Democrats in Congress are rightly discussing the necessity of forming a commission, modeled on the 9/11 commission, to investigate what went so wrong with the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. David Ignatius reported:
When America has recovered from the coronavirus crisis and people are back to work, Rep. Adam B. Schiff thinks Congress should consider a 9/11-style independent commission to examine why the nation was so unprepared for the pandemic.
Schiff, a California Democrat, told me in an interview Monday that his staff has already started working on a discussion draft modeled after the 9/11 Commission, and that he would be talking about the possibility with others in Congress. And he said the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs, has begun reviewing the committee’s intelligence materials on the pandemic.
“We will need to delay the work of the commission until the crisis has abated to ensure that it does not interfere with the agencies that are leading the response,” Schiff explained in an email. “But that should not prevent us from beginning to identify where we got it wrong and how we can be prepared for the next pandemic.”
I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that President Trump doesn’t think it’s necessary. At yesterday’s Conornavirus Campaign Rally he said:
I want to remind everyone here in our Nation’s Capitol, especially in Congress, that this is not the time for politics, endless partisan investigations, here we go again. They’ve already done extraordinary damage to our country in recent years. You see what happens, it’s a witch hunt and witch hunt after witch hunt and in the end the people doing the witch hunt have been losing. They’ve been losing by a lot. And it’s not any time for witch hunts, it’s time to get this enemy defeated.
These partisan investigations, in the middle of a pandemic, is really a waste of vital resources: time, attention. We want to fight for American lives, not waste time. Everyone knows it’s ridiculous. We want to focus on this country.
As you probably noticed, the idea is not to do this in the middle of the pandemic, but afterward. In fact, it’s unlikely it would be done until Trump is removed from office after the November election. But needless to say, that doesn’t matter. The 9/11 Commission was convened just a little over a year after the attacks. It will have to be done regardless of who is sitting in the White House.
However, Trump’s words would ring hollow even if they were talking about convening a commission this week. Politico reported yesterday:
A key Senate committee is vowing to press forward with its investigation targeting former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, despite logistical challenges posed by the global coronavirus pandemic.
The probe, which Democrats vigorously oppose, has fueled tension among the Senate’s ranks, even breaking out into a rare and previously unreported verbal altercation between senators during a classified briefing.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Republican-led inquiry was entering a critical phase last month when senators dropped all nonessential work to focus on delivering economic and medical relief as the coronavirus reached a crisis point in the United States. The Senate is not due back in Washington until April 20 at the earliest.
“While the chairman is primarily focused on the once-in-a-generation crisis we’re experiencing, our oversight staff is continuing to push ahead with their work. Nothing has changed in our long-term plans for our investigations,” said Austin Altenburg, a spokesman for the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).
In fact, a Senate staffer working on the probe explicitly told one witness’ legal team several weeks ago — just before the wave of lockdowns — that the coronavirus pandemic would not impede the committee’s probe, according to a source familiar with the matter.
As if that hasn’t been completely litigated already.
And when it comes to cheating in the election, they are working full speed ahead and taking full advantage of the crisis:
President Donald Trump’s political operation is launching a multimillion-dollar legal campaign aimed at blocking Democrats from drastically changing voting rules in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
In the past several weeks, the reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee have helped to oversee maneuvering in a handful of battleground states with an eye toward stopping some Democratic efforts to alter voting laws, and to bolster Trump. The mobilization is being closely coordinated with Republicans at the state and local levels.
The Trump campaign and RNC are actively engaged in litigation in Wisconsin, where the parties are at loggerheads over an array of issues including voter identification, and in New Mexico, where the battle involves vote-by-mail. The skirmishing has also spread across key states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, where the well-organized Trump apparatus has fought over changes that could sway the outcome of the election.
The enterprise — which includes more than two dozen GOP officials, including lawyers dedicated entirely to litigation — shows how completely the pandemic has upended the 2020 election. While litigation over voting issues is not uncommon, the coronavirus — and the likely obstacles it will create for voting in November — has brought the issue to the forefront of the campaign.
Naturally Trump said the quiet part out loud:
During an appearance on Fox News this week, Trump pushed back against an effort by House Democrats to secure billions of dollars for election assistance in the coronavirus relief package. The bill Trump ultimately signed included $400 million, a fraction of what Democrats had been seeking.
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said.
So let’s not hear anymore lugubrious whining about “playing politics” during the pandemic, especially coming from Trump during his Daily Coronavirus Campaign Rally where he brags about his “ratings.” Please.