Erick-Woods Erickson
Say it with me: you can’t expect Republicans to hold their own side accountable when Democrats never hold their side accountable.
Fani Willis has now been summoned to divorce court. The wife of Nathan Wade, Willis’s alleged boyfriend who she appointed special prosecutor, had a process server serve Willis with a subpoena to appear in court. According to the Wall Street Journal,
The subpoena was served Monday just hours before one of Trump’s co-defendants filed a motion laying out allegations of misconduct by Willis and Nathan Wade, including of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case.”
The allegations are pretty substantive and the lawyer making them has backed them up.
Likewise, we’re learning that the day Nathan Wade met with the White House Counsel was the day Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith. Now, full disclosure, I was told by one of the lawyers in Georgia involved with the defense and also another person familiar with the case that the Biden team was seeking to dissuade Willis from bring the case, believing it would interfere with a special counsel.
But a long meeting at the White House with the Special Counsel suggests a level of coordination, not an effort to stop a prosecution.
The field day in the press if this were Republicans would be off the charts and last for day.
Add to all of this Lloyd Austin.
His “elective surgery” was treatment for prostate cancer that even the President of the United States did not have knowledge of.
His stay in the hospital was due to an infection.
He underwent general anesthesia without the President or anyone else knowing and was later admitted to the ICU without anyone else knowing.
There are a few big issues here.
First, the man, who had been a military officer, had a responsibility and duty to make sure others knew.
This episode is another instance of Lloyd Austin making the wrong call. His instincts are off. In Biden’s DEI pursuit of cabinet building, he clearly picked the wrong guy to be the first black Secretary of Defense. This behavior is inexcusable, particularly for a man who had been in military leadership before taking civilian command.
Second, the White House and Pentagon are engaged in “reviews” of “processes.” There is no review that is needed. The matter should be common sense and everyone knows it.
Third, the Democrats would be ballistic if this were a Republican Administration and you all know damn well it would be a bigger story in the press.
Fourth, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, how the hell is the President of the United States of America going days on end in the middle of military actions in the Middle East not talking to his Secretary of Defense?
Who exactly is in charge? Obama up in Kalorama?
Now, for you Democrats and reporters who are reading this, here’s a more relevant political nugget.
Barack Obama is, in fact, telling the Biden Team that Joe Biden needs better people on his campaign. It doesn’t matter who, but the Biden campaign team is out of their league in the fight to come and Obama is telling Biden this.
But the issue is clearly bigger than just the campaign team.
In the past several weeks, in addition to the situations in Ukraine and Gaza, the American military has been involved in active engagements against foreign adversaries — both Iranian cells in Iraq and the Houthi.
And somehow the Secretary of Defense can go missing for multiple days, including undergoing general anesthesia, and nobody knew? Only yesterday did Biden learn that Lloyd Austin even has prostate cancer.
These people are not talking to each other when they should be. That does not need a review. It needs to come to an end.
And frankly, for you reporters reading, I think you’re all doing everyone a disservice here. You’re so worried about the second coming of Trump, you’ve failed to hold the Biden Administration accountable for stuff like this in the same manner you would the GOP. And that sloppiness, induced in part by your light hand in holding Democrats responsible, is going to blow up in all your faces.
Democrats getting to behave badly and get away with it will come to an end at the ballot box. A prosecutor sleeping with her appointee secretly and the SecDef sneaking out for days on end unnoticed will provoke a reaction from voters.
