by President Joe Biden is set to participate in the Winter meeting of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia as the party considers overhauling the 2024 presidential primary calendar. The proposed lineup would move the South Carolina primary before that of New Hampshire, which angered party leaders in the state.
Here’s what else is happening in politics:
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Another FBI research: Federal authorities are negotiating searches of former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home and Washington office for more classified documents.
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Second Amendment rights: A federal appeals court ruled that a law that bars people subject to a domestic violence restraining order from owning a firearm is unconstitutional.
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The FBI is expected to search Pence’s premises for government documents
Federal authorities and Mike Pence’s representatives have discussed voluntary searches of the former vice president’s Indiana home and a Washington, DC office, for more classified documents, according to media reports.
The expected action comes after the FBI searched President Joe Biden’s vacation home in Delaware on Wednesday, the third Biden location where authorities have searched for additional government documents.
No classified documents were recovered at Biden’s Rehoboth Beach residence, but the FBI did take some handwritten notes from his time as vice president, the president’s attorney said.
Plans for a search related to Pence, first reported Thursday by the Wall Street Journal, follow the discovery last month of a small number of documents bearing classified marks at the former president’s Indiana home.
CNN also reported that authorities are expected to search a Washington office connected to Pence.
—Kevin Johnson
From the office to the beach house: Joe Biden Confidential Documents Investigation Timeline
House GOP launches another investigation
The House Judiciary Committee is deepening its investigation into political bias with a new focus on Charles McGonigal, a former FBI special agent who last week pleaded not guilty to money laundering and U.S. sanctions violation charges in connection to a Russian oligarch.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray Thursday, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., requested documents, personnel records and communications related to McGonigal by Feb. 16 .
McGonigal, who headed the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York for 22 years until 2018, is accused of working for Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
— Candy Woodall
Law banning guns for people on domestic violence restraining orders is unconstitutional, court rules
A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that a law that bars people subject to a domestic violence restraining order from owning a firearm is unconstitutional in a case likely going to the Supreme Court.
A three-judge panel of the Louisiana-based US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said the federal law may have been based on “healthy policy goals intended to protect vulnerable people in our society,” but that it is still conflicting with the Second Amendment.
The ruling by the justices – two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump and a third by former President Ronald Reagan – follows last year’s Supreme Court ruling on firearms, in which a majority of 6 at 3 said that to pass constitutional muster, a firearms regulation must be consistent with the nation’s “historic tradition of firearms regulation.”
– John Fritz
This article originally appeared in USA TODAY: FBI Should Search Pence’s Locations – Live Updates
