He’ll be out of there in a week. He was a temp, a hired interim manager. He knew it, too. They just wanted to get him on the record either to use it against him or someone else. He wasn’t buying any of it.
No, afaik they can’t do jack about it. Generally “contempt of Congress” is the refusal to appear under subpoena. If you are subpoenad you have to appear but can refuse to answer. Whitaker has 1st Amendment and 5th Amendment rights among others. He can talk to them with all the scorn and contempt he thinks they deserve.
It’s a kick to listen to some of the news clips of Howard Hughes telling Senator Brewster off... in 1947. He flat said “it is unfair to put me in the position of having my integrity questioned, and not allowing me to question the integrity of Senator Brewster”. Hughes believed Brewster was in the pocket of Pan-Am and working to thwart the expansion of TWA by being a crooked-azz hack. Which he was. Brewster was one of those “all my life serving the public” types, state assembly, governor, congressman, senator... almost no private sector experience... and he wore like a badge of honor but anyone with a lick of sense knows it means his only skill is graft and corruption.
I wish more people would do like Hughes did. But it was a different time.
“Senator Brewster’s story as related here [in the Senate hearing] is a pack of lies”. - Howard Hughes Testimony in Senate Committee.
Nobody speaks to these entitled jackazzes like that anymore. Probably because they have so much more power today.
Like Chuck Schumer, to pick a more recent example. They're, for the most part (99%) completely dishonorable, thieving, ignorant and unaware of their ignorance, and arrogant beyond belief.