I once thought of being a Republican, back 40+ years ago, but even with the higher standards they were using then, I couldn’t flunk the IQ test low enough to qualify for membership. I don’t think I could even try today. As witness...
As they promised when they took power back on January 3, GOP lawmakers are working together with former Trump officials to deliver on Jungle Gym Jordan's promise to reveal an anti-Trump conspiracy.
So far, they've produced a modest “dumpster fire,” but as long as they keep tossing more crap in the dumpster, the bigger that fire's going to get.
Jungle Gym and Crew have brought only three of that “multitude of whistleblowers” Gym bragged about having to Capitol Hill for questioning. After that first “hearing” in mid-February, even Jungle Gym knows a fakakte when he steps in one, and he has not scheduled additional interviews.
As committee Democrats have pointed out in an interim report they published yesterday, so far in the interviews conducted to date, “witnesses have offered contradictory responses, maintained fringe and violent online presences that undermine their credibility, and failed to demonstrate first-hand knowledge of alleged FBI wrongdoing.”
That first freak show, er, I mean hearing, saw Gym bring an FBI veteran as a witness, who they claimed would expose a “deep state conspiracy” among Democrats and their accomplices in the intelligence community. As it turns out, this “witless,” er, I mean “witness,” was part of a network of “whistleblowers”that were sent to the new Weaponization of Government panel by allies of Donald Trump.
The Witless, former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill, who retired in 2002 and admitted under questioning by Democrats that he didn’t know what a smart phone is, also admitted he had no firsthand knowledge of alleged “deep state” scandals. Instead, he brought a seabag filled with baggage of his own: a history of inflammatory commentary on social media. Democratic staff had done their research and found a tweet in which Hill claimed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had “blood on her hands.” Rolling Stone found a since-deleted tweet in which Hill wrote “Cancer! GO FASTER!” in response to a tweet from Rep. Lauren Boebert claiming President Biden had been diagnosed with cancer.
One almost had to feel sorry for Ol’ Grampaw Boom-Boom.
Before the interview was over, it was the Witless who was failing to answer difficult questions. As the exchange went on, Hill’s attorney, Jason Foster - a former GOP chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and defender in court of Trump’s Big Lie - was begging the Democratic counsel to stop asking about his client’s tweets.
Hill and Friend are both represented by Foster, who while he was GOP chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee masterminded an aggressive assault against the FBI in the midst of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump. He has since founded Empower Oversight, a self-described “nonpartisan government and corporate accountability organization.” Friend said in an interview with Russia Today(!) that Jordan’s office had “attached” him to Foster.
The results of Gym’s public excursion into demonstrating how many times too many he got dropped on his head back in his ‘rasslin’ days when he was too busy turning a blind eye to his boss’s sexual abuse of the athletes Gym was supposed to care for, have left Democrats gleeful and even some Republicans deeply unimpressed. “Clearly there is room to grow and improve before [more] public hearings,” a Republican told Rolling Stone. But the work so far, the Republican says, has been “very much amateur hour,” adding that “airing this stuff on live television would make us look like morons.” Ya think???!!
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Representative Jerry Nadler, and Weaponization Subcommittee ranking member Delegate Stacey Plaskett released a 316-page report on Thursday - you can get it in PDF, it’s a doozy.
The report suggests that instead of legitimate whistleblowers the trio appears to be a group of conspiracy theorizing, embattled former FBI agents who were compensated and supported by allies of former President Donald Trump. They are: George Hill, a retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst from the Boston field office; Stephen Friend, a former special agent who worked in the Daytona Beach office; and Garret O’Boyle, a suspended special agent from the field office in Wichita, Kansas.
O’Boyle and Friend, testified that they have received financial support from Kash Patel, former Chief of Staf to Devin Nunes and Trump’s last Deputy Secretary of Defense, who was considered responsible for the delay in the Pentagon authorizing release of the National Guard forces to the Capitol on January 6.
During his testimony, Friend detailed that Patel sent him “$5,000 almost immediately after they connected in November 2022.”
Patel didn’t just provide financial assistance to the so-called whistleblowers. The Democratic report states: “Based on this evidence, committee Democrats conclude that there is a strong likelihood that Kash Patel is encouraging the witnesses to continue pursuing their meritless claims, and in fact is using them to help propel his vendetta against the F.B.I., Justice Department, and Biden administration on behalf of himself and President Trump,” the report said.
Patel got Friend his current job, after his security clearance was suspended by the FBI, working as a “fellow on domestic intelligence and security services” at the Center for Renewing America, which is led by Russell Vought and funded by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is run by Mark Meadows and former Senator and certified looney Jim DeMint. Patel, too, is a CRA fellow, according to the organization’s website.
Patel also arranged for Jesse Binnall , who worked as one of Trump’s lawyers when he falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, to become O’Boyle’s attorney. “When Committee Democrats asked O’Boyle about this financial connection, Binnall appeared to surprise his client with an announcement that he was now representing O’Boyle pro bono.”
In a social media post Hill claimed that the January 6 attack was a “set up” and part of a “larger #Democrat plan using their enforcement arm, the #FBI.” Friends sent FBI Director Christopher Wray a public letter in December 2022, asking “tough but fair questions” such as, “Will you commit to educating executive management personnel that J6 protesters did not kill any police officers?” and “Why didn’t the FBI open a civil rights violation investigation concerning the killing of Ashli Babbit?” Friend also published several tweets calling for the FBI to be “defunded, dismantled, dissolved, aborted, abolished,or otherwise ended.”
Regarding Hill’s combative interview as published in the Democratic report, Foster wrote “It’s irresponsible and a violation of the assurances witnesses were given for Committee staff to leak excerpts of closed door interviews to attack whistleblowers rather than actually doing their job to investigate their allegations regarding the FBI.”
In response to the Democratic report, the GOP House Judiciary spokesperson demonstrated the value of their Home Skoolin’: “It is beyond disappointing, but sadly not surprising, that Democrats would leak cherry-picked excerpts of testimony to attack the brave whistleblowers who risked their careers to speak out on abuses at the Justice Department and FBI.”
Per the report: “Federal law only protects FBI employees from retaliation when making claims that they ‘reasonably believe’ provide evidence of ‘(A) any violation of any law, rule, or regulation; or (B) gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.’ None of the three witnesses interviewed to date comes close to meeting that definition.”
Democrats argue that the trio of witnesses relied on “second hand claims and hearsay” during their interviews and therefore don’t meet the legal definition of a whistleblower. “None of the witnesses have provided evidence related to a violation of law, policy, or abuse of authority. None are whistleblowers in any sense recognized by federal law or any federal agency,” the report read.
What is notable is House Democrats flexing big time to pre-empt Jordan’s circus. Based on how the news emerged last night, it appears some news outlets were given advanced notice of the report. Nothing wrong with that per se. It just shows Democrats aren’t sitting back and letting themselves and the public be led around by the nose by Jordan.
If the whistleblowers can’t produce what Jordan has promised, it will be a serious blow to the Republican plan to use control of the House to refocus away from Trump’s connection to the insurrection and onto an alleged anti-conservative conspiracy.
And in case you missed it, Congresswoman Potatoface and the rest of the Goons had further fun publicly celebrating their mendacious, malevolent, moron stupidity on Tuesday:
The newly formed Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic met for what chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup said would be some “Monday-morning quarterbacking.” It instead became a Tuesday afternoon of false starts and illegal blocks.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) kicked off with the unsupported allegation that “covid was intentionally released” from a Chinese lab because “it would be impossible for the virus to be accidentally leaked.”
Rep. Richard McCormick, M.D. (R-Ga.) informed the panel that coronavirus booster shots “do more harm than good.”
Not to be outdone, Marjorie Traitor Goon scored with this extraordinary medical discovery: “Researchers found that the vaccinated are at least twice as likely to be infected with covid as the unvaccinated and those with natural immunity.” Vaccines make you more likely to get covid!
The greatest contribution to the science of misdirection was to feature three scientists who arguably did more than all others to champion a herd-immunity approach to covid. Two - Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya were co-authors of the Koch-funded “Great Barrington Declaration,” which argued in 2020 for letting the virus run wild through the population while somehow segregating the old and vulnerable.
“Doctor” Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon (surprise surprise) and Fox News regular, declared with absolute certainty that the virus came from a Wuhan lab. “It’s a no-brainer that it came from a lab. What’s more, at this point it’s impossible to acquire any more information, and if you did it would only be in the affirmative.”
Makary predicted in late February 2021, that “covid will be mostly gone by April.” He was also the source of DeSantis’s dubious claim that face masks cause unhealthy levels of carbon dioxide in children’s blood.
He even suggested that two of the nation’s top virologists knew this but “changed their tunes” because they were bribed with grant money by Anthony Fauci.
The third “medical” witless, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University (also a Fox News regular), called coronavirus testing “actively harmful” and warned about “great harm” and “danger” from vaccination. He worked on a study that claimed the covid death rate was similar to the flu’s, and argued in March 2020 that “there’s little evidence that the novel coronavirus would kill millions” if left unchecked.
Makary, mocking “King Fauci,” claimed that “the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government.” Bhattacharya repeatedly complained that they had been “censored,” “marginalized” and “slandered” by public health “dictators.” The other witless, Swedish epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, called covid restrictions “the worst assault” on the poor and middle class “since segregation.”
Dr. Mengele would be proud of these proofs that it is indeed possible for a moron to graduate from medical school.
As it was, Republicans used these “scientists” claims disparaging face masks, isolation and vaccines to whip up resistance to public health restrictions.
(A good rule of thumb when choosing a new medical professional is to always ask if the doctor is a Republican - you don’t want some idiot who doesn’t know what they’re doing making important decisions about you)
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The bad news is that this circus is a colossal waste of time.
The good news is that it is so transparently stupid that it just may move more Republicans toward a rational middle.
( I wish Friend had not been in the Daytona Beach office. We are "road kill" already here in Florida. We do not need Friendly's fire!!!)
All of this makes me remember the last scene of one of my all time favorite movies, Little Big Man. In that scene, 121 year old Jack Crabb is last seen just shaking his head in weariness from all of the strife he has witnessed in his long life. He just hangs his head and waves his interviewer away because he is just so very tired of it all. Call me Jack Crabb.