Friday with Matt
I spent Friday with Matt Whitaker and the House Committee for the Judiciary; at least they had part of my attention. We are going on vacation, trying to dodge some of Ohio’s wonderful winter weather, and we literally broke the piggy banks. So while I listened to Mr. Nadler of New York, the Democratic Chairman, Mr. Collins of Georgia, the Ranking Minority Member and the Acting Attorney General; Jenn and I managed to count and roll about $686 worth of change: hotel in Pensacola covered!
So what did Mr. Whitaker have to say to the Committee, in this first Congressional Democratic crack at the Trump Administration?
He began by saying that he would not discuss conversations he had with either President Trump or the Senior White House staff. He made that clear, but then proceeded to tell what he hadn’t discussed with either of them: the Mueller investigation. He made it clear that he wouldn’t talk about what he knew about the Mueller investigation, despite the fact he had already publicly discussed how soon it would end in his famous, “melt down” press conference. But then, he also made it clear that he had not interfered with the Special Counsel, nor had he been asked to approve or disapprove his actions.
After six hours of testimony, we got that: Whitaker let Mr. Mueller do what he had to do, and hadn’t interfered. We also got that he thought Mueller was a trustworthy and forthright man, who wasn’t running a “witch-hunt,” though he was unwilling to tell that to the President saying to Eric Swalwell of California, “I am not a puppet to repeat what you say.”
What we didn’t get was a person prepared to run the Justice Department, even though he has a scant few days left in the job. He was unprepared to answer questions on the child separation policy, what he insisted on calling “zero tolerance;” a policy he was a critical part of creating as Jeff Session’s chief of staff. He seemed unable to recall the tax status or other critical details of the Foundation for Accountability and Trust, an organization he served as Executive Director and sole paid employee, for two years. And he was unwilling to acknowledge that his own Federal Bureau of Investigation’s statistics on crime in El Paso, Texas were correct, and that the President was wrong.
Whitaker was prepared for a fight. For the first session of the hearing, he was flippant, arrogant, and disrespectful to Chairman Nadler and Democratic members of the Committee. “I know that question is important to you” and “thank you for that question” led off almost every answer, with long soliloquies ending with the phrase, “…as a sit hear today,” and of course “…I see your five minutes have expired” directed to the Chairman. But oddly, he didn’t seem able to answer the “softball” questions of Republican members as well, including Freedom Caucus leader Jim Jordan. Whitaker’s “handlers” must have had some words during the first break, as the Acting General came back with shorter and much less hostile answers (though his prodigious consumption of water was impressive, as was his hot-mike comment, “…only five minutes for lunch?”)
So after the much-anticipated showdown between the Congressional Democrats and the “pretender” Attorney General, the outcomes were clear. Whitaker, absent having committed perjury, has left the Mueller investigation to proceed apace. The greatest fear, that Whitaker, who spoke on CNN of “starving the Special Counsel” by cutting funding, chose not to follow through on his threats.
And we learned one more thing: the United States, Trumpest or Resistor, will be a lot better off when Bill Barr is confirmed by the US Senate and takes charge at Justice. He is “an adult” in the room, and a man of legal capacity. Neither a caretaker, nor a “mole” for the President, he is a man of his own standing. While Democrats won’t agree with much of what Attorney General Barr believes, I believe he will protect the integrity of the Justice Department, and the nation. And besides, he’s one of Robert Mueller’s best friends, something the Trump Administration must have missed in their vetting process.
