Nov09
Petraeus
on November 9, 2012 at 3:08 pmCan someone explain to me why resigning over an extra-marital affair would allow you to decline to testify before Congress?
Can someone explain to me why resigning over an extra-marital affair would allow you to decline to testify before Congress?
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[Obama] ran out the clock on his scandals, and now throws anyone associated with them overboard.
Petraeus, Holder, Clinton, Geithner all gone for second term. Move on. No scandals here.
This is just the beginning, folks. Issa is going to be a PITA for POTUS. Sooner or later, someone is going to talk and bring down the whole house of cards. Between Benghazi and Fast and Furious, the truth is obviously very damaging to the administration – they’re throwing people under the bus as fast as they can – and all of it will come to light sooner or later.
For the same reason as everything else:
“Because shut up.”
THANK YOU Sir, I no longer feel like me damned head is going to explode! It makes no sense to me either. So he slipped the willy who wasn’t his wife, he’s probably been faithful until h went to D.C. as CIA Director.
See, I’m the kind of suspicious type who will wonder if he was set up, by his Commander in Sleaze, just in case there was a screwing of the pooches along the way.
And, as you asked, how does this keep him from talking to Congress? If having an affair kept you from talking to Congress, the place would sound like a Deaf Mute School!
It doesn’t prevent him from testifying of course. Though as a private citizen maybe another “invitation” needs to be sent.
He can be subpoena-ed I suppose.
Yeah, he’ll just get sent another invite! And as a civilian, he can either show up or not.
If he doesn’t show with a subpoena, he’ll be in contempt of Congress….which I already have.
My hope is the man “cleared his schedule” by revealing the scandal forthrightly, and can now testify as a private citizen unencumbered by Washington politics.
I find the “affair” rationale deeply suspect. Even if true why state it in the resignation letter? It needn’t be in there and usually isn’t in resignation letters. It’s clumsy..
I suspect he was forced to do that.
Banana Republic.
The admission in a letter of resignation will automatically taint any testimony he might give. The hypocritical MSM can brush aside anything he might say, since, after all, he cheated on his wife and therefore is untrustworthy.
Was he forced to do that? Who knows, but it sure sounds sleazy to me.
Wouldn’t this be funny if there was a Benghazi crazy scandle that went non-linear before the Electors meet on December 17….just thinking.
You think there’s a humanly reachable level of sleeze which would persuade an elector for the current occupier of the white house to change his mind?
Peterh,
Two problems. First many Electors are bound by state law to vote the way the state.
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html
Second, most of the others will be party faithful who will vote for the party they belong to regardless…
That list leaves 96 of Obama’s electoral votes up for grabs.
The rest I’m not sure about. Even if you’re bound by law to vote for A, you could go ahead and vote for B and just face the legal penalties.
George,
The problem is that even in the states with laws that bind Electors the Electors are the party faithful. They are selected by the party for their service to the party, a reward usually reserved for those that have demonstrated dedication to the party, so don’t hold your breath for them voting the other way.
Fact is, there are a lot of laws on the books that never get enforced. It would be interesting to see whether “faithless elector” laws are among them.
I don’t get it. However, reading Gregg’s comment, I do wonder if a private citizen would still have his classified emails? In other words, he gets a good excuse to delete evidence. But then, these are classified emails (that apparently his biographer was trying to get as well). Other than that, I’d say subpoena him.
Leland,
ex-military people are responsible for explaining any correspondence they had, or made, regardless of their past security clearances. If you had a super duper secret squirrel clearance, they’ve got your papers and they can ‘ask’ you to explain them.
And they can throw your @$$ under Leavenworth for refusing to answer said questions. So according to everything I ever signed or was told he’s on the hook even if he had an affair with the Easter Bunny, Margaret Thatcher and Obama himself.
Thanks Der Schtumpy. It was all I could come up with as a problem with testifying. Otherwise, he’s still a US citizen and Congress can subpeona citizens.
Everyday, all day, day in and day out, for as many days as they want you to talk.
He is a General Officer, techincally he can still be held to account under the UCMJ even though he is retired.
IIRC, adultery has a “prejudicial to good order and discipline” clause.
Barring an out and out witch hunt, he is probably safe from actual criminal prosecution.
Congress should be able to compel no-one to testify. Same with the courts. What happened to freedom?
So if I damage your property or cause harm to someone you love, you shouldn’t be able to compel me to appear in court in order to answer for what I did?
They could make you appear, but in that situation, you fall back on the 5th Amendment.
Ah, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to everything, such as civil trials where “only money” is at stake.
Nope. Obviously, it may be in your interest to do so, but force should be reserved for those who have already been found to have aggressed against others. You should be free to not show up for your court date and suffer the consequences of that action. Taking an innocent man into custody, and we’re all innocent until proven guilty, is unjust.
Yes, it is agreed he can be made to testify – if he is alive. Remember Vince Foster. Could the Chicago Obama buddies have threatened him or his family??
As I understand it (I may be wrong) he was invited to testify, not subpoenaed. Therefor, he can decline, and has.
He can still, however, be subpoenaed. And IMHO he should be.
I also think this whole thing stinks – he resigned, and along with it announces he won’t testify? That’s just too damn convenient.
Petraeus’s resignation letter says that the affair began some time after July 2011.
Petraeus became CIA director fourteen months ago – September 2011.
Now when Petraeus was vetted, did he tell the administration about the affair?
If yes, he gave the administration a throat slitter.
If no, then he horribly besmirched his reputation.
Suppose it’s yes….he told the vetters about the affair.
New we have Sept 11,2012. lots of lying and fingerpointing. The CIA let it be known that they never told anyone to stand down.
The CIA testifies (was it Petraeus himself? I don’t recall) and says it was the video.
Now what’s a Chicago hack to do?
Use your throat slitting card and force the General to resign.
But I’m not sure that saves the Chicago Hack. What does Petraeus have to lose now? Unless he can be nabbed for perjury before Congress due to past testimony – not clear about those details.
What does Petraeus have to lose now?
Some body organs that are near and dear to him? Or maybe this is his way of recovering them from the Chicago Lock Box.
Stories coming out late refer to some sort of FBI investigation (don’t know if investigating the affair or her backmailing). These stories suggest the FBI was upset about him remaining in his position until after the election. If she was trying to blackmail, then once it came out the FBI (thus Petraeus planning to resign after the election) then the blackmail is useless, no? If the blackmail is useless, why would the FBI be upset?
This suggests to me that Petraeus may have lied during his vetting to be CIA head.
Reading more info that the investigation did begin with emails from her to a third person. This is just getting weird.
As I understand it, he was subpoenaed in his capacity as CIA director, so that responsibility now falls on the new acting. He could be re-subpoenaed as a private citizen with knowledge of the matter. However, as pointed out, he no longer has access to any documentation except for whatever emails he retains in his archives. It is alo the case that as director, he also had access to the entire files of the agency, which he no longer does. If he wished to fight back against an Administration attempt to scapegoat him and/or the agency, he could also leak a clue to a friendly staffer about which agency documents to subpoena, but now that he’s gone, his ability to identify such documents well enough to aid the committee is limited. I certainly hope the House committee subpoenas him and he helps them dig.
There is a widespread assumption that the White House chose to force his resignation at this time. This doesn’t make sense for a number of reasons.
Consider an alternate explanation: He resigned, explicitly acknowledging the affair, as his best retain-some-honor response to a (White House?) attempt to blackmail him (RE his upcoming testimony?) with the information.
If something now happens to prevent him testifying on Benghazi as a citizen… Then we’re in for interesting times, redoubled.
Now here is a puzzling article. I refer to the last paragraph, wherein the Obama administration is said to have told reporters that because of the resignation, Petraeus will not testify before congress. The administration can’t prevent him from doing so. Why would they say something like that?
I don’t know why his affair would show a lack of character. I think it shows good taste and a dedicated author thoroughly researching her subject.
John Stewart interview
I’m thinking they threw him under the bus, violently.
When you’re entrusted with national security secrets, an extramarital affair – or indeed any behavior for which you could be blackmailed – is a risk to national security. The key question is, when did the White House know that the General was a risk, before or after the election?
Or whether they knew before or after he was vetted for the CIA position. I thought it was a straightforward case of him not telling the CIA about it. Supposedly the FBI investigation started in the spring, so I’d say the resignation was politically timed.
Looks like the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence committee is complaining about being out of the loop. He indicates word circulated through the intelligence community in the afternoon on Election Day.
Transparency“When you’re entrusted with national security secrets, an extramarital affair – or indeed any behavior for which you could be blackmailed – is a risk to national security. ”
No one seemed to care when Clinton was boinking interns
BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG, no more callers PUH-lese, we ave a WINNER!!!
“When you’re entrusted with national security secrets, an extramarital affair – or indeed any behavior for which you could be blackmailed – is a risk to national security.”
Actually, the only thing that will automatically get your clearance jerked is if you lie about something during your polygraph. You can tell the truth about an affair, or pretty much anything else, and it can be “adjudicated” in your favor according to some arbitrary whim of a security official.
A story in point concerns someone who worked for a defense contractor many years ago. He had a TS/SCI and tickets out the wazoo. But his wife was cheating on him openly, and would even call him at work while in the midst of a tryst to torment him. Everyone at his office knew what he was going through.
One day, he received a phone call from his wife. She was in the midst of torrid love-making with her squeeze. After hanging up, he went home, shot his wife and her lover to death, and turned himself in to the police. Because of the circumstances, he was convicted of some lesser charge, and served a short term in jail. Upon being released, he was able to go back to work, and ultimately got all of his clearances re-instated.
Why would you out the CIA director (or anyone) for the thing you were blackmailing them with? Then you lose all power over them. How does this make sense?
Maybe they were blackmailing Petraeus with the affair to keep him quiet about something (or everything) in the Benghazi debacle. How do you get out of blackmail? Confess what you did so the blackmail has no power over you (or murder the blackmailer, but this ain’t an episode of Remmington Steele). Being that sort of person, Petreaus decides to sacrifice his personal life and confesses his sins (notice it was NOT the FBI or Holder who announced his infidelity, it was Petraeus himself) after Obama wins the re-election and it is clear that the voters won’t remove the guilty parties. Knowing that IF Petreaus testifies then they won’t be able to control what he says then the Obama regime arranges for him to not testify. In this case it is not that Petraeus confessed to get out of testifying. Obama and his cronies secretly manuever to get him off the list of people to testify AFTER he confesses. It makes sense that way. Who decided that because he wasn’t DCI anymore he wouldn’t appear before congress to testify on Benghazi? Was it Petraesu who said he wouldn’t appear? Was it someone on the committee that said they didn’t want him to appear now? Or did the media just suddenly start reporting that he wouldn’t appear without Petraeus or Congress saying so?