DWS threat to Capitol Police Chief – she told him there is "no investigation"
During an otherwise routine budget meeting for the U.S. Capitol Police on May 18, an extraordinary video was recorded, but it has only now started to get attention since the arrest of Imran Awan as he tried to flee the country. What’s really significant in that video isn’t just Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s threat “there will be consequences” made to the Captain of the Capitol Police. If you listen to DWS, she’s telling the Chief there’s “no ongoing investigation” in which the laptop seized by the U.S. Capitol Police might be held as evidence, even if it may be connected to the Awan case.
Not only is Debbie threatening the Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences”, she’s also telling him there is no “investigation” or “case involving the Member” that justifies the Department keeping evidence. She said that four times in less than two minutes.
What is the real message of Wasserman Schultz? She’s clearly warning the Chief that there “will be consequences” if he pushes his investigation outside the limits that Debbie wants to impose. DWS seems to be saying the laptop belongs to someone in another Congressional Office. Or, she’s using the royal Third Person, and the “property” is her own. Either way, she’s saying, it’s off-limits to your investigation, give it up, or else.
If the laptop doesn’t belong to her or one of her own staffers, why didn’t that other Member show up and demand it returned? If it was her “device”, what makes her presume she can dictate to the police what constitutes evidence in the case? By the way, she seems to be stating that neither the “device” nor the “Member” are associated with “an ongoing case.” If it’s her office’s computer, that statement is very much untrue, unless she thought the investigation of the Awans was over.
DWS to Chief Venderosa: “I think you’re violating the Rules when you conduct your business this way. There will be consequences.”
DWS appears to have been referencing a recent House rules change that made records held by the Member the personal property of the Member. On January 3, 2017, the Congressional Record included a little-noticed but potentially significant change to Rule VII of the House.
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2017/01/03/house-section/a...
page H8
Rule VII
(4) add at the end the following new paragraph:
(b) Records created, generated, or received by the
congressional office of a Member, Delegate, or the Resident
Commissioner in the performance of official duties are
exclusively the personal property of the individual Member,
Delegate, or the Resident Commissioner and such Member,
Delegate, or Resident Commissioner has control over such
records.”.
DWS seems quite well aware of new Rule VII in her admonishment to the Chief of the Capitol Police on May 18, and here, she may have truly overreached her power, and hanged herself.
That change in House Rule, however, does not give a Congressperson the legal right to demand return of deemed evidence in a criminal investigation. A prosecutor would conclude, it was more certainly an indication that Wasserman Schultz had criminal awareness and intent (and displayed more than a trace of an anger management issue.)]
This has the appearance of Obstruction of Justice pursuant to a real crime. So, tell us, this isn’t newsworthy? With the release of the Sy Hersh audio, there are two significant cracks developing simultaneously in the “Russia-gate” narrative.
[Lots of crappy versions of the DWS video out there on sketchy sites with silly voice-overs. Here’s the URL for an official House of Reps. recording, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfby0FYLBkM&feature=youtu.be&t=1h24m24s ]
Comments
Does That Mean No FOIA Access to Congressional Stuff? nt
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
DWS thought it created proprietary immunity to search & seizure
by the Capitol Police. But, she's been wrong before.
Congress already exempted itself from FOIA.
How much smoke does there need to be until it can be called
a fire?
There are so many issues concerning the DNC, DWS, John Podesta's emails, Hillary's emails, Seth Rich and the other dead people, the DNC lawsuits, the Awan family, CrowdStrike, Tarmac Lynch and the FBI that I think is quite enough to determine that there is a fire somewhere in all of this.
But until the wheels come off the Russian bus, the mainstream media and their websites are not going to cover these issues. It has been over 18 months since the Russian interference with the election and the Trump administration's collusion with Russia was first mentioned and the propaganda is still going strong. This crap is stealing all the oxygen from the country for it to focus on the other heinous things that republicans and Trump are doing.
Republicans are threatening to push tax reforms through using reconciliation and they want to gut our social programs and give the money to the corporations, the micc and the rich and too many people aren't paying attention to it.
One look at the DK wreckage list is full of diaries about Trump and Russia. The ones that cover other issues don't stay on it for very long.
Plus everyone focuses on the stupid tweets that come from Trump. Just like website trolls, if people ignore his then maybe he will quit tweeting stupid shit.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
leveymg, you bring up an important rule change
go which I was unaware, even though I have been closely following the Imran brothers scandal. To me, it therefore seems that the Capitol Police were already pursuing an investigation into something, probably Awans, when Darling Debbie requested "her" device back. Now the device in question may have been DWS's or it may have been a device exfiltrated by the thieving Awan brothers from her office--or, less likely, from the office of another congress critter.
Rule change
The rule change reinforces a problem that I, as a taxpayer, have had with DWS and her little fit with the Capitol police over the laptop. My issue is how can tax payer funded equipment and the information it stores become the private property of an elected official?
BTW, nice essay.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Wouldn't it be amusing if
Wouldn't it be amusing if that mysterious computer was the one which Seth Rich had been carrying on his last night alive and which somehow went sorta missing after his murder? Perhaps amusing isn't quite the term, though...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.