OPINION:
Reps. Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff — two of the leading voices behind Russia collusion, Russia obstruction of justice, Ukraine quid pro quo, impeach, impeach, impeach! — have turned coattails away from the Games of Politics they oh-so-normally love to play to tweet disparagingly about, get this, President Donald Trump’s use of his White House platform for political revenge.
How delicious it is when the wicked are trapped within their own traps.
Here’s what House Judiciary Chairman Nadler said on Twitter, in reference to the Department of Justice’s decision to look at the key players who kicked off the whole Russia collusion nonsense through criminal eyes: “If the Department of Justice may be used as a tool of political retribution, or to help the [p]resident with a political narrative for the next election, the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage.”
Wow. That’s a pot meet kettle moment, if ever there was one.
Isn’t Nadler the same guy who said just this past September that “personally, I think the president ought to be impeached” — without offering any evidence of impeachable offense? Yes, yes, indeed he was. And in that case: Where was his concern for “the rule of law” then?
Nadler, on his Twitter feed, also wrote this: “These reports [of DOJ’s criminal investigation] raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under AG Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump’s political revenge.”
Nadler made it clear his tweets were joint statements with Schiff. Which is another hoot, given Schiff’s oversight of secret hearings in the Intelligence Committee he chairs.
Honestly, calling out Barr and this Justice Department for political shenanigans brings a laugh list of hypocrisies. The previous administration practically perfected the art of political revenge. Can you say Eric Holder?
“The Department of Justice secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors who work for the Associated Press news agency, including records for the home phones and cell phones of individual journalists,” Wired wrote, back in March of 2013.
Even The New York Times weighed in scathingly on that one, blasting in a headline, “Phone Records of Journalists of The Associated Press Seized.”
Then there was that whole Holder v. Fox News affair, the one where the Barack Obama White House sought to know correspondent James Rosen’s sources. And this is how it went down: “U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder personally approved a decision to subpoena Fox News telephone records,” Reuters wrote in 2013.
The story went on: “The revelation that Holder approved subpoenas that sought Fox News phone records shows that his involvement was broader than the Justice Department had earlier acknowledged publicly.”
Interesting.
So, too, that whole IRS-tea party non-profit application scandal — the one saw delays of tax exemptions to certain groups that were critical of Obama-era policies and that ultimately led to the departure of the acting IRS chief.
“Obama Justice Department Was Involved In IRS Targeting, [Lois] Lerner Emails Reveal,” wrote Forbes in a 2014 piece that included this bit: “[T]he DOJ withheld over 800 pages of Lerner documents … [that showed] Lerner was talking to DOJ officials about prosecuting tax-exempt entities (yes, criminally!) two years before the IRS conceded there was inappropriate targeting.”
Yikes.
Talk about using a political stage for intimidation of U.S. citizens.
Nothing says shut up and sit down like threats from the IRS.
But such was the reputation of Holder and the previous administration.
“Eric Holder,” wrote Hans von Spakovsky, in a Heritage Foundation piece called “Eric Holder’s legacy,” published in April of 2015, “aggressively used the enormous power of the Justice Department to abuse the liberty and economic rights of Americans, to manipulate racial politics and drive a wedge of hostility deep into our society, and to exploit the administration of justice as a political tool to benefit his president and his political party.”
Now that’s using a position of power to extract political revenge. Too bad Schiff and Nadler weren’t so concerned about the politicization of the DOJ and the use of White House revenge politics back when Obama was president.
The stuff that could’ve been prevented …
But Attorney General Barr? He’s not politicizing his investigation. He’s not polluting the DOJ with partisan politics.
Barr’s only going after information the American people are dying to learn — and rightfully deserve to learn. After more than three years of investigating this president, and coming up with nothing, you’d think Nadler and Schiff and the rest on the left might suffer at least a few weeks of investigation into the investigators. After all, if there’s nothing to hide, why worry.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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