Pierce: What the Hell Happened During Peter Strzok's Testimony?
What the Hell Happened During Peter Strzok's Testimony?
It was the most embarrassing episode in representative democracy in 400 years.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUL 12, 2018
...Just as long as we’re all on the same page. It always has been about the money, and to whom the president* owes it, and what else he might owe those folks, and what might he do to settle those debts. Which makes the display in the House on Thursday all the more comical, as well as being the most embarrassing episode in representative democracy since the dissolution of The Useless Parliament in 1625, and that one had an outbreak of bubonic plague to excuse its floundering. This one only had Steve King. Not sure which way I’d go on the swap there, actually.
It helps to make sense of the nonsense to remember that the fundamental position of the Republicans on the committee was that the FBI went out of its way during the 2016 presidential campaign to help Hillary Rodham Clinton. Nobody who was alive during that time can find that contention anything short of ridiculous. Nobody who was alive on October 28, 2016, when FBI director James Comey wrote his letter to Congress about Anthony Weiner’s laptop, can find that contention anything short of ridiculous. (I mean, hell, there’s data.) Nevertheless, that was the basis for hauling Peter Strzok up to Capitol Hill to play the role in which they have cast them in their own heads....
The first mistake everyone made was making this a joint hearing between the House Judiciary Committee and the House Government and Oversight Committee. Not only did this divide the overall chair of the panel between Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Trey Gowdy, the lopheaded Javert of Benghazi, Benghazi!, Benghazi!, but also it brought together an exaltation of wingnut crazy unmatched in the Congress since the last time Michele Bachmann dined alone with the voices in her head....
Jordan spent almost eight hours reminding the American people about “the dossier,” while his presence on TV reminded people of what’s going on at The Ohio State University these days. They had Gowdy’s repeating “Impeachment!” over and over again. They gave Raja Krishnamoorthi, Democrat of Illinois, a chance to ask Strzok about Rudy Giuliani’s possible connivance with the New York field office of the FBI, and it gave Strzok a chance to talk about how that connivance worried him.
Did they really want to be the people who kept reminding America of that, or of the pee-tape, or the people who insisted on injecting the idea of impeachment into the public dialogue? Everybody except Gohmert, who is a fool, and Steve Russell of Oklahoma, who came around to it at the end of the day, the Republicans tap-danced around Strzok’s relationship with DOJ reporter Lisa Page? Did they really want to get into marital infidelity in defense of this president*? Do they think any of this helped the White House? Do they think anything they did on Thursday scared Robert Mueller?
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22134841/peter-strzok-testimony-what-happened/?src=socialflowTW
= new reply since forum marked as read
