Saturday, January 14, 2017

Chaffetz letter

To Senators Sessions and Shelby and Representatives Byrne, Roby, Rogers, Aderholt, Brooks, Palmer and Sewell:

My opinion is that the Chaffetz letter situation presages Congress and Trump getting bogged down bigly.

The letter was sent after the director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, announced at a press conference on Wednesday that President-elect Trump’s “fix” to his ethics and emoluments clause problems didn’t fix anything. In response, Chaffetz sent Shaub a letter accusing him of unprofessionally blurring politics and ethics guidance, and demanding that Shaub make himself available for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to “interview” him. The letter slams Shaub for attempting to engage in “public relations” and raises at the end of the letter Congress’s need to reauthorize the OGE.

It is fairly certain the controversy over the Trump organization is not going to end anytime soon, and the only question is how big a problem it will become and how much it results in Trump being hampered in implementing his policies and programs.

If Trump gets bogged down, it means Congress will be bogged down too and look bad, and you, the Alabama delegation in DC, will look bad.

You are far better equipped than I to evaluate the risk for yourselves here.

In making your evaluation, I hope you will consider how Trump could have made a sacrifice for the country (as laid out in A Trump speech - NOT), thereby ended the problem of the Trump organization, and further won esteem for himself and greatly aided himself in implementing his policies and programs to help the American people.

Trump is making it evident that he is not going to sacrifice anything personally for the country, and he will take great pleasure in the Trump organization exploiting Trump's Presidency to make the Trump brand even more valuable.

For upwards of half the country, Trump is more and more proving that he is a bullying, blustering, vainglorious egomaniac who is interested only in himself and his greater glory. 

You will have your own views and analysis of the dicey situation that Trump and the country are in, and you will reach your own decisions about what you are going to do.

One choice is to let Trump roll over you (which I think you know he is going to try to do), or you can push back. Maybe Trump will be successful in rolling over Congress, the media, the intel community and the 65,000,000 Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton. Alternatively, his unrelenting belief in himself may cause him to run headlong into an immovable wall and come a cropper.

Only time is going to tell whether Congress gets bogged down with Trump, and whether Congress continues to go down in the eyes of the country.

Good luck.

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