Paul Ryan’s Impending Choices

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FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | August 23, 2018freadshot

“Does Ryan enable or prevent the effort by House Freedom Caucus leaders, Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, to hold Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in contempt of Congress?”

As the walls are closing in on President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan has a fateful decision to make when the House returns on September 4.

Does Ryan enable or prevent the effort by House Freedom Caucus leaders, Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, to hold Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in contempt of Congress?

Meadows and Jordan cannot realistically go after Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose office is overseen by Rosenstein. A new Fox News poll, for example, found a 59% public approval rating for Mueller, up 11 points since July, as compared to 37% disapproval.

They are going after Rosenstein with an obvious goal: to win a House floor vote to hold Rosenstein in contempt and give Trump “cover” so that he can get rid of Rosenstein and place supervision of the Mueller investigation in the hands of a Trump loyalist, and, thereby, Trump himself.

As The New York Times said in an editorial today, Speaker Ryan “needs to shut down the attacks on Mr. Rosenstein by Mr. Trump’s lackeys in the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus.”

Speaker Ryan and House Republicans also will face another issue when they return: the indictment this week of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and his wife for alleged extraordinary misuse of his campaign money.

This reportedly included Hunter and his wife spending more than a quarter of a million dollars of his campaign funds on impermissible personal expenses, such as paying for family trips to Hawaii and Italy, their children’s private school tuition, and a $600 airline ticket for a pet rabbit. Rep. Hunter has vowed to fight the charges and win reelection.

House Republicans will have to decide whether to take any serious action against Hunter or to just stay silent in the face of his massive ethical and legal transgressions.

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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.