Cruz and Hawley (Ethics Complaint)

[angrysoba]

A group of Senate Democrats filed an ethics complaint Thursday against GOP Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, over their Jan. 6 efforts to object to the 2020 presidential election results.

...

The letter, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), requests that the panel investigate several issues, including whether Cruz (R-Texas) and Hawley (R-Mo) encouraged the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol; whether they coordinated with organizers of the pro-Trump rally immediately before the riot; whether they received donations from any organizations or donors that also funded the rally; and whether the senators “engaged in criminal conduct or unethical or improper behavior.”

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I hope the Democrats are successful here and Cruz and Hawley go down for this.

I don't know if Hawley is very stupid or very dishonest (yes, of course it can be both), but look at what he says:

Hawley, in a statement, described the complaint as "a flagrant abuse of the Senate ethics process and a flagrant attempt to exact partisan revenge" and said Democrats appeared "intent on weaponizing every tool at their disposal."

If that doesn't explain Hawley and Cruz's campaign to overturn an election, I don't know what does.

This is like his complaint that a publisher was denying his freedom of speech. Some people are just too stupid to be Senators, or too evil. Hawley is at least one or the other.

As for Cruz:

A spokesperson for Cruz said in a statement that “it is unfortunate that some congressional Democrats are disregarding President Biden's call for unity and are instead playing political games by filing frivolous ethics complaints against their colleagues.”

Hilarious!

 

[Minoosh]

These are non-denial denials - but maybe they said something more direct.

 

[Upchurch]

I don't know if Hawley is very stupid or very dishonest (yes, of course it can be both), but look at what he says:

He’s ambitious. He picks his issues based on the perceived optics rather than any merit or truth. See his involvement with the McCloskeys here in St. Louis.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I'm sure Trump will rush to their defense! Because he does that sort of thing, right? For his friends? His loyalty is legendary! In the sense that it's a fictional story.

 

[Norman Alexander]

I'm sure Trump will rush to their defense! Because he does that sort of thing, right? For his friends? His loyalty is legendary! In the sense that it's a fictional story.

I always thought a legend was a foot.

 

[Stacyhs]

Interesting story demonstrating Trump's loyalty to his "friends":

John Kluge had been friends with Trump for years. Kluge was once Forbes' "Richest Man in the World" and owned a vast vineyard in Virginia. When Kluge and his wife, Patricia, divorced, she got the vineyard and Albemarle, the 45 room castle-like mansion that sat in the middle of the 200 acre vineyard. In 2008, when the financial crisis hit, she leveraged the vineyard and by 2010, she was bankrupt and went to Trump for help. She wanted to sell the vineyard and house for $100 million. Big mistake. Like a shark, he smelled blood. Forget that the Kluges had been longtime friends. Trump wanted the property but he wasn't going to let friendship stop him from screwing Patricia over.

He found out the Kluge's only son was also in financial difficulty and that he held the land in trust leading to the vineyard...land that had the only access to the vineyard and house. So Trump bought the right of first refusal to acquire the land for a mere $500K and put a lien on the son's interest so he couldn't sell it unless it went to Trump first.

Trump let the land grow wild making it look destitute and put up No Trespassing signs all along the road leading to the house and vineyard which Patricia had lost and the bank now owned. Prospective buyers were not impressed.

Next, Trump bought the vineyard land, since no one wanted it since he controlled the access land, for only $6.2 million plus $1.7 million for the winery equipment and the wine inventory which they had paid $16 million for at the foreclosure auction. But he wanted the house, too. So he told the bank that, now that he owned the land right up to the house, that he was going to build a twenty foot high wall all around the house with TRUMP WINERY signs on it every few feet so that anyone looking out of the house would only see that. They sold him the house $6.7 million. He bought the entire winery and house for $13 million when the asking price had been $100 million.

To top it off, there were millions of dollars worth of wine already in inventory that he then sold to his golf courses and hotels. But the real measure of the man was that he gave Patricia a job working for Eric at what used to be her winery for $250K a year so she would tell the press what a wonderful and generous man he was...which she did. He fired her after a year.

 

[CJW]

Interesting story demonstrating Trump's loyalty to his "friends":

That's like a story line right out of The Sopranos

 

[Garrison]

Link

I hope the Democrats are successful here and Cruz and Hawley go down for this.

I don't know if Hawley is very stupid or very dishonest (yes, of course it can be both), but look at what he says:



If that doesn't explain Hawley and Cruz's campaign to overturn an election, I don't know what does.

This is like his complaint that a publisher was denying his freedom of speech. Some people are just too stupid to be Senators, or too evil. Hawley is at least one or the other.

As for Cruz:



Hilarious!

Sound to me like the pair are shocked that Democrats are prepared to play hardball, I think they missed the part in Biden's speech when he made it clear he wasn't going to go easy on those who tried to overthrow the government.

 

[Stacyhs]

I think Rep. Mo Brooks of AL is another one that needs to be censured.

 

[Segnosaur]

Not exactly about the ethics complaint, but seems relevant...

From: The Independent
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley wrote a column at the age of 15 defending members of anti-government militias following the Oklahoma City bombing...Mr Hawley argued against calling militia members domestic terrorists..."Many of the people populating these movements are not radical, right-wing, pro-assault weapons freaks as they were originally stereotyped," Mr Hawley wrote about militias...Mr Hawley also wrote at the time that the depiction of former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman as a racist was unfair after Mr Fuhrman's use of slurs was made public during the trial of OJ Simpson.

So the member of the "Party of personal responsibility" thinks people who killed dozens aren't really that bad because "society made them do it".

Have to admit I'm a bit surprised that none of this actually came out before (such as during earlier senate elections.) Hopefully all this will make Hawley toxic to the GOP. (I doubt it will affect his re-election efforts, him being from one of the backwards states, but it should help prevent him from going any further.)

 

[Dr. Keith]

Have to admit I'm a bit surprised that none of this actually came out before (such as during earlier senate elections.) Hopefully all this will make Hawley toxic to the GOP. (I doubt it will affect his re-election efforts, him being from one of the backwards states, but it should help prevent him from going any further.)

I'm not from Missouri, but I feel certain there were campaign ads that featured these talking points. I mean, getting published at 15 as a forward thinking conservative is a pretty big accomplishment, why wouldn't you include it in your campaign ads.

 

[Segnosaur]

Re: Hawley wrote article defending domestic terrorists...

Have to admit I'm a bit surprised that none of this actually came out before (such as during earlier senate elections.)

I'm not from Missouri, but I feel certain there were campaign ads that featured these talking points. I mean, getting published at 15 as a forward thinking conservative is a pretty big accomplishment, why wouldn't you include it in your campaign ads.

To be honest, I can't really tell if your response was serious or not.

 

[Suddenly]

The "never defend; always attack" theory of politics can get absurd when people have zero shame.

He has no reason to not stick with it. If there is fatigue and he stays in the senate, he'll probably be just fine and be in good shape for re-election. If he gets bounced he's well positioned to jump onto the right wing grift gravy train as he can spin his being expelled as revenge for this attempt to speak truth to the left wing powers.

 

[Suddenly]

I'm not from Missouri, but I feel certain there were campaign ads that featured these talking points. I mean, getting published at 15 as a forward thinking conservative is a pretty big accomplishment, why wouldn't you include it in your campaign ads.

Hawley is trash but this is a summery and a few passages. The KC paper that broke it (and from who all other news sources have copied from) is beyond a paywall and I can't find a link to the original essay.

15 year old kids write and think weird things.

 

[Dr. Keith]

To be honest, I can't really tell if your response was serious or not.

Thank you!

I was serious that he will not apologize for always having been a terrorist supporter. It would be un-American in his eyes to ignore the passions of domestic terrorist who share his racismideals.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Hawley is trash but this is a summery and a few passages. The KC paper that broke it (and from who all other news sources have copied from) is beyond a paywall and I can't find a link to the original essay.

15 year old kids write and think weird things.

Indeed. I was more just commenting on how some of the Pro-Trumpers may actually run on such things that would have been embarrassing a few years ago.

 

[Suddenly]

Indeed. I was more just commenting on how some of the Pro-Trumpers may actually run on such things that would have been embarrassing a few years ago.

Hawley, again, is trash, but at this point this story is being handled poorly.


That is why I'd like to read the whole thing. What I see is not totally out of line with the mainstream rhetoric back then.

Someone at the KC star read it and published a few paragraphs and implied that this was a defense of the OKC bombing. Which even from the presented snippets seems a bit much. Then every other outlet repeats this story even though it is pretty clear none of these other outlets reviewed the source material. So we see what amounts to the opinion of a KC Star staffer look like a heavily covered story.

The idea that a Republican would express sympathy for the conditions that gave rise to the broader militia movement is unsurprising. That back then he would point out that the movement wasn't monolithic and a lot of it was silly larping isn't shocking. Complaining about the OJ trial and race ("the race card") also was mainstream.

The NY Times has published countless punditry trying to come to terms with these forces w/r/t the rise of Trump that presented a sympathetic view of those on the far right, excusing bigotry as "economic anxiety," etc.

Hawley totally deserves a hit piece, and it could be that the essay is worse than the KC Star's characterization of it.... but that doesn't make it good practice.

 

[ChristianProgressive]

If, as Hawley says, Democrats are "intent on weaponizing every tool at their disposal", why shouldn't they? The Treasonus GOP has been doing this for more than a decade now. Democrats should not be afraid to take every institutional advantage they can find.

Hawley, Cruz, and the 100+ GOP House terrorists who joined in this bullcrap should all be referred to the DoJ for Sedition and Treason charges.

 

[Stacyhs]

I'm still reading Cohen's book, Disloyal. To illustrate just how much **** Ted Cruz is willing to eat from Trump's hand and still support him in his efforts to inherit the Trump mantle, Cohen tells the behind the scene story of the Enquirer's front page headlines regarding Cruz's father and Lee Harvey Oswald during the 2016 primaries.

Cohen says David Pecker, the owner of the Enquirer and a 'friend' of Trump's, called him and said someone was claiming he had a picture of Cruz's father, Rafael, with Lee Harvey Oswald on the day JFK was killed that he was trying to sell him. Cohen asked if he had proof. Pecker said, "Does it matter? All we have to do is allege that it is."

Cohen took a mock up of the front page that Pecker emailed him to Trump who became very excited. Trump knew damn well that there was no evidence at all that the picture was of Cruz's father (It has never been verified). This was just after he had insulted Cruz's wife and had negatively compared her to Melania. Trump approved of the plan to print the scurrilous story about Rafael Cruz in order to hurt Ted Cruz's chance of winning the Indiana primary. But when no mainstream media picked up the story right away, Trump went to FOX and insinuated Rafael Cruz was involved in JFK's assassination:

“(Cruz's) father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot! I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous … And nobody even brings it up. I mean, they don’t even talk about that, that was reported and nobody talks about it. But I think it’s horrible, I think it’s absolutely horrible, that a man can go and do that, what he’s saying there.”

“I mean what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald, shortly before the death – before the shooting? It’s horrible.”

Ted Cruz has no ethics. He supports the man who attacked his wife and told this horrible lie about his father just to further his own political ambitions. He is no better than Trump. In many ways he is worse and, I think, even more dangerous: he is smarter, more devious, and not as easily manipulated as Trump.

 

[angrysoba]

Ted Cruz has no ethics. He supports the man who attacked his wife and told this horrible lie about his father just to further his own political ambitions. He is no better than Trump. In many ways he is worse and, I think, even more dangerous: he is smarter, more devious, and not as easily manipulated as Trump.[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/716696020e9a6c81ce.jpg[/qimg]

Although maybe it is Josh Hawley that some are more worried about. Ted Cruz is probably even more thoroughly unlikeable than Trump:

On January 6, a violent mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of Electoral College votes. Five people died, including a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick. When news outlets around the world wrote the story of the riot, many illustrated it with a photo of Hawley, raising his fist to a crowd of then-peaceful protesters.

The Missouri senator became the avatar of the congressional insurrection, the one lawmakers started before the mob showed up. Conservatives and liberals alike blamed Hawley for encouraging the Capitol attackers by questioning the legitimacy of the election. Sure, seven other senators, including Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kansas’s Roger Marshall, also challenged the results, as did 139 members of the House of Representatives. But Tuberville was schooled by Nick Saban, not John Roberts—the former Auburn coach wasn’t marked for political greatness. It didn’t even matter much that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has a similarly elite résumé, stuck it out with Hawley and disputed Arizona’s Electoral College results. “Ted is now just that annoying fly in the room—okay, we’ll swat it eventually,” a Republican campaign operative told me. “Josh is seen as so much worse.”

Link

He can appeal to conspiracy theorists and to populists.