2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein has refused to fully cooperate with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation. And I’m sorry, but she looks like she has something to hide.
Stein visited Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum yesterday, apparently looking for more moral support from the network. But MacCallum was not quite as supportive as Tucker Carlson had been in December.
Before Stein's appearance, Fox correspondent Trace Gallagher gave a rundown of Stein’s situation. He noted that Stein has submitted material related to four of the six categories the Senate committee was interested in. Gallagher explained, “Stein is refusing to hand over documents involving her communications with Russian persons or communications related to her campaign's policy discussions about Russia.”
Host Martha MacCallum was hardly a tough interviewer but she did ask Stein, “Why not be fully transparent and hand over everything that you have if you have nothing to fear?”
Once again, Stein evaded and deflected:
STEIN: So remember, we're not using the Fifth Amendment here. When you take the Fifth, it’s because you have something that could be used to incriminate you, something that exposes guilt, there's none of that here. We're turning over everything relevant to the question of Russian interference. That is all communications with Russian government, Russian media, Russian business, although we have no communications of Russian business. We have opposition research, and Fusion GPS, and all of that, and WikiLeaks, no communications--
MACCALLUM: So, what are you not turning over?
STEIN: So, the only thing we're not turning over is what the Constitution says the government should never ask of us. So, our founders were very smart and they set up some amendment that is our civil liberties and they said government cannot intrude.
MACCALLUM: Were these personal, are they friends of yours? So, is it personal emails with Russians--
STEIN: What I'm saying -- you know, you might have been born in Russia and might not know it. So, the point we're making is that there's no way to know who has Russian background. And furthermore, it was like, we don't want to get in a situation like before the Second world war where went through everybody's Japanese background -- we don't want to criminalize--
As Think Progress explained (and MacCallum did not), the committee’s request for “communications with Russian persons, or representatives of Russian government, media, or business interests” is “typically understood to be Russian citizens, not anyone across the world who may have Russian ancestry.”
Also according to Think Progress, Stein has refused to hand over material relating to her campaign’s platform on Russia, even though it’s unclear what that platform was. She did, however, choose a vice presidential candidate “who described the 2014 destruction of Flight MH17 over Ukraine as a false flag attack to make Russia look bad.”
In December, after she received the document request, Stein told Democracy Now, that she intended to comply:
STEIN: We intend to cooperate, because there is now this presumption of guilt that’s been created by this ongoing smear campaign. There’s a presumption of guilt, and the air really needs to be cleared. We’re all for transparency. And as I say, our documents have been—you know, what we’ve been doing, who we’ve been talking to and what we’ve been talking about has been public, in real time, and continues to be public. So, no harm for us to gather up those documents and put them all in one place and make it possible for everyone finally to examine them.
As I said in my December post about Stein’s cozy visit with Carlson, while I happily voted for Hillary Clinton, I have never blamed Stein for Clinton’s loss or Trump’s win.
But I think we all deserve to know the nature and extent of her relationships with Russians.
Watch Stein dodge and deflect below, from the May 3, 2018 The Story with Martha MacCallum.
(Transcript excerpts via Fox News, with light copy editing.)
At the same time, I wouldn’t besmirch Ralph Nader, who ran an honorable campaign in 2000, in between two other campaigns he ran in 1996 and 2004. Had Al Gore listened to Nader and just taken a couple of his issues, he could have earned the votes of thousands of Nader voters who likely made the difference in Florida in 2000. But Gore refused to listen, and the Dems that year acted in a shameful manner – including the moment where Nader was threatened with arrest if he entered a debate venue even though he had a ticket in hand. We can contrast that situation with what happened with Bernie Sanders in 2016, where the Dems included Sanders in the entire process, had him in dozens of debates, had him at the convention, and adopted multiple issues of his both in the platform and even in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. So I would argue that the Dems learned their lesson from 2000. It’s unfortunate that in 2016 there was a small number of extremists who would not accept that situation and made a lot of unhappy and inaccurate noises about a “rigged” primary. Thankfully, they didn’t affect the result of the final election – that was taken care of by the 2-3 million Dems in the swing states who refused to show up, and that wasn’t because they were all Bernie supporters.
But Nader didn’t go for a payout in 2000 or 2004 and we shouldn’t be entertaining notions that he did or that he even would. Ralph Nader spent his career as a professional gadfly – he’s made some money over the years, but he’s no Carl Icahn by any means. I think he’s happy just sitting on his moral high ground. Jill Stein on the other hand appears to have become a professional crank, which is truly unfortunate for both her and the Green Party.
1. Auditioning for a contributor contract on FoKKKs Spews
2. Looking to land a $EVEN FIGURE BOOK DEAL from FoKKKs Spews Channel’s sister company HarperCollins. Remember: Ralph Nader got this when his book “The Good Fight” was published by HarperCollins in the summer of 2004. Nader himself appeared on FoKKKs Spews in July 2004 to promote this book. Ergo, there is ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NO DOUBT in my mind Jill Stein is thinking the following:
“Hey, if Ralph Nader can get a seven figure book deal from Rupert Murdoch for helping his man get into the White House, so can I!”