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Meet the Senate aide with a $44,000 taxpayer-funded commute

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The top aide to Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas charged $44,000 to taxpayers over the past two years in commuting expenses between Washington and Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lives, according to public records.

The reimbursements paid to Brent Robertson are legal and comply with congressional rules governing expense reimbursements, according to experts who reviewed his arrangement, but they also said it was highly unusual and at odds with the intent behind those rules. Typically senior congressional aides are stationed either in Washington or their employer’s home state.

Not so for Robertson, Marshall’s longtime chief of staff, who bought a home about 190 miles from Washington in March 2024.

Between April of that year and the following September, he took 11 trips labeled “Lynchburg VA to Washington DC and Return” and got $16,000 back in expenses from the government, according to Senate expense records. The expenses covered “incidentals,” “transportation” and a “per diem,” which is not usually taxed.

Between October of last year and this past March, Robertson took 15 trips with the same label and got an additional $28,000 in expenses back. He secured a per diem payment of $10,000 for one trip to D.C. between Jan. 14 and Jan. 23, coinciding with the presidential inauguration.

Stanley Brand, an attorney who served as House general counsel under Speaker Tip O’Neill, said it appeared to be “a big, wide loophole” and said he had “never” heard of a similar arrangement.

“What if everybody decided to do that, let their staff live far away from their location, and then just charge it off to the government?” Brand said after reviewing the arrangement at Blue Light News’s request.

Robertson declined to comment. Neither Marshall’s office or other experts, including a Senate Democratic aide familiar with official reimbursements, could point to another case where a senior congressional staffer lived outside the Washington area or their employer’s home state and expensed travel costs in this way.

Payton Fuller, a spokesperson for Marshall, said the senator is permitted under Senate rules to designate a remote duty station for his employees, which would allow them to expense work trips to Washington. Marshall’s office shared documentation showing Robertson changing his duty station to Lynchburg before charging the trip expenses.

“After a gang shooting struck his wife’s vehicle outside their D.C. condo, Brent and his family made the decision last year to move to Virginia,” Fuller said in a statement. “Like dozens of other chiefs of staff who have duty stations outside of D.C., and in full accordance and approval of Senate ethics, rules, and guidelines, Brent is reimbursed for official travel to and from his home and duty station in Virginia.”

She declined to comment when asked whether Robertson, who is separately on track to earn more than $220,000 in salary this year, intends to keep charging regular travel to and from his Virginia home to Marshall’s official expense account.

The Republican and Democratic spokespeople for the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees the chamber’s personnel practices, declined to comment.

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, interim vice president of policy and government affairs at the nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, questioned the arrangement after being briefed on the expenses. Robertson’s use of official funds, he said in an interview, “appears as though it’s purely personal, which is not what those funds are supposed to be used for.”

Senate expense rules prohibit spending taxpayer funds for personal use, and Hedtler-Gaudette said the expenses “violate the spirit” of those guidelines. “It would be one thing if he was traveling to Kansas because that’s the state that his boss is the senator from,” he said.

He also raised the concern that arrangements like Robertson’s, that “stretch the definition of what a duty station is and encompass the personal home of every staffer,” could proliferate.

Robertson’s expenses were paid out of Marshall’s Official Personnel and Office Expense Account, a $4 million annual allowance that encompasses staff salaries, representational costs and other office expenses. Marshall has spoken out against federal employees doing remote work and sponsored legislation to curtail the practice.

“I want to make it clear, I’m against teleworking from home,” he said last year. “I’m just against it overall at the government level.”

Robertson’s decision to live in Lynchburg and seek travel expenses back and forth is further complicated by the fact that he continued to own a Washington condo that he claimed as his primary residence until it was sold in May, according to D.C. property tax records. Publicly available copies of his tax bill show that lowered his property tax bills by hundreds of dollars during the period he was claiming travel expenses to and from Lynchburg.

After Blue Light News inquired about Robertson claiming a “homestead” tax deduction, Fuller said a “delay in processing” led to the error and that the “issue has been resolved.” Robertson, she said, recently paid about $700 in back taxes and fees owed to the D.C. government.

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Congress

Senate Republicans release subpoenas sought by Jack Smith during Trump probe

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Senate Republicans aren’t standing down in their investigation into the tactics Biden-era special counsel Jack Smith deployed as part of his probe into President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results.

Still smarting from recent revelations Smith obtained phone records for several GOP members of Congress around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol, Republican senators gathered Wednesday to announce the release of nearly 200 subpoenas Smith issued as part of his inquiry.

Smith’s team requested communications with media companies — including conservative stalwarts Fox News and Newsmax — and correspondences with senior White House advisers — like Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino. Investigators sought information regarding fundraising and financial data for conservatives and conservative groups.

Calling the Smith investigation worse than the 1970s political scandal that followed the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters and ultimately toppled Richard Nixon, GOP senators at their press conference demanded accountability for the former Biden administration.

“We should have Watergate style hearings on this for months,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). “If we’re ever going to root this out, we have to be serious about it, and consequences have to follow: resignations, firings, criminal prosecutions. You simply can’t in this country use the justice system to throw people in jail because they have a red jersey on or a blue jersey on.”

Trump has come under fire for politicizing the Justice Department and encouraging Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after his adversaries. In recent weeks, New York Attorney General Letitia James — who brought a civil fraud case against the president — was indicted for mortgage fraud; former FBI director James Comey was charged with lying to Congress; and former national security adviser John Bolton was accused of mishandling classified documents.

But Trump and allies are casting Smith’s investigation as an example of the political weaponization of President Joe Biden’s DOJ.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, argued that the massive trove of documents revealed a “Biden administration enemies list.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) accused D.C. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg of printing subpoenas at Smith’s behest “like the placemats at Denny’s, one after the other.”

Senators also suggested the House should consider impeaching Boasberg, renewing calls for the judge’s removal for ruling against the president in a deportation case earlier this year.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is running point on the Smith investigation alongside Johnson, called the special counsel’s investigation “the vehicle by which FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.”

In a statement, Lanny Breuer, a lawyer for Smith, reiterated that the former special counsel was open to sharing details of his investigation with Congress.

“As we informed congressional leaders last week, Jack is happy to discuss his work as Special Counsel and answer any questions at a public hearing just like every other Special Counsel investigating a president before him has done,” Breuer said. “We hope the House and Senate Judiciary Committees will agree so the American people can hear directly from him. Name the time and place. Jack will be there.”

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Senate votes to continue Biden-era owl-killing plan

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The Senate on Wednesday shot down legislation to stop a Biden-era plan encouraging the killing of one species of owl to save another.

The fight became bitter at times, pitting Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy against some of his colleagues and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who support the killings.

Kennedy forced a vote on a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to nix a Fish and Wildlife Service plan to save the native and critically endangered northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest by killing non-native barred owls. The legislation failed 25-72.

“I can’t think of a rule … that better demonstrates the arrogance, the hubris, of the federal administrative state,” Kennedy said from the Senate floor before the vote, flanked by posters of owls and the rifle-carrying cartoon character Elmer Fudd. “This regulation is stupid and we will live to regret it.”

The Congressional Review Act makes it easier for lawmakers to undo administration actions. Republicans have used it repeatedly against Biden rules.

Kennedy said Burgum called him last week urging the senator to withdraw his resolution. Kennedy refused, saying the secretary should “call somebody who cared what he thought.”

Kennedy in recent days repeatedly deployed his signature rhetorical barbs against Burgum and the Biden rule. He described the barred owl as having “very soulful eyes” and said Burgum was “mad as a mama wasp.” Kennedy also said the administration was using DEI for owls.

The Trump administration is supporting the Biden-era action under pressure from loggers, who say scrapping the owl-killing rule could affect existing land-use plans — and, in turn, jeopardize GOP efforts to increase logging.

Advocates have been split. Some animal rights advocates have sided with Kennedy, while other environmentalists have pointed to protecting the endangered spotted owl.

Similar divisions were evident among senators and went well beyond party lines.

“Killing a half-billion owls seems like a crazy thing for the government to be doing,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who voted for Kennedy’s resolution.

But Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who voted against it, observed, “The Trump administration agrees with the Biden administration on this — how rare is that on this strategy? We’ve heard a lot from timber and some other folks.”

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Republicans are growing tired of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s shutdown attacks

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is on the warpath against her own party’s handling of the government shutdown. And her fellow Republicans are increasingly calling her out.

The firebrand three-term lawmaker, long an ally of President Donald Trump, has distanced herself from Republican leadership in recent months. And as the shutdown drags on, Greene’s loud — and usually lonely — dissent risks fracturing Republicans’ efforts to present a united front and pressure Democrats into caving on funding the government.

“Don’t spend much time worrying about [what] Marjorie is saying,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday.

While a few other Republicans have criticized the party’s approach to the shutdown, Greene has been the loudest and most prominent detractor. She’s focused on expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies — which Democrats have made their central demand — and accused her party of ignoring the issue.

“Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!” she wrote in a social media post in early October.

Republicans have continually indicated they’ll negotiate on health care premiums only after the shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson has tried to brush off Greene’s attacks and defuse the tension, telling reporters that GOP-led conversations on health care are happening in other channels.

“Bless her heart, that’s an absurd statement,” he told CNN when asked last week to comment on Greene’s assertion that the Republicans were “sitting on the sidelines” on health care.

Greene has only ramped up her critiques of the speaker and his team, with the shutdown now well into its fourth week, writing on X on Tuesday that Johnson “said he’s got ideas and pages of policy ideas and committees of jurisdiction are working on it, but he refused to give one policy proposal to our GOP conference on our own conference call.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) on BLN late Tuesday called on Greene to put her own health care plan forward — and to stop attacking her party.

“I like her, she came out to Ohio a few times,” he said. “She’s certainly able to write a bill herself. Like if this is something she’s passionate about, put pen to paper, write a bill. Present an option. Don’t just criticize what other people are doing.”

Greene’s disagreement with Republicans stretches beyond the shutdown. She broke party ranks by calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocidein July and was one of just a handful of Republicans to sign a discharge petition from Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that would force a floor vote on the Epstein files.

Greene’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the party, Cruz said, is moving on.

“Suddenly, Marjorie is for massive government spending and taxes and she’s for open borders and amnesty. Ok fine,” he said Wednesday. “That is not where the American people are. Where the American people are, is real simple. We’re on day 29 of the stupidest shutdown.”

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