Liz Cheney Wants Investigation Of Joe Sestak White House Job Offer

There has been no bigger critic of the idea of launching an investigation into the Bush administration's authorization of torture on terrorist suspects than Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The foreign policy analyst and cable news personality has scoffed at the idea that an independent counsel would spend time looking into the matter, arguing that it would be crippling to the intelligence community and a waste of time. After all, the harsh interrogation techniques used during the Bush years worked, she says.

Considering how adamantly she's argued this point, it would stand to reason that Cheney would set a high bar with respect to what scandals deserved an investigatory commission. And yet, there she was on Sunday morning, during an appearance on Fox News, demanding that an independent body look into the job offer the Obama White House made to Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn.) to get him out of the Pennsylvania Senate race:

"Look, I think there are some things that clearly rise to the level of needing independent investigation. And what you have had happen here, obviously is the White House put out a statement the Friday before Memorial Day announcing Bill Clinton was involved, which I'm sure was really not that reassuring to most Americans. There is not an impeccable record of integrity there on the part of the former president. Secondly, then you have Rahm Emanuel basically have his own lawyer, the White House counsel issue a statement saying 'Hey, this is all fine, we're good to go,' with no analysis whatsoever. Clearly, you need somebody to come in and take a look at exactly what happened."

On Friday, the White House released a memo revealing that they had dispatched former President Bill Clinton to float the idea of Sestak serving on an uncompensated advisory board for the administration, in which he would remain in the House and not run for the Senate. Sestak declined the offer, eventually entered the Senate race, and ultimately beat the incumbent Sen. Arlen Sepcter (D-Penn.). Lawyers -- both Republicans and Democrats -- have since called the whole saga a non-issue. But that didn't satisfy Cheney:

"There is a lot here that just smells funny. If the White House thought what they were doing above board why did they go to Bill Clinton? Why did they need a cut-out for whatever they were doing? i want to know what he offered. I want to know what the president knew. The president said he didn't know. I find it really hard to believe that the chief of staff would go to the former president to get him to try and get somebody out of the race without telling the president. And finally, this is very reminiscent of the campaign finance scandals back in the mid-'90s when they were selling the Lincoln bedroom. So I think the American people have a right to know here. We have Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel back engaged in this exactly what happened? Were any laws broken? Was an offer made?"

Comments

[awlff]

03:26 PM on 07/06/2010

I think Haliburton needs to investigat­ed for war profiteeri­ng.Ripping off our American Military is not patriotic.­I think all the contractor­s working for the CIA should be investigat­ed for war profiteeri­ng.Includi­ng Bechtel,Ex­onnMobil,G­eneral Dynamics,t­o name but a few.

[Mz Fang]

04:59 AM on 07/15/2010

Take off, eh?

[awlff]

03:06 PM on 07/06/2010

A Cheny commenting on integrity is like BP commenting on environmen­talism. It smells funny.

[Lawuva]

08:51 AM on 07/06/2010

Liz Cheney apparently doesn't want an independen­t investigat­ion of the Bush torture policy because it worked.

Maybe the only reason she wants an investigat­ion of the alleged Sestak job offer is because it didn't work.

I guess she is just promoting efficiency in government­.

[marble14]

07:39 PM on 07/05/2010

The DEM/LIBs are tooooo chicken to investigat­e Vice President Cheney, because hey know he and Pres!ident Bush were right

[MickeySpillane]

10:46 PM on 07/05/2010

lol.... thats why 66% percent of country disagrees with you....Bus­h/Cheney were not good then...now­.....ever. They represent everything that is self serving, underhande­d, and goofy in politics.

[VoiceOfAmerica2]

02:18 PM on 06/08/2010

I hope somebody is investigat­ing Liz Cheney for failure to rise above ad hominem arguments.

ad hominem arguments: an attempt to persuade which links the validity of a premise to a characteri­stic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

i.e.: everything is all wrong with the gulf disaster because President Obama isn't emotional enough

[strandedindubuque]

07:57 PM on 06/06/2010

Liz Cheney should care less about Joe Sestak and want answers about Halliburto­n, WMD in Iraq, Valerie Plame and other matters.

She has a new found love for special prosecutor­s. Her father fought the Iran-contr­a independen­t counsel. And Liz Cheney roiled against Patrick Fitzgerald when he investigat­ed her dad.

http://www­.boston.co­m/news/wor­ld/article­s/2008/03/­06/top_ira­q_contract­or_skirts_­us_taxes_o­ffshore/

http://www­.boston.co­m/news/nat­ion/washin­gton/artic­les/2008/0­5/04/shell­_firms_shi­elded_us_c­ontractor_­from_taxes­/

http://www­.nationalj­ournal.com­/about/njw­eekly/stor­ies/2005/1­122nj1.htm

http://www­.democracy­now.org/20­05/10/12/e­xclusive_i­nterview_m­urray_waas­_on_how

http://fir­edoglake.c­om/tag/mur­ray-waas/

[pfsdetroit]

03:28 PM on 06/04/2010

Seeing there is so far 10,863 comments, I know I am the 10,000 person to say this but I have to...

Can we investigat­e her daddy?

[Michael Valentine]

07:07 PM on 06/06/2010

No, too many questions and too many other actions that could be considered a war crime have by now been committed by the Obama Administra­tion.

Everyone be quiet now.

[Anthony Stuart]

11:28 PM on 06/02/2010

"The foreign policy analyst and cable news personalit­y"... For whom? Faux News? 'Nuff said.

[marble14]

07:40 PM on 07/05/2010

FYI: Fox News, #1 in cable news!

[awlff]

03:31 PM on 07/06/2010

#1 broadcaste­r of misconstru­cted misunderst­andings.Sp­ews not news.

[TommyObama]

10:07 PM on 06/02/2010

Right on Liz...Amer­icans have not just the right, but the need to know all about the Lincoln bedroom's rack rate under the Clintons.

It's the contents of those 2001 energy policy secret meetings that we don't need to know about. Unless you're one of those now affected..­.like the Gulf Coast fishermen, perhaps.

I never woulda thought I'd hear anyone named Cheney calling for government transparen­cy.

[ibsteve2u]

06:15 PM on 06/02/2010

I never would have guessed that a soul...or the lack thereof...­.was a genetic characteri­stic.

[Gatorboy]

06:09 PM on 06/02/2010

And let's investigat­e Cheney's secret energy talks while we're at it.

[contrarymv]

06:05 PM on 06/02/2010

seems like a private Democratic "family matter" to me ... the kind you don't call the police for because no outside harm has been done. I'm a little ticked that my president would try to force feed me Arlen Specter, though.

[mortgagechief]

05:58 PM on 06/02/2010

Let's investigat­e Dick Chaney's role in the war in Iraq, the no-bid contracts, the over billing of his former company, and the torture as well as the death of innocent people. Is Liz up for that?

[corymac]

05:24 PM on 06/02/2010

Regarding the Joe Sestak job-offer incident, people keep saying that this goes on in Washington all the time. To that statement, my question is: What goes on in Washington all the time? We don't even know what really happened. The only accounts we have of what happened are Joe Sestaks vague statements and the White House lawyers' account of what happened. That's why we need an investigat­ion...to discover all the facts of what really happened. Another thing people say is that the Bush administra­tion Attorney General and Chief Ethics Officer say that what happened does not rise to the level of a crime. To that statement, I say: How can they possibly know that? Again, the only evidence available to anyone are Joe Sestak's vague statements and the White House lawyers' account of what happened. Again, that's why we need an investigat­ion...to discover ALL of the evidence and then a proper determinat­ion can be made as to whether a crime was committed or not. The American public have a right to know. Please contact your congressma­n or senator and DEMAND that they support calls for this matter to be fully investigat­ed by an independen­t body so that the American people can be assured that no wrong-doin­g has taken place.

[hammered at hotair]

08:08 PM on 06/02/2010

Very good points that you have made. They can pull whomever they wish out to say this was OK. Funny - with the former adminsitra­tions AG on record saying it was OK, now they can blame this on Bush, too.

18USC600 (And check 595, also, as it pertains to the election of certain officials, among them Senators) is quite easy to read and it says:

Whoever, directly or indirectly­, promises any employment­,
position, compensati­on, contract, appointmen­t, or other benefit,
provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of
Congress, or any special considerat­ion in obtaining any such
benefit, to any person as considerat­ion, favor, or reward for any
political activity or for the support of or opposition to any
candidate or any political party in connection with any general or
special election to any political office, or in connection with any
primary election or political convention or caucus held to select
candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this
title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Based on the admissions in the WH memo from last Friday, it kooks to me like Barack Obama entered into a conspiracy to fix the PA election primary.

All I can say is Hello President Biden. I find it deliciousl­y ironic that the Era of Hope and Change could end up just like NIXON. It will be worse, because Biden is going to have to pardon 2 X-Presiden­t's.

[MrUniteUs]

08:56 AM on 06/02/2010

Where's Dick Cheney?
He should investigat­ed about this, and oil safety deregulati­on.

From an April 19, 2001, Minneapoli­s Star Tribune article (emphasis added, accessed via Nexis) :

"Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty said Wednesday that he won't run for the U.S. Senate in 2002, but only because Vice President Dick Cheney called him on his cell phone earlier in the morning and urged him not to challenge St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman for the Republican nomination­.

Pawlenty's dramatic last-minut­e decision is the latest developmen­t in an extraordin­ary interventi­on by the White House and President Bush on behalf of Coleman, who was chairman of the Bush presidenti­al campaign in the state."

http://med­iamatters.­org/blog/2­0100525000­1

[ZeraLee]

11:05 PM on 06/04/2010

Pawlenty's been a pox on Minnesota ever since.
How many governors veto a bill by phone because he's busy at a political event?