| MORE ADMINISTRATION: The Justice Department during the Trump years not only secretly sought the email and phone logs of U.S. journalists and at least two Democratic lawmakers who were investigating Trump but also subpoenaed from Apple in 2018 information about Trump’s first White House counsel, Don McGahn, and barred Apple from disclosing that fact to McGahn, the West Wing attorney who represented the presidency, The New York Times reported on Sunday. The New York Times: McGahn was a source for The Washington Post in 2018 while explaining a nuance of a 2017 encounter with Trump, also disclosed by The New York Times and denied by the president, in which Trump sought McGahn’s help to oust former special counsel Robert Mueller. McGahn in 2017 did not heed the president’s entreaty. The drip, drip, drip of disclosures about the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain information in secret about a wide range of targets has sparked a new internal inspector general investigation at the Biden-led Justice Department, prompted an emergency meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland and news media executives today, and inspired demands in Congress for sworn testimony from former attorneys general. Some Democrats in Congress described the department’s clandestine actions, apparently in search of unauthorized leaks, as an abuse of power, a serious breach between the legislative and executive branches, and potentially a trampling of the First Amendment. The Justice Department, now serving a successor administration, has not publicly explained why Apple was being ordered to hand over subpoenaed data. The department has also not explained why the request was so broad, who approved it, and what was being investigated. Former Attorney General William Barr told Politico during an interview on Friday that while he was attorney general, he was “not aware of any congressman’s records being sought in a leak case.” He added that Trump never encouraged him to zero in on the Democratic lawmakers. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has said something similar about being unaware of the moves (CNN). Lawmakers want to know if the top law enforcement officials in the department for four years were truly unaware of the subpoenas to Apple, who else may have been targeted and who inside the government reviewed the information disclosed by the tech giant in the context of a government search for leaks. Apple and other tech giants such as Google and Microsoft are in an uncomfortable position between law enforcement, the courts and the customers whose privacy they have promised to protect. The number of government and court-ordered requests for data has soared in recent years to thousands a week, according to The New York Times. Left holding the rubble is Garland, whose department continued some of the sleuthing after Biden became president (The New York Times). The Hill: Garland sparks anger with willingness to side with Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN on Sunday that subpoenaing tech companies for account data of lawmakers, their staffs and family members was a step that “goes even beyond Richard Nixon,” adding, “Richard Nixon had an enemies list. This is about undermining the rule of law.” The Speaker said a Justice Department probe into the matter is “not a substitute for what we must do in the Congress,” adding that the House would investigate. 
© Getty Images > The tax man cometh? ProPublica’s recent report based on confidential tax returns describing how some of the wealthiest Americans pay zero in federal taxes set members of Congress on edge. So did a Sunday front-page New York Times article focused on how private equity firms and their employees and partners avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes each year, in part because the IRS, outgunned and outlobbied, does not audit private equity interests aggressively. The controversy about how the wealthiest corporations and individuals are able to dodge the IRS, either under law and advantageous loopholes or because agency auditors are poorly trained and understaffed to deal with complex firms, is animating members of Congress. “If you’re a wealthy cheat in a partnership, your odds of getting audited are slightly higher than your odds of getting hit by a meteorite,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said during a hearing last week. “For the sake of fairness and for the sake of the budget it makes a lot more sense to go after cheating by the big guys than focus on working people,” he added. As The Hill’s Naomi Jagoda reports, Republican lawmakers are critical of Biden’s push to increase IRS resources to catch the wealthiest and most sophisticated tax dodgers. The New York Times reports that the White House is “already backing down from some of its most ambitious proposals” to increase the IRS budget. GOP lawmakers, eager to blame the agency, also howl that ProPublica obtained private tax data about billionaires’ tax avoidance. > U.S. ambassador vacancies: The Hill Brett Samuels pulls back the curtain following the G-7 summit on the range of top diplomatic posts abroad that have no U.S. ambassador nominated or confirmed five months after Biden took office. > Lobbying & ethics: White House counselor Steve Ricchetti and his brother, Jeff Ricchetti, a Washington lobbyist for various corporate interests, serve as an early test of how far Biden will go to make good on his promise to untangle the murky ethics practices often associated with the Trump administration. Steve Ricchetti first served in the White House under former President Clinton. The firm Jeff Ricchetti founded with his brother has reported making $820,000 in the first three months of this year, the most recent federal filings available. That represented nearly five times more than it made in the same period last year. Four of his contracts have him in contact with Biden’s office and four others involve lobbying Cabinet-level agencies (The New York Times). ***** CONGRESS: Congress returns in full this week with the future of the Biden agenda on the line as questions swirl around the future of a potential infrastructure package after a group of bipartisan senators reached an agreement late last week. Lawmakers are hitting a crucial stretch ahead of the July 4 recess, with the hourglass running low on possible accords on an infrastructure blueprint and a police reform bill. For now, most of the attention is on the former, with senators of the so-called G-20 attempting to hammer out a deal with buy-in from party leaders and rank-and-file members. However, pressure is building for Biden himself, as The Hill’s Amie Parnes writes. Throughout his presidential campaign, Biden touted his ability to work with Republicans — a claim that has been in short supply during the opening months of his presidency as an infrastructure agreement on all sides remains at large and very few priorities have earned GOP support. “Yes the Republicans are obstructionists, but I think so much of Biden’s legacy in the White House is tied to whether or not he can strike these kinds of deals,” one Democratic strategist told The Hill. “This was the basis of his campaign: to move Washington along again.” Niall Stanage: The Memo: Democratic tensions will only get worse as the left loses patience. On the right, all eyes are on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) amid speculation that he could back the $1.2 trillion package laid out by the bipartisan group, which includes $579 billion in new money, a possibility that could toss a wrench into Democratic plans. Sources tell The Hill’s Alexander Bolton that the Kentucky Republican remains open to supporting a package and that the GOP leader is essentially daring Biden to oppose the proposal. They add that McConnell is counting on there not being enough political momentum in the Democratic caucus to pass both the emerging bill and a larger one through reconciliation in the same month. “The question is whether Democrats are willing to swallow that and that’s unclear at this point,” one GOP aide said. NBC News: In the Democratic Senate, the path to making law still goes through McConnell. The Hill: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) says an infrastructure bill won't include a proposed gas tax increase or seek to undo the 2017 GOP tax reform law. Politico: Why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is not sweating White House's infrastructure dance with the GOP. 
© Getty Images Outside of concerns surrounding McConnell, Democrats are also facing issues within their own ranks as progressives continue to ratchet up the pressure on Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and refuse to believe their hopes of eliminating the filibuster are over. As The Hill’s Hanna Trudo writes, it remains an open question within progressive circles how to best deal with Manchin specifically, as he already indicated he won’t jettison the filibuster and back the Democrats’ voting reform bill known as the For the People Act. However, activists are looking beyond him and at other centrist members they can call out for standing in the way of pushing through the left-wing agenda. The Hill: Pelosi: “I don't give up on Joe Manchin.” The New York Times: What drives Manchin? Frustrated Democrats can look to West Virginia. The Hill: Democrats mull overhaul of sweeping election bill. The New York Times: In Congress, Republicans shrug at warnings of democracy in peril. More in Congress: Pelosi on Sunday indicated that she is delaying any decision on creating a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol after House Democratic members asked her to give the Senate another chance to pass a bill creating a commission to do so (CNN). … British diplomats are pitching U.S. lawmakers on trade as the Biden administration slow-walks discussions around a bilateral trade agreement. The British Embassy in Washington plans to distribute reports to every member of Congress detailing how the U.S.-U.K. trade relationship impacts their constituents amid an effort to secure a new trade accord (The Hill). | 
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