In his scheduled appearances before the House Judiciary and the Intelligence Committees today, former special counselor Robert Mueller has his work cut out for him. He will be facing a group of Democrats led by two of the most partisan Trump haters in the House: Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Those two bicoastal Trump haters are sharpening their knives hoping to, at last, carve up Donald Trump’s presidency. Each has unequivocally displayed their rancor and hatred for a President who has already embarrassed them simply by pointing out their errors and hypocrisy.
In the late 1990s, Rep. Jerrold Nadler made daily appearances on the news circuit defending President Bill Clinton against Republican impeachment, “Members of Congress have no power, indeed they have no rights, to arrogate to themselves the power to nullify an election absent such a compelling threat.”
The compelling threat at the time was a President who chose to lie under oath, and later admitted that he had committed perjury. Again, Nadler’s own words, “Perjury is a serious crime, and if proven, should be prosecuted in a court of law, but it may or may not implicate the president’s duties and performance in office.”
Nadler’s response when Donald Trump brought attention to Nadler’s pathetic inconsistencies, “The President is a bully.”
If President Trump is a bully, then Congressman Nadler’s standards of fairness are likewise skewed. In a different political landscape than when he was defending President Clinton, Nadler now wants to ignore existing law and subpoena grand jury testimony from the Mueller report.
Nadler, a lawmaker, now insists that Congress see the entire Mueller report, which, by law, the U.S. Attorney General cannot give Congress. Groused Nadler, “We — the members of the Judiciary Committee, the House of Representatives and the entire American public — are still waiting to see that report. We will not wait much longer.”
Nadler has offered a somewhat lame compromise by offering the public a redacted version, while the committee members get to see the whole package. Anyone with an ounce of experience in the Washington, DC leaky sieve, knows how quickly all that sensitive information will show up in the next day’s newspaper headlines.
Nadler and his fellow Democrat leakers know that, which is why they are demanding the whole report.
Past chairpersons of the House Intelligence Committee have typically been seasoned, mature, and fair-minded people, who put our national interests first. Chairman Adam Schiff is the current exception. Schiff, has the demeanor of a college political science professor, but has tossed unsupported opinions and unwarranted criticism of Donald Trump typical of California campus radicals.
Schiff seems to have been bitten by the TDS bug—Trump Derangement Syndrome—that has poisoned his party since 2016. His view of the Mueller report, which found no collusion, “I don’t think a two-year investigation of this magnitude, followed by a written report and a 10-minute statement without questions, satisfactorily answers the many, many questions we have about the investigation.”
As a measure of Schiff’s attitude going towards the entire Russian collusion mess, Schiff, back in February 2019 said, “We are determined the public is going to know exactly what Donald Trump did, what his family did, what his campaign did, what the Russians did and what we need to do to protect the country.”
The Mueller report provided answers to Schiff’s public-spirited whining. He is going to have to live with the disappointing outcome of the investigation. Nine Republicans on the Intelligence committee signed a letter back in May 2019 calling for Schiff to resign. This demand followed months of Schiff’s unsupported claims of conspiracy on the part of Attorney General Barr and the administration. Schiff claimed that there was evidence of corruption and collusion.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) compared Schiff to Senator Joe McCarthy and his 1950s communist hunt. “With McCarthyism we had Russia, chasing after Russian communists. Now we have Schiff chasing after Russian collusion and those who would collude.”
Donald Trump would probably prefer a House of Representatives that concentrates on the constructive work of the American people. What he has is a group of partisan hacks, who preach to the converted. As Democrats solidify their base in the deep blue states of New York and California, they preach to the converted.
Normal people, who know a witch hunt when they see it, know better.
