There’s a fight brewing behind the scenes at the House intel committee that deserves your attention. It kicked into high gear last week when ranking member Jane Harman (D-CA) released the summary of the committee’s investigation into the corrupt practices of former committee member Rep. Duke Cunningham. As payback, Chairman Hoekstra (R-MI) yanked the clearances of one of the Democratic committee staffers and accused him of having leaked the Iraq NIE to the New York Times.
The accusation is one for which Hoekstra’s staff now reportedly concedes the chairman has no evidence. Rep. LaHood (R-IL), who first leveled the accusation, went so far as to tell Fox News that the accusation was payback for Cunningham.
This has been kicking around for a few days. The staffer in question, Larry Hanauer, swore out an affidavit, stating that he played no role in the leak.
Then yesterday Chairman Hoekstra told the Democrats he wants to convene an investigation in which the Republicans alone choose an investigator and that investigator gets to look through the Democratic staff’s phone logs, email, and review all other ‘relevant’ records all with a broad breach to uncover any “improper” conduct.
In other words, it’s a witch hunt. You can see the Democrats’ response below — click the images for the full page.
The back story here is important. The Republicans are looking like they’re going to sustain heavy losses on November 7th. One of the reasons is that the public is starting to get a clear view of the disaster they’ve created in Iraq and the broad sweep over corruption that pervades the entire Capitol. Hoekstra didn’t like any of the Duke findings going public. He wanted Harman to agree to keep it secret. But she wouldn’t. And there wasn’t any legitimate reason why it shouldn’t be made public. This is payback.
Most of what is happening to the Republicans right now is happening because too many facts — about Iraq, about the corruption, and all the rest — started to leak out. Some people wouldn’t roll over anymore.
Keep an eye on this. It’s a good prism into what we’ll see over the next two weeks.
We will be bringing you more on this soon.
