Hatch finally forced to defend himself against his own comments

Asked earlier this week if he was concerned the filings from prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York implicated the president, [retiring GOP Senator Orrin] Hatch told CNN: "I don't care, all I can say is he's doing a good job as president."

[...]

"Earlier this week in an unplanned hallway interview with CNN, I made comments about allegations against the President that were irresponsible and a poor reflection on my lengthy record of dedication to the rule of law," Hatch, who is retiring in January, said in a statement on Friday.

He added that with Americans’ "faith in so many of our institutions is at an all-time low, I regret speaking imprudently."

"I don’t believe the President broke the law, but one of the core principles of our country is that no one is above the law. That means anyone who does break the law should face appropriate consequences," Hatch continued.

[...]

Hatch added in his statement on Friday that he does not believe Cohen is "any kind of reliable voice in this process" but that he has previously acknowledged that "the campaign finance allegations were 'some serious charges, and they can’t be ignored.'"

"While I believe the President has succeeded in a number of important policy areas, that success is separate from the validity of these investigations, which I believe should be allowed to run their course," Hatch added.

  The Hill

Still talking like the feds would be prosecuting on simply the word of Michael Cohen without corroborating evidence.

Video of his original comments is in the article.



"You can make anything a crime under current laws."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yep, Orin Hatch has dirty Russian money in his coffers

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Can it get worse?

Perhaps.  But it could be a toss-up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is poised to become the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced Friday that he would step down to take over the chairmanship of the Finance Committee.

  The Hill

Chuck should just step down, period.

The Senate Finance Committee is one of the most powerful in Congress. It was at the center of the health care and tax reform debates of 2017 and also has jurisdiction over trade and the major entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

At least we get rid of Orrin Hatch, who is finally retiring.  But probably not going away.

Graham met Thursday with Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general whom Trump appointed to replace Jeff Sessions the day after the election.

Whitaker assured the senator that he saw no reason to fire Mueller, something that has been a top concern of Democrats and some Republicans since Sessions’s resignation.

“As to Mueller investigation, I’m confident that it is not in jeopardy,” Graham said after meeting with Whitaker.

Whitaker told Graham that he doesn’t think Mueller’s probe has breached any guidelines.

Okay, but is he going to demand all Mueller's information to then give to Trump's lawyers?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Arizona has counted

The fire just got stoked higher under His Nibs.

The first Democrat since 1994.  How's he gonna pretend that wasn't his fault?  Never mind, I know: the losing contender, Republican Representative Martha McSally, gave him no love.

If Abrams and Gillum should pull out their races, his lone reason for claiming victory - that the Republicans gained Senate seats (almost complete victory, he ridiculously called it) - will look pretty sad, indeed.  In fact, it already does, since there were three seats that flipped to Republicans (Indiana, North Dakota - where there was serious voter suppression of Native Americans - and Missouri), and now with Sinema's win, two seats have flipped to Democrats. (Jacky Rosen over Dean Heller in Nevada is the other.)  That leaves him only one pick up to brag about, and about 40 losses in the House.  Republican pundits must be feeling a bit pressured what with all their "there was no blue wave" talk.




Thank goodness no one has to explain anything to Hatch any more. Hopefully there's room for the Democrat January celebration to include the riddance of Orrin Hatch to the Senate chambers.  But if not, I'll be celebrating it for them.  Sadly, he did stick in there long enough to get Kavanaugh on the bench, but I suspect, with the exception of Lisa Murkowski, any other Republican would have done that as well.

UPDATE:

Dishonest and disingenuous

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Friday said that the U.S. Senate will be not be intimidated by "paid protesters" in its quest to vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

"Our vote today was important not only because it will allow us to move forward and conclude this process," Cornyn said on the Senate floor after the chamber voted in favor of ending debate on Kavanaugh's nomination. "It was important because it showed that the U.S. Senate will not be intimidated.

"We will not be bullied by the screams of paid protesters and name-calling by the mob."

  The Hill

John Cornyn knows the protesters are not paid by anyone, whereas, John Cornyn is a paid corporate agent.  John Cornyn is a shithead.  Texas women: you know what to do in 2020 when he runs for re-election.

And, speaking of disgusting old man whores...

The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board ripped Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) in a fiery editorial for his part in a “despicable attack” launched on Julie Swetnick, the third woman to publicly come forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“The despicable attack launched by Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Senate Judiciary Committee — more precisely, the Republicans on that committee — on one of the women who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault is a textbook example of why more victims do not come forward,” the board wrote on Thursday.

“Worse, it betrays a positively medieval attitude toward all women as sex objects who cannot be believed or taken seriously,” the board continued.

[...]

“What we now know for sure is that Hatch and others working for the Judiciary Committee have, without question, tried to slime one of Kavanaugh’s accusers in a way that is widely, and accurately, described as ‘slut-shaming,’” the editorial concluded.

“Except it is Hatch and his allies who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves."

The Salt Lake Tribune is Utah’s biggest newspaper.

  The Hill

Hatch, whose office has been front and center in the smearing of Kavanaugh's accusers, has said he's retiring. Let's see if he sticks to it. If not, hopefully Utah will dump him. That old asshole has been in Congress 41 years. It's time for Congressional term limits.



Paid protesters is the go-to argument for every protest the GOP witnesses.

Hatch again

They can afford to lose one.  Mike Pence is the tie-breaker.  (And that's a rule that ought not exist.)



I had forgotten this about Hatch.  Flake and Coons discussed pairing in their Atlantic Festival talk.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE  10/6:

Trump has put Daines on notice:



Fucking incredible.

Orrin Hatch again

Video posted on Twitter by the group Vote Pro Choice shows protesters confronting [Orrin Hatch] as he enters an elevator on Capitol Hill.

"Why aren't you brave enough to talk to us and exchange with us?" one of the protesters asks Hatch. Hatch responds by waving his hand at her, which results in the woman shouting, "Don't you wave your hand at me!"

"When you grow up I'll be glad to," Hatch can be heard saying as he enters the elevator.

  The Hill

He wasn't about to get himself in a Flake position for the TV.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



Let's not be talking about making things in the basement with love.

Hatch office - again!

You'd think after that Ed Whelan business, Hatch's office would lay low for a while. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Never underestimate how low the GOP is willing to go

I hate to have to agree with Orrin Hatch

The Utah lawmaker Orrin Hatch, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a 44-page amicus brief earlier this month in Gamble v. United States, a case that will consider whether the dual-sovereignty doctrine should be put to rest. The 150-year-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double-jeopardy clause allows state and federal courts to prosecute the same person for the same criminal offense. According to the brief he filed on September 11, Hatch believes the doctrine should be overturned. “The extensive federalization of criminal law has rendered ineffective the federalist underpinnings of the dual sovereignty doctrine,” his brief reads. “And its persistence impairs full realization of the Double Jeopardy Clause’s liberty protections.”

Within the context of the Mueller probe, legal observers have seen the dual-sovereignty doctrine as a check on President Donald Trump’s power: It could discourage him from trying to shut down the Mueller investigation or pardon anyone caught up in the probe, because the pardon wouldn’t be applied to state charges. Under settled law, if Trump were to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for example—he was convicted last month in federal court on eight counts of tax and bank fraud—both New York and Virginia state prosecutors could still charge him for any crimes that violated their respective laws. (Both states have a double-jeopardy law that bars secondary state prosecutions for committing “the same act,” but there are important exceptions, as the Fordham University School of Law professor Jed Shugerman has noted.) If the dual-sovereignty doctrine were tossed, as Hatch wants, then Trump’s pardon could theoretically protect Manafort from state action.

[...]

“If Hatch gets his way [...] a federal pardon would essentially block a subsequent state-level prosecution.”

  The Atlantic

Frankly, I don't have a problem with that. Well, I may have a problem with a federal pardon, but I don't have a problem with not being tried at the state level for something you already were tried at the federal level.

Also, it's my understanding that this very thing is why Mueller chose to not charge Manafort with all the things he could have. Because New York already has this rule on the books, he left some charges off so that the state could file those charges, and in that case, Trump would still not be able to pardon Manafort.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Have I mentioned that Orrin Hatch is a prick?

Yeah, and same senator whose office was encouraging people to watch for Ed Whelan's story that somebody else committed the attack on Ford.

Whelan's helpers

A good place to start is Orrin Hatch's office.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Ed Whelan's strategy

On Thursday night, Twitter was aflame with the news that a prominent conservative legal strategist had gone public with the theory that another man may have been the perpetrator of the alleged sexual assault against Christine Blasey Ford.

The strategist suggested that Ford had confused this man for Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh — and worse, he named the other man, in effect publicly accusing him of committing attempted rape.

Ford promptly denied that she had confused this man for Kavanaugh. [...] Kavanaugh needs to clarify whether he had any advance knowledge of this strategy of pinning the blame on someone else.

Senior Democratic aides tell me that, in the upcoming Judiciary Committee hearing, Senate Democrats are likely to pose questions along these lines directly to Kavanaugh, when he is under oath.

The conservative strategist who floated the alternate attempted rape theory, Ed Whelan, has been active in conservative judicial circles for a long time, and is close to Kavanaugh. He posted a long Twitter thread — which we will not link to here, and nor will we name the man he fingered — that rather creatively employed maps and floor plans of the house at which he suggested the attack took place. Whelan also posted the name and a photo of his alternate suspect.

[...]

The senior aide also noted that this was particularly important to pursue given that a particular person was named, and because it constituted an open acknowledgment by a top Kavanaugh ally that “the party in question” — where the alleged attack took place — “actually happened.”

[...]

Whelan apologized on Friday morning for publicly implicating someone else, and it is, of course, entirely possible that Kavanaugh had no knowledge whatsoever of Whelan’s machinations.

  Greg Sargeant @ WaPo

But not likely. Give him another chance to lie to Congress.

On Thursday, a top aide to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, mysteriously told everyone to keep an eye on Whelan’s Twitter feed. Though he has since claimed no knowledge of Whelan’s plan, this at least raises questions as to whether it had come up in internal discussions with the very Republicans who will vote to move Kavanaugh’s nomination forward.

Indeed, Steve Schmidt, who ran Supreme Court confirmation efforts for Republicans in the past but recently left the GOP, was quite forceful on this point. He noted on Twitter that “it is inconceivable to me,” based on his own experience, “that Whelan published that email without discussions, debate and assistance” from the White House and “GOP Senators and staff.”

#MeToo.

Republicans on Capitol Hill and White House officials immediately sought to distance themselves from Whelan’s claims and said they were not aware of his plans to identify the former classmate, now a middle school teacher, who could not be reached for comment and did not answer the door at his house Thursday night.

Whelan did not respond to requests for comment. He had told people around him that he had spent several days putting together the theory and thought it was more convincing than her story, according to two friends who had talked to him.

On Friday morning, Whelan said he had made an “inexcusable mistake” by identifying Kavanaugh’s classmate.

[...]

Whelan has been involved in helping to advise Kavanaugh’s confirmation effort and is close friends with both Kavanaugh and Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society who has been helping to spearhead the nomination. Kavanaugh and Whelan also worked together in the Bush administration.

Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident involving Ford happened, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

[...]

Earlier this week, Kavanaugh told Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), one of his most fervent supporters, that Ford has the wrong perpetrator in mind and that he has not attended a party like the one Ford described in an account she gave The Post this week of the alleged assault.

  WaPo

And as far as I know, Kavanaugh has not denied any involvement yet. I have a feeling they're all now bunkered to decide the best way for him to withdraw. Or maybe I'm just hoping.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The office of Rep. Sen. Orin Hatch weighs in

Full stop?  Without mentioning family, Sean Hannity at dinner, John Bolton, and the Mercers?  Also, that lets The Idiot in Chief off the hook for advising himself.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

When Orrin Hatch turns on you

The office of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) clarified on Thursday that the senator did not say President Trump was the greatest president ever, but suggested he could be.

Trump said Thursday at a GOP retreat that Hatch, 83, had called him the "greatest president in the history of our country," thanking Hatch and calling him a "spectacular man."

"Orrin is — I love listening to him speak ... He actually once said I'm the greatest president in the history of our country and I said, 'does that include Lincoln and Washington?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'I love this guy,'" Trump told reporters at a press conference for the West Virginia retreat.

Hatch spokesman Matt Whitlock told The Hill that "Hatch has said that he would like to work with the President to make this the greatest presidency in history for the American people."

  The Hill

He hears what he wants to hear.

Hatch has announced his retirement from the Senate after his current term.

Hooray!

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, long rumored to be a replacement candidate, announced Thursday that he would make a Senate announcement in two weeks.

Sigh.

A tiny bit of good news

Orrin Hatch is stepping down.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving Senate Republican, announced Tuesday that he will retire at the end of the year, rebuffing personal pleas from President Trump to seek an eighth term and paving the way for Mitt Romney, a critic of Mr. Trump’s, to run for the seat. Mr. Hatch’s decision marks another political setback for Mr. Trump, who lost a Senate seat in Alabama after his preferred candidates were rejected. He also faces an exodus of Republicans from both chambers of Congress and has been warned of a political typhoon in November.

[...]

Mr. Hatch was under heavy pressure from Mr. Trump to seek re-election and block Mr. Romney. Last month, Mr. Trump flew with Mr. Hatch, who has emerged as one of the president’s most avid loyalists in the Senate, on Air Force One to Utah for a day of events that was aimed entirely at lobbying the senator to run again. At the request of the senator, the president announced that he was vastly shrinking two of Utah’s sprawling national monuments, reversing decisions made by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

  NYT

And look how he repays him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

But, speaking of Orin Hatch...

The senator from Utah got a big write-up today in the Salt Lake Tribune, having been chosen their Utahn of the Year.

[T]his year, as many times in the past, The Tribune has assigned the label to the Utahn who, over the past 12 months, has done the most. Has made the most news. Has had the biggest impact.

[...]

The selection of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch as the 2017 Utahn of the Year has little to do with the fact that, after 42 years, he is the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, that he has been a senator from Utah longer than three-fifths of the state’s population has been alive.

It has everything to do with recognizing:

• Hatch’s part in the dramatic dismantling of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
• His role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in passing a major overhaul of the nation’s tax code.
• His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power.

  Salt Lake Tribune

Well then.

To all appearances — appearances promoted by Hatch — this anti-environmental, anti-Native American and, yes, anti-business decommissioning of [Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante] national monuments was basically a political favor the White House did for Hatch. A favor done in return for Hatch’s support of the president generally and of his tax reform plan in particular.

[...]

The fact remains that tax reform has been talked about and talked about for decades and only now has anything been done. And Hatch, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has his fingerprints all over it.

But perhaps the most significant move of Hatch’s career is the one that should, if there is any justice, end it.

The last time the senator was up for re-election, in 2012, he promised that it would be his last campaign. That was enough for many likely successors, of both parties, to stand down, to let the elder statesman have his victory tour and to prepare to run for an open seat in 2018.

Clearly, it was a lie.

[...]

It would be good for Utah if Hatch, having finally caught the Great White Whale of tax reform, were to call it a career. If he doesn’t, the voters should end it for him.

"His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power."

Could actually be a tribute to many a politician.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Apparently, he didn't actually read it.  Now they can add one more item to the list.

Pretty lame attempt to make the SOB look like he's on top of things.  That would be the subtlest tongue-in-cheek tweet I ever saw.  And I'm not new to Twitter.  

UPDATE 1/2/18:

"It would be good for Utah if Hatch, having finally caught the Great White Whale of tax reform, were to call it a career."

And, there he goes.  He's looking forward to spending more time with his family.  How many times have we heard that one?  What's he trying to hide from?  Or is he just afraid he couldn't win again?

Bah humbug

Who I believe is fourth in line - likely soon to be second - for the presidency after Paul Ryan.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They can't seem to get their tax plan passed

Orrin Hatch thinks a 1-year limit on tax cuts would be the fix. But no limit for businesses. Sadly, I wouldn't put it past Congress to go along.

A host of tax cuts for individual taxpayers would now be temporary, expiring after 2025, under a major revision late Tuesday to the Senate tax reform plan by Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch.

[...]

But because Hatch would simultaneously make tax cuts for businesses permanent, it’s certain to be attacked by Democrats as siding with Big Business over average Americans.

  Politico

I should hope so. There are more changes in the Hatch proposal. It's still a bad plan. Unless you're rich or a corporation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

American Drug Kings

You won't hear The Most Notable Loser talking about this.

I caught enough of this outrageous story about why there is an opioid crisis in this country (take a guess) on NPR early this afternoon to confirm that villainy is the correct term.

And here's the 60 Minutes report if you prefer video.

This is the story that caused Tom Marino - Trump's nominee for "drug czar" - to withdraw his name.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.