Only, so far, MTG in DC made that gaff.
With no paywall, MSN reposts a Strib item:
Minnesota taxpayers are on the hook for $430,000 in legal costs to outside lawyers who helped Gov. Tim Walz prepare for a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing where he sparred with Republicans over immigration.
[...] On the day of the hearing, Minnesota’s budget agency sent a letter to a state legislative commission asking it to approve a $430,000 transfer from a general fund account to the governor’s office to pay for the legal services.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., sent a letter to Walz in April requesting his testimony at the hearing. [...]
“Accordingly, the State agreed to use K&L Gates to prepare for the hearing, and to ensure that the State, administrative agencies, and the Governor were well-represented,” the letter says.
Walz’s spokesman, Teddy Tschann, said in a statement Tuesday that U.S. House Republicans “planned a political stunt on the taxpayer dime.”
“They were too busy performing for the cameras to even feign interest in hearing from Governor Walz about Minnesota’s balanced approach to immigration,” Tschann said. “What’s most frustrating is that Tom Emmer and Pete Stauber planned this spectacle knowing what it would cost and went through with it anyway.”
[...] In his remarks before the House Oversight Committee, Walz stressed that the country’s immigration system is broken and said state and federal officials need to work together to fix it. The DFL governor mostly avoided engaging in heated exchanges, even when fellow Minnesotan and GOP House Majority Whip Emmer launched into a several-minute attack.
But Walz angered several Republicans on the committee when he refused to apologize for his claim that President Donald Trump is using federal immigration agents as a “modern-day Gestapo.”
[...] Stauber said at the hearing. “Will you rescind it? This is like the fifth time, yes or no?”
In an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune on Monday, Walz accused Republicans on the oversight committee of engaging in “theatrics” and using the June hearing for “personal attacks.”
So, in a nutshell, Emmer and Strauber, rather than doing real work for their federal paychecks, took a key role in attempted assassination of Gov. Walz's political career, and Walz defended.
Those two assholes ran the states meter, indirectly yes, but, to the tune of half a million dollars that could have been spent on schools or day car, or Medicaid. Instead of helping the poor the law firm's bill was run up to help wealthy lawyers so Walz could avoid a wholly unnecessary career ambush attempt by the two jacking around instead of doing real work.
But Walz and AG Ellison put the work outside instead of AG prep of Walz for the fucking stupid ambush attempt, where you'd think Walz cannot be faulted for protecting himself.
Not so.
A PiPress opinion piece:
Walz was a predictable candidate to be summoned as he stubbornly refers to ICE agents as a modern-day Gestapo; the left in this country fanboys itself into a lather when it comes to Germany.
The coaching sessions began April 10 and continued right up to June 12 when the K&L team, their fingers crossed, boxed Walz up and shipped him to Washington for the day.
Oh, the bill. The bill was $430,000 of our money, with the K&L people promising not to wink at each other until they cleared Minnesota air space.
None of it makes sense.
[...] In comes K&L Gates with a reported fee of $516 per hour. Among the questions we’ll never get answered is why K&L Gates? A local firm couldn’t have been tossed this bone? How about a firm that bills at, say, $316 an hour? How is it that K&L Gates just popped up on somebody’s rolodex?
Here’s another reason it doesn’t make sense. From the moment Walz got the letter summoning him to Washington, he grumped and griped about how this was nothing but a grandstand play by Republicans. He had a spokesman, Teddy Tschann, claim that the Republicans were planning a political stunt on the taxpayer dime. Practiced in the art of deflection, like a good spokesman, Tschann meant the federal taxpayer dime, not the local soaking for the legal bill.
[...] But here’s the best reason the $430,000 doesn’t make sense. Walz served in Congress from 2007 to 2019. He was on countless committees and commissions. He held congressional hearings. Walz could walk through the nation’s Capitol building blindfolded. He not only knows all the nooks and crannies, he knowns all the tricks, the deflections, the stunts, the BS, you name it. And we’re supposed to believe that Walz needed highly specialized and outrageously expensive coaching for two months so he could handle those evil attack dogs, of whom he once was one.
Saying Walz knew the game because he'd been on the other side of hearings is to say both sides of the two party approch to getting real and helpful business done is somehow wrong down to the bone.
It is.
Aside from that, Wals should not have said Gestapo. It was a rude and provocative usage, but, mainly, the concentration camps in Nazi Germany were Schutzstaffel, not Gestapo, e..g., as noted here.
If Walz has said Schutzstaffel instead of Gestapo he may have gotten more milage, better media attention, Because reporters out of ignorance would have had to look it up.
Leave it there for now, but if readers research that law firm which Walz used they might find themselves here or here. Possibly worse.
What this all shows -- Our nation's Two Party stranglehold in splendid display, this whole story. Why I am an independent, but by lesser evil finding my voting record favoring the Democrats. The lawyers get paid and stroked, the taxpayers, well, there is a word or two that could be used for what they get. If JD Vance were to believably and sincerely stand for Medicare for All I might reevaluate, bur remember, Vance is the founder of the Haitian cuisine story, so the believable part weighs heavy against any cred he'd have.