Tuesday, October 17, 2017

That Was Then

It was just about two years ago when Hillary Clinton spent 11 hours in front of a congressional committee getting grilled about her role in Benghazi! and what about her e-mails and her private accounts and state secrets and ohmigod?

My, how times have changed.

The White House brushed off a bipartisan request from House investigators for details of senior administration officials’ use of private email and encrypted messaging apps for government work, including possible violations of federal record-keeping laws, a letter obtained by POLITICO shows.

In a terse letter to Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) — leaders of the House oversight committee — President Donald Trump’s congressional liaison Marc Short declined to indicate whether any administration officials had used personal email accounts or messaging services, despite reports suggesting such communications were common in the West Wing.

“The White House and covered employees endeavor to comply with all relevant laws,” Short wrote in a two-page reply delivered late last week and obtained Monday by POLITICO.

Short’s statement comes despite recent revelations that several senior aides to President Donald Trump routinely used private email addresses and personal devices for government business. Among the current and former aides who POLITICO found at least occasionally relied on private email addresses were Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Gary Cohn and Reince Priebus.

In a similarly brief letter, Short also declined to provide records in response to a separate inquiry by Gowdy and Cummings into the use of costly private air travel by top administration officials.

If this had come from the Obama administration — or any Democrat, for that matter — there would be Tiki torches mounted atop the Rascal scooters of the Tea Party — hey, remember them? — until MSNBC stopped live coverage.

But now it’s *shrug* and “Whatever….”  Like it should have been the first time.