Scarborough: “I’ll Testify Under Oath” Trump Admin said Kushner will be De Facto Secretary of State
“I’ve been told by four people in the administration . . . that Jared Kushner was going to be the de facto Secretary of State”
Joe Scarborough has an explanation for the way Rex Tillerson has reportedly said he’s been thwarted as Secretary of State. On today’s Morning Joe, Scarborough said he would “testify under oath” that Trump administration members said that Jared Kushner “will be the de facto Secretary of State.”
Scarborough later said, “I’ve been told by four people in the administration over the past six months that Jared Kushner was going to be the de facto Secretary of State.”
Scarborough’s statements came during a discussion of this Politico article, reporting that at a White House meeting last Friday, in the presence of Kushner and Reince Priebus among others, Tillerson:
“unloaded on Johnny DeStefano, the head of the presidential personnel office, for torpedoing proposed nominees to senior State Department posts and for questioning his judgment. Tillerson also complained that the White House was leaking damaging information about him to the news media.”
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Politico says the Secretary of State unleashed his anger at a White House staffer in charge of personnel with Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus in the room. The report said Tillerson’s pent-up frustrations “exploded last Friday.” He reportedly yelled about damaging leaks from the White House and the, quote, torpedoing, of his hand-picked nominees for the State Department.
. . .
JOE SCARBOROUGH: What Rex Tillerson did was patriotic. And way overdue. This White House, because Donald Trump wants his son-in-law to be de facto Secretary of State —
MIKA: The guy with no experience.
JOE: — and anybody that knows what’s going on in there knows that. He wants Jared to be the de factor Secretary of State. So they have cut Rex Tillerson off at the knees, every single day. They don’t let him put in qualified people in the State Department, they’re talking about slashing things by a third.
MIKA: They have been doing little events with Ivanka.
JOE: Because they’re thinking, hey, we don’t really need a Secretary of State. Which is basically what they’ve said. Jared is going to be running everything himself. so they are, now they’ve gotten to a situation—they said it—I’ll testify under oath they said it, repeatedly. Jared’s going to be the de facto Secretary of State.
. . .
I have been told by four people in the administration over the past six months that Jared Kushner was going to be the de facto Secretary of State.
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Comments
I’ve been told by six people I met at Chick Fil A yesterday that Joe is full of it. Which statement sounds like the truth?
More anonymous sources …
You can’t hardly get those no more!
Anonymous sources – not worth the fake newsprint their inked on….
Yeah, unless he’s gonna name sources, go away Joe.
Testify under oath that Kushner will be de facto SecState, or that four leakers, criminals by their very nature, told him that Kushner will be de facto SecState.
Big difference, but since he’s a journalist, he de facto [and probably de jure] doesn’t have the intelligence to know that.
Since this blog is generally devoted to the Legal Aspects of most stories – Joe is going to testify under oath about Hearsay evidence? Seriously???
Just a few observations WRT “hearsay”…
1. we use it every day in our daily lives
2. “Hearsay” is a legal fiction…or rule of evidence…limited to trials or other places where LEGAL evidence is mandatory and the rules of evidence obtain
3. The definition of hearsay generally starts with “…an out-of-court statement…”, which implies that one is IN court
4. A statement by a principle OR THEIR AGENT is not hearsay AT ALL, and employees are generally agents
Hence, if a staffer for Congresscritter X tells you that the boss said 123, that isn’t hearsay at all. It may or may not be true, but it ain’t hearsay. Even at trial.
Mac’s post is a better reply than this one, but just to respond to your four points:
1. we use it every day in our daily lives
Yeah, but Joe said “testify under oath” so he wasn’t talking about things we do in our everyday lives, was he?
2. “Hearsay” is a legal fiction…or rule of evidence…limited to trials or other places where LEGAL evidence is mandatory and the rules of evidence obtain
Again, Joe said “testify under oath” – so he was talking about a procedure where LEGAL evidence is mandatory, wasn’t he?
3. The definition of hearsay generally starts with “…an out-of-court statement…”, which implies that one is IN court
As I keep saying, Joe was obviously talking about being IN court, wasn’t he? Where else does one “Testify under Oath”? But maybe he has delusions of getting back on the Congressional floor.
4. A statement by a principle OR THEIR AGENT is not hearsay AT ALL, and employees are generally agents
But Joe is not the Agent of anyone here, is he? We aren’t talking about Trump’s Agent testifying, we are talking about Joe’s claim that HE could testify about what someone ELSE’s Agent may or may not have said.
In Court, which is what Joe is talking about by his choice of words, That is Hearsay.
Do people who testify before Congress often do so under oath?
Yes. They do, and the rules of evidence are not in force.
Does anyone who executes an affidavit do so under oath?
Yes. They do, and the rules of evidence are not in force.
Does anyone who executes or witnesses a will do so under oath?
Yes. Generally, and the rules of evidence are not in force.
There are about a 100 different ways people make assertions under oath in normal every-day life, and the rules of evidence never apply.
gotcha on the agent thing, at least. heh.
No. You didn’t.
Heh…!!!
(See comment below.)
Oh, and…
Heh…!!!
Rags is partially correct on this. Hearsay evidence is usually not allowed in court, as it does not represent “best evidence” of anything other than the fact that one party said a certain thing to another. It is not best evidence that the statement was factual. If person A tells person B that he [A] saw person C in possession of a ton of heroin, all that person B can reliably testify to is that A told him this. It represents no reliable testimony that C had any drugs, especially a ton of heroin. So, A would have to be identified by B and A would be required to testify as to what he {A} saw.
What Scarborough has is known as gossip. In order to give any credence to the accuracy of these alleged statements, he would have to identify his sources and those sources would have to be interviewed personally in order to ascertain if they imported information as described by Scarborough and to judge their reliability. It is impossible to make any true decision as to the alleged statements of anonymous sources.
“It is impossible to make any true decision as to the alleged statements of anonymous sources.”
That, at least, is partially true.
Gee ,Joe , do you want fries with that nothingburger ?
And?
There they go again.
Psycho Joe and Bloody Mika.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tweets-mika-was-bleeding-badly-from-a-face-lift
It’s like an alternate reality version of… everything.
– Look! The Trump Administration is about to implode!
– What? I don’t see anything?
– I heard this rumor and this other rumor and even my hairdresser heard the same rumor!!
The real question for me is this: “I have been told by four people in the administration over the past six months…”
Who, in this administration, would be talking to MSNBC hosts?
What does “this administration” mean, anyway? Do they have to be new people who came in with Trump, or could they be low-level staffers in the State Department who started in the Clinton administration?
He is whipped.
Ms.nbc says it all, consider the source.
MS-DNC……..
could be true… mika whispering in his ear… you’ve heard of the 3 faces of eve! thus, its confirmed!
More like “The 57 Faces of Mika.”
It should come as no surprise that Trump and Tillerson would butt heads sooner or later. They are both successful businessmen and they are used to doing things their way. I don’t see Tillerson allowing his power to be eroded by Kushner and remaining in office. He will get his staff that he wants or he will resign just as Trump would do if the jobs were reversed. BTW, I am ashamed of the latest tweet from Trump about the airhead Mika. It is beneath him to sink to such a low level of Hollywood type gossip and comment on her bleeding face from a facelift. Please Ivanka, take his phone away!
Joe and Mika need to get their meds checked ASAP!
They both fit so well on MSNBC. A network full of blithering idiots.
They’ve both long overdue for their jacket fitting at Bedlam.
Scarborough is an idiot if he’d testify under oath for that. Opens him up to all kinds of questioning just to put out a he said/he said.
Lucky for him, no one in DC gives a damn about him or wants him under oath…he’s just a useful puppet for the left.
The problem with putting successful CEOs in positions such as Tillerson’s is that they think that they run things. Tillerson is not the CEO of USA INC., Trump is. Tillerson is in charge of the foreign policy division of USA INC. He works for Trump. Where Tillerson’s behavior is out of line, if this report is factual [given the propensity for news organs to manufacture and spin reported facts this is anyone’s guess], is in the fact that he was yelling at the wrong people. He should have been yelling at HIS boss, Trump. CEOs and department heads disagree all the time, in organizations. If they can not come to agreement on how the department head is going to do his job, usually the department head leaves the company.
I think he is yelling at the low life that is denying him the staff he needs to do his job. In the military, the colonel does not go to the 4-star general and demand anything. He goes through the established channels. If not then there would be nothing but chaos and conflict among Trump’s administration. If I were the low life, I would think carefully about whom I was angering unless Trump is behind it.
If Mark Finkelstein stopped watching “Morning Schmoe”, the viewership would be cut in half.
Keep tweetin Mr. President!
The mentally insane just become more unhinged.
Yea, Scarface is going to testify that someone in the administration told him…
All based on an unprovable story (AKA fake news) about the SOS.
Fake news, then fake news about the fake news.
“But Joe is not the Agent of anyone here, is he? We aren’t talking about Trump’s Agent testifying, we are talking about Joe’s claim that HE could testify about what someone ELSE’s Agent may or may not have said.”
But Joe can testify…even in court…as to what the agents of a principle said, and it is never hearsay.
The finder of fact is competent to judge the weight of any evidence.
I wouldn’t trust Joe to tell the truth if he swore on his mama’s grave. And if I were to accept that he wasn’t a lying POS who is going to vouch for the truthfulness of the people who supposedly told him what he says they did? Joe is no more significant than the average Joe on the street – now he’s just Mika’s pool boy.
Maybe Joe should first tell us , under oath. exactly why he had a dead intern in his DC office
I love Rex, absolutely adore him, I truly hope this is the usual fake news.