Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the committee, and others argued that Nunes damaged the credibility of their investigation by doing so.
…an intended consequence.
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Nunes is from California farm country, Tulare, and farming was all he did before he reached the position he now has, and where he’s in over his head. It’s clear he doesn’t belong there, but like the old song says, how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris. Or the inside of Paulie’s office.
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Big whoop. Too late. The damage has been done. Mission Accomplished, Doofus.
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Don’t call it an apology when it wasn’t an apology, Rep Speier… see, that already makes headlines out there. He abused his power, he committed obstruction of justice, and he’s a Trump accomplice. That should be today’s headline, not “Uh well he kinda sorta apologized somehow”
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It was a Senate committee - Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities aka The Watergate Committee
Chairman: Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (D-NC)
Vice Chairman: Howard H. Baker (R-TN)
Committee members:
Edward J. Gurney (R-FL)
Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI)
Joseph M. Montoya (D-NM)
Herman E. Talmadge (D-GA)
Lowell P. Weicker (R-CT)
Here is a link to the entire process: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/investigations/Watergate.htm#Investigation
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Forget the ‘apology’ fro a minute. Did any of the other members actually see the leaked docs? Do they even exist?
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Remember this guy ? Former Senator and Actor Fred Thompson ? He did this…
In 1973, Thompson was appointed minority counsel to assist the Republican senators on the Senate Watergate Committee, a special committee convened by the U.S. Senate to investigate the Watergate scandal.[20] Thompson was sometimes credited for supplying Republican Senator Howard Baker’s famous question, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”[21] This question is said to have helped frame the hearings in a way that eventually led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.[22]
A Republican staff member, Donald Sanders, found out about the White House tapes and informed the committee on July 13, 1973. Thompson was informed of the existence of the tapes, and he in turn informed Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt.[23] “Even though I had no authority to act for the committee, I decided to call Fred Buzhardt at home,” Thompson later wrote,[24] “I wanted to be sure that the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action.”
Three days after Sanders’s discovery, at a public, televised committee hearing, Thompson asked former White House aide Alexander Butterfield the famous question, “Mr. Butterfield, were you aware of the existence of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?” thereby publicly revealing the existence of tape recordings of conversations within the White House.[18][20] National Public Radio later called that session and the discovery of the Watergate tapes “a turning point in the investigation.”[25]
Thompson’s appointment as minority counsel to the Senate Watergate committee reportedly upset Nixon, who believed Thompson was not skilled enough to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outfoxed by the committee Democrats.[21] According to historian Stanley Kutler, however, Thompson and Baker “carried water for the White House, but I have to give them credit — they were watching out for their interests, too… They weren’t going to mindlessly go down the tubes [for Nixon].”[21] When the Watergate investigation began to pick up speed, tapes revealed that Nixon remarked to his then-Chief of Staff Alexander Haig, “Oh shit, he’s dumb as hell.”[26]
Journalist Scott Armstrong, a Democratic investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee, is critical of Thompson for having disclosed the committee’s knowledge of the tapes to Buzhardt during an ongoing investigation and says Thompson was “a mole for the White House” and that Thompson’s actions gave the White House a chance to destroy the tapes.[27] Thompson’s 1975 book At That Point in Time in turn accused Armstrong of having been too close to The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and of leaking committee information to him. In response to renewed interest in this matter, in 2007 during his presidential campaign, Thompson said, “I’m glad all of this has finally caused someone to read my Watergate book, even though it’s taken them over 30 years.”[27]
Same old, same old. Republicans are corrupt. Full Stop
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Hey thanks. I did a little looking last night at the procedure and then stopped and I was just thinking about it.
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I didn’t realize it lasted 16 months, and it’s fair to say people of a certain age, ahem, followed every day of it. It will take as least as long to get to the bottom of the trumpswamp
@tena I remember John Dean spoke of a cancer on the presidency, which I always found to be compelling testimony. Here’s what he said, and for his actions in the White House got four months in prison
I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed that the president himself would be killed by it. I also told him that it was important that this cancer be removed immediately because it was growing more deadly every day…
I told the president about the fact that there was no money to meet their [the Watergate burglars] demands. He asked me how much it would cost. I told him I could only make an estimate that it might be as high as a million dollars or more. He told me that that was no problem. He also looked over at [Chief of Staff H.R.] Haldeman and repeated the same statement
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One of the things that took so long during Watergate was getting to the hearings.
We’re already at the hearings.
Evidence gathering is on a different scale this time since it is IC gathering it instead of two reporters.
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True, but doesn’t the process slow down if they move to a special prosecutor at this point? And mightn’t that be the point of Nunes discrediting his own committee?
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Speier entered politics by serving as a congressional staffer for Congressman Leo Ryan. Speier was part of his November 1978 fact-finding mission organized to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple followers, almost all of whom were American citizens who had moved to Jonestown, Guyana, with Jones in 1977 and 1978.[4] Speier was one of two members of the mission who made wills before traveling to Jonestown.[9] Several Peoples Temple members ambushed the investigative team and others boarding the plane to leave Jonestown on November 18. Five people died, including Congressman Ryan. While trying to shield herself from rifle and shotgun fire behind small airplane wheels with the other members of the team, Speier was shot five times and waited 22 hours before help arrived.[10] That same day, over 900 of the remaining members of the Peoples Temple died in Jonestown and Georgetown in a mass murder-suicide.
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I can’t answer that - I don’t really know. It doesn’t have to; one would think they could appoint a special prosecutor any time. It’s just that I don’t think the House is going to do it whereas the Senate might.
That’s what made think about the Watergate Select Committee.
None of it is going to be as fast as we’d like. Shit always takes more time that you think it should.
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Mia Culpa will be appearing on the next Drag Race with RuPaul… not.
I lived, and still do, in San Francisco at that time, and these events are as vivid as if they had happened yesterday. Speier’s a gutsy lady.
Just nine days after these horrors, Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were killed by ex-Supervisor Dan White at City Hall. Our City was reeling. To her credit Mayor Dianne Feinstein held it together while we grieved.
@irasdad Along with the moderate Senator Javits in NY, there was also a moderate R mayor, John Lindsay, People seemed to think he had a bright future but I don’t believe he pursued anything else.
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Those were the days…
“Moderate" Republicans.
Where are we going to find the likes of Baker and Weicker in 2017?
- Ike.
- Margaret Chase Smith.
- Chuck Percy.
- Jacob Javits.
- Nelson Rockefeller.
- Richard Lugar.
All long gone, like so many other extinct species…
(Hell, the 2017 GOP even makes Barry Goldwater look good by comparison!)
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Constipated justice, I guess…
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Justice is a lot like filming movies - a lot of hurry up and wait.
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I was at Berkeley at the time and also remember those events as they unfolded. It was a rough time. And right on their heels came Three Mile Island and the Iranian hostage crisis.
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- Nunes “apologized” for telling the President details on an ongoing espionage investigation linked to people near him. Monstrous.
- Comey said he “had” to tell congress about Hillary when days later he cleared her. Again. And most likely turning the election. Monstrous.
- Trump balls-out lies monumentally, continuously. Monstrous.
What do all these have in common? Words. Words and actors with absolutely no integrity behind them and, in fact, deep maliciousness and and intent to harm to our country. Monstrous.
And most people I see saying… “Well, politics is so toxic”, “I’m just so tired of it”, “Not going to say anything because it’ll just cause arguments”.
And me… I no longer wonder “what will it take for them to see how monstrous this administration is”.
They see.
They can’t be bothered.
They think this will go away and it will be ok eventually.
That is not the way destruction works.
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