In the current Senate, with the parties tied at 50-50 and Kamala Harris providing the tiebreaking vote, all committees are split evenly. Since Harris is not available to break ties on committee votes, this slows things down a lot for Democrats. The upcoming 51-49 Senate, where Ds will have majorities on all committees, should smooth things considerably.
And there's something else this will do: it allows Democrats to issue subpoenas and conduct depositions all by themselves. They no longer need any Republican votes to exercise oversight.
Over in the House, Kevin McCarthy has already made it clear what they're going to do with their majority: investigate Hunter Biden; consider impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; figure out once and for all where COVID came from; and so much more. I could provide a whole list, but why bother? McCarthy has already done it.
In the LA Times today, Kurt Bardella says Democrats should retaliate in force. And he should know. Bardella is a Democrat these days, but he was a spokesman for the House Oversight Committee back when Republicans were using it to investigate Benghazi. He knows how the game is played:
There is no reason Senate Democrats should not turn the tables on Republicans by finally investigating the conflicts of interest created by Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner during their time in the White House.
Documents recently released by Congress reveal that foreign nations were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at President Trump’s hotel at the same time they were trying to influence our foreign policy.
Records obtained by Congress exposed that when agents had to stay in Trump hotels, Trump’s companies charged the Secret Service as much as five times more than the government rate, costing taxpayers more than $1.4 million.
Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner received a $2 billion “investment” from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince.
This sounds like a bit of weak tea to me. But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe the point is just to annoy the other side; provide fodder for news and pundits; and hope that if you keep at it something unexpected will pop up. After all, it was by pulling a long string on Benghazi that Republicans got lucky and discovered that Hillary Clinton had some issues with her email.
Weak tea? Investigation the corrupt behavior of a President is weak tea?
I have to conclude that you make your tea with more leaves than water!
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Kevin’s flat wrong. Prohibition against emoluments is written in black and white on a document I read somewhere…..if only I could remember which one….
Kinda a big deal.
Then there’s the rampant nepotism and self dealing, which all normal people saw as wildly toxic. Still waiting to hear why so many military flights were diverted to a tiny, failing airport near some Trump owned property.
But honestly, Trump is doa for 2024. Better to spend limited time and resources investigating DeSantis’ human trafficking or other abuses of power first.
“The upcoming 51-49 Senate, where Ds will have majorities on all committees, should smooth things considerably.”
I’m gonna place a market right now on “this didn’t age well at all” in a future Kevin post about how Sinema didn’t agree to letting committees be majority Democrats.
The Democrats, and those who caucus with them, are still 50-49, unless Sinema goes all the way and votes with the Republicans.
I understand that and yet I still stand by what I wrote. I wouldn’t put it past Sinema to eventually cross fully over to the Republican side, if not officially by registration then by just caucusing with them instead of Dems.
Sinema's office has said that she will caucus with the Dems.
Well, you know if Empress Sinema agrees.
Email issues?!?! sadly we all more on this matter than one would have hope for. Put me in the camp that the so called issue was concocted out of thin air. Every modern Secretary of State used work arounds to be able to work from home. Unless we build a separate residence for the position (which now that I think about it is not a bad idea)- the position dictates that it communicates with people in a variety of ways. The media and its lackeys fabricated the issue (where is Bob Somerby when we need him) because in their eyes modern systems requiring electronic monitoring sounded sophisticated and futuristic (morons) and of course we all had to pay the consequences of having Comeys and Cillizas in this world.
I don't care what anyone thinks is "weak tea"; if there's any chance a law was broken then investigate it regardless of whether someone thinks the lawbreaking was too minor or whatever.
But don't do it to "retaliate." Congressional investigations aren't punishment, nor is being called in to testify. Do it to find and publicize Trump administration lawlessness.
I don't think that's a weak play at all. I see it as mainly trying to push back at the media.
I mean, the core accusation is weak sauce. But that's not the point. The political press seems to have lost the ability to form paragraphs without an operative feeding them a narrative frame. So this is handing them the complement for their "both sides" horse shit, while challenging them to do better.
Is the fact that a president's son is a troubled, louche loser really equivalent to a silver-spoon tool selling out the US to Mr. Bone Saw? Opinions differ!
Perhaps select outliers in the drooling media class will point this out. Perhaps not. But trying to be high-minded doesn't work with reporters who think their primary job is protecting their privileges, so it is at least worth seeing what happens, meeting them on their own terms.
A $2 billion payment to Jared for past (and possible future) services on behalf of MBS while Jared was whatever he was in the Trump WH is weak tea?!?
Oh, and didn't Trump get something like a $3 billion deal with the Saudi's? Is that more weak tea?
When Mitch McConnell refused to bring the Merrick Garland nomination up for a vote in the Senate, the Democrats should have retaliated immediately. The Republicans are willing to bring the government to a halt with their debt ceiling nonsense, so let the Democrats do exactly the same thing, or whatever works. Reducing appropriations to southern military bases would be a start, because the people who live in those states and rely on that income coming into the economy would put pressure on their congressional reps.
Hell to the yeah, and Ginni Thomas should be high on that very long list of obvious targets to pursue.
$2 billion is weak tea!
Yeah, I agree, I don't get out of the house for less than $10 billion. Otherwise it's not worth my effort.
I don't get why Democrats won't do this: McCarthy will do it, MTG will file articles of impeachment for, check notes, releasing an hostage from Russia. If you look into Jared's communications with the Saudi, you'll find something, of course. It's like Trump's tax returns. Investigate away!
Why investigate Trump? He's already in plenty of hot water. Investigate Kevin McCarthy, Clarence Thomas, Jim Jordan, Ron DeSantis, etc.
What did they call it back in the day? The politics of personal destruction. Bring it on. If you can get fired for quoting and old movie line, then sure we can dispense with republicans.
Why do this?
Because Trump has been a veritable loser, in court and in politics. Investigating him and his family triggers an automatic reaction by Republican partisans and Trump himself. That reaction keeps the two tied to the hip and reminds voters that Trump is a corrupt, criminally-involved loser.
Republican Party will never walk away even when he tells you that he wants to get rid of the Constitution. So long as they keep it up, they'll never have their red wave.
Meh, I'd rather they spent their time doing something on reproductive rights now that they've done the work they should have done years ago on marriage.
The clock is ticking and the 2024 race is already underway. I'd rather they work as if DeSantis is a lock to win and they need to start damage control now.
Priorities.
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After the revelations of the last week or so (Taibbi, Weiss etc) Democrats should also launch their own investigation into Twitter in the pre-Musk era.
It now seems incontravertibls that:
1. Twitter allowed accounts such as LibsOfTikTok to continue invoking violence in contravention of its own standards because it was afraid of a right-wing backlash.
2. It allowed Trump to provoke a violent coup in controverntion of its own standards because it was intimidated into doing so by the right.
3. It came under pressure from the Trump White House, FBI and Department of Homeland Security during the 2020 election.
The first two, of course, it was entitled to do as a private entity (just as Fox is entitled to do the same). But the third raises at least the possibility that it was under government pressure, which is more problematic.
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