Author Barry Piatt suggests: “Maybe U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) thinks Iowans are stupid.”
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Piatt tells us why in his most recent column:Maybe he thinks Iowans just aren’t paying attention.
“Worse yet, maybe he thinks that after all these years, Iowans no longer care about democracy and his responsibility as one of Iowa’s two elected U. S. Senators in making that democracy survive and function.
“If any of those three possibilities are the actual explanation for what’s the matter with Chuck Grassley these days, he’s wrong on all three counts.
Iowans are not stupid. They are paying attention, and Iowans do care very much about our democracy, its survival and its ability to function as the constitution intends.
Which is to say, yes, we have noticed that Grassley has incinerated whatever reputation and legacy he may have once had as a serious public servant and now rivals even Donald Trump himself as a partisan buffoon.
Once heralded as one of the Senate’s most vigorous and effective watchdogs (a reputation I always thought was a bit over hyped, but not entirely unearned), Grassley has lit it all on fire and cashed in the ashes to become a full-time, boot-licking, partisan lackey for Donald Trump.
It is astounding what Grassley thinks Iowans won’t notice.
The one-time warrior against $500 hammers at the Pentagon now lets mountains of waste, fraud, and abuse fester unchallenged right under his nose for no other reason than because it is Donald Trump’s waste, fraud, and abuse.
The same goes for Trump’s constant graft and corruption, much like Sgt. Schultz on the 1960s TV show “Hogan’s Heroes.” When it comes to graft and corruption by Donald Trump, Grassley “sees nothing.” Always.
Grassley, however, chased the Burisma so-called “Biden bribery” scandal that was entirely manufactured and fed to him by a Russian agent. Grassley even forced the FBI to release raw investigative files in the case even after Grassley – Grassley, specifically – was warned those raw investigative files contained information that was unfounded, unverified and inaccurate.
The Russian agent was eventually arrested and charged with intentionally providing false information to the FBI.
Has Grassley brought the same level of “dogged determination” to get the “facts” on President Donald Trump and the “Epstein files?”
Attorney General Pam Bondi recently claimed those files were on her desk waiting her review. Now she claims they never existed.
That sounds like a classic and incredibly clumsy cover-up of possible serious crimes by Trump.
In a word: No.
Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has taken no action whatever to force release of the “Epstein files” or to get to the bottom of the evidence Bondi claimed in February to have on her desk but now claims never existed.
Instead, Senator Grassley has offered only the most passive bromide observations about the need for Bondi to be transparent on this issue. Whatever that means.
Given the sycophantic role she is playing in Trump’s second term, that is clearly unlikely to happen.
So we turn to the second thing that is needed: for Chuck Grassley, as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee – which has jurisdiction over Bondi’s Justice Department – to do his job in a separate but co-equal branch of government, and do some serious and timely oversight of this scandal.
Grassley has plenty of power as chairman of the committee with jurisdiction and oversight responsibilities over the Department of Justice. He has used none of it. He has done nothing.
There is plenty that needs to be done.
The Ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), revealed Friday that his office has received information that AG Bondi has dispatched 1,000 FBI agents on a 24-hour schedule to comb through the “Epstein files” to flag Trump mentions.
Sounds a lot like a mission grounded in evidence tampering to me.
It also sounds like a strange mission, all of a sudden, a rush mission to search files that we were just told recently don’t exist. But consistency has never been the strong suit of anyone in Trump’s orbit.
And seriously, THIS is where we are going to commit 1,000 FBI agents with all the other threats our nation faces?
More to the point, however, has Senator Grassley expressed any outrage-or even curiosity-about this search? It amounts to an unsupervised ransacking of a crime scene by the lead suspect, something one would think might concern the chairman of a Senate committee charged with seeing that America’s justice system works toward that end.
But no. Nothing from Grassley like that.
A reminder: we’re not talking about casual misdemeanors here, or obscure campaign finance forms that contain errors..
We are talking about multiple felony sex crimes involving children.
Why is Chuck Grassley willing to let that slide? Especially when he so aggressively pursued the Russian-concocted fantasy crime tale about Biden that plenty of people correctly warned him against?
Why? Because Iowa’s senior senator apparently now believes his responsibility is to perform serial political hackery rather than do his actual job on behalf of Iowa, the country and democracy.
To what end does Grassley intend to use his Judiciary Chairmanship?
As citizens and non-citizens alike are getting kidnapped off the street by masked, no warrant, no ID, no badge thugs who claim to be federal police but offer no proof of that; as those kidnapped individuals are then sent off to hell hole prisons in the US or deported to torture black hole prisons in countries to which they have no connection – all with no charges, and no due process – what does Grassley plan to make his priority at the Judiciary Committee?
Earlier this month, in an interview on the Iowa PBS program “Iowa Press,” Grassley told us: He intends to use it to investigate the “political weaponization” of the Department of Justice’s powers and agencies against Donald Trump.
Seriously.
Someone needs to inform Grassley that a bipartisan majority of his own colleagues voted to impeach and convict Trump twice. Nobody is making anything up. The president is a one man, perpetual motion, walking crime wave and if the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee can’t see that then he has even bigger problems than we know.
Grassley has a new “scandal” he’s pursuing now, by the way: Did President Joe Biden appropriately use the autopen in the final hours of his presidency.
Seriously.
Sadly as dean of the Iowa delegation, Grassley sets an example for the rest of the Iowans in Congress. It has not been a good one.
Grassley’s approach to his job has been reckless and lazy. It serves as a guide to others in the delegation.
When 20-year-old Pascual Pedro, a popular, former star Iowa high school soccer player and graduate of West Liberty High School, was kidnapped by masked thugs claiming to be ICE officers, Grassley had little truthful or helpful to say about it.
When asked to help get him back, Grassley lied: “My hands are tied,” said the senior senator in the United States Senate. “I make the laws. I don’t enforce them.”
He actually said that even though he knows, and lots of Iowans know, that part of every senator’s job – including Grassley’s – is, and has always been, to unsnarl miscarriages of government policy like this one. They have offices with staff in multiple buildings across various cities to assist with that work.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) sees Grassley’s nonchalant lie and ponies up with at lest two of her own: that Pascual Pedro – who has no criminal record – is associated with fentanyl dealers; then she pivoted to the “blame Biden” Hail Mary Republicans turn to so often, telling the lie that Pedro came to America during the Biden administration, when the truth is that he came during the first Trump administration.
See how easy it is to lie and feed the Republican base what they want to hear?
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-2nd) told the biggest lie about Pascual Pedro. “I believe (Pascual Pedro) has had due process,” she said.
False.
He received nothing resembling even a flicker of a shadow of due process.
What is wrong with Chuck Grassley, and for that matter, with others in Iowa’s congressional delegation?
None of them seems to take their government jobs seriously these days. It’s all toadying up to Trump, all politics, all campaigning, all political spin, all the time. They churn out little but hyper-partisanship, sloppiness, and lies. And none of them – increasingly – seem fit for public office, these days, whether you agree with them politically or not. If you can’t tell the truth and you can’t do your job, what are you doing voting on behalf of Iowans in Congress?“
- Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains. Piatt can always be counted on to hit the nail on the head — accurate, insightful, and truthful. Readers can subscribe by clicking on Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains.