Just in case anyone could use a refresher, here are the most recent six "scandals" that have preoccupied Republicans during the last two Democratic administrations:
- Benghazi
- IRS tea party targeting
- Hillary's email
- Durham investigation
- Afghanistan withdrawal
- Hunter Biden
And here's how they turned out:
Benghazi (2012-14): There was no "stand down" order and no denial of air support. Nobody lied about the cause of the enemy attack. Administration statements were generally accurate given what was known at the time they were made. The "Innocence of Muslims" video really did play a role in the attacks. Security at the consulate was sufficient, and in any case was provided mostly by the CIA, not State. There was no cover-up related to security. The attack was primarily opportunistic, not planned, and was carried out by a mixed group. There was no incompetence on the part of Hillary Clinton or the State Department.
Two years after the attack, all of this was finally acknowledged by Republicans when the House Select Intelligence Committee—controlled by Republicans—issued its final report. Their exoneration of the White House was sweeping and nearly absolute.
IRS (2013): Initially the IRS released records that made it look like they were targeting tea party groups over their tax-exempt status. However, that was because the initial demand from Republicans had been solely for records of conservative groups. It took several years, but when a broader record search was done it turned out there had never been any partisan conduct at all from the IRS. In fact, liberal groups had actually been targeted far more than conservative groups.
Hillary's email (2015-16): In the end, the final FBI report showed that Hillary had done nothing seriously wrong. She used a single account hosted on a private server for both work and personal emails, which was probably a mistake in judgment but not done with any intent to withhold anything. There is no evidence that any foreign adversary hacked the server. She turned over all official emails when requested. Before she handed them over her lawyers culled out personal emails, and there's no evidence that any work emails were deleted in the process. In fact, extensive evidence makes it all but impossible that this happened. Her personal server was eventually wiped clean, but this was part of a routine change in record retention policy that was botched by her hosting service. During her time as Secretary of State she sent and received only three classified emails, all of them trivial. After the fact, State and CIA argued over some other emails—almost none of them initiated by Hillary—with CIA concluding that they should have been classified. Hillary did nothing wrong except for relying on State's classification in real time. The FBI's report is an almost complete exoneration of Hillary.
Durham investigation (2019-23): John Durham was appointed in hopes of demonstrating that the FBI's investigation of Donald Trump's ties to Russia was unfounded and illegal. However, despite continual leaks and feverish indictments insinuating otherwise, Durham never found anything of the sort. In the end he indicted only three people, all on trivial charges, and even so managed to lose two at trial and win only a plea deal on the third. We know now that, in fact, Trump's presidential campaign did have links to the Russian government. The FBI did have a perfectly sensible reason to open an investigation into this. Vladimir Putin did try to interfere with the election in Trump's favor. There were never any intelligence operations targeting Trump. There were no illegal actions by the Hillary Clinton campaign. And several members of Durham's team did quit because of disagreements with him over prosecutorial ethics. Every leak from Durham produced excited reports from Fox News, but by the time he was finished he had produced nothing.
Afghanistan (2021): Joe Biden didn't set the date of withdrawal. It had been set by Donald Trump during the previous administration. The evacuation was chaotic for the first four hours of the first day, but proceeded efficiently for the the rest of the month. The State Department worked heroically to approve visas in the face of obstacles previously put in place by Trump aides. Over 100,000 people were flown out, including all but 300 Americans. There were almost no fatalities aside from a single ISIS suicide bomber. All in all, it was an impressive operation by the Pentagon and State Department under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
Hunter Biden (2020-present): Hunter's infamous laptop—mysteriously produced by Rudy Giuliani just before the 2020 election—ended up revealing nothing but some embarrassing tidbits. Joe Biden didn't try to get a Ukranian prosecutor fired because he was investigating Burisma, Hunter's employer. It was official administration policy—and the policy of most Western countries—to pressure Ukraine to fire the prosecutor because he was corrupt. Although Hunter failed to pay his taxes for two years, he eventually settled with the IRS and paid them in full. To this day there remains no evidence that Joe Biden was involved with Hunter. In fact, there's barely any evidence that Hunter himself ever did anything illegal.
Under the circumstances, is there any good reason to think that any Republican investigation is worth believing? All of them have been characterized by a constant drip of misleading leaks and none of them have stood the test of time. On this score, Republicans should always be presumed guilty until they prove their innocence.
There’s the Durham report that was a nothingburger as well.
Did you read the post?
But they served their purposes: they had no desire for actual fault finding, altho that would have been a bonus. They were merely used as fishing expeditions to find other dirt AND to continue to keep the outrage machine tuned up to 11. As the latter was the main objective, they all were resounding successes and one, arguably, got Trump into office.
truly - it was all just cranking the mighty right-wing Wurlitzer to keep the media monkeys hopping, with gleeful Dems in Disarray headlines at every turn. Worked, too.
It remains insufficiently acknowledged by Democrats and journalists that Joe Biden's colorful description of the way he got Viktor Shokin fired was a comical piece of fabulism that had no basis in reality. Presumably Joe was out of office, on the paid speaker circuit, and felt obliged to entertain the customers. But the truth completely undercuts the Republicans' only concrete allegation of corruption: that Joe got a prosecutor fired to help his son's company Burisma. Democrats and journalists should be discrediting the myth at every opportunity, even if it's a bit embarrassing for the White House.
The real story was well reported at the time - see for example https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/shokin-dismissed-as-procurator-general/
"But the truth completely undercuts the Republicans' only concrete allegation of corruption:…"
How, exactly, is an allegation "concrete" if the truth undercuts it? Perhaps I missed an irony.
It doesn't have to be correct or factual.
FAKE News!
I would bet that most Republican voters and politicians would say the outcome of each of the things Kevin listed was the exact opposite of what Kevin said the actual outcome was. So you are right “fake news” is exactly what they would say and believe.
Haha
Then all of these (and many other GOP-driven fake scandals) are reduced to convenient shorthand to be casually referenced to invoke the presumed villainy of various Democrats.
"Under the circumstances, can you think of any good reason to believe that any Republican investigation is worth believing?"
No indeed. However, they are sure to continue, wherever and whenever the present GOP is in power.
The propaganda purposes of these pseudo-scandals is almost better served the more meritless they become upon examination. For that purpose is to insulate the party and its fellow travelers from reality--to demand a progressively greater detachment from common sense the more one goes into them. And in that they have succeeded.
We've all seen this unfold before, on both the left and the right, but it's quite something to see it happening to the mainstream of one of the two major political parties, in real time.
Solyndra!
The Trump administration was remarkably scandal free.
/S
There is a distinct decline in quality over time. Republicans are getting too weird and untethered for their fake scandals to amuse much.
I blame the media. They're failing to hold Republicans to any quality standards at all. Hell, the Hunter Biden crap was delivered in a cloud of farts by a man leaking shoe polish from his head.
If the media is going to die on the Both Sides hill, then the only thing they have to sell is their curation. Which means having some standards. Come on, folks, where is your pride?
"...the Hunter Biden crap was delivered in a cloud of farts by a man leaking shoe polish from his head."
HAW!
Yeah but what about Pedo Joe and the adrenochrome harvest?
That is, there's the scandals with a tenuous grounding in reality, which can actually be investigated and disproved.
And there's the scandals based wholly in fantasy, and trying to prove or disprove them is like grasping a rainbow. They live only in the hearts of the faithful. They are the heart and soul of the modern GOP.
Don’t forget the endless, breathless, appeals to “Just wait until the Horowitz report comes out!” and the. “Just wait until the Durham report comes out!”
Oh, and the acquittal of Greg Craig, who served as Obama's top White House lawyer.
And the acquittal of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic Party.
You can extend the time period to the 90s and the results are the same. It's been at least 30 years of nothing but bullshit investigations from Republicans that never deliver on the intended motive.
“Joe Biden didn't set the date of withdrawal. It had been set by Donald Trump during the previous administration.”
The agreement negotiated by Trump specified that the United States and it's allies would remove all their troops from Afghanistan in 14 months, which meant the troops would be out by May 1, 2021. When Biden came into office he inherited the agreement--but no plan to actually carry out the withdrawal. This gave the incoming administration a bit more than three months to plan and execute the withdrawal. Biden concluded that this was simply not enough time, so he pushed the date for final withdrawal to August 31, 2021.
Thank you for reality. Biden's big mistake was to implement the plan that donnie's bois came up with.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan was NOT a mistake. It may have proved to be unrealistic to expect the Afghan Army to hold out against the Taliban for at least a couple of weeks without Americans propping them up, but it was not an unreasonable expectation at the time.
What lawnorder said. We occupied Afghanistan for 20 years. Twenty! Occupations aren't supposed to last forever. It was plonkingly obvious to everyone that Afghanistan was never going to become the stable, prosperous country that Bush fondly envisioned when he invaded. Indeed, everyone in the intelligence community knew the Taliban would take over the day after we pulled out. Obama's people knew it, Trump's people knew it (which is why they set the pullout date after the election), and Biden's people knew it. Biden was the only president willing to swallow that pill.
Come on, Kevin, you know as well as I do that the fact that nobody turned up any actual wrongdoing is simply proof that the vast left-wing conspiracy goes even deeper than you ever imagined.
The FBI/CIA/House Republicans who conducted these investigations and found nothing are all part of the liberal elite and almost certainly pedophiles and groomers and alien lizard people planning a One World government.
This summary does some serious glossing over.
IRS (2013): There were probably people who claimed the "scandal" was unfair targeting for audits. But the original scandal was inaction on applications for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations. There were hundreds of organizations whose applications were simply stored without action, in some cases for over two years. The groups "targeted" in this way were mostly conservative-sounding organizations, and the BOLO list originally included only tea party-sounding names, later expanded to include some liberal-sounding names to disguise the intent.
Hillary's email: Using a private server for her only email account was more than "probably" a mistake in judgment - she was repeatedly told by the IT people in her organization that it was terribly insecure. She fired an ambassador for doing the same thing while she was Secretary of State. She did it to make sure that nothing she considered unofficial would ever be disclosed as a government record. When she did turn over all the emails she considered "official", she did it in the least useful way possible - rather than turning over a data file with all the relevant emails, her team printed copies of the emails and turned them over in boxes. The FBI report did not come close to "exonerating" Hillary, any more than the FBI's reports "exonerated" Trump. Although I believe it was correct that there wasn't sufficient wrongdoing to merit prosecution, there was probably more than enough to warrant cancellation of her security clearance. Which by that time was probably inactive, if not lapsed.
On the larger question, "is there any good reason to think that any Republican investigation is worth believing?", the answer is "of course not". Partisan investigations are partisan first, and investigations second. Of course, this applies to Democratic investigations as well.
Among other topics, you really need to read up on the Ambassador and why he was "let go".
"The groups "targeted" in this way were mostly conservative-sounding organizations, and the BOLO list originally included only tea party-sounding names, later expanded to include some liberal-sounding names to disguise the intent."
Plainly and completely wrong. The list of targeted groups made public included mostly conservative-sounding organizations--by design. The initial list was carefully barbered by Republicans to look just that way. The names "added later" were on the original list, but not included in Republican talking points.
The IG report issued on May 13, 2013 listed the terms used on the BOLO list, and when they were added. I won't quote extensively from the report, but you can read it all here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130612132155/http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf.
To support my first point, I will quote from page 6:
"In August 2010, the Determinations Unit distributed the first formal BOLO listing. The criteria in the BOLO listing were Tea Party organizations applying for I.R.C. § 501(c)(3) or I.R.C. § 501(c)(4) status. ...
Figure 3 shows that, by June 2011, the expanded criteria included additional names (Patriots and 9/12 Project) as well as policy positions espoused by organizations in their applications"
Then on Page 7:
After being briefed on the expanded criteria in June 2011, the Director, EO, immediately directed that the criteria be changed. In July 2011, the criteria were changed to focus on the potential “political, lobbying, or [general] advocacy” activities of the organization. These criteria were an improvement over using organization names and policy positions. However, the team of specialists subsequently changed the criteria in January 2012 without executive approval because they believed the July 2011 criteria were too broad. The January 2012 criteria again focused on the policy positions of organizations instead of tax-exempt laws and Treasury Regulations."
If you still think I'm "plainly and completely wrong", I'd be interested to see the source on which you base your judgment.
Thanks.
"plainly and completely wrong" just about sums it up. There is no talking to people like this, but it is fun to notice what their strategy is to hide the fact that this was a manufactured scandal. Kevin’s point was that more liberal groups than conservative ones were investigated so it wasn’t partisan. Did you notice how the person keeps going on and on about how some conservative groups were targeted in the hope that you’d forget that liberal ones were targeted more. They must figure that saying something this dumb convinced them, so it will convince you too. They make the same point in several other posts. No mention of liberal groups. If even one conservative group was targeted then it was partisan.
The person’s real motivation is spelled out in their original post: “Partisan investigations are partisan first, and investigations second. Of course, this applies to Democratic investigations as well.” In other words, all the Trump investigations aren’t because Trump broke so many laws, but because Democrats manufacture scandals too. Those of us who don’t have our head up our ass know all the Trump indictments are because he broke so many laws.
"Kevin’s point was that more liberal groups than conservative ones were investigated so it wasn’t partisan."
Yes, that was Kevin's point. But Kevin was wrong.
I explained that the initial BOLO list targeted conservative, not liberal groups. This is clearly stated in the 2013 IG report. The 2013 IG report also identified 296 "Tea Party", "9/12 Project", or "Patriots" organizations that had been referred for political intervention. This is more than the 110 examined in the 2017 IG report.
Kevin was also wrong to say that "The IRS Confirms There Was No Targeting of Tea Party Groups". Nothing from the IRS ever said that - this was Kevin's (unsupported) interpretation of the 2017 IG report. He either didn't take the time to read the report, or he deliberately misrepresented its scope and conclusion.
The reason that more liberal groups than conservative groups were included in the 2017 report is that the scope of the 2017 report included 17 specific BOLO categories. Of the 13 that had any activity at all, 7 were identified as "liberal". But "Tea Party" was not included in the 2017 report because it had already been covered by the 2013 report.
Given that you didn't address, or even acknowledge, my previous points, I expect you aren't interested in checking the facts for yourself. But, in case you are, here's the link to the 2013 report:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130612132155/http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf
Here's the link to the 2017 report:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171005133818/https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/201710054fr.pdf
This report in no way changes, contradicts, updates, modifies, revises, or otherwise addresses the 2013 report, except to mention "a prior audit" in the introductory "Highlights".
This stuff isn't hard to check. If you actually want to learn the facts, I've provided the facts, and the links you can read for yourself.
I'll take you at your word that the original scandal was not IRS investigations and instead the slow walking of 501 applications. I'll also take you at your word that the government reports that you link to indicate that conservative sounding names were slow walked more than others. I'll also take you at your word everything you said about Hillary's emails it true. Fine, but I'll point out that Hillary didn't do anything that Colin Powell also did, and yet somehow the GOP didn't care about that and the Democrats didn't start a jihad against Powell like the GOP did.
However, regarding this: "Of course, this applies to Democratic investigations as well." Bullshit. Absolute both-sides bullshit. And you have offered absolutely nothing to support that statement. Because you have nothing.
Thanks for that comment. I wanted to prepare a smart response, but I guess we should stop and define what exactly we mean by "partisan investigations".
Kevin seems to mean "claims of scandal instigated by partisans or ballyhooed for partisan purposes". He gives 6 examples. Of these:
One (Afghanistan) had no investigation that I'm aware of - Kevin didn't cite on.
Three (Hillary's email, Durham Investigation, and Hunter Biden) were law enforcement investigations. As far as I know, there was no "Republican" investigation, although all were initiated with a lot of encouragement from Republicans. Do these count as "Republican investigations?"
One (IRS) was conducted by the agency Inspector General's office, again at the request of members of Congress, presumably Republicans. But the Treasury Department's Inspector General hardly qualifies as "Republican". Does it count as a "Republican investigation" because it was requested by Republicans?
One (Benghazi), according to Kevin, was investigated by the House Select Intelligence Committee, so politicians, and controlled by Republicans. So, the one clear case of a "Republican investigation" got to the truth (again, according to Kevin), which reflected well on the Obama administration.
So, if we take the definition I proposed above, I think my comment is correct.
Trump offered a lot of material, much of it real scandals, or at least embarrassment. But the "Trump Russia Collusion scandal" was instigated and ballyhooed by Democrats yet turned up no collusion. The Democrat-instigated investigation of Brett Kavanaugh turned up no verifiable information that he had done anything wrong, but it was ruthlessly played for political purposes.
I can't think of other examples off-hand. But maybe my definition is wrong. What would you mean by "Republican investigations"?
"The Democrat-instigated investigation of Brett Kavanaugh"
Nope. Trump gave the order at the request of the Senate Judiciary Committee, after Arizona Republican Jeff Flake made such an inquiry his condition for backing the judge. Republican instigated.
The appointing of Muller as special council was made by Rod Rosenstein (Republican) to take over ongoing investigations. Neither of those investigations were instigated by Democrats.
OK. But you didn't really answer my question. What would be a "Republican investigation?" Do you consider Kevin's examples to qualify? Based on what criteria?
Dishonest.
"She did it to make sure that nothing she considered unofficial would ever be disclosed as a government record."
This comment undermines your credibility for all else you said. This is just a right wing narrative. It requires reading Hillary Clinton's mind to uncover her bad motives. It appears that Clinton simply wanted to continue using her Blackberry and her personal email address. Also, like many people, she disliked the idea of having to carry two phones. Not that this is a valid excuse for what she did (or what Colin Powell did).
As to her motives, there was her correspondence with Colin Powell, which was publicized at the time. His caution to her was that anything on her official email account would become a public document. Following this, she never established or used an official email account. You are free to draw your own conclusions on her motives.
As to her desire "to continue using ... her personal email address" - do you have a source for that? It was reported in 2016 that the domain name she used (clintonemail.com) was purchased the first day of her confirmation hearings in 2009. If this is true, she couldn't have used the email address before 2009. (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/us/hillary-clinton-emails-take-long-path-to-controversy.html)
You do know that most of us lived through those 'scandals', right? So who're you trying to zoom with those dead-fish talking points?
Hi, SOV. Do you disagree with the facts I stated, or claim they're irrelevant?
Thanks.
We already know you're a troll from way back:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/10/after-four-years-irs-finally-confirms-there-was-no-targeting-of-tea-party-groups/
Now I'll give you an oppoertunity to prove it by refusing to admit you're wrong.
Did you read my comment? I'll quote me from 14 hours ago:
"There were probably people who claimed the "scandal" was unfair targeting for audits. But the original scandal was inaction on applications for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations."
You reference Kevin from 2017: The IRS, they said, had identified dozens, maybe hundreds, of tea party organizations for extreme audits based on their political leanings.
How does his statement refute mine? Let me make it clearer: The scandal was not "audits". The scandal was "inaction". There was inaction. It was originally target at organizations that used "Tea Party" in their names. It later included organizations that used "Patriots" or "9/12 Organization" in their names. For more detail, see my comment above in response to QuakerInBasement. Or read the report from the Treasury Inspector General from May 14, 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130612132155/http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf.
You usually have more substance in your snark.
Since you referred to Kevin's 2017 column, I went back and read it. He provided a link to the 2017 IG report, which I've now read. His link doesn't work any more, but the report can be accessed from the Wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20171005133818/https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/201710054fr.pdf.
Here's a brief summary response:
Kevin misread the 2017 report, and didn't accurately report its scope or findings, or its relevance to the 2013 report. The 2017 report did not amend, correct, supersede, or otherwise relate to the 2013 report in any way, apart from noting that there was a 2013 report.
The 2013 report addressed the IRS's use of "Tea Party" and associated names in screening criteria for additional scrutiny of applications for Tax Exempt status. It found that the IRS had used "Tea Party" in an organization's name as grounds for additional scrutiny, with no other criteria needed. It then set the applications aside and mostly did nothing with them. This was in the 2013 report: https://web.archive.org/web/20130612132155/http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf
After the 2013 report, several members of Congress requested the IRS look at other criteria used for the BOLO lists. The IG's office identified 259 criteria that had been used to build BOLO lists at various times; 16 of these were still active in 2017, and 19 others were considered "historical", and the others had been deleted at that time. Congressional committees requested the IG office to investigate 11 of these. The IRS suggested one more, and 5 were added based on their appearance in IRS training materials, for a total of 17 criteria of the 259 that had ever been used. None of these were "Tea Party" or "9/12", so these criteria, the initial focus of the 2013 report were not included. When Kevin implied that the 2017 report was the "complete" investigation of the 2013 issues, he was wrong. It would be like comparing NFL rosters to NBA statistics - the fact that there's no match only means that the subjects are different.
Good God, there are STILL people who want to relitigate Hillary's email investigation?
Translation: You're not going to admit you're wrong. Gotcha.
It's clear that Republican scandal mongers just constantly lie and deceive, and the media sees its job as repeating those lies. The coverage of the email stuff was absurd, and most of the Republican complaints were absurd. Clinton didn't commit a crime. But she set things up to commit tens of thousands of violations of the Federal Records Act and its implementing regulations and policies. No normal federal employee would be allowed to do it, and any normal employee who persisted in it would be fired. And it was just pure stupidity. Tellingly, when Obama came into Office, he had to go to lengths to keep his blackberry, and the reports on that all said they planned to comply with the Presidential Records Act in doing so. Complying with records laws wasn't too onerous for him. But apparently, Clinton was above such things.
As a somewhat left liberal, both Clintons and their cadre have driven me crazy for years through bad policies, bad judgments, and constantly putting themselves first. And the whole time, people make endless excuses for them. Can't we finally just acknowledge that, yes, Clinton made a serious mistake and violated a civil law? And somehow, the Clintons seem to give the scandal mongers so much more to work with than say Obama, or Biden, or Kerry, or Pelosi, or Schumer, etc. I still donated to Clinton's campaign and voted for her, and I don't think any rational person should have changed their vote based on this. But why do we have to keep up this constant myth of the Clintons as competent, law-abiding people? I don't think it's good for the Democratic party that we just provide endless cover for incompetence when it's by high level people.
"...During her time as Secretary of State she sent and received only three classified emails, all of them trivial. .."
This seems inconsistent with the requirements of her job.
I seem to recall some discussion around that at the time, and the explanation given was that on the one hand there's email and on the other there's paper, and the safer way to discuss classified paper in emails is to circumlocute. Pretty much the way you'd hint about classified info to somebody else who's clued into it if you were in a public place rather than a SCIF or someplace you could speak freely. Reports from ambassadors and stuff like that, that would definitely be privileged, had to move on the secure DOS system. It was clunky enough that several prior secretaries also did various things to get around it.
The Secretary of State wouldn't do much classified business by e-mail - she has staff for that.
Going back further the most egregious scandal is Vince Foster’s “murder”. None other than Brett Kavanaugh blew over $2 million of our tax dollars on the last of multiple investigations of that vicious slander. Kavanaugh talked Starr into letting him do it but his memos to his colleagues made it clear he believed Foster had committed suicide. But why pass up the chance to prove yourself to the far right. It has paid off handsomely for him.
Without bad faith….
….republicans would have no arguments at all.
Glad to see folk coming around to my point the other day:
Both sides do not do it. The GOP has the corner on corruption and sleaze.
Confess I am a little surprised that every article about Hunter Biden does not mention that Jared and Ivanka reported AT LEAST $170 million in "outside" income while they were "working" for the American people in the White House.
I'm getting those figures from an outfit named CREW which ran the numbers. You will sometimes see a $640 million number, but that comes from the fact that "outside" income is reported in a range, and $640 million is the top of the range, while $170 million is the MINIMUM in the range.
Really journalists, these are officially reported figures. Just report them and make Hunter look like the piker he is.