February 10, 2017

“Do Your Job!” Hundreds of People Shout Down Jason Chaffetz Over Lack of Trump Probe

”We want to get rid of you!”

 

 

At a town hall meeting on Thursday night held by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chair of the House Oversight Committee, the mood got rough, when hundreds of people demanded answers from Chaffetz regarding a host of controversies: his unwillingness to investigate President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest, his support for Obamacare repeal, a proposal to sell off public lands, and more.

 

“You’re really not going to like this part,” Chaffetz said at one point. “The president under the law is exempt from the conflict of interests laws.”

That remark—and many of his other comments—was met with jeers, as people chanted, “Do your job!” and “We want to get rid of you!” The raucous event came amid complaints from Democrats on the committee that Chaffetz won’t investigate the Trump administration’s various global entanglements and possible ethics violations. Critics noted he had enthusiastically pursued Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to portray him as a hypocrite for not investigating Trump’s conflicts.

The angry crowd also blasted Chaffetz for a bill he introduced in January to sell off public lands and for his efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.

 

During a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday, Chaffetz afterward said the president had instructed him not to raise the topic of “oversight“—to which he had replied “fair enough.” Some town hall attendees expressed anger over Chaffetz’s failure to confront the president on this point. Others threatened his current term would be his last.

The town hall meeting reportedly ended 40 minutes early, with Chaffetz refusing to take questions from the press as he departed.

 

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

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In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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