February 7, 2020

Bullock meets with Obama as Montana Senate deadline nears

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/06/steve-bullock-obama-meeting-111814

Former President Barack Obama met privately with Montana Gov. Steve Bullock on Thursday in Washington, an adviser confirmed, as Democrats hold out hopes that the red-state governor makes a surprise, last-minute splash into the state’s Senate race.

Bullock has consistently said he will not run for the Senate after dropping his own White House bid last year. And even after meeting with the former two-term president, Bullock is undeterred.

“As he has said repeatedly, there will be a candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana against Steve Daines. It will not be Steve Bullock,” said Matt McKenna, a longtime adviser for Bullock. McKenna said he had no knowledge of the details of the private conversation between the two.

Bullock is in town for the National Governors Association's winter meeting. Since leaving office, Obama has often met with Democrats about their political future. An Obama spokesman didn't immediately comment.

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February 7, 2020

TPM: Will Trump's Operatives Now Biden Bernie?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/will-trumps-operatives-now-biden-bernie

We’re in a pretty dramatically different situation in the Democratic primaries than we were a week ago. Everything could change on Tuesday. But for now it looks much more likely that Bernie Sanders will be the nominee than it did a week ago or certainly a month or two ago. With that in mind, I wanted to flag a set of facts that tie back to what I discussed earlier this afternoon about Trump’s even more blatant post-impeachment abuses of power.

Most of these facts have been rattling around my head for the last six months but a reader from the Bernie world flagged an article to mention this evening which renewed my attention.

Back in 2016 and then again into 2017 a series of press reports raised questions about Sanders’ wife Jane Sanders and her time as President of Burlington College. The college underwent a dramatic expansion under Sanders’ leadership and then closed in 2016 under a mountain of debt. Press reports and political critics suggested that Jane Sanders and Senator Sanders’ Senate office had pressured People’s United Bank to make a $6.7 million loan to the bank which underwrote the expansion. That’s the accusation.

Sanders denies the claims about his office, calling it “nonsense,” and no one has ever been formally accused of any wrongdoing. But let’s set the accusation and its merits aside for the moment and look at where those criticisms and press reports came from. They start with a guy named Brady Toensing who sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney in Vermont asking him to probe whether Jane Sanders’ committed fraud with respect to that loan.

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