MEMBERS OF THE GOP ARE ACTING STRANGE IN THE NATION’S CAPITAL

…Trump at the weirdest White House cabinet meeting….ever

 

Cornell Law School professor says Jeff Sessions’ reasoning for not answering questions did not make sense.

In considering what has been happening in our nation’s capital, am I the only one that is seeing some strange activities regarding actions within the Grand Old Party….?

 

·       Why is it that there seems to be cases of mass amnesia with certain members of the Republican party, such as the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, and many of those from the Trump election campaign?  These individuals just happen to not remember (including Sessions), what was discussed when they met with diplomats such as the Russian ambassador.

 

·       Why was the first full meeting of confirmed cabinet secretaries a kind of Harry Potter ‘surreal and ridiculous event’ where each member, going around the conference room table, seemed to be trying to one-up the former cabinet member in genuflecting to President Trump? 

 

·       Why are the Republican Senators keeping their health care bill so secret that they aren’t even allowing any of the press or any Democratic senators to see the bill…?  The word on the street says the bill is so scary that, like the House bill, it will also take heath care away from millions of Americans, and it gives gigantic tax cuts to the wealthy.  It is now expected that the senate leadership is going to attempt to pass the bill through Reconciliation, which means that it could be passed with only the votes of 50 Republican senators and the GOP vice president.

 

·       Why did all those republican officials testifying at the Senate Intelligence Committee refuse to answer the senators questions, when most of the questions could easily been answered with a simple “yes” or “no”?

 

More and more it is appearing that whether it is true or not, there are apparently things going on within the Trump administration, or within a certain part of the GOP,  that no one wants to talk about.

 

But back to the Attorney General. 

 

Jeff Sessions’ repeated refusal to answer lawmakers’ skeptical inquiries apparently draws on a long political tradition: “Private deliberations involving the president and his top advisers often can be kept out of public view.”  But in this particular case, why did Sessions refuse to state whether he had discussed the firing of the director of the FBI with President Trump?

 

The analysts have disagreed on whether the attorney general was actually using “executive privilege” or merely suggesting it as a shield to fend off questions he did not want to take.

 

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee lambasted the attorney general for failing to provide responses, especially when they were not asking about classified material or involving ongoing investigations.

 

In fact, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said he believed Sessions reasoning for not commenting was wrong: “There was no appropriateness bucket,” he said, for declining to answer a legitimate congressional inquiry. Sen. Angus King (I-MA) said Sessions was being improperly “selective” in what he revealed.   Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said Sessions was “stonewalling,” and that the public was frustrated by it.

 

There is no question that the president has the right to assert “executive privilege” and to stop an adviser from revealing details of their deliberations.  Justice Department policies on releasing information to the public note the concept of “deliberative process privilege,” which is meant to “encourage open, frank discussions on matters of policy between subordinates and superiors.”

 

But the legal analysts were split on whether Sessions was correct on Tuesday.  Sessions admitted that Trump had not asserted executive privilege, and he himself had no power to claim it.  But Sessions said he did not want to reveal details that the president might want out of the public eye, if he were given the time to consider it.

 

“It’s my judgment that it would be inappropriate for me to answer and reveal private conversations with the president when he has not had a full opportunity to review the questions and to make a decision on whether or not to approve such an answer,” Sessions said.

 

A former federal prosecutor and associate independent counsel now in private practice, said Sessions had taken a “legitimate position . . . to protect the confidentiality of his conversations with the president.”

 

But Cornell Law School professor Jens David Ohlin said Sessions’s reasoning did not make sense.

 

“His justification for refusing to answer the questions was completely incoherent. He claimed executive privilege but then denied that he had done so,” Ohlin said. “It made no sense whatsoever. He’s basically trying to have his cake and eat it, too: He claim executive privilege, but then pretend that he didn’t. His position has no basis in law, common sense, or even basic logic.”

 

Sessions declined to detail his conversations with the president on a number of topics.  They included the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey and possible discussions of pardons, or of the Russia investigation. He did, though, offer some specifics on why Comey was fired, a point Senator King said showed he was being choosy in what he was willing to discuss.

 

Last week, the Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers also declined to answer questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee about their conversations with the president.  Coats, like Sessions, said he did not know whether the White House would block his participation in the questioning by asserting executive privilege.

 

Senator Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) pressed Sessions to promise that he would at least provide documentation to help the committee’s investigation.  However, Sessions said that he would only review Justice Department rules and precedents.

 

If you recall, President Richard Nixon had famously invoked executive privilege in trying to withhold White House tapes of himself and others discussing the Watergate scandal.  But he had to resign not long after he lost in the US Supreme Court and was ordered to turn the materials over.

 

It is more and more looking like that at some point the Trump administration will also be embroiled in a circumstance similar to or even worse than the Watergate scandal.

 

Stay tuned!

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017