GOP new name: POH (Party of
Hypocrites)
POH Platform if one is needed
(As if we didn't already know)
Timeline to introduce the three topics that
follow:
• March 4th: Trump tweets “Obama wiretapped” Trump Tower.
• March 10th: White House lawyer Ezra Cohen-Watnick canned by NSC chief.
• March 13th or 14th: Trump overrules NSC chief and says Cohen-Watnick stays.
• March 15th: Trump says new info coming.
• March 21st: Rep. Devin Nunes (House Intel Chair) called to White House
to review “new info” which by some accounts came from Cohen-Watnick and maybe
one or two others who had access to the same info in a secure location and got
Nunes into the W/H grounds and facility to read it.
• March 30th: First reported by The Wall
Street Journal (also from Vanity Fair here) Michael Flynn has informed FBI and congressional investigators
(House and Senate) involved in the ongoing DOJ inquiry into Russia’s meddling
in the 2016 election that he would be willing to appear before the House and
Senate intelligence committees on the condition that he is shielded from future
prosecution – that is he is granted immunity.
(I Note: To date, his request has not been granted and it seems too early also.
Three topics of interest to this subject
– the first part is from Bill Moyers here – Which I Call: “Watergate (c. 2017) Redux: Or, here we
go again.”
It’s
déjà vu all over again.
As
the Trump Russia story continues to stutter forward, comparisons to Watergate
are everywhere — and justifiably so. The revelations and denials, the slow
unraveling of deception, the critical role of a free and independent press
challenging the cover-up and digging for the truth are all very familiar, especially
to those of us who actually were in Washington back during those peculiar days
and nights of Richard Nixon.
But
another inside-the-Beltway, historic parallel struck me last week when reports
emerged of House Intelligence Committee
Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) suddenly jumping from his Uber car into another
and covertly racing to the White House grounds, where he met with who-knows-who
about who-knows-what. (The New York Times reported that
White House officials Ezra Cohen-Watnick
and Michael Ellis gave Nunes access to “intelligence reports that showed
President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign
surveillance by American spy agencies.” Early Thursday evening, The Washington Post added to
the list John Eisenberg, legal
adviser to the National Security Council.)
When
it comes to paralleling Nunes and his car switcheroo, there hasn’t been such
noteworthy bolting from a vehicle in the DC since a South
American stripper named Fanne Foxe (AKA: (aka Fanny Foxx and Fannie Foxx) dashed
from the limousine of House Ways and
Means Chairman Wilbur
Mills (D-AR) and
jumped into the Tidal Basin.
That
was in 1974, just a couple of months after Nixon’s resignation. Foxe and Rep.
Mills were having an affair and soon after his companion’s 2 a.m. dip, Mills,
who was considered by many to be the most powerful man on Capitol Hill, had to
give up his chairmanship. Foxe had her 15 minutes of fame, during which her
exotic dancer sobriquet was changed from “The Argentine Firecracker” to “The
Tidal Basin Bombshell.”
No
word as to what Rep. Nunes’ stripper name will be, but I’m open to suggestions.
Certainly Devin “D for Dumb” Nunes is a real possibility. Which brings to mind
another congressional highlight of 1974, and I’m not talking about the superb
work of the House Judiciary Committee passing articles of impeachment against
Nixon. It also was the year that a start-up magazine, New Times, made a
splash with its cover story naming, “The 10 Dumbest Members of Congress.”
It was written by Nina Totenberg, now
NPR’s star legal affairs correspondent.
The second part is also from Bill Moyers here – Call this part: “A bit of treason in the Air (or so
it seems).”
FBI
director and NSA testimony before the House Intelligence Committee was
proof positive of the absolute need for both a special
prosecutor and an independent, bipartisan commission with subpoena
power to conduct a full investigation of the Trump campaign’s connections with
Russian intelligence — as well as Russia’s multipronged attack on our elections
and Trump’s business connections with that country’s oligarchs.
And
it’s proof more than ever that even if we get that prosecutor and inquiry, a free
and independent press may be the only real way to ever get to the bottom of
what ranking committee member Adam Schiff said may represent “one of the most shocking betrayals
of our democracy in history.”
Just
as FBI Director James Comey
officially revealed for the very first time (finally!) that indeed since late July the
FBI has been investigating whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with
Russia’s interference with our elections, Republicans, led by committee chair
and Trump enabler Devin Nunes did their best to blow smoke aimed at deflecting
attention from what Trump and his team may or not have done. Instead, they
asked question after question about the illegality of leaks of confidential
material to the media — in particular, leaks about former Trump national
security adviser Mike Flynn’s contacts with Russia.
(I Note: There
was agreement that leaks are illegal but no one mentioned that it’s the media’s
complete and constitutionally guaranteed right to report on them. Nor was
anyone asked how many times GOP members of the committee have done their own
leaking.)
Trump
did what he could to distract as well, firing a volley of five heated early-morning tweets just
before testimony began, and reiterating claims that disgruntled Democrats
manufactured charges about Russia’s involvement in the election and contact
with Trump aides. There were more during
the hearing itself — from Trump or someone at the White House tweeting in his
name — twisting the day’s testimony by Comey and National Security Agency (NSA) chief Admireal Mike Rogers.
Bizarrely, the two men then were placed in the position of having to rebut
Trump’s allegations while they still were in the witness seats, correcting and
putting the president in his place — virtually in real time.
Not
only did Comey verify that the FBI was actively investigating Trump and his
associates, he also flatly denied on his behalf and of the DOJ that prior to
January’s inauguration that President Obama had ordered eavesdropping on Trump
Tower. Under normal circumstances this would seem to neutralize yet another of
Trump’s wacky tweet storms, this one from two weeks ago, but as we’ve learned
so well, the truth has never been a barrier to the social media madness of King
Donald I.
The third part is this update (April 1,
2017) from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) the
ranking DEM on the House Intel Committee: Call it: “I read the same documents
and see no diff that Nunes thinks he read.”
Washington (Huffington Post) – The top Democrat
on a US congressional committee investigating alleged ties between Russia and
Donald Trump's presidential campaign faulted the White House for withholding
until Friday information it said it had shared last week with his Republican
counterpart, saying in part:
“Today
my staff director and I reviewed materials at the White House. It was
represented to me that these are precisely the same materials that were
provided to the chairman over a week ago. While I cannot discuss the content of
the documents, if the White House had any concern over these materials, they
should have been shared with the full committees in the first place as a part
of our ordinary oversight responsibilities. Nothing I could see today warranted
a departure from the normal review procedures, and these materials should now
be provided to the full membership of both committees. The White House has yet
to explain why senior White House staff apparently shared these materials with
but one member of either committee, only for their contents to be briefed back
to the White House,” Schiff concluded and only after he was finally being
allowed to view the materials more than a week after they were apparently shown
to Nunes.
According
to unconfirmed media reports, the White House shared some information it has in
the case with Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, but not with his counterpart Schiff or other members of the panel. The
documents pertain to investigations underway in Congress and by the FBI into
allegations that Moscow tried to swing November's presidential election in
Trump's favor, and whether some in the Republican's inner circle colluded with
Russia.
The FBI, in an extraordinary admission earlier in the month, confirmed
publicly last week it was probing the
possibility of such collusion.
We have a very long road to travel and it's not pretty, believe me. Stay tuned.
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