DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: Subpoenas for everyone, and the usual tit for tat in the DC games

It’s like watching the worst kind of reality show. The kind that makes you close your eyes so as not to watch, but you can’t help it.

One Republican senator, Marsha Blackburn from Tenn., decided last week to issue six of her own subpoenas in response to a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting where the Democrats were attempting subpoenas relating to Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. 

The subpoenas from the Democrats were meant for additional information regarding luxury travel arrangements and more for the justices.   

Blackburn’s list of subpoenas, however, were a smorgasbord of topics, and it didn’t take Democratic chairman, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin long to halt the entire subpoena game gaveling out so as to avoid an oncoming train wreck. 

Number one on Blackburn’s list was calling for a subpoena to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff who helped sell her books and to her book publisher, “so we can fully understand the back story of these deals,” Blackburn said.

The Sotomayor issue is interesting, and was likely the Republican Senator’s way to refer back to subpoenas surrounding Thomas and Alito, possibly due to the Dobb’s leak (relating to Roe v. Wade). 

“Ultimately, you’re doing this for one reason: you don’t agree with the Court’s recent decisions or its ideological makeup. 

“So, you want to do everything you can to delegitimize the Court as an institution,” Blackburn said calling to subpoena Sotomayor’s staff regarding the nearly $4 million she has made on her books and her refusal to recuse herself in two copyright infringement cases concerning her book publisher.

TIT FOR TAT ANYONE?

“And since we are in the business of issuing subpoenas now, here are a few more I filed…” Blackburn added.

A subpoena to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate to provide the flight logs for his private plane “given the numerous allegations of human trafficking and sexual abuse surrounding Mr. Epstein I think it is very important we identify everybody that was on that plane and how many trips they took on that plane and the destinations to which they arrived,” she said.

Good idea, why hasn’t someone thought of that before?

A subpoena authorizing the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra to appear before the committee and explain how HHS and the office of refugee resettlement lost track of 85,000 children.

There was also a subpoena to “compel the Biden DOJ to provide all documentation about their disastrous decision to terminate the successful China initiative,” critical to targeting and prosecuting Chinese spies in America.

Blackburn also filed a subpoena for documents relating to political donations and participation by Special Council Robert Mueller, Former Director of the FBI’s staff regarding Trump.

And, there was a subpoena to the DOJ and the FTC to provide documents related to the investigation of Elon Musk regarding censoring conservative speech online and the DOJ’s filing a security and practices suit against Twitter on behalf of the FTC.

Poor Durbin, perhaps he just wanted to go home. Basically, he cited “scheduling issues” (as in hours and hours of conversation).

“We will continue our efforts to authorize subpoenas in the near future.”

LET’S SEE HOW THAT GOES

For the best entertainment around these days go to C-Span and watch our best and brightest at work in the nation’s capital.

Rita Cook is a freelance writer for The Ellis County Press. She can be reached at rcook13@earthlink.net