Politico

As the House barrels closer to an impeachment vote, Democrats are vowing to defend Biden to the end — Joe Biden, that is, and not Hunter.

Top Democrats are coalescing around a strategy to oppose the GOP’s impeachment inquiry: cleaving off the son’s conduct from his father’s. They think they have the facts to back them up, since the probe has yet to find any evidence directly linking Hunter Biden’s business dealings to Joe.

“Our job, or my job, will be to remind the American people of that over and over again — that Hunter Biden is not the administration,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), the party’s top member on the subpanel tasked with investigating GOP claims of federal government bias.

“You can’t impeach Hunter Biden, but he will be prosecuted,” seconded Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the party’s top member on the Oversight Committee.

Democrats don’t plan to even try to defend Hunter Biden’s conduct during his time serving on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma. That arrangement, Republicans say, allowed him to trade on his father’s influence at the time as vice president.

Instead, the president’s party is keen to keep Joe as far away as possible from the drip-drip of damaging information coming out about his son.

“Hunter Biden may have very well done some improper things. He’s a disturbed man. Almost every president has had problematic family members,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the party’s top member on the Judiciary Committee.

As part of their anti-impeachment messaging, House Democrats also plan to cast Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) as the real leader of Republicans — not Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Recall that former President Donald Trump talked with Greene about impeaching Biden at his New Jersey club recently, as POLITICO first reported.

Greene is a member of the Oversight Committee, so she will play a big role in any impeachment process. Of course, she’s also Democrats’ favorite bogeywoman these days.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries illustrated how the Hunter-Joe split will play out by saying in an interview that “it’s an illegitimate impeachment inquiry. There’s not a shred of evidence that President Biden engaged in any wrongdoing.”

Left unsaid: Hunter, who’s still in real legal peril over potential gun-related charges, may be a different story.

During House Democrats’ closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday morning, Jeffries was optimistic that Biden’s impeachment would provide his party an opportunity to put the GOP on defense.

The New York Democrat told his members that impeachment would provide “another opportunity to illustrate [GOP] extremism,” according to a person in the room who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

September on Capitol Hill has gone from crazy to flat-out insane.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement yesterday declaring an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden added new gravity to the nasty fights already roiling the House, with a government shutdown 18 days away and a growing cadre of conservative hard-liners threatening McCarthy’s gavel — to say nothing about the implications for 2024.

If McCarthy thought the impeachment gambit would settle any of the uncertainty surrounding those clashes, well, it’s done the exact opposite — triggering a bevy of new questions about what’s next.

Playbook spent the past day trying to flesh out some of those questions. Some of them have answers, some of them don’t, and some of them have even befuddled McCarthy’s investigators — who had barely a few hours’ heads-up about yesterday’s announcement and are still strategizing about their next steps.

What are Republicans trying to prove?

That Biden was on the take. The centerpiece of the probe, as laid out in McCarthy’s public statement and a letter to his members, involves unsubstantiated claims of bribery. It’s well documented that his son, Hunter, was paid millions by foreign companies while his dad was vice president. But Republicans have not turned up any evidence showing that the elder Biden personally profited or that he took any official action to benefit those who paid his family.

Making those links will be the top priority of the probe, we’re told, but it might not be the only priority: Republicans might still pursue other allegations against Biden, such as that he “weaponized” the Justice Department against Donald Trump — which McCarthy mentioned in the letter yesterday.

What’s the timeline?

Unclear. When Democrats targeted Trump for impeachment in 2019, they launched their probe at almost the exact same point in the year and wrapped it up with an impeachment vote just before Christmas. That rat-a-rat timeline was dictated by then-speaker Nancy Pelosi, who didn’t want her swing district members dealing with impeachment baggage during the 2020 midterms.

That turned out to be a grave political mistake, ending in a half-baked case that ultimately failed to convince the nation that Trump was dangerous and needed to be removed from office.

None other than Newt Gingrich told our colleagues recently that the impeachment of Bill Clinton that he presided over as speaker “failed to totally convince the American people” and offered a word of warning to his successors: “Go slow & be careful.”

Will there be public hearings?

Eventually. We’re told that, yes, Republicans expect they’ll eventually air their case before cameras as they try to convince Americans that their effort to remove Biden is justified.

First, however, we’re told that investigators currently intend to continue interviewing key witnesses in private, though nothing is final. It’s yet another shoe-on-the-other-foot moment for Republicans, who blasted Democrats during Trump’s 2019 impeachment for conducting closed-door depositions. This time around, they have a different view.

Will Republicans vote to formalize the inquiry?

That’s the plan. Back in 2019, McCarthy blasted Pelosi for refusing to formally authorize Trump’s impeachment inquiry with a House vote. Now McCarthy is doing exactly that, arguing he’s following Pelosi’s precedent. The political reasons for doing so are obvious: McCarthy doesn’t currently have the votes, senior Republicans tell us, and he’s keen to protect his swing district members from having to take a position.

Here’s the thing about the Pelosi precedent: House Democrats did, in fact, take a vote formalizing their inquiry five weeks after her initial announcement, which gave investigators time to gather additional evidence backing their quid-pro-quo allegations against Trump. We’re told by one senior GOP aide that McCarthy plans to do the same.

How is the White House going to handle this?

Very carefully. Just as McCarthy borrowed Pelosi’s playbook, the Biden White House could borrow Trump’s. As our Kyle Cheney wrote last night, the Justice Department back then determined that since the House hadn’t held a formal vote authorizing the probe, Trump and his aides were free to ignore Democrats’ impeachment subpoenas.

It’s a turnabout moment that staffers for McCarthy and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) anticipated back in 2019. McCarthy’s now chief of staff called it a “one-way ratchet,” meaning if one president ignored impeachment oversight, other presidents would follow. Jordan personally counseled Trump, unsuccessfully, against refusing to cooperate with the probe.

But tempting as it might be for Biden to tell the GOP to pound sand, he’s also facing tactical concerns. Already some impeachment-skeptical moderates are suggesting that a lack of White House cooperation on document and testimony requests could bring them around, and so a complete stonewall might well be counterproductive.

Will impeachment placate McCarthy’s conservative critics?

Sure doesn’t seem like it. For weeks, McCarthy’s inner circle privately talked about an impeachment inquiry as a sort of break-glass emergency measure that could mollify the right if the spending showdown went sideways.

Turns out that was wishful thinking. Just minutes after he announced the inquiry, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) went to the House floor to make the case for McCarthy’s potential removal, slamming the the inquiry as a “baby step” and vowing to start “every single day in Congress with the prayer, the pledge and the motion to vacate” if he doesn’t do the right’s bidding.

Gaetz isn’t alone. Other conservatives, including Reps. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas), have indicated that an impeachment probe won’t satisfy their thirst for spending cuts or a crackdown at the border.

Is there any way this doesn’t end in Biden’s impeachment?

Don’t count on it. McCarthy is privately trying to appease his unhappy centrist members by telling them that opening an inquiry is just that — an inquiry — and that doesn’t mean they’ll have to vote to actually impeach Biden someday.

Back in 2019, Jordan and his staff made fun of Pelosi when she made the exact same argument. One aide likened Pelosi’s decision to launch an impeachment probe to skydiving: Once you’re out of the plane, there’s no going back. Eventually you land in impeachment.

Any other scenario ignores the reality of 21st-century impeachment politics. Opening an inquiry then failing to follow through would be a major political boon to Biden — essentially, a tacit admission by the GOP that he’s innocent. And we wouldn’t be surprised if McCarthy uses that argument to squeeze moderates who currently see no evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors to back impeachment later on.

And if you’re expecting those moderates to withstand that pressure in order to save their own skin, that would be pitting hope against history. There’s a reason many House Republicans call centrist members “squishes” — they tend to fall in line. Facing down possible primary challenges and the ire of the base, senior Republicans think they’ll do just that.

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Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach President Joe Biden, including talking with a member of leadership in the lead up to Tuesday’s announcement authorizing a formal impeachment inquiry.

The former president has been speaking weekly with House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, who was the first member of Republican leadership to come out in support of impeachment. The two spoke Tuesday, the same day House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Republicans would be pursuing the inquiry, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

Stefanik has been a longtime Trump ally. She endorsed his comeback presidential bid before he made his official announcement and has been mentioned as a potential Trump VP pick should he win the GOP nomination.

On Sunday night, Trump had dinner at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), an ally of Trump and McCarthy. At the gathering, the topic of impeachment was discussed, according to a person familiar with the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A Trump spokesperson did not comment. The former president has not been shy about his belief that Biden should be impeached. Late last month he wrote on Truth Social: “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US.”

But the extent of his private involvement in encouraging House Republicans to plow forward with the process shows the influence he continues to wield inside the party as its likely presidential nominee. It could also spark further attacks from Biden’s camp that impeachment is being done merely to bloody him up before the election.

Trump was impeached twice by the Democratic-controlled House during his tenure — first, over his pressure campaign against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Biden, and later for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trump will be in Washington at the end of the week and is taping an interview with Megyn Kelly on Wednesday.

When Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to get to the small community of Haines, Alaska, last month, the state’s senior Republican senator privately hoped for bad travel karma.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski wanted Buttigieg to confront the same obstacles the residents of her state experience all the time.

And he did. Bad weather meant Buttigieg couldn’t take the usual quick plane ride from Juneau to Haines. Instead, he traveled aboard Plan B — an early morning, five-hour ferry ride along the state’s “marine highway.”

While on it, Murkowski made the case to him that Alaska’s tenuous transportation system needs federal support. She had a clear message: Alaska is unique. It can’t be treated like the other 49 states.

Buttigieg wasn’t the only Cabinet member to hear the mantra. Throughout August, nearly a dozen Cabinet and senior administration officials have made the long trek to the nation’s most northern state and the home of the Republican senator who has proven most likely to work with the president.

The list of travelers includes Attorney General Merrick Garland, HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, White House senior adviser Mitch Landrieu, Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau, and senior HHS administrator Tom Coderre, among others. The visitors all left their suits at home, donning polo shirts and rain jackets for their tours.

Alaska, while beautiful in the summer, is not exactly close to Washington D.C. But few senators are as critical to the Biden agenda as Murkowski. Her influence in the tightly controlled Senate has made her a magnet for top White House staff. And both she and her fellow Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, have used that newfound audience to their advantage, leaning on administration officials to take Alaska’s uniqueness seriously: far larger and far less populated than other states, with many communities that are not reachable by reliable internet, let alone roads.

On Monday, Murkowksi will reel in the biggest fish when President Joe Biden, on his way back from the G20 summit and Vietnam, will visit her state to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“People can be critical of me and say that I support too much of the Biden administration,” Murkowski said in an interview. “I have to work with whoever is president, I have to work with whoever the Cabinet officials are. I just can’t hold my breath and say, ‘Let’s wait it out for four years,’ because then the people in Alaska suffer.”

Early in the Biden administration, Murkowski and Sullivan were go-to votes when Democrats had to venture to the other side of the aisle. They were two of the four Republicans who backed Deb Haaland for Interior secretary, and two of the six Republicans to cross party lines for DHS’s Alejandro Mayorkas. Sullivan introduced Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at his hearing. Just last week, Murkowski and Sullivan saved the nomination of National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox.

Their willingness to help the administration has, in turn, given them influence. Two years ago, the administration pulled the nomination of Elizabeth Klein to be Interior’s deputy secretary after pushback from Murkowski. Earlier this year, the administration angered progressives and climate activists to approve the huge oil drilling project known as Willow, a priority Murkowski pushed with Biden for months.

But there are limits to Murkowski’s reach — and her courtship of Biden officials. The same day of the NLRB vote, the administration canceled oil and gas leases in the state’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, drawing the ire of both senators. Murkowski said she was given a head’s up on the decision but had no sway. There was no negotiation.

The 2017 GOP tax law had included the opening of ANWR, and Murkowski didn’t mince words about how she viewed the decision to undermine that policy.

“The law was pretty clear in 2017,” she said. She called the latest decision “unlawful.”

Late last year, the state elected Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, a moderate who met with several of the administration officials during their recent visits but who has criticized some of their decisions, including last week’s leasing announcement.

Inside the administration, White House officials view Alaska’s senators as Republicans who are willing to listen.

“President Biden promised to fight for all Americans — wherever they live, whatever their views are — and to find common ground with Republicans in Congress,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “He appreciates Sen. Murkowski’s willingness to work across the aisle, as well as Sen. Sullivan’s votes for priorities like infrastructure, and Rep. Peltola’s advocacy for Alaska.”

The Cabinet travel is not exclusively about courting the state’s delegation. It is part of Biden’s ongoing approach of working with lawmakers on the other side when possible, according to a person familiar with the outreach and granted anonymity to describe the relationship.

The rush of official travel up north last month is partially a result of a pandemic backlog and the good weather of August that makes it one of the best times to visit. Several of the visits fulfilled promises made during Senate confirmation to venture to the state. Sullivan asks all nominees to commit to visiting Alaska. Murkowski starts her confirmation conversations with a quiz about whether they’ve ever visited.

Murkowski argues that policymakers often cannot understand Alaska — one-fifth the size of the lower 48 states, but with fewer road miles than Connecticut — until they see it for themselves. In her eyes, getting up to Alaska is a means of proving their seriousness.

But a mere trip is not what Murkowksi is after. It’s the ear of the Cabinet member and the policies and regulations they can affect that she craves.

Buttigieg said “the right words in support of the Alaska Marine Highway System” ahead of the visit, Murkowski said, adding that the secretary was helpful in facilitating funding for the program that she secured in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“The way that he talked about the Marine Highway System after our five and a half hours on the ship was, ‘Wow, people need this in order to get to their medical appointments, in order to get their kids to school, in order to move their household goods when they’re in the military,’” Murkowski said.

In the same way that Buttigieg’s travel delays provided a window into the needs of the state, the remote nature of Alaska also dawned on Garland during his visit. After bad weather fouled up his visit to the village of Huslia, the attorney general spoke about the difficulties law enforcement officials have in addressing emergencies in a community that’s only accessible by plane or boat.

“We had a United States Marshals plane. We had a United States Air Force plane. And still, with the weather, we weren’t able to get there,” Garland said at an event in Anchorage. “I can’t imagine what would happen in the circumstance if there was an emergency in one of the villages without roads, how hard it would be to get there.”

Other visitors to Alaska last month include Small Business Administration Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman, HHS Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, National Park Service Director Charles Sams and Indian Health Service Director Roselyn Tso. Earlier this summer, Haaland, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and first lady Jill Biden paid visits to the state. In some cases, too many officials were in far-flung locations at the same time, and Murkowski missed some of them.

For Murkowski, it’s a beneficial political pipeline even if, in public, she tries to downplay the politics.

“I hope that they’re listening to me, and I would hope that they give me the courtesy of listening to me, because I have allowed myself an open mind to sit down with them even though we may disagree on certain policy issues,” Murkowski said.

“I’m sure it’s just my charming personality that attracts them all.”

Joe Biden publicly shook hands with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman at the G20 summit Saturday — after the president sustained a backlash last year for fist-bumping the crown prince, who U.S. intelligence believes ordered the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The leaders’ latest interaction came in New Delhi, India, as they announced their respective countries’ participation in an international infrastructure and economic partnership to promote the new India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

“This is a game-changing regional investment,” Biden said at the event, as he thanked the world leaders flanking him. Biden is expected to meet with bin Salman during the G20 summit, which runs through Sunday.

Khashoggi was an opinion journalist for the Post who often wrote columns critical of the Saudi government. In 2018, after entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, he was found dismembered. The CIA, under the Trump administration, released a report that found bin Salman ordered the killing.

Following Biden’s July 2022 meeting with MBS at Al Salam Royal Palace in Jeddah, which the president was partly using to raise U.S. energy priorities, Biden laughed off a reporter’s question about the fist-bump greeting between them.

Fred Ryan, The Washington Post’s publisher at the time, called the interaction “shameful.”

The continuing relationship between the two leaders has drawn fire from critics of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, which includes heavy religious restrictions, state-sanctioned torture and media repression.

Saudi Arabia and Russia both extended voluntary cuts to oil production through the end of the year on Tuesday, which drove a sharp spike in oil barrel prices to a peak not seen since last November. That tension could play into the 2024 U.S. presidential election if the cuts continue, given that energy policy and oil prices have been a dominant theme in political attacks of the Biden administration’s handling of the economy.

At the G20 event, Biden and bin Salman sat alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The economic partnership is seen as a counterweight to a Chinese-led infrastructure project, the New Silk Road, which stretches across Europe, Africa and Asia. Li Qiang, China’s premier and the country’s emissary at the summit, was not part of the G20 event.

“We aim to usher in a new era of connectivity with a railway, linked through ports connecting Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” the White House said in a release. “The United States underscores our unwavering commitment to pursuing transformative regional investments and working to build out this corridor together with our partners.”

President Joe Biden is facing continued low approval — including from his own party — in a new CNN poll released Thursday.

Sixty-seven percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning surveyed voters said the party should nominate someone other than Biden, with his job approval rating standing at just 39 percent among all Americans surveyed. And 58 percent said they believe that Biden’s policies have made economic conditions in the U.S. worse.

The results are consistent with other recent polling on Biden’s handling of the economy. Last month, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found 63 percent of surveyed Americans said they disapproved of Biden’s handling of the economy.

Biden was again confronted with widespread concerns over his age. Seventy-three percent of Americans said they’re seriously concerned that the 80-year-old Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence, and 76 percent were concerned about his ability to serve another full term as president if reelected.

In hypothetical head-to-head matchups with 2024 GOP challengers, Biden was statistically tied with one exception: former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley stood as the only Republican candidate to hold a lead over Biden, with 49 percent to Biden’s 43 percent.

Former President Donald Trump led Biden by one percentage point, with 47 percent to 46 percent. A Wall Street Journal poll last week found that if a matchup between the two candidates took place today, the two were even at 46 percent.

In the same poll, Trump continued to hold his position atop of the field of Republican presidential candidates. Fifty-two percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters supported Trump, compared with 18 percent who supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Behind DeSantis were former Vice President Mike Pence and Haley at 7 percent and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at 6 percent.

The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from Aug. 25-31 among a random national sample of 1,503 adults drawn from a probability-based panel. Results among the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 points.

Vice President Kamala Harris said she believes that those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, including former President Donald Trump, should be held accountable.

“I spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor,” Harris said in an interview with The Associated Press Wednesday while in Jakarta, Indonesia for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. “I believe that people should be held accountable under the law. And when they break the law, there should be accountability.”

When asked if the same standard applies to the former president, Harris said, “Everyone has their right to their day in court. But absolutely people should be held accountable.”

Federal prosecutors indicted Trump last month for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. They also accused the former president of trying to exploit the violent Jan. 6, 2021 assault on Congress to continue his effort to cling to power.

Enrique Tarrio, the national leader of the Proud Boys on Jan. 6, on Tuesday was given the longest Jan. 6 sentence of 22 years in prison for masterminding a seditious conspiracy aimed at derailing the transfer of power from Trump to Biden.

“Let the evidence, the facts, take it where it may,” Harris said in the interview.

President Joe Biden and Harris have been vocal when it comes to holding those involved in the riot accountable, but have been less outspoken about Trump’s legal woes. In 2022, exactly a year after the riot, Biden declared that the former president bore “singular responsibility” for the insurrection attempt.

President Joe Biden is building up his 2024 campaign with a handful of new senior aides focused on communications, policy and his surrogate operation.

The staffing moves, which the Biden campaign and Democratic National Committee officials shared exclusively with POLITICO, are the latest sign that the reelection effort is gradually ramping up. Last month, Biden’s team officially opened its headquarters in Wilmington, Del., and launched a $25 million ad campaign.

The hires also demonstrate the extent to which the Biden campaign is working closely with the DNC.

Ammar Moussa, the DNC’s national press secretary and rapid response director, will be brought on to serve as the director of rapid response for Biden’s reelection bid. María Carolina Casado, who goes by Maca and is the DNC’s director of Hispanic media, is likewise taking on a role with that title for Biden’s campaign.

Grace Landrieu, who was previously director for economic policy and labor at the National Economic Council, will work as the Biden campaign’s policy director. Carla Frank, who was recently special assistant to the president and deputy political director at the White House, will be the director of the national advisory board and surrogate operations for the 2024 campaign.

“We are excited to continue building the talented and dedicated team who will help reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “Each of these impressive leaders bring a diverse and unique set of experiences that will help our campaign communicate and reach the voters we need to win next November.”

The DNC, meanwhile, is bringing on two aides to replace those departing for the Biden campaign. Marco Frieri, an economist and news commentator, will be the DNC’s new Hispanic media director. Sarafina Chitika, deputy communications director for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), will be the DNC’s national press secretary.

Biden has run what his advisers have said is a purposefully lean campaign at this early stage of the 2024 presidential election. He has been able to do that, in large part, by leaning heavily on a robust DNC.

President Joe Biden has nominated former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel, the White House announced Tuesday.

Lew, who served as White House chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration, would succeed Ambassador Tom Nides, who left the post in July. Lew also served as OMB director during the Clinton administration.

If Lew is confirmed by the Senate, he will come to one of the highest-profile U.S. ambassadorships, with the Biden administration pushing for Israel and Saudi Arabia — two of the biggest Middle East powers but longtime rivals — to normalize their relationship.

The effort to strengthen that historically fraught relationship comes after the Trump administration helped facilitate the “Abraham Accords,” normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

A normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful and wealthy Arab state, has the potential to reshape the region and boost Israel’s standing in significant ways. But brokering such a deal is a heavy lift as the kingdom has said it won’t officially recognize Israel before a resolution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lew is currently a managing partner at Lindsay Goldberg, a private equity firm, and a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. A spokesperson for Lew said he did not have any immediate comment on his nomination.

Democratic Majority for Israel President and CEO Mark Mellman said Lew would come to the posting “well-versed in the intricacies of international relations and the pressing issues facing Israel and the U.S.-Israel alliance.”

He also currently serves as chair of the board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, co-president of the board of the National Library of Israel USA and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Lew has also previously served as managing director and chief operating officer for two Citigroup business units. He was executive vice president and the chief operating officer of New York University and a professor of public administration in the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU.