIARY SQUARE

LAWYERING DOWN — “Ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon seeks to change attorneys in fundraising fraud case,”by ABC’s Aaron Katersky: “Former Trump adviser STEVE BANNON has asked a judge to let him change lawyers as he defends himself against charges that he defrauded donors to the ‘We Build the Wall’ campaign … Prosecutors accused Bannon of intentionally failing to engage with his lawyers to delay the case. … In the end, the judge agreed to give Bannon until Feb. 28 to secure new attorneys.”

N.B.: “Bannon ignored questions from reporters asking if he was advising anyone in Brazil’s protest movement.”

SCOTUS WATCH — Google warned in a court filing yesterday that if the Supreme Court alters the “liability shield” protecting tech platforms, it could “upend the internet” and usher in a new era of, alternatively, offensive content and onerous censorship. More from the WSJ

POLICY CORNER

SEEMS CONCERNING — “U.S. nuclear agency falls short on scheduling, cost estimates,”by AP’s Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M.

WHAT HOUSE REPUBLICANS ARE READING — “Mayorkas ordered internal review of massive immigration contract: Emails reveal,”by the Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli

ONE TO WATCH — “FTC ban may be test of bipartisan opposition to noncompete clauses,”by Roll Call’s Ellen Meyers

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

PULLOUT FALLOUT — The State Department posted a new form yesterday that Afghan evacuees in the U.S. can use to try to reunify their families, CNN’s Kylie Atwood reports.

WHAT THEY’RE READING IN MIAMI — ConocoPhillips is working on a potential deal to sell Venezuelan oil in the U.S., WSJ’s Patricia Garip scooped. That would bring Venezuela further into the global fold of energy markets, furthering the Biden administration’s efforts to re-engage the country and ease sanctions. It could “help the U.S. meet its energy needs.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

THEY LIED — “Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections,”by Geoffrey Supran, Stefan Rahmstorf and Naomi Oreskes in Science: “For decades, some members of the fossil fuel industry tried to convince the public that a causative link between fossil fuel use and climate warming could not be made because the models used to project warming were too uncertain. Supran et al. show that one of those fossil fuel companies, ExxonMobil, had their own internal models that projected warming trajectories consistent with those forecast by the independent academic and government models. What they understood about climate models thus contradicted what they led the public to believe.” More from Zack Colman

CHOOSE YOUR FRAMING — “Spy agencies report hundreds more UFO sightings since 2021,”by Bryan Bender and Kelly Garrity … “Report Categorizes Many Unexplained Sightings as Drones, Trash or Birds,”NYT

SUNDAY SO FAR … 

CNN “State of the Union”: Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.).

FOX “Fox News Sunday”: Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) … Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders … Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.). Panel: Guy Benson, Olivia Beavers, Juan Williams and Horace Cooper.

ABC “This Week”: Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). Panel: Chris Christie, Donna Brazile, Rick Klein and Rachael Bade.

CNN “Inside Politics”: Panel: MJ Lee, Jonah Goldberg, Tia Mitchell and Eli Stokols.

Ron DeSantis’ campaign website is selling aprons depicting gas stoves.

Mary Gay Scanlon says getting carjacked didn’t change her criminal justice views, but “I just would rather not have had that proof in my face.”

John Kasich is getting swole.

Kristi Noem won’t be able to have Fourth of July fireworks at Mount Rushmore.

OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED at a birthday party for Heather Podesta Wednesday night at dLeña: Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Molly Ball, Steve Kessler, Ruth Marcus, Hilary Rosen, Carol Melton, Elena Allbritton, Margaret Carlson, Tammy Haddad, Kellyanne Conway, Guy Cecil and Steve Clemons.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Brian Garcia will be comms director for Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.). He most recently has been press secretary for Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas).

MEDIA MOVES — Elana Zak is joining WaPo as director of newsletter strategy. She previously was head of newsletters at POLITICO. … Nick Sobczyk is joining Axios to cover energy and climate. He previously was a reporter for E&E News.

TRANSITIONS — The NRCC announced its senior staff for the 2024 cycle, including Chris Winkelman as executive director, Micah Yousefi as deputy executive director, Mike Thom as political director, Leigh Ann Gillis as finance director, Jack Pandol as comms director, Taylor Black as grassroots director, Erin Clark as general counsel and Katy Williams as COO and CFO. … Pat Thompson is now a professional staff member for the Senate Armed Services Committee. He previously was a professional staff member for the Senate Commerce Committee. …

… Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) has added Carly Miller as chief of staff, Chris Berardi as senior adviser and comms director, Troy MacMullen as legislative director and Marjorie Daily as operations director. … Courtney O’Hara Taylor is joining the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as Democratic staff director. She previously was SVP at ML Strategies and is an Environmental Defense Fund, Interior Department and DOJ alum. … Will Devine is now a senior associate at Civitas Public Affairs Group. He previously was associate VP at A10 Associates.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) … Nate Silver … U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards … Andrew Yang … Rod Rosenstein of King & Spalding … Tim Noah … Marc Thiessen … Julia Tishman … Natasha McKenzie … Andrew Riddaugh of Liberation Technology Services … Jason Chung … Time’s Mini Racker … Ali Tulbah … Fox News’ Christina Robbins … Kristina Schake … Britt Bepler of Monument Advocacy … Jessica Post … John Allen … Nora Walsh-DeVries of Rep. Katie Porter’s (D-Calif.) office … Mollie Bowman of the Partnership for American Democracy … Rich Gold of Holland & Knight … Dave O’Brien … David Rosen … POLITICO’s Alexandra Velde, Corey Jaseph, Dana Beckman, Robin Bravender and Delianny Brammer … Ken Pollack … Jordan Bell … Will Baskin-Gerwitz … Allan Rivlin … Laurence Wildgoose … Liana Guerra of Rep. Darren Soto’s (D-Fla.) office … Katie Murtha … Microsoft’s Kristin Strobel … Vincent Pan … Andrew Kossack … Ajwang Rading … Ingrid Duran of D&P Creative Strategies … Tali Stein Elleithee

Send Playbookers tips to [email protected] or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Setota Hailemariam and Bethany Irvine.

Corrections: An earlier version of this newsletter misidentified Sen. Jim Risch's party affiliation. He is a Republican. Wednesday’s Playbook misspelled the names of Alan Davidson, Emilia Rowland and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).