Day 540

Day 540 Friday July 13, 2018 1,038 Days to Go

Yesterday, I was getting ready for bed. I was tired. We had climbed a mountain and then went to the movies with our niece and one nephew. I was ready for bed. I flipped on the TV. The guide said CSPAN had a Congressional hearing with Peter Strzok. He’s the FBI agent that was having an affair and sent some inappropriate texts to his paramour. He was on the Mueller investigation and immediately reassigned. He had worked on the Hillary Clinton email server investigation and on the Trump Russian investigation.
When the TV came on Jim Jordan was asking questions. Jim is the leader of the right wing ultra-conservative so-called Freedom Caucus, which is anything but about freedom.
Jim comes from a wacky district formed by the Republicans in 2010. It’s a narrow strip that runs north to south through Ohio. It’s is ultra-conservative and very white. I often wonder if the Republican establishment regrets what they did, as Jim Jordan and his caucus pals, including my Congressman, Dave Brat, have been stymying any reasonable legislation getting through the House.
Last time I saw Jim Jordan in a Congressional hearing he was asking questions which were narrowly focused and designed to subvert the truth. He was doing it again. He was bringing up picky stuff that the witness did not have in front of him and did not recall. Apparently, Jordan was trying to get Strzok to say from whom the FBI got the Steele Dossier. Strzok was not permitted to talk about an on-going investigation and therefore couldn’t answer the question. This seemed to be a hard concept for Jordan to grasp. Jordan wanted Strzok to say the FBI got the file from Bruce Orr’s wife who worked for the firm that paid for the dossier. Jordan and Gowdy like to say it was the Democrats who paid for the dossier, conveniently forgetting that it was Republicans who initiated the work.
Then there was the Trey Gowdy show where he contemptuously asks the witness if he understand some legal point. The last time he tried this was on Jim Comey. Jim explained to Trey what the law was and how it worked. This shut Trey up enough to move on without comment. This time Trey seemed to have a problem understanding that there was a discussion Strzok had where he said he didn’t know if what the FBI had was impeachment or if “there was no there there.” Gowdy wanted to know which it was. Strzok explained multiple times that he didn’t know, hence the discussion. This was a concept beyond Trey’s mind to grasp. Why didn’t Strzok do that in the Hillary email server investigation? Why indeed? Oh wait, there was nothing that smelled of impeachment. In fact, there was no there there. Well, there was the recipe for something. That was the only thing that had any smell to it.
But all this was beyond Trey’s ability to comprehend.
I kept wondering how Senator Scott could say with a straight face that Trey Gowdy was his friend and always sought the truth? Was this what a black man had to say in South Carolina to keep the voters happy?

1,038 Days to Go

PS A walk on the beach