Tag Archives: Congressional investigations

Josh Hawley smells blood in the water and attacks Dianne Feinstein

01 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

GOP Attorney Josh Hawley got some bad news today when CNN’s latest polling numbers put him 3 percentage points behind Democrat Claire McCaskill whom he hopes to replace in the Senate. The poll shows McCaskill with 47 percent to Hawley’s 43 percent. The new poll reverses the last polling that put McCaskill 2 percentage points behind Hawley.

Senator McCaskill and Hawley are still within the poll’s margin of error, but those of us who have been thoroughly turned off by the bible-thumping GOP boy wonder are nevertheless cheered by McCaskill’s upwards trajectory. We were particularly pleased after reading about Hawley’s crude effort to prove that he’s not too prissy to be a good little team player:

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (R), who’s running against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D), is calling for a special counsel to investigate Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her staff over the handling of sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“It raises very troubling ethical question … and that’s why I’m calling today for a special counsel to investigate the conduct of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, her staff and all other relevant party for violating the confidentiality of Dr. Ford and obstructing the work of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Hawley told reporters on a Monday conference call, referring to the first woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.

Nothing like jumping on a leaky boat in one’s haste to get in on the action and get a share of the booty. Hawley should probably think it over very carefully before he spews more of this sort of righteous rhetoric; the effort to deflect attention from an ethically very flawed SCOTUS candidate to Senator Feinstein’s hypothetical misbehavior has the stench of pure desperation – not to mention stupidity. Bogus investigations don’t impress anyone but the terminally dim-witted anymore.

Just think about what Hawley is proposing: Imagine that a man, hearing anguished cries, trespassed by entering a vacant building where he discovered a serious crime in progress which he reported. Now imagine that the perpetrator of the crime was ignored by the police when they arrived – apart from a few officers who apologized for causing him distress – and instead the putative trespasser was denounced, investigated and punished for the crime of trespassing, which was described as a serious ethical lapse.

Wouldn’t you want to know why the law refused to focus on the real criminal and instead pursued a possible minor miscreant? Similarly, don’t you want to know why Hawley won’t focus on finding the truth about the SCOTUS nominee, particularly if, as he claims to believe, that, lacking a thorough investigation, the “corroborating” evidence is currently insufficient?

Finally, why is Hawley ignoring the rather strong evidence that Judge Kavanaugh has lied to the members of the Judiciary Committee on numerous occasions during the past weeks? Isn’t perjury at least as serous as Senator Feinstein’s effort to respect the wishes of Dr. Ford? And, incidentally, doesn’t the fact that, Dr. Ford has indicated that she’s not at all bummed out by Senator Feinstein’s actions indicate that Feinstein’s lapse, if any, is pretty damn trivial?

Shouldn’t Hawley try to be a little more honest with us about what he’s really doing? Do you think it could have something to do with those very close polling numbers? Just asking.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): on Trump and Russia – May 6, 2017

07 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in US Senate

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

“…it is really whether or not the criminal investigation that is ongoing at the FBI is gonna be able to follow the money around to his associates during the campaign…”

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) continued her face to face contact with constituents in Missouri yesterday with several events in Kansas City.

The Greater Kansas City Women’s Political Caucus hosted a forum with Senator McCaskill midday. Close to one hundred fifty individuals attended. The Senator spoke for about twenty minutes then took questions for about an hour.

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) – May 6, 2017.

One of the questions was on Donald Trump (r) releasing his tax returns:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): ….I don’t know whether we’ll ever see Donald Trump’s taxes or not. I am not as convinced that his taxes would tell us a lot. Um, you know, tax returns are not as informative as people might believe, um, especially when you have a lot and lots of complicated financial structures.

Um, it, it is really whether or not the criminal investigation that is ongoing at the FBI is gonna be able to follow the money around to his associates during the campaign. And whether or not there will ever be enough, either circumstantial or direct evidence, to indicate that he was aware of some of the activities that were going on.

And that is way more important. Now, I get it that he is the first president that hasn’t done it. And it’s possible, because you do have to disclose foreign money, it is possible that there’s foreign money on those taxes. Um, but, I do think that, and the taxes may end up being produced as part of these investigations, ‘cause we’ve got three different investigations going on in Congress. And then of course, we have the FBI investigation.

Um, I, I, I know some things that are classified that I can’t share with you, but there’s many things that aren’t classified. And that is, for example, Russia had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people on their payroll doing nothing all day but creating Facebook accounts. All day long. For months on end. In order to drive news stories and to drive, and we know the algorithms jumped right before the election. And we believe these algorithms jumped because of these Russian efforts. And what they were doing, they were trying to hit three places in the key states, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, and Michigan. What they were doing, they were to hit African American men, Bernie Sanders supporters, and, um, [….] young women, maybe. And they were trying to feed into their Facebooks, for example, for African American men they were feeding into the Facebooks the comment that Hillary Clinton made at one point about predators. And they were, they were doing a complicated algorithm where they were trying to find Facebook pages where there was some indication that some member of their family had been in jail or was in jail. [voice: “Oh my God.”] And they were targeting Bernie supporters with, the reason all that stuff about the rigged primary happened when it did? They released that right as we went into the convention, the Russians did. That all of the hacked e-mails, to try to undermine unity, undermine enthusiasm within the Democratic Party for Hillary Clinton.

So, this was sophisticated stuff Russia was doing. And that kind of stuff hasn’t gotten as much attention as some of the other things that they’ve done. So, um, and, then we know that many of their associates had direct and indirect contact with Russia in a variety of capacities. So, there’s real stuff going on in these investigations. And shoes will continue to drop. We had another shoe drop just yesterday where we now learn that they were copying classified documents in the transition office and removing them from there, uh, around the time Michael Flynn was meeting with the Russian ambassador who, um, he knew was directly tied to Russian intelligence, so. [Voice: “We’re really in a mess, aren’t we?”] Kinda are.

[….]

Oh my.

Previously:

What a difference eight years makes (April 13, 2017)

If only Roy Blunt (r) could give him something to do at one of his open town halls in Missouri (April 13, 2017)

This ain’t 2009 and right wingnut billionaires ain’t paying to rile up teabaggers (April 13, 2017)

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): press availability – Parkville, Missouri – April 13, 2017 (April 14, 2017)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): on Zombie Trumpcare – May 6, 2017 (May 7, 2017)

Investigate Trump’s Russian ties

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Today I sent this text as an email to Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill:

During the recent election campaign, there were intimations that the Russian government was cooperating with the Trump campaign. Today that was confirmed in an interview given to the Washington Post by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Trump is also known to have financial relations with members of the Russian oligarchy who are close associates of Vladimir Putin. I doubt that I am alone in my concern that our naive and poorly informed President elect may have acted in ways that compromise the security of the United States by allowing a relatively unfriendly power the ability to meddle in our internal affairs. I worry that this Russian influence may extend into the future and further compromise our government.

I urge you to do whatever you can to see that President-elect Trump’s Russian ties are investigated and their nature and extent made public. Given the position that Mr. Trump will occupy, an investigation of this sort demands a non-partisan special prosecutor. At the very least, though, concerned members of Congress can make sure that the call for such action is heard, perhaps by holding shadow hearings if the Republican congressional majority refuses to act. President-elect Trump’s many and various conflicts of interest are important, and paramount among them are his Russian ties and the suggestion that he and his campaign allowed the Russian government to meddle in the recent election.

Thank you for entertaining my comments.

I sent a similar email to Republican Senator Blunt; for obvious reasons I omitted the phrase in the second paragraph suggesting shadow hearings if Republicans won’t act.  Instead I urged Blunt to put the welfare of the country over partisan considerations.

I don’t expect action from Blunt – or, truth be told, from McCaskill – but I do want them to hear and be aware of this sentiment. If any of you share this concern, I urge you to join the call for investigation with similar letters to your  congressmen, your local papers or whatever other venues you have access to.