WILL THE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS DEAL WITH TRUMP AS THEY DID WITH HILLARY?

…Former General Mike Flynn became famous for the “Lock Her Up! chants against Hillary

 

How will the Republican Congress weigh in on Trump’s revealing info to the Russians?

 

Do you all remember what the reason for all those chants of “Lock her up!” from the conservative critics of Hillary Clinton? 

 

Well, if you recall, it was all about Hillary’s use of a private server while she was our Secretary of State.  The sticking point of that was according to the FBI, the possibility of classified information being put at a risk of being intercepted by foreign agents, should her server have been compromised.  But Clinton’s team had insisted that the server hadn’t been breached and the FBI said there was no evidence that it was.

What is bizarre is that Donald Trump is president today in part because of voters’ concerns about protecting US classified material.

 

And you will recall that the now fired National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn had at one time said: “I have called on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race, because she, she put our nation’s security at extremely high risk with her careless use of a private email server.” He then joined in the chants: “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

 

Isn’t it ironic that now yesterday, the Washington Post reported that, as president, Trump himself revealed classified information in a conversation with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.  At this meeting in the Oval Office, with these Russian diplomats, where by the way, only Russian press and photographers were allowed, Trump described details about an ISIS terror threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft. 

 

So, with that in mind, I think it’s worth rev-isiting what Trump himself said about Clinton’s e-mail security.  It was a subject that came up regularly in Trump’s freewheeling stump speeches.

 

In Redding, Calif., last June, Trump said: “She could have used the government stuff, assume everybody’s listening to you — I always do. Every time I pick up a phone, I assume people are listening, you know. Now, you sue their a — off if they are. If you can find them, you drop a little lawsuit on them and make them pay, bigly. For her to do what she did puts our country at risk. She’s secretary of state.”

In New York, in June he also said: “We can’t hand over our government to someone whose deepest, darkest secrets may be in the hands of our enemies.”

 

In Doral, Fla., the next month he said: “So how can Hillary Clinton be briefed on this unbelievably delicate information when it was just proven that she lied and that her server shouldn’t have had it and that they’re missing 33,000 emails and that’s just the beginning. … I don’t think that it’s safe to have Hillary Clinton, in light of what just happened, and in light of what we just found out, I don’t think it’s safe to have Hillary Clinton be briefed on national security because the word will get out.”

 

In August, in Portland, Maine, Trump said: “Her email scandal put our entire country at risk. Made our sensitive secrets vulnerable to hacking by foreign adversaries.”

 

Then in Greenville, N.C. in September: “This is really, if we bring it up, this is like Watergate, only it’s worse, because here our foreign enemies were in a position to hack our most sensitive national security secrets. We can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘confidential.’ ”

 

This kind of blather continued right up to the election.

 

But Trump wasn’t alone.  The conservative media jumped on board, and others on the right were quick to question Clinton’s fitness for office.

 

On two occasions, Republicans on Capitol Hill explicitly described Clinton’s email server as treasonous.

This was done by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX.), who made that claim on Fox News.  And Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) who coincidentally announced plans to run for US Senate in his home state, he had even suggested impeaching Clinton should she be elected president, thanks to her lax use of classified information, since “Hillary Clinton has, in my opinion, committed a high crime or misdemeanor or treason, which is the constitutional standard.  She betrayed her country by exposing national security information to risk by our adversaries,” Brooks said. “That is a criminal offense. That makes it an impeachable offense. She probably has committed an impeachable offense, therefore she probably should be impeached. But in all likelihood she won’t be because Congress doesn’t have the political will to do so.”

 

With all of this, I wonder if Mr. Brooks will say the same things about his Republican President Trump?  And will the Republican Congress weigh in on this issue?

I doubt it.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017