Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada appears to have lost a spot helming President Donald Trump's reelection campaign in the state after comments he made last month about the impeachment inquiry.
Amdoei, who chaired Trump's campaign in Nevada in 2016, said Wednesday that he had been approached by Trump's team earlier this year about taking on the job again in 2020 and said he'd be happy to. He said the campaign asked him for a statement that would be released when the announcement was made, but that was the last he heard from the campaign.
Trump's campaign announced Tuesday that the state's Republican former attorney general and top Republicans in the state Legislature would chair the president's Nevada team.
Amodei had to clarify his remarks last month when he was asked on a phone call with reporters about the impeachment inquiry and said, "Let's put it through the process and see what happens." After calls from GOP leaders and posts on Facebook that called him a "traitor," Amodei said he did not support the impeachment process but wanted House committees to investigate a whistleblower's complaint that touched off the process.
Asked Wednesday why he was not chairing the Trump campaign, the four-term congressman said in a statement, "Your guess is as good as mine."
"I can only assume that a fake news story from a few weeks ago has obviously created some discomfort for them, so they acted accordingly," he said. "In today's political climate, even if a story is proven incorrect, there clearly isn't any margin for even a wrongful claim."
Trump's campaign did not return a message seeking comment Wednesday.
Amodei said Michael McDonald, the chairman of Nevada's Republican Party, told him Wednesday morning that he "also knew nothing about the change" until minutes before the new campaign headquarters opened in Reno" on Tuesday night.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.
While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.
At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.
He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.
In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.
The Wall Street Journal first reported about the U.S. intelligence determination.
FILE - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny gestures while speaking during his interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 18, 2017. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, in February of 2024. An official says the U.S. intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death or directly ordered it. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
