Grassley attacks first, fact-checks later

Sen. Chuck Grassley and I are old friends, although it has never been “Chuck” and “Norm.” We are old in the sense that we both are closer to 100 years old than to 70. We are friends, at least in my eyes, because he bought me lunch shortly after he came to the Senate in 1981. It seems only a century ago … and he may have forgotten, as old people sometimes do. The two of us sat in the senators’ dining room where no one eats without a senator as host. I answered his questions about my late boss and longtime Sen. Hubert Humphrey.

Grassley asked about Humphrey’s reputation for getting along with those who disagreed with him, how he accomplished things in a bipartisan way without losing his partisan allegiance. Ideologically, they were far apart, but Grassley wanted to capture Humphrey’s embracing style. At the end of the hour and after dessert, he seemed a good student who had a great teacher. It turns out we both flunked. He has been a handmaiden to the worst of Republican habits — attack first, check accuracy later.

The New York Times reported Feb, 15, “The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden has charged a former F.B.I. informant (Alexander Smirnov) with fabricating claims that President Biden and his son each sought $5 million bribes from a Ukrainian company — a stinging setback for Republicans who cited the allegations in their push to impeach the president.” Grassley, unfortunately, treated it as truth — and he did so for partisan political gain.

Columnist Heather Cox Richardson recently wrote, “The accusation that the Bidens accepted bribes broke into public channels on May 3, 2023, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray saying they had received “highly credible … whistleblower disclosures …”

Grassley expressed growing concern about the Department of Justice and the FBI’s track record of allowing political bias to infect their decision-making process.

Grassley is clearly among those Republicans that Ken Buck, a Republican congressman, had in mind when he said, “Top Republicans were warned about the debunked Biden claims from a former FBI informant before he was indicted for making up allegations that the Bidens took bribes.”

Sen. Grassley cannot undo the damage he has done, not just to Biden, but to the integrity of the Senate and his committee. He ought to explicitly tell us he was wrong when he said that the Justice Department and the FBI were trying to cover up a “criminal bribery scheme” implicating the Bidens.

To accuse a president of the United States of taking bribes, to disparage the Department of Justice of manipulating the truth, to suggest that the FBI was somehow complicit, is serious business. It must not be the campaign ammunition of demagogues like Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or usually-more-decent people like Chuck Grassley.

I’ll buy lunch next time if he promises not just to listen, but to remember.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.