From the Left

/

Politics

Invite President Trump to Testify, Too

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

As President Donald Trump approaches the end of his first 100 days in office, he is reminding me of Joe Btfsplk. Yes, that's how you spell it.

In the late Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic strip, Joe was the world's worst jinx. He strolled through life with a little storm cloud over his head as he brought disaster to everyone around him.

That image came to mind as President Trump lost another ally in the fallout from his unsubstantiated March 4 tweet that claimed the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower during last year's presidential campaign.

Numerous officials, including FBI Director James B. Comey, have debunked that tweeted claim. But President Trump, true to his stubborn style, refuses to back away even an inch from his apparent hogwash. Instead, he leaves it to his staff and various other allies to look for evidence he appears not to have.

Now it is Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and embattled chairman of House Intelligence Committee, who recused himself Thursday from his panel's investigation into Russia's efforts to meddle in last year's election.

Shortly after that announcement, the House Ethics Committee announced that Nunes himself was under investigation because of public reports that he "may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information."

 

Complaints from watchdog groups to the Office of Congressional Ethics, which is separate from the ethics committee, followed Nunes' disclosure of information from classified intelligence reports to reporters two weeks earlier.

Trump associates had been swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by American spy agencies during the transition, according to the classified reports Nunes cited. He further stirred up a partisan hailstorm by rushing to the White House to brief President Trump and talk to reporters before he briefed other members of his own committee. Democrats were infuriated by a move that showed Nunes to be acting more like a Trump ally than the chairman of a bipartisan investigation.

Even more curious were The New York Times' revelations that the classified information about incidental surveillance had come from White House officials who had been working on the surveillance probe -- and trying to find evidence to support Trump's outlandish wiretapping tweet.

After secretly viewing classified information at the White House, the Times reported, Nunes made a show of returning to the White House to brief the president and reporters.

...continued

swipe to next page

(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

Comics

Tim Campbell Joel Pett Kirk Walters Randy Enos Mike Peters Bob Englehart