I think of Nancy Pelosi and now I have a mental image of Joseph McCarthy in drag shrilly saying, “I have a list…”:
Gingrich fires back at Pelosi over threat
By Justin Sink – 12/05/11 02:50 PM ETNewt Gingrich said that a threat from ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to disclose information she learned while serving on an ethics committee investigating him during his time as Speaker of the House would “totally abuse the ethics process” and violate rules of the House of Representatives.
“I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift,” Gingrich said at a press conference in Manhattan Monday.
Gingrich denounced the threat from Pelosi, who is now the minority leader in the House, as “a fundamental violation of the rules of the House,” and said that if Pelosi were to disclose details of the investigation, it would expose the “tainted ethics process the House was engaged in.” He also called for the House to condemn Pelosi if she were to reveal anything from the ethics probe.
Pelosi told Talking Points Memo that she would reveal damaging material about Gingrich “when the time is right.”
“One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi said. “When the time is right. … I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”
But responding to Gingrich’s comments, a spokesman for Pelosi said the former Speaker was “clearly referring to the extensive amount of information that is in the public record, including the comprehensive committee report with which the public may not be fully aware.”
Pelosi served on the ethics committee that sanctioned Gingrich for violating tax law and lying to an investigative panel when he claimed tax-exempt status for a college course he ran for political purposes. Gingrich agreed to a $300,000 fine and admitted that he submitted inaccurate statements to the committee, but maintained Monday that the majority of the charges “were repudiated as false.”
Gingrich said that Pelosi’s suggestion that she would reveal information from that investigation underscored that the ethics charges were politically motivated.
“It tells you how capriciously political that committee was,” Gingrich said.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a picture to summarize the above events:
The Hill isn’t being very honest in its coverage of this story. They tell you all about the sanction and the fine, but here’s what they DON’T tell you:
First of all, what exactly were the charges against Newt? David Bonior brought 75 charges against Newt – and 74 of them were found to have NO MERIT WHATSOEVER. The last charge, whether Newt funded his college class “Renewing American Civilization” properly, was too complicated a tax issue for the committee to investigate on its own, so they brought in an outside tax expert to investigate. Two charges arose out of this investigation.
The first ‘charge’ from the ethics committee is that he “may have” violated tax law by using tax-deductible contributions from nonprofit organizations to teach an allegedly partisan college course.
The lectures never mentioned the words “Republicans” or “Democrats,” and one entire session was spent praising FDR. Is that “partisan?” Not only has a former commissioner of the IRS has come forward and said that no tax laws were violated, but an Ethics Committee lawyer even gave approval for the class before Newt started it.
The second ‘charge’ from the committee is that, in the course of the investigation, Newt provided false information to the committee. Do you know what this “false information” is
Newt testified that the above contributions were in fact made by those organizations to “Renewing American Civilization.” He filed papers that stated the very same thing. This is never a fact that anyone was trying to hide. But one paper filed with the committee stated that those groups did not make the contributions. So is this a big deal? Is this “lying to Congress?”
What’s funny is that the Ethics Committee itself approved the course Newt taught, the same course that started this whole “ethics violation” farce. Newt wasn’t even paid for the course. In any case, I am not getting into all the details of the whole ethics violation mess, and the incredible double standard shown, since that would warrant a separate web site. I just find it odd that the Ethics Committee turned around and slammed Newt with a $300,000 penalty for something that they had approved! In addition, if a reprimand was enough “punishment” for Barney Frank, who was charged by the same committee with fixing 30 parking tickets, and writing a misleading probation letter on behalf of child pornographer, cocaine dealer, male prostitute and lover Steven Gobie, why is Newt getting slammed with such a harsher penalty?
The only reason that Rep. David Bonior and other Democrats filed 75 ethics charges against Speaker Gingrich in the first place is because Newt filed and forced former Democrat Speaker Jim Wright to resign in 1988. The whole ethics violation farce was about nothing but revenge. Bonior and the Dems. wanted revenge for Jim Wright and for losing the House in 1994 and 1996.
Newt Gingrich says that there were actually 84 charges leveled against him. And what do you know, he’s right:
Of the 84 charges against him, 83 were eventually dismissed, but the case caused severe damage to his political career and he resigned from the House in 1998, following a disastrous midterm election for his party.
Today, Mrs Pelosi threatened to revive the scandal if Mr Gingrich were to become the Republican nominee.
Does the fact that 84 charges were brought against Newt Gingrich and 83 of them were determined to have NO MERIT WHATSOEVER tell you anything about the integrity of that “ethics” committee???
Newt Gingrich had better be ready for the most dishonest media since Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Because the “journalists” will be joining their fellow ideological traveler Nancy Pelosi in gunning for him now.
And hopefully he won’t be sitting on a couch with that wicked witch again any time soon.
Start Thinking Right 