Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s call for a special prosecutor is a wonderful display of how two-faced and highly partisan our elected senator really is.
Speaking about President Trump’s nomination of Rod Rosenstein for the Justice Department, Blumenthal is quoted as saying, “I will do everything in my power to block this confirmation of the Deputy Attorney to the Department of Justice unless he commits to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Russian meddling in our elections.”
To a normal person, that sounds an awful lot like blackmail and it goes to show why nothing much gets done in Washington these days. Perhaps Sen. Blumenthal has already forgotten the accolades that Rosenstein received from Democrats when he was appointed to the U.S. District Court of Maryland by President George W. Bush in 2005. To refresh Blumenthal’s memory a bit, he was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate for that position at that time.*
The U.S. has a long history of interfering in the elections of other countries — most recently Israel and Macedonia, and other countries have also been doing the same thing for decades. To suddenly express moral outrage that Russia may have tried to influence our last election and to hold a nomination hostage until the promise of a special investigation is offered by the nominee is the height of hypocrisy.
DOJ nominee Rod Rosenstein should respond to Sen. Blumenthal’s demand in the following manner: “I will appoint a special prosecutor to look into the possibility of Russian influence in the last election IF existing evidence of wrongdoing warrants such an investigation, and I will also investigate the improper meddling of the U.S. into elections in Israel and Macedonia that were carried out under the orders of the previous Democratic administration, when your concerns about U.S. meddling in other country’s elections were noticeably silent.”
Selective outrage about meddling in our election by other countries without calling out our own meddling in foreign elections makes you look very ignorant, Senator. If this is the best that you can do to get your face in front of the cameras and show the people back home in Connecticut that you are actually “doing something” in D.C., you are sadly mistaken.
Craig Hoffman lives in Cheshire.