Nancy Pelosi

In Savaging Pelosi For "Attacking" CIA, GOP Ignores Its Own Record Of Similar Attacks

Zachary Roth | May 20, 2009, 1:08PM

We really shouldn't have to do this. As we've said before, the idea that it's some kind of outlandish and unconscionable slur to point out that the CIA -- the CIA, for chrissakes! -- can sometimes be economical with the truth is absurd on its face. But the Republican attacks on Nancy Pelosi for daring to make that claim just keep coming, so it looks like we're going to have to point this out:

Shocking as it sounds, the GOP hasn't always been so sensitive about harsh criticism of the CIA -- including leveling the charge that the CIA is being deliberately deceptive -- when it's served the party's political interest.

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CIA

Boehner: Lie? The CIA? That's Crazy Talk!

Zachary Roth | May 14, 2009, 2:02PM

House Republican Leader John Boehner says it's "hard for me imagine" that the CIA would ever mislead Congress, as Nancy Pelosi has claimed.

Watch:

Yes, we too would be shocked to learn that our nation's spy agency is ever less than entirely forthcoming.

Voting

Conyers To Boehner: Enough With The Voter Fraud!

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 5:51PM

House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has released a statement in response to Republican leader John Boehner's various recent efforts to get the Justice Department to pay more attention to voter fraud, despite scant evidence of such fraud.

Writes Conyers:

This endless campaign to press the Department into pursuing phantom claims of 'voter fraud' must end. So-called "voter fraud" is vanishingly rare and every time this subject is given a careful look it is found to have essentially no concrete impact in our elections. Indeed, according to Justice Department data, out of almost 200 million votes cast in federal elections since October 2002, only 102 individuals have been convicted of federal voter fraud offenses. Thus, Republican agitation on this issue is both unnecessary and costly, as Department resources are needed to combat serious matters of voter suppression. Fliers distributed in Virginia this week using state letterhead to mislead Democrats and Independents about the date of the election and recent reports of violence and intimidation against citizens working to register and turnout voters are real-world problems that directly impact citizens' right to vote. It is also disconcerting to see Members of Congress criticizing career personnel of the Department for their private political activity, which intrudes deeply upon their privacy and appears to have no bearing on their job performance.

Voting

Boehner: DOJ Politicized ... In Favor of Dems!

Zachary Roth | October 31, 2008, 3:41PM

At last, a high-ranking Republican has admitted what many Democrats and independent observers have maintained since the scandal over the US Attorney firings -- that, under President Bush, the Department of Justice has been inappropriately politicized.

But according to John Boehner, the House GOP leader, that politicization was actually carried out ... by Democrats.

Boehner today released a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in which he complained about the department's decision no longer to include federal prosecutors in its teams of election observers, as it has done in previous years.

He also cited recent reports that some top officials in the department's voting-rights section had contributed to Barack Obama's campaign.

Writes Boehner:

Frankly, the real motive behind the Department's decision is undeniably suspect given that Obama partisans in key positions at the Department of Justice may well have played a pivotal role in making it.

Earlier this week, DOJ announced that it would decline a request by Boehner -- forwarded by the White House -- to intervene in a voting dispute in Ohio, on behalf of state Republicans.

Yesterday, the department released a list of the polling places to which it will send its team of observers. We'll have more on that shortly.

Boehner's full letter follows after the jump...

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John Boehner

White House Wants DOJ Action On Ohio Voting Case

Zachary Roth | October 25, 2008, 5:23PM

Looks like the White House is having trouble getting out of the habit of using the Department of Justice for political purposes.

The Washington Post reports that President Bush has asked DOJ to look into a request by House Republican leader John Boehner that would force Ohio's Secretary of State to provide local election officials with information on 200,000 newly registered voters who have mismatched registration data. That could make it possible for Republicans to issue challenges to many of these voters, perhaps forcing them to cast provisional ballots.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ohio Republicans, who were seeking to force the Secretary of State, Democrat Jennifer Brunner, to provide the information on mismatches to local officials, did not have standing to bring the case.

Boehner announced yesterday in a press release that he had sent a letter earlier this week to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to take action, but received no response. He then turned to the White House for help -- warning in a letter to President Bush that if no action were taken, "there is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino characterized the move as "a routine step that would be taken for any such request from a congressional leader," according to the Post.

But it's worth remembering that much of the politicization of the Department of Justice that was exposed in the U.S. Attorneys scandal centered on voting issues, and specifically on an effort by the White House and DOJ to prioritize voter fraud prosecutions despite scant evidence that such fraud was occurring.

As voting rights groups point out, the mismatches at issue in this case are often nothing more than that the name on a voter's drivers license includes a middle initial, while that on his voter registration form does not.

Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Post: "This is taking the politicization of this to a new level."

We'll be watching this closely.

Voting

What's Behind the Feds' ACORN Probe?

Zachary Roth | October 16, 2008, 4:03PM

It's worth noting, in response to the news that the FBI has launched an investigation into whether ACORN was involved in a nationwide voter-registration fraud scheme, that the launch of the probe comes at a time national Republicans at several different levels have sought to make an issue out of ACORN -- in some cases calling for just such an investigation.

Last week, John McCain told a Florida crowd:

"There are serious allegations of voter fraud in the battleground states across America. They must be investigated." The GOP standard-bearer has continued to sound the alarm over ACORN since then, and brought it up at last night's debate.

GOP House leader John Boehner last week called in a statement for ACORN to be de-funded -- it is currently eligible for federal housing funds -- and charged that over the years, ACORN "has committed fraud on our system of elections, making American voters question the fairness and accuracy of the exercise of their most fundamental right under the Constitution."

Last week the RNC held at least five separate conference calls with reporters to stoke fears of voter fraud connected to ACORN.

And numerous state- and local-level Republicans have also in the last few weeks called publicly for authorities to look into ACORN.

There's something else that's worth keeping in mind as we learn more about what's behind the current investigation.

At a summer 2007 hearing on the U.S. attorney firings, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) questioned then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about changes made to DOJ's election crimes manual.

As TPMmuckraker reported at the time:

The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions -- no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election. "Two and possibly three of the fired U.S. attorneys were fired because they didn't bring those small cases that might affect an election," [Feinstein] observed. "Something's rotten in Denmark."

The recent inspector general's report on the U.S. attorney firings concluded that the failure to pursue voter fraud allegations as aggressively as the Bush administration wanted was a factor in several of the the firings.

We laid out the details to the changes in the manual at the time of Feinstein's questioning.

John Boehner

Boehner: What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander

Kate Klonick | October 15, 2008, 4:36PM

Back when the Mark Foley page scandal threw Republican leadership into the spotlight, Rep. John Boehner voluntarily testified.

And now that Foley's successor, Tim Mahoney, has found himself in a sordid scandal of his very own, Boehner is eager to see the same standards of forthrightness applied by his Democratic compatriots.

"In 2006, House Republican leaders voluntarily testified under oath in the matter of disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley," Boehner said in a statement released by his office on Wednesday. "Will House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.), Congressman Emanuel (D-Ill.), and Congressman Van Hollen (D-Md.), agree to do the same?"

Van Hollen and Emanuel have both admitted to speaking with Mahoney after hearing rumors he was carrying on an affair with a staffer. Pelosi called on Monday night for a House Ethics Committee investigation into the allegations about Mahoney.

Mark Foley

Ethics Inquiry into Foley Scandal Continues

Justin Rood | October 16, 2006, 4:56PM

The special subcommittee of the House ethics panel that's looking into the Foley scandal met again today, hearing testimony from two key witnesses.

Danielle Savoy, a former aide to Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) -- who sponsored one of the pages who received inappropriate emails from Foley -- spoke with the panel this morning. Savoy was the first Alexander staffer the page told of the emails.

In the afternoon, Alexander's chief of staff, Royal Alexander (no relation), took the witness chair.

Also slated for appearance before the panel today: Rep. Dale E. Kildee (D-MI), a member of the page board who says he was never told of Foley's behavior.

Tomorrow, the panel is expected to hear from House Sergeant at Arms Wilson Livingood, according to CQ (sub. req.). House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), is is scheduled to appear Thursday.

New questions are being raised over the credibility of the panel's probe, however. Existing political ties -- including donations from House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), whose behavior is under investigation, to panel members -- have already cast doubt on the panel's trustworthiness.

Congressional Quarterly's Alan Ota takes a look at some of the ambitions held by GOP members of the panel -- ambitions that only Dennis Hastert has the power to fulfill:

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John Boehner

Boehner Flack: Who's Sure of Anything in This Crazy World?

Paul Kiel | October 3, 2006, 4:08PM

How does Majority Leader Boehner resolve the apparent contradictions of his public statements about whether he had discussed Mark Foley's emailing problem with Speaker Hastert?

Roll Call has the answer (sub. req.):

The Washington Post late last Friday reported that Boehner said he had discussed the issue with Hastert, and Hastert had assured Boehner, “We’re taking care of it.” Boehner and his aides later contacted the Post and other media outlets, including Roll Call, to retract the comment.

“That is not true,” he said after the Post’s initial report, and he contacted the Post to say he could not be sure he spoke to Hastert personally.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Boehner, said the comments were consistent with earlier statements in that it is Boehner’s recollection of events, but he is not absolutely certain of the conversation. “He still can’t be certain of that, but that is his recollection,” Madden said. [my emphasis]

Call it the Boehner Uncertainty Principle of Public Comment.

John Boehner

Boehner Hits Casino on Road Trip

Paul Kiel | June 15, 2006, 6:00PM

More on Majority Leader John Boehner's lucky pee break.

The casino Boehner hit, the Kewadin Casino of Manistique, Michigan, is way up in Michigan's upper peninsula. A number of readers have written in to ask, with some suspicion, what Boehner was doing up there. As TPMm reader DS put it, "there's a whole lot of nothing-but-pine-trees, swamps and logging camps (and trains loaded with pulp logs on the way to a paper mill somewhere) out there."

To illustrate the point, here's a map of the upper peninsula area. The red dot is where Boehner's lucky break happened:

Earlier this afternoon, I got a call back from Rep. John Boehner's press rep Kevin Madden, who gave me the following account:

Boehner had been in a meeting with Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) in "an adjacent district" to Michigan's upper peninsula. He was on his way to another event in Wisconsin.

On the way there (and Madden digressed here to mention that even though Boehner has caught flak for being a frequent flyer on corporate jets, he does "a lot of driving"), Boehner and his companions decided to stop off the main traveling highway for a break. There were some restaurants in the area, gas stations, etc. and they saw that a casino was nearby, so they went in there to use the restroom and take a break from travel. Boehner "played the casino and had a hit" while "he was waiting for his political aide" - to get back from the john, presumably.

That's his story and he's sticking to it.

John Boehner

Boehner Pees at Casino, Comes Back with $2,700

Paul Kiel | June 15, 2006, 12:21PM

We got a number of emails from TPMm readers in Michigan about today's item in the Daily Muck about Majority Leader John Boehner's (R-OH) lucky break at the slots. According to Boehner's spokesman, he won this money at a "rest stop" when he stopped off to go to the bathroom - his aide told The New York Times he gambled "to pass the time at a rest area while waiting for a colleague."

But there's a problem.

There are no rest stops with gambling in them, our intrepid readers pointed out. If you want to gamble in Michigan, you either go to Detroit, where there are three casinos, or to the numerous Native American casinos throughout Northern Michigan.

So what's Boehner talking about?

Well, on his disclosure form, Boehner reported that he'd won the money in Manistique, Michigan. So I called up the Manistique City Hall and asked, if I wanted to pee and gamble in Manistique, where would I go?

Turns out, I'd only have one option: the Kewadin Casino, which is run by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. "Would you call that a rest stop?" I asked. "Well, they have bathrooms in there," replied Rebecca Weber, who works for the city of about 4,000.

So there. This is what Boehner calls a rest stop.

I left a message for Boehner's spokesman, but my call wasn't immediately returned.

Update: Apparently the above picture is of another Northern Michigan Kewadin casino. This, apparently, is what the one in Manistique looks like - more modest, but still a remarkable rest stop. Thanks to reader MT.