Today while watching the never-ending news loops of Betsy Devos, I noted something I had apparently missed the first time around or had intentionally relegated to my subconsciousness . In the footage of her confirmation hearings, sitting front and center, was Joe Lieberman (I-Israel). What the hell was he doing there?
From the Washington Post (January 17, 2017)
Former senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut on Tuesday introduced Betsy DeVos at her Senate confirmation hearing for education secretary in the upcoming Trump administration — and in the process he dissed the entire education establishment.
Lieberman — a member of the board of the organization that DeVos founded, the American Federation of Children — talked about DeVos in glowing terms and said she has helped hundreds of thousands of children.
“She is disciplined, organized, knows how to set goals and then develop practical plans to achieve them. She is really a purpose-driven team builder,” he said. He noted that the Department of Education is bigger than anything she — or virtually all of the senators on the panel — had ever run but said she is ready to take on the task.
And then, he said: “I know that some people are questioning her qualifications to be secretary of education, and too many of those questions seem to me to be based on the fact that she doesn’t come from within the education establishment. But honestly I believe that today, that’s one of the most important qualifications you could have for this job.”
Turns out that after spending his waning years in the Senate dissing the Democratic party, in general, and Barack Obama, in particular, old Traitor Joe moved on to join the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP. Gee, where have I heard that name before? In addition to representing Trump in his latest battles with Russiagate and other miscellaneous corruption, this firm has a long history with the Trump organization.
As David Halperin noted in a blog on HuffPost back in January 2017:
Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP have represented Trump in all manner of matters since at least 2001. Such matters have included, but are certainly not limited to, the restructuring of $1.3 billion in bondholder debt connected to his Atlantic City casinos; a defamation case filed against the author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, for stating that the businessman was worth between $150 million and $250 million, not billions (a suit that Trump later lost); and the fight to keep filings from his 1990 divorce from ex-wife Ivana Trump sealed. Most recently, Lieberman’s law firm represented Trump by threatening the New York Times for publishing pieces of Trump’s tax return.
Joe Lieberman’s invocation of his Democratic Party credentials to endorse DeVos, without mentioning out loud to the American people that his law firm has long worked for Trump, is yet another piece of the deep corruption Trump is bringing to Washington.
Hard to believe that this is a guy who was once on Bill Clinton’s short list for SCOTUS and was handpicked by Al Gore to be Vice President of The United States. Years from now, when historians try to explain the woes that beset the Democratic party in the early 21st century, they will have to look no further than the smarmy, wretched career of the junior senator from Connecticut.