Tom Fitton Quotes
It seems like basic principle to me. According to Senate ethics rules, Members of the U.S. Senate, and their families, cannot benefit personally and financially from legislative decisions they make. Senator Feinstein, apparently, either doesn't agree with this principle, or she has chosen to ignore it.
Fitton, Tom. The Corruption Chronicles: Obama's Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government. Threshold Editions, 2012.
In the beginning of the 21st century some lobbyists were so powerful that they were actually in Congressional committee markups and other closed meetings and writing or helping to write actual legislation. In prior years lobbyists would send notes or make suggestions as to wording, but were not part of the group of Congressmen actually doing the drafting. The Republican majority took this practice so far that they had lobbyists in the committee rooms drafting legislation and refused to allow the minority party members in the meeting. So lobbyists got to draft legislation favorable to the organizations that paid them while elected congressmen were not allowed to participate or even observe who was in the room and what they were doing. Lobbying scandals in 2005 and 2006 began to curtail some of these most egregious practices. Democrats, when they were in the majority sometimes surreptitiously would accept written “language” suggested for laws and then would use the “suggestions” in their draft of the legislation. So the effect and the lack of ethics was often the same but the method more subtle. These unethical practices go back even to Daniel Webster who was regularly paid a monthly bribe to care for the interests of the railroads and he introduced legislation sought by the industry and company that was paying him. At least that overt a practice has been outlawed, but so many others remain.
She and her husband had been flown across the country for a campaign fundraiser by a private businessman in his corporate jet. Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was also on the flight. Her husband was censured for an ethical violation but Hastert was not.
Trump was a businessman who ran provate (not public) corporations where it was not unusual for the owner to demand personal loyalty of all his key employees. He had not historical knowledge of experience with public service in America where, unlike campaigns, all officials take an oath of loalty to the Constitution and the nation and not to the President. Trump had fired the then FBI Director who was investigationg his campaign for illegal contacts with the Russians, which Trump regarded as an act of disloyalty, especially when the Director refused to pledge his loyalty to Trump.
Thomas J. Fitton is an American conservative activist and the president of Judicial Watch. Fitton is known for pro-Trump commentary. Fitton is prominent for criticizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election; he has said that the investigation was a "coup" against U.S. President Donald Trump and called for it to be shut down.
