Questions for Iowa Attorney General Bird
Why declare the Trump trial a sham before the jury renders a verdict?
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, when watching CNN coverage of the Donald Trump criminal trial on Monday that Iowa’s attorney general, Brenna Bird, was in New York to spend the day in court with Trump.
As the former president delivered his morning comments to the journalists in the hallway, Iowa’s AG made sure she was easy to see on camera over Trump’s shoulder. All dressed in red. In fact, when some dude stood in front of her, she relocated herself to make sure the cameras could see her.
As a former journalist, I have questions:
WHY are you there?
Is this an official day of work for the citizens of Iowa?
Who paid for your plane fare, hotel and meals? Iowa taxpayers? Campaign funds? Your own out-of-pocket? (Her office late in the day said no taxpayer dollars were used – but who DID pay?)
As a retired journalist – now just a citizen with opinions about all sorts of things, I have some additional questions:
Why would Bird, as the top law enforcement officer in the state of Iowa, inject herself into this national spectacle that has nothing to do with her duties for Iowans?
Doesn’t she have better things to do here at home, like maybe at long last finish her “review” of her office’s sexual assault policy? For more than a year, she’s blocked state funds for morning-after-pills for sexual assault victims while “reviewing” previous policy. How long does it take? It’s not that complicated.
My questions from the morning session were partially answered when during one of the court breaks, Bird came out to a camera position outside the New York City courthouse and said the following:
“My background is as a prosecutor and what I saw in that courtroom today is a travesty. Politics has no place in a court of law.” (Remind me again why YOU were in that court of law today? Nothing to do with politics, I assume.)
“A sham and a scam…”
She called the charges “a sham and a scam.” She said she’s worried for our democracy, “…when Biden knows he can’t defeat President Trump so instead they charge him with all these ridiculous things.” (Note to our attorney general, who presumably knows a thing or two about the law: President Biden has no power to file state criminal charges New York.)
She then calls former Trump fixer Michael Cohen a “perjurer…convicted of lying…” without any apparent sense of irony that she’s appearing on behalf of Donald Trump, who lies as easily and frequently as the rest of us breathe.
So dear Iowans, our state’s top law enforcement official spent the day in court in New York hearing the evidence firsthand. Cohen, testifying under oath, directly tied Trump to the hush money payments and to the plan to falsify records to reimburse Cohen. No question – Cohen has told a lot of lies in recent years. And he served time in prison because of it. For him to be sworn in and perjure himself now – after all he’s been through – means a return to prison.
It must have been difficult for her to sit there and listen to all these nasty things said about the guy she endorsed in the caucuses earlier this year. Iowa’s female attorney general must not care much about how Trump treats women like E. Jean Carroll. Or Stormy Daniels. Or Karen McDougal. Or his wife.
Is this what her legal training taught her?
In her considered legal opinion, after listening in person to a day full of evidence implicating Trump – Brenna Bird calls the case a sham.
Shouldn’t Iowa’s top lawyer respect the rule of law and wait for a jury verdict before chiming in with her own verdict? What does that tell us about her and her office’s ability to competently analyze evidence against Iowans and make fair judgments?
Unfortunately, today’s dog and pony show demonstrates that Brenna Bird – barely a year into her new job in the Hoover building – has her eye fixed firmly on her next gig in Washington should Trump prevail in November.
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Thank you for your column. I too wondered who paid for this trip, why she was there in the first place, will she use a vacation day to make up for her absence from her job. She is a sorry excuse for an AG, quite a difference from her quietly effective predecessor.
Reading this is almost like attending group therapy! Once again, thank you for so eloquently putting into words how so many of us feel. We continue to be lucky to have your voice of reason in a sea of crazy!