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Opinion: Canton resident disgusted Stefanik votes to release ‘Nunes Memo’

Posted 2/15/18

To the Editor: I write to express my profound disgust over Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s vote to release the “Nunes Memo.” She has proven that, along with her other Republican colleagues on …

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Opinion: Canton resident disgusted Stefanik votes to release ‘Nunes Memo’

Posted

To the Editor:

I write to express my profound disgust over Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s vote to release the “Nunes Memo.” She has proven that, along with her other Republican colleagues on the Congressional Intelligence Committee (the name of which, for them at least is an oxymoron), Party Trumps America.

Stefanik is not for “America first” if we mean respecting the rule of law, our institutions of government, and her Congressional responsibility to provide a check and balance against the Executive branch’s unbridled power.

Once again Stefanik had an opportunity to show her independence. If she really were a moderate, as she claims, why does she side with the most “ultra-right” extremists of her party? She seems to have drunk the Koolaid and has lost touch with what most of us call reality. She doesn’t fool me anymore! It seems that when she voted she hadn’t even read the actual letter! So much for due diligence.

Nunes, a Trump lapdog, spends much of his time in D.C. living at the White House. Working with Trump’s minions, he regularly cooks up his malodorous stew lies, innuendo, and spurious charges to discredit the Russian collusion investigation. We know Nunes’ game: Throw the crud against the wall and hope that some of it sticks to the president’s accusers.

Remember last time? Nunes covered for Trump’s baselessly wild accusations of Obama having his “wires tapped” at Trump Tower. By falsely accusing Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, had illegally “unmasked” the names of Trump operatives, Nunes strove to undermine the investigation. He failed.

Now Nunes serves up his insidious memo, his same old smear campaign—this time against the FBI’s investigation of pretty shady Trump aides. What stinks here is Nunes’ own grandstanding that he’s doing us a public service by attacking the very intelligence agencies trying to protect our democracy from those harming it---be it the Russians, or possibly Nunes’ good buddy lounging at 1600 PA Avenue? It’s the FBI investigators not Trump who need investigating, Nunes claims. Sure.

This was Stefanik’s moment to show us she’s a moderate. Why didn’t she vote against Nunes’ madness? She made a despicable, callow, completely partisan and deeply cynical choice. Of course, now, per usual, she’s in hiding.

Even Stefanik can’t publicly defend the indefensible. Meanwhile Trump has quashed the Democratic memo. Can anyone now deny that Congresswoman Stefanik has aided and abetting the ongoing cover-up orchestrated by the Whitehouse?

Mark MacWilliams

Canton