Yeah, Kids. It’s “Binary”. Sessions Lied Under Oath

NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 2This one is really simple. The top law enforcement official of the United States lied under oath. As all the cool kids are saying these days, “It’s binary.” Yes … or … no. Simple as it gets. No nuance required. And here, as regards Attorney General Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions the III of the great state of Alabama, the answer is unambiguously, “yes.”

So less than one day after the D.C. punditocracy was wetting itself over Donald Trump “pivoting” to Presidential, we’re whiplashed back into the real reality of, you know, what is really going on. And there’s no plausible equivocating that can be done here.

Sessions, one of the first-in-for-the-Donald members of Congress, and a constant presence throughout the sordid campaign, not only lied in his reply to a question from our own Al Franken, he “volunteered” the lie … abut something that he didn’t have to lie about. (Although the more his standing with the Senate Armed Services Committee is tossed up as an explanation for chatting up the Russian ambassador the more people are stopping to say, “Wait a minute. Chatting up foreign ambassadors is a function of the Foreign Relations Committee, not the one Sessions was on.”

The significance of last night’s news — from both The Washington Post (on Sessions and the Rooskies) and The New York Times (on several foreign governments offering confirmation of Trump associates meetings with Russians in Europe during the campaign) — is that Congressional Republicans are … this close … to the tipping point. The point at which the accumulation of suspicion and evidence is large they have no practical choice other than to agree to an “independent special prosecutor” to investigate — a la Ken Starr — anything and everything related to Trump and the Russians.

Who that special prosecutor would be, who appoints him/her and what level of subpoena power (i.e. into Trump’s taxes) they have remains to be … politicized to hell.

But for now, things are proceeding quite nicely, thank you.

Trump worshippers and toadies will kick up a lot of dust parsing the possible innocence of Sessions’ coziness with the Russian ambassador. But the, uh, unimpeachable fact is that he flat out lied … under oath … to Congress. Just as Bad Old Bill Clinton lied about “not having sex with that woman.” Only this time, we’re not talking about heavy-petting, sort-of-sex in the Oval Office. We’re talking about colluding with the United States’ primary foreign adversary to screw with a Presidential election. Republicans are going to have go deep doo-doo double secret probation tribal to make sex a bigger deal than this, and I have no doubt they will. But as they like to say down in ‘Bama, “That dog don’t hunt.”

Six weeks into the Trump era we’ve already reached the point of needing an extra-Congressional investigation of possibly treasonous activity. (“Treason” being another word that has lost most of its meaning as a result of the constant braying of tri-corner hat-wearing imbeciles.)

Not that I’m surprised, you understand. In fact what surprises me most about the way Sessions, Gen. Flynn before him and the whole Trump team has responded to “the Russian thing” is that it doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of these deep thinkers that it is the business of the NSA, the CIA, the DIA and on and on as well the MI5 in Britain and every other allied intelligence agency to monitor meetings and calls and communications with people close to Vladimir Putin. In fact … wait for it … it’s precisely what we pay billions of dollars a year for them to do.

So, I don’t know if, “Dem boys ain’t too bright” is another ol’ ‘Bama sayin’. But it sure fits this crowd.

5 thoughts on “Yeah, Kids. It’s “Binary”. Sessions Lied Under Oath

  1. Don’t get your hopes up. 86% of Republicans approve of Trump — probably a higher percentage than Obama ever had of Democratic approval! The GOP congressthings will never, but never, actually stand up against His Excrescency.
    But I do like your phrase about the punditocracy peeing on themselves about the supposed merit of the Orange Maggot’s speechification. Wish I had a nickel for every Star Trib editorial-page dribbling about how maybe things are going to be just hunky-dory, oakey-dokey, after all, and in spite of everything.
    I’m glad to see that the Circle newspaper, publisher of Native American news, seems to be following my recommendation that no one should ever attach the title of “President” to the name of Trump. Their articles just call him “Trump,” which is more polite than he deserves, of course.

    • It helps to know the guardians of the Strib’s editorial page if you wonder about their, um, “excessively temperate” approach to Trump. As for the news section, their DC correspondent(s) are almost entirely focused on our delegation, which is not exactly on the cutting edge of the current controversy, Al Franken withstanding. Big papers are almost by definition status quo entities. Their operative strategy is to appear to lead by following a fast step and a half behind the people doing the actual leading, which at the moment is the Times and the Post.

  2. If Attorney General Sessions hadn’t lied about the meeting occurring, it would have seemed plausible that an Armed Services Committee member might have a legitimate foreign policy reason to meet with the Russian ambassador. But the fact that Sessions so brazenly lied about the meeting makes it seem much more likely that they talked less about Crimea and more about cyber crimes.

    • As with every other element of the Trump-Russia story the matter of plausibility lends credence. I mean, a desperate 1980s-90s Trump seeking financing from anywhere gets wound up with Russian oligarch/gangsters/Friends of Vladimir, and privately engages in manic debauched behavior? It’s too easy to believe.

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