Day 794 Monday March 11, 2019
602 Days to the 2020 election and 680 Days to Inauguration Day
The howls on the right are increasing to finish up the Mueller probe. There are mimes saying stuff like the only thing Congress is doing is spending money investigating one another.
Isn’t that interesting? (Okay, it’s not. But say it in a Church Lady voice and it gets better.)
Let’s review:
Mueller has charged a bunch of people and organizations. Some have been sentenced to jail. Additionally, he has referred cases to other prosecutors that have uncovered other criminal activity, which is not part of his purview, but do show a pattern of deceit and contempt for not only our laws but our fundamental sense of fairness and what it means to be an American. Nothing illustrates that more than the boob in North Dakota who is a Republican operative and alleged boyfriend of Russian spy Martina Butina. I say alleged because Martina complained to her Russian handlers about having to be around this fellow. He had a way of making money, which was sending out mailers with patriotic names and making promises of good deeds and patriotic stuff. Once he got the check; he cashed it and moved on.
Of course we could look at Paul Manafort who laundered money for Russians and Ukrainians and did the dirty political behind the scenes stuff for the dirtiest of dictators and got a light sentence for it.
We could look at the Republican behavior toward the Democrats for the last three decades, starting with Whitewater. It is worth going back and reading the Wikipedia article on Whitewater. What it shows, among other things, was a persistent attempt by rich right wing people with no real interest in the American people to go after and hound the Clintons. Again and again the Clintons were accused and they were found to be innocent, or at worst, there was no credible evidence. This did not stop the false accusations and conspiracy allegations however. Finally, Ken Starr who was the second of three special prosecutors who finally left the investigation to hide out at Pepperdine University after there were complaints regarding him and sexual misconduct, admitted under oath that the Clintons were completely exonerated of any wrongdoing in two matters that had been ginned up by the right wing media and the Republicans. They were called Travelgate and Filegate. Somehow, Mr. Starr had forgotten to mention this at the time that it would have been appropriate to do. It was an “Oh by the way” admission as he was going out the door.
Hillary Clinton was asked under oath about Whitewater and her candid and fully truthful answers were applauded at the time. Not that this stopped the Republicans or right wing from continuously attacking her.
When all was said and done a few Arkansas folks were found guilty of financial crimes. The Clintons were never charged and not found guilty of any wrongdoing. There was grumbling that they or their lawyers had not been helpful enough.
This kind of attacking of the Clintons continued into her campaigns for president. She at one point said there was a vast right wing conspiracy and this outraged them, but of course, there was and there still is.
Then came Benghazi.
But let’s review the record on Benghazi. There was:
– An FBI Investigation
– Senate Committee investigation on Intelligence
– House committee investigation #1
– House committee investigation #2
– House committee investigation #3
– House committee investigation #4
– House committee investigation #5
– State Department Accountability Review Board
– Senate Committee investigation on Homeland Security
– House Select Committee
What did they find?
The administration did not adequately deploy resources to protect the staff.
What they forgot to mention was that the Republicans in charge of much of the investigating were the same people who voted to cut funds for security and to cut security positions from the State Department. Republican representative Issa and Chaffetz who were at the center of the House investigations were also the ones who voted to cut over half a billion dollars from State’s security budget. Issa voted to eliminate 300 security positions from State. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State went to Congress repeatedly to beg for funding. She was denied. She warned the Congressional people that this would have consequences for national security. When it did, those self same Congressmen tried to blame her.
The people guarding the compound in Benghazi were contracted through a British firm and were armed with flashlights and batons. Hardly, what was needed against a trained group of armed terrorists.
This continued into the seven Benghazi hearings that the Republicans held. The facts were known after the first hearing. Actually, before the first hearing, but this didn’t stop the Republicans from holding hearing after hearing, but for the record let’s review the House Select Committee:
First Hearing September 17, 2014 Trey Gowdy chairman.
December 2014 Chairman Gowdy announced the hearing would continue into January, February, and March of 2015. Gowdy said they would be interviewing 20 Obama administration officials. He said in February that they would be questioning why the State Department was in Benghazi. The hearing was not held. By April he had interviewed none of the twenty and had said they were shifting their focus from the attack itself to reviewing policy decisions by Clinton a few days before the attack. By June they had interviewed 29 witnesses. It was clear to Elijah Cummings that the purpose of the long drawn out investigation was to attack Clinton and her campaign for President. Gowdy said it was the slow response of the Obama lawyers to requests for documents. This was not shown to be true because the committee didn’t ask for documents until mid November 2014 from State and mid April 2015 from Defense. At this point Gowdy said the hearings would continue through 2016.
What did they find? Well, not much and what they did find they tried to redact the testimony to try and show Clinton was somehow to blame for their own lack of funding which had led to the debacle.
One State official at the time said that it was not the danger at the outposts that worried him, but rather the problem from people in Congress that were supposed to be helping him and others.
Kevin McCarthy, head Republican in the House, admitted that much of the Benghazi hearing were to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Way to go Kev! You did it.
What is especially egregious about all this is that you can say what you want about the Clintons. Maybe they skated close to ethics or legal things, but the Republicans that were accusing them were doing the same sorts of things, really doing them, not skating near the edge at all. They were doing those things while investigating the Clintons. Be it Whitewater or Benghazi or Bill’s sexual misconduct – what the Republicans were doing in each and ever instance was much much more egregious.
Whitewater was at best an uncovering of some local corrupt state officials. Compare that to Manafort, Flynn, and Trump who were not only doing dirty deals, but endangering the country. The scale of their crimes is off the charts compared to whatever the Clintons might have done. Remember the outrage over Hillary Clinton having her picture taken with a contributor to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State? So what if it was normal for a Secretary of State to have photo taken with a person in his position? He was also a contributor to the Clinton Foundation!
Meanwhile Matt Whittaker was being paid hundred of thousands of dollars so he could have a FLA (Four Letter Acronym) after his name while going on Fox News to espouse his silly claims. And while Bill Clinton was being blasted by Gingrich for having an improper relationship with an intern; Gingrich was having an affair himself and a bunch of his Republican representative buddies were staying in a row house in D.C. that was supposedly owned by a church (I guess to avoid taxes or maybe they could claim the rent as a charity donation?) and they were using the house for their affairs. All the while condemning Bill and claiming to be upstanding Christians.
While Chaffetz was outraged and very concerned about Hillary’s private email server he was using one himself. It was printed on his House of Representatives calling card.
So please.
The current outrage over the time that Mueller is taking for a criminal investigation (not a House or Senate inquiry) is taking less time then you boys took to investigate nothing and he is finding lots and lots of criminal activity that seriously undermines our fundamental democracy not to mention the money stolen, laundered, and fraudulently absconded with…Unless you can show me your concern when the Republicans went on and on about nothing.
Stuff it.
I mean, I think we should let the investigation play out and let the chips fall where they may. Don’t you agree?
And please stop posting those silly memes saying how much this is costing and can’t Congress do anything but investigate the other side? If you look at some of the legislation and resolutions being passed in the House you’d see they are doing quite a lot.
The Senate? They aren’t doing squat because the Republicans control it and they aren’t about to help the American people. No sirree. Gotta serve our masters. And that’s not you.
602 Days to the 2020 election and 680 Days to Inauguration Day
PS https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/politics/benghazi-committee-special-counsel-robert-mueller/index.html
PS Tikal, The main plaza with Temple #1
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