A senior Trump administration official on Wednesday rolled out some new after-the-fact justifications for the firing of Steve Linick, the former State Department inspector general who was investigating an emergency arms sale to Saudi Arabia at the time of his dismissal.
Those are my reasons. And, if you don’t like them, I have others.
Apologies to Groucho Marx.
The House of Representatives needs to install a slapping machine that will rise up from the floor in front of a witness and deliver a good, swift, open-handed crack to the side of the face each time a beyond-the-pale lie is uttered. I bet that would clear up a lot of the bullshit real quick!
This guy is just not a very good liar. No doubt his tenure in this job will be brief.
Yet another item for the Biden administration to fix: Inspectors general shouldn’t be able to be fired without the consent of who? A Congressional committee? There must be some system that can be implemented to disable the power of the investigated to fire the investigator.
I guess Bulatao finally flipped over his 3 X 5 card of Bogus Reasons for Firings and just read the ones on the back.
“Just give me a minute. I’ll find something that’s gotta work better than the truth.”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a CPA who reminded the hearing room that he was the only professional auditor present, seemed amused by the suggestion that Linick was fired for a late audit or low employee morale, calling them “rather easily dismissed ideas.”
“If low morale is reason for someone to be fired, look up, not down,” he said, referring to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Wow - another California Democrat kicking ass. Is he as good as he sounds? I am not familiar with him.
He additionally cited low morale as reflected in survey responses from Office of Inspector General employees.
“We’ve got a problem, and it starts with leadership,” Bulato said.
previously
No apology necessary.
"“We’ve got a problem, and it starts with leadership.”
Right at the top. Right at the top.
In his brief on the Flynn dismissal, Judge Gleeson flagged shifting rationales for an action as evidence that it’s pretextual.
Is there some reason I get the feeling that might apply here, as well?
I love this misspelling/typo of POTUS’ name -kind of close to calling him turnip.
President Donald Trunmp
“If asking questions is bullying --”
Do you want me to punch your face in?
See, no bullying, just asking questions.
OT but this seems important -none of the leaders wore masks. ahem.
NEW: Multiple White House staff have tested positive for COVID-19 today. The White House press pool was just informed, but Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is not releasing any further information.
— Travis Akers (@travisakers) September 16, 2020
This comes less than 24 hours after international leaders met with President Trump.
I had no idea there were so many eunuchs in the DC area working in the Trump administration…just effing wow.
Is that your final answer?
A single appearance by Barr would burn the thing out.
The political leadership of the Trump administration has heavily damaged our government, which you can see from things like this. The Democrats really are going to need to air out all of this bad behavior, and then develop new civil service laws to protect us and government employees from undue influence in the future, as well as the IG system from interference by the president. Congressional oversight has to grow real teeth to avoid these kinds of abuses again. It’s just clear that we can no longer depend on people who win political office to have the best interests of the nation at heart, and when they step across the line there have to be real barriers and consequences, including for the president if they try to block investigations.
It’s going to be a rough few years sorting all of this out, but good governance just has to win the day if we’re ever going to have a government that remains accountable to the people. It’s touch and go as it is, even with politicians who take this seriously we’re very close to an oligarchy. It’s going to be up to the Democrats to do this, the Republicans are too far gone at this point, so we’d better hope Biden is serious about what he says about government working for the people.
Now that you’ve asked that, he’d like to call a friend.
If only he had any.