Asynchronous Scandal Response

It was an interesting thing to watch the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Christopher Wray to be FBI Director yesterday.  Aside from the interminable speeches (on both sides) masquerading as questioning of the candidate, there is the curious asymmetry on view for all.

Wray seems like a perfectly reasonable candidate, and I assume, since the Democrats on the committee seemed perfectly disposed to vote for him, that he has relatively unimpeachable credentials -- which we already knew.

The asymmetry, though, was what was odd, particularly given that the Republicans are the majority party of the Senate and hold the committee chairmanships, including, of course, Judiciary, chaired by Iowa's Senator Chuck Grassley.

In those interminable lead-ins and speechification, I noticed that occasionally a Republican senator would raise an issue of comparable import -- or more, in fact -- to those flying around in regard to the Trump-Russia nothingburger I discussed yesterday.   One senator (might have been Lindsey Graham, but I'm sure as heck not rewinding to see; life is too short) cited an article in the leftist medium Politico, published in January.

That article referred to a report that the DNC and Hillary campaign in 2016 had conspired with elements of the government of Ukraine -- a former Soviet nation, regardless of what they are now -- to dig up or simply create dirt on Donald Trump while the campaign was active.

The actual question to Wray was to ask whether he would investigate that which, of course, he said he would as FBI Director, assuming that Sen. Graham's office actually follows through and provides Director-to-Be Wray with the article and anything else needed.

"Did you know about the article?", Wray was asked.  No, he hadn't, but he would be willing to investigate.

Did you know about the article?  I know I follow politics, at least enough to write this column, and I had never heard of it until a passing reference -- yesterday, six months after the article appeared.

So what the heck is going on with the press?  Is there one set of rules for scandals, even fictional ones, implicating Republicans and a whole 'nother one for Democrats?  What other conclusion can you make from this?

Donald Trump, Jr., takes a meeting on the expectation of some opposition research purported to be from Russia, but which turns out to be about adoption.  I mean, we know that's what it was.  At worst, the offense was taking the meeting; since there was nothing there, nothing happened relative to any actual offense.

According to Politico, the Democrats did at least that and more -- there was this in their article from the January piece:

"Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found."

Hmmm.  So Donald Jr. took a meeting purporting to provide such adverse information on Hillary Clinton, but there was no such information and the meeting turned out to be about Russian adoption.  Nothing happened, and the only "bad" thing was the willingness of the younger Trump to meet with someone from a foreign country with opposition research -- of which there was none.

Hillary's campaign people actually worked with representatives of a foreign government to obtain and disseminate adverse information on her opponent, of which there was such information and it was indeed promulgated.

Yet we have three days (so far) of Trump Derangement Syndrome bellyaching in the left-controlled media about something that ended up not even being about opposition research and has not been connected to actual (Russian) government officials; the only involved Russian denied such connection.  And we are only now even hearing about the actual collusion with a foreign government to interfere in the 2016 election, by the Democrat Hillary Clinton and her team.

The silence on that one is deafening.  Go figure.  Donald Trump Jr. is accused of "treason" by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) but Kaine doesn't puff a breath about Hillary and the Ukrainians who actually worked with her.

Someone needs to explain the asymmetrical response by the media to the two events.  I do hope that, after the confirmation hearings today and the commitment to investigate the Clinton side of the collusion scandal, the FBI will open a case up about Ukraine-Clinton and actually work it.  Of course, there is probably nothing really illegal in what they did either, but any assumption of lack of illegality on that side applies in spades to the Trump Jr. meeting, where nothing actually took place.

I think I'm going to keep asking about that one in these pages.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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