One of President Donald Trump’s former campaign managers spent more than five hours testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, and it was quite a show.
If you can’t quite recall the name of Corey Lewandowski, he was the guy who managed the Trump campaign before Paul Manafort, who is currently serving time in federal prison for various financial and perjury crimes. Lewandowski was caught on videotape manhandling a female reporter, and although the local officials decided the incident didn’t rise to the level of criminal assault he was fired from the campaign, but Trump continued to praise his pugnaciousness. After winning election Trump continued to consult with Lewandowski, and according to the special counsel investigation of Robert Mueller the president asked private citizen Lewandowski to order then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to curtail the investigation, one of several instances in the report which document attempts by the president to obstruct justice, which is what the House Judiciary Committee wanted to ask about.
Lewandowski was every bit as pugnacious as Trump could hope for, and spent most of the five hours dodging questions on the claim of executive privilege, although he’d never been an employee of the executive branch, and asking his interrogators to read long portions of the special counsel’s report, and impugning their motives for asking such pesky questions, and personally insulting some committee members. At one point a questner compared Lewandowski’s testimony to the tooth fairy, and Lewandowski castigated for him for undermining his children’s faith in the fairy tale.
Despite his best efforts, Lewandowski did ultimately admit under oath that Trump had in fact asked him to tell Sessions to kibosh the special counsel, which Lewandowski had told the special counsel about under oath, so the Democrats running the committee got what they were after. It remains to be seen if the general public cares about a rather clear cut if clumsy attempt by the president to obstruct justice, which came to naught when Lewandowski went “on vacation” without carrying out the order, which he had no legal authority to make in any case, but if public opinion continues to turn against Trump it might prove handy ammunition.
The most striking moment to us was when Lewandowski freely admitted that he outright lied on Ari Melber’s MSNBC show when he said that “I don’t ever remember the president ever asking me to get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Justice Department in any way, shape, or form, ever.” If you’re not familiar with Melber’s program he’s a typically leftward biased MSNBC host with an annoying penchant for allusions to hip-hop lyrics, but he doesn’t just make things up, and he asks hard questions of people on both sides and gives them a chance to answer, truthfully or not. “I have no obligation to be honest to the media,” Lewandowski unapologetically explained, adding “They’re just as dishonest as anyone else.”
Trump “tweeted” effusive praise for Lewandowski’s performance, and Lewandowski “tweeted” during a break in the proceedings about a potential run for the seat of famously mild-mannered Democratic Sen. Jean Shaheen in New Hampshire. We’ll leave it to the people of New Hampshire to decide that matter, but we’ll also hope they keep in mind that Lewandowski freely admits he feels fully entitled to lie to the American public on national television. That seems to be the current standard, but it shouldn’t be.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 