You can’t make this stuff up

Hearing the news in Washington and Concord this summer, one wonders what has happened to the rules applicable to government and its participants.

The Jeffrey Epstein matter has grabbed a lot of headlines and air time. Trump and his allies promised a full release of all investigative materials involved in this sordid tale of sex abuse by the rich and powerful.

The attorney general claimed a list of those involved was “on my desk” to be reviewed. Now, it seems, there is no list, the Justice Department is adopting the Biden reports, and the matter is closed. Except that does not satisfy the Trumpers who demanded release so they could expose rich men behaving badly.

Instead of allowing investigations, Speaker Mike Johnson sent Congress home early, the attorney general tried alternate ways like asking courts to release grand jury testimony, which either would not be done or would not contain the desired lists.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump once sent Epstein a birthday card with content suggesting he knew of Epstein’s conduct, whereupon Trump sued the paper and Rupert Murdoch, one of his primary boosters. When asked about this, Trump answered by saying Barack Obama was a traitor and should have been impeached. Curious.

The Trump Administration has requested complete voting lists from a number of states that had close votes in the 2020 election, ostensibly bowing to Trump’s claim he won that election. When one such request reached NH Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, he refused to comply, citing state laws protecting the privacy of voters.

Clearly, after President Biden was elected and served his term, and President Trump was elected again, the issue is moot.

While this is going on, in a number of states, like Texas, the legislatures are meeting in unusual sessions to try to redraw congressional district lines to favor the GOP, with Trump blatantly vowing to use such tactics to keep the majority in the mid-term elections next year. Dangerous.

In the recently passed recission bill, clawing back billions of dollars already appropriated, funding for public broadcasting radio and television stations was eliminated retroactively. This not only will cause its share of chaos, it was done with the clearly stated purpose of silencing news the Trump people did not like. Sad.

In New Hampshire, the carefully crafted system to resolve cases involving alleged sexual abuse at the Youth Development Center, developed in a bipartisan manner and approved by the attorney general and the NH Supreme Court, which resulted in the appointment of retired Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick, was turned on its head by the Legislature’s final budget. It gave the governor the power to appoint the head of the office, and the attorney general power to veto agreed settlements.

This disrupted the system, led to more litigation and Broderick’s resignation, and could lead to huge additional litigation expenses and damage awards, after further delay. Regrettable.

Also, here in New Hampshire, Gov. Kelly Ayotte issued a number of vetoes of bills championed by very conservative representatives. In one, she vetoed HB 324, which would have let parents and guardians of school children petition for the removal of books from schools. In another, she vetoed a bill that would allow businesses and other entities to decide how to segregate people by biological gender.

She vetoed HB 358, which made it easier for parents to refuse vaccinations for their children on religious grounds. She negated the passage of HB 446, requiring parental permission for “non-academic” surveys in schools. In considering one of the most controversial bills to come out of the Legislature, Ayotte vetoed HB 667, which would have required school sex education courses to show movies of computer-generated depictions of the development of organs in unborn children.

On bills about local government, Ayotte vetoed HB 475, which gave an alternate “default budget” option to voters at town meetings, one which would eliminate spending for positions which were open, and HB 115, which was passed to provide a continuing resolution for the budget if the Legislature had failed to pass a budget. That one was not necessary.

The governor gave good reasons for her vetoes, but one wonders if the proper question is why these measures passed in the first place. Laudable.

Warning: Summer is only half over.

Brad Cook is a Manchester attorney. The views expressed in this column are his own. He can be reached at bradfordcook01@gmail.com.