Jennifer Rubin has rarely been right about anything until drumpf took the stage, but her disgust with the Diaper Don defiling the Oval Office has her hitting all the right notes on the not so comic farce that took place in the Senate yesterday.
WaPo:
“Again and again today at the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers refused to answer direct questions as to whether they had been asked by the president to interfere with the investigation into possible collusion with Russia. In response to Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Angus King (I-Maine), they said they did not feel “pressured” and/or “directed” but declined to say whether they were asked. FBI acting director McCabe also refused to say if he had conversations with former FBI director James B. Comey about his conversations with the president. And then Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein refused to explain how and why Attorney General Jeff Sessions un-recused himself and whether he understood his memo would be used to fire Comey.
This is nothing short of outrageous. Congress has an independent obligation to conduct oversight. Witnesses cannot simply decide they don’t want to share. If they could, there would be no oversight. While they were not under subpoena, their behavior was contemptuous and frankly unprecedented. The committee has the option to subpoena witnesses, demand answers and then hold them in contempt if they decline to answer. (Is that what the witnesses are hoping for, so they will be seen as having no choice?) It is hard to see any reason why Congress should not do so. A source not authorized to speak on the record but familiar with his thinking told me, “Senator Heinrich will seek to get answers one way or another.” It should be noted that no closed-door sessions are scheduled.”
Clearly, Rogers and Coats are deploying a White House crafted strategy to keep what they know to be true, that the so called President sought to obstruct justice by hamstringing the FBI investigation, from the public eye and are seeking cover under the long ever-so-slowly bending arc of the Special Prosecutor’s plodding efforts.
And just as clearly the Republicans on the Senate Committee will take this insult to their public duties in stride, as just a necessary unraveling of our Democratic process that must be endured if they are to proceed in their aim to destroy the legacies of FDR, LBJ and Barack Obama.