Trump Spends $8 Million on Ads Assailing Biden: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee announced Friday that they are spending a combined $10 million on ads attacking Joe Biden over Ukraine and the House Democrats for beginning an impeachment inquiry of the president.

Trump’s campaign will spend $8 million on a 30-second ad that includes a recording of Biden recalling how, when he was vice president, the U.S. threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine unless the country fired its prosecutor. The ad says Democrats are trying to steal the next election by considering impeachment over Trump’s request to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son.

The ad will run on national cable and digital platforms from Sunday through next Sunday.

The Republican National Committee is making a separate $2 million ad buy aimed at House Democrats who campaigned as moderates willing to work with Trump on issues like infrastructure but now support investigating his actions. The ad, which doesn’t mention impeachment, will run in 25 to 50 House districts, the RNC said.

Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement that Trump, “in a panic about holding onto power is launching an unprecedented general election attack ad campaign before the first Democratic primary has been held.”

“Donald Trump is terrified of Joe Biden,” she added, “because the vice president would beat him like a drum.”

Warren Asks SEC to Toughen Ratings Regulations (4:12 p.m.)

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to toughen regulations on rating companies, warning that federal agencies aren’t doing enough to protect investors and American families from being misled about the risks associated with financial products such as loan securitizations.

In a letter dated Thursday and released on Friday, Warren called on SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to “do your job” and take action against the “perverse incentives” of rating companies like S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Corp., that continue to “rubber stamp risky products” with little oversight and few regulations.

The Massachusetts senator has been one of the most ardent advocates of financial regulation in Congress. She criticized the SEC for not implementing reforms that were put in place in 2008 -- when inflated ratings contributed to the financial crisis -- and pressed for details about the steps the SEC has taken to address the issue in the last decade.

Warren said she’s especially concerned about the lack of response by federal agencies to the increase of collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs, securities backed by a pool of debt. That market has more than doubled in size since 2008 to around $700 billion. The lack of protections for lenders and investors create a significant risk for the U.S. economy, Warren said.

Warren said the issuer-pays model, where bond-issuers hire ratings companies, creates a conflict of interest by giving incentives to ratings companies to assign higher credit ratings on riskier assets in order to compete for clients with rivals. She called on the SEC to recommend a new pricing model. -- Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

Gabbard Says She Supports Impeachment Inquiry (2:44 p.m.)

Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard says she now supports the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump after reviewing the transcript of his call with the president of Ukraine.

The Hawaii congresswoman initially opposed pursuing impeachment because she believed it would further divide the country, but in a statement Friday she said not moving forward would “set a very dangerous precedent.”

“If we allow the president to abuse his or her power, then our society will rot from top to bottom,” she said. “We will turn into a banana republic, where people in positions of power -- from the president all the way down to the traffic cop -- will feel it’s okay to abuse their power with no consequences.”

The statement was in response to the release Thursday by the White House of an unidentified whistle-blower’s complaint that said Trump had pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden in connection with his son Hunter’s business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company. The document’s disclosure came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday that her chamber would begin an impeachment inquiry of Trump.

Gabbard qualified for the fourth Democratic debate in Ohio in October, but has consistently polled in the low single digits. She currently is polling at 0.9%, according to the RealClearPolitics average. -- Emma Kinery

October Democratic Debate Will Be One Night (2:00 p.m.)

The Democratic presidential debate in October will be for just one night, according to CNN, which is hosting the event with the New York Times.

The fourth debate will be on Oct. 15th at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. Twelve candidates are expected to take part: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Castro, Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer.

All, except Gabbard and Steyer, appeared in the three previous debates, which capped the stage to 10 candidates a night.

Candidates have until Oct. 1 to meet the participation qualifications of 2% support in four polls approved by the Democratic National Committee and a minimum of 130,000 unique donors, with at least 400 donors per state from 20 states.

CNN’s Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper will moderate the event with Marc Lacey, the Times’s national editor. -- Emma Kinery

Warren Plan Aims for More Tech-Savvy Congress (9:08 a.m.)

When Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill last year, lawmakers questioning him were roundly criticized for their ignorance of basic social media and technology.

Elizabeth Warren says she has a plan for that.

The Democratic presidential candidate rolled out a proposal Friday to re-establish the Office of Technology Assessment, which, from 1972 to 1995, provided members of Congress and their staffs with analysis of complex scientific and technology issues.

Warren said the move would allow Congress to make decisions without relying on lobbyists, who are at the core of her anti-corruption efforts. Lawmakers, she said are increasingly being asked “to climb steep learning curves on these technical subjects without much help other than from corporate lobbyists whose goal isn’t to find the right policy answer but rather to secure the most profitable outcome for their companies.”

A Warren administration also would increase funding for agencies that provide support and information to lawmakers by creating the Lobbying Defense Trust Fund, financed by taxing those who engage in “excessive lobbying.” She also vowed to increase pay for congressional staffers to competitive salaries as a motive to attract and retain talent in those positions. -- Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

COMING UP

Democratic candidates will attend a presidential forum hosted by the 2 million member Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles Oct. 4 and 5. So far, Warren, Joe Biden, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris are set to attend.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union will host forums in Iowa and Michigan with Democratic presidential candidates on Sept. 29 and Oct. 13. Biden, Booker, Warren, Harris, Sanders, Michael Bennet and Pete Buttigieg have confirmed they will attend.

--With assistance from Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou, Emma Kinery and Tyler Pager.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Allison in Washington DC at ballison14@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann

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