by Jeffrey Lord
Talk about a double standard.
Talk about abuse of power.
Again.
On Friday, Dec. 30, the Democrats running the House Ways and Means Committee are releasing former President Donald Trump’s taxes.
Which is to say, they are launching one of the biggest — if not the biggest — invasion of privacy in the history of the U.S. Congress.
But unwittingly (as always) the Democrats are clueless about a key problem they have created for themselves. In a word? Precedent.
Once the barn door of releasing the private tax returns of a former government official has been opened, the demand will — and should — be on to release the tax returns of other government officials past and present — to teach the lesson that this should never happen again — to anyone.
The first place to start with this precedent would be with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has said the following on the subject: “When and if I decide to run for president, I will most certainly release my tax returns.”
Breitbart has noted this of her refusal to release her tax returns in a story that ran in July 2020:
Pelosi’s refusal to release her own tax returns comes as federal loan data released by the Trump administration earlier this week shows companies connected to her husband received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Paycheck Protection Program.
In other words this is the old liberal double standard in play: Rules for thee and different rules for me. In this case that means one set of rules for President Trump — and a second, quite different set of rules for Nancy Pelosi.
But thanks to the precedent being set by releasing the Trump returns, it is time to change the rules and make them the same for everybody. So if the Trump returns are to be released, the demand should go up to require Pelosi to reveal hers.
Also on the precedent list? That should be the outgoing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Congressman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and his 24 Democrat committee colleagues who voted to invade Trump’s privacy by releasing his returns. And yes — no double standards. So the Republican Committee Members should be required to do this as well.
The larger point here in the invasion of President Trump’s privacy is that, yet again, the Swamp that is Washington D.C. has a serious double standard problem in dealing with Trump (and other Republicans), combined with repeated abuses of power by those in power in the Biden Justice Department, the FBI, and elsewhere in the bureaucracy — and media — as well.
Over there at Conservative Brief is this headline:
Paul Sperry Unpacks The Trump-Hillary Double Standard
The article, by Martin Walsh, details ace reporter Paul Sperry’s detailed analysis of the government’s treatment of Hillary Clinton versus that of Donald Trump. Walsh begins by saying this, with bold print for emphasis supplied:
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch obtained evidence that a computer contractor working under the direction of Hillary Clinton’s legal team destroyed subpoenaed records that the former secretary of state stored on a private email server she originally kept at her New York home, and then lied to investigators about it. Yet no charges were brought against Clinton, her lawyers, or her paid consultant.
The leniency accorded to Clinton contrasts with recent moves by Attorney General Merrick Garland to aggressively investigate former President Trump and his lawyers for allegedly obstructing investigators’ efforts to locate subpoenaed records at his Florida home. Legal experts say the apparent double standard may provide a useful defense for Trump and his legal team.
Later on, Walsh notes this:
To be sure, the agency has used more intrusive methods probing Trump for similar allegations of mishandling classified information and concealing documents under subpoena.
Unlike the Clinton probe, where investigators and prosecutors sought to obtain evidence by consent whenever possible, the department has used a federal grand jury to issue subpoenas to Trump for thousands of documents, as well as surveillance video footage, from his Palm Beach estate. They also obtained a search warrant to raid his private office and family bedrooms. In addition to seizing more than 11,000 documents, agents confiscated some 1,800 personal items, including gifts, photo albums, clothing, passports, and medical and tax records, according to court records.
Clinton and her representatives were spared such heavy-handed tactics and indignities.
Now move on from the Hillary–Trump double standard to the current story of the Twitter files and the revelations of the FBI’s “investigation” of Hunter Biden. The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland headlines this story as follows:
FBI Office Investigating Hunter Biden Sent Twitter Numerous Censorship Requests Right Before 2020 Election
Cleveland reports this:
Given the involvement of both Baltimore FBI and FBI headquarters in the investigation of Hunter Biden — and the latter’s attempt to shut down the probe — the revelation that “some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ” were “doing keyword searches for violations,” suggests the FBI undertook a full-court press to interfere in the 2020 election.
In other words, the FBI is revealed as directly involved in trying to shut down the news of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, directly undertaking “a full-court press to interfere in the 2020 election.”
Which reveals that former President Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election was rigged was 100 percent accurate. As the Twitter files show, this is 100 percent true.
The bottom line here is that the double standard in the treatment of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and the behind-the-scenes demands of the FBI to suppress the story of the Hunter Biden laptop prove that there has been serious corruption in the treatment of Trump. Corruption in these cases by the FBI, the Justice Department, and Twitter to rig an election.
Not to mention that the abuse of power by House Democrats in releasing Trump’s taxes — but not demanding the same treatment of Pelosi’s taxes, not to mention their own — is itself an assault on Trump’s right to privacy in the handling of his tax returns.
The good news here is that as of Jan. 3 Republicans will be in charge of the House — which means investigations, serious investigations, into this corruption.
Along with, hopefully, either punishment for those who violated the former president’s privacy by revealing his tax returns — or using the treatment of Trump’s tax returns as a precedent for opening Nancy Pelosi’s tax returns and the tax returns of all those Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee who demand to keep Pelosi’s and their own returns private.
Jan. 3 approaches. And as the great Bob Dylan sang, “The times they are a-changing.”
Buckle in, Democrats. Buckle in.
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at [email protected]. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
Photo “Nancy Pelosi” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Background Photo “Internal Revenue Service” by Joshua Doubek. CC BY-SA 3.0.
