Posted on 06/19/2017 1:43:28 AM PDT by blueplum
....After eight-and-a-half years on an upward trajectory in Washington, D.C., Chaffetz of Utah has suddenly and quite unexpectedly pulled himself out of the game.
Attkisson: "Some people might think this is a great time to be a Republican chairman of an important committee because Republicans control the House, they're the majority in the Senate, and they hold the president's office. That means, you would think, that federal agencies can't stonewall investigations of spending, waste, fraud and abuse."
Chaffetz: "The reality is, sadly, I don't see much difference between the Trump administration and the Obama administration. I thought there would be this, these floodgates would open up with all the documents we wanted from the Department of State, the Department of Justice, the Pentagon. In many ways, it's almost worse because we're getting nothing, and that's terribly frustrating and, with all due respect , the attorney general has not changed at all. I find him to be worse than what I saw with Loretta Lynch in terms of releasing documents and making things available. I just, that's my experience, and that's not what I expected."
(Excerpt) Read more at wjla.com ...
Chaffetz: "We have everything from the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which is really one of the critical things. There was the investigation into the IRS. And one that was more than seven years old is Fast and Furious. I mean, we have been in court trying to pry those documents out of the Department of Justice and still to this day, they will not give us those documents. And at the State Department, nothing. Stone-cold silence."
Attkisson: "To what do you attribute that?"
Chaffetz: "I think if we went to the senior-most people, even the president himself, they would be pulling their hair out and they would hate to hear that but within the bowels of the organization, they just seem to circle the wagons and think, 'Oh we can just wait you out. We can just wait you out.'"
Attkisson: "Well they, they do."
Chaffetz: "They do."
Attkisson: "Republicans were very upset in the last few years over the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, who they said allowed destruction of documents and investigations and other things. This committee, I believe, even called for him to be impeached. He's still IRS commissioner even though Republicans are now in charge of pretty much everything. Why is that?"
Chaffetz: "Now look, you have more than 50 Republicans pleading with President Trump to release him, um, to let him go, fire him. Uh, or at least encourage him to retire. No, he's still there. No changes. Nobody was fired. Nobody was prosecuted. Nobody was held accountable. We tried to issue subpoenas, we tried to hold people in contempt and the Obama administration said no, and the Trump administration came in and did zero. Nothing. Nothing changed."
Attkisson: "Do Republican leaders have an appetite to do the kind of oversight that needs to be done?"
Chaffetz: "No, no. No, I mean the reality is there aren't very many people that want to play offense. There aren't many people who say, look, we have a duty and an obligation to fulfill the oversight responsibility that was put in place at the very founding of our country."
(interview continues at link)
Trump needs to start acting like the CEO we hired him to be. Fire this scum at the IRS and then put them in prison.
Fire everybody! Geez. Is it that hard? Fire so many people the media and the deep state can’t hope to keep up on their “investigations”.
Absolutely!
He should start by firing Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller!
Then he needs to remind the Repukes in Congress (McStain, that includes you!) that their position depends on the outcome of 2018, and they'd best be getting to work on the agenda!
And then he and they need to refocus the people on the goal: MAGA!
Trump has been president for five months tomorrow.
Chaffetz hasn’t seen anything that makes Trump better than Obama.
That is some pretty deep horse “stuff” right there.
Trump has done many things, yet Chaffetz is not aware of any of it. Nope, Trump is no better than Obama.
And some folks even here read his message, and buy into it hook line and sinker.
Good freakin grief folks.
When I worked for the Army as a civilian we would get an occasional Colonel who wanted to turn everything upside down for his OER, not to actually improve anything. We had an expression, “I was here when you got here, I’ll be here when you are gone.” Everyone like that needs to go. If they need help replacing the folks sent packing they probably couldn’t do better than recruit right here.
I’m not sure if Chaffetz is singling out Trump per se, with the exception of firing the IRS guy. Chaffetz is bonechewing over all the donothings in Congress. As he quits out of impatience. Chaffetz should stick around. Trump just now filled his cabinet. The man can only do so many things in one day.
i feel like there is something more than meets the eye with Chaffetz. the Trump admin is barely in place so i don’t think he is trying very hard. he wants out of there - i don’t think he is telling us the real reason. woman’s intuition.
Chaffetz has proven himself to be one of the weak sisters with no staying power. I understand the desire for more family time, but Chaffetz has chosen to make excuses for his retreat from the battlefield instead of sticking around to help Trump with the slow & difficult process of draining the swamp.
I agree with your woman’s intuition. It’s taking longer to get Trump’s people in place because they are being fought tooth and nail by the dimocrats. The republicans are just standing around with their arms folded looking at the floor or something. I guess the fact that they are upright is an improvement over how they threw themselves on the floor and let Obama walk all over them. Chaffetz has just been acting to weird. Something about this whole thing is suspicious.
I agree with you. This is drama queen stuff.
Actually, I think he *is* acting like a CEO. CEOs don't fire everyone when they take over a company; they keep the talented staff and bring them around to a new vision.
Politicians fire everyone so that they can install their ideological cronies. Because politicians are about the power, not the job.
I think it would be nice if government were more like a business--where people go into it because they believe in the mission, and they want the mission to go forward regardless of who is in the lead.
I will say that Chaffetz' problem is not Trump so much, but a Congress of Republicans who have been bullied into submission and will not do the people's work because they are afraid of the left/media.
Without the Army Civilians to provide long-term institutional memory, I don't think the Army would function well at all.
Double woman’s intuition. Something stinky going on soon and he either is involved or he doesn’t want to get caught.
I’ve been through very ugly mergers where people get riffed wholesale.
When everybody is smart, it’s about surrounding yourself with loyalists. It’s no different on Wall St.
When you take over a company you put your people in.
I feel the same. It seems to me someone has something on him. He just got re-elected, had a seat on a powerful committee, is in the majority, and then just up and leaves?
I used to jokingly try to tell some of them that they should be able to submit an OER support form that stated, “When I got here things were running like a well oiled machine so I left everything just as the ARs require...” Somehow most of them never seemed to get it. It never dawned on a few that almost all of their “improvements” were specifically contradicted by the Regs.
Perhaps he doesn’t want to be part of any impending impeachments.
All true, but how does any of that apply to Koskinen? He was a hot button appointee reviled by the base with many demanding his immediate removal. He was running a criminal enterprise targeting conservatives and, yet he continues to serve. This is one of the major mysteries of the Trump Administration.
That is a merger, where I think it is inevitable that downsizing occurs—you don’t need duplication of staff.
But in a case where one CEO is replaced with another, is it the case where the incoming CEO fires everyone and starts over? I think the incoming CEO would keep most of the staff, letting go only those whose jobs are restructured out of existence, or who cannot adjust to the new structure.
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