Iowa's Senior Senator Doesn’t Do His Homework
Chuck Grassley is Not Who He Used to Be. If He Ever Was.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Iowa’s senior US Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) doesn’t do his homework.
Grassley used to be known as a hard nosed detail man who ferreted out waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending. Whether that reputation was ever actually deserved remains a topic of debate. In any event, he does little of that sort of work any more - if any - having traded in that mission instead, to be a highly partisan spear carrier for bitterly partisan Republicans now in control of the federal government.
Instead of an independent Grassley, Iowans - and Americans - got a highly partisan Grassley who took his direction like a secretary takes dictation from then Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). (Remember the Supreme Court seat Grassley, at McConell’s direction, was instrumental in stealing from President Obama?)
When Donald Trump 2.0 returned to town, and McConnell left the leadership post, apparently overcome with guilt and buyer’s remorse after all those years of enabling Trump 1.0, and saving him from conviction in not one but two Senate impeachment trials, Trump became Grassley new choreographer.
These days, there is a new reason to be severely disappointed in Chuck Grassley.
He often doesn’t do his homework - even on really big things.
I worked as a senior staffer in the Senate for two decades. I know that a senator doing his or her homework is absolutely vital for a senator’s ability to do their job. For the good ones, it is homework. literally. They take bulging briefcases home at night, and return the next morning ready to work another full day and to then return home with another freshly filled briefcase.
Fall behind and it’s hard to ever catch up. That’s the best case scenario.
Worst case senario: you wind up looking uninformed, unprepared, or even ignorant when you are asked your opinion on something you aren’t prepared to have an informed opinion on because you didn’t do your homework.
Which brings us to today’s Chuck Grassley.
Two recent cases in point:
Grassley was asked in a media call his office arranged with reporters in March to react to news that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth included a reporter in a group text chat where imminent military attack plans were discussed. Not broad, general plans, but detailed plans, down to the specific targets that would be hit, the exact timing of those attacks, and the kind of aircraft making the attacks.
Grassley lip synched the standard Trump excuses at the time, assuring reporters that nothing that could have damaged national security was discussed in the call.
My guess is that if you were the pilot of one of those attack planes, or if your son or daughter was, you’d have a very different view from Grassley’s on the matter.
By the time Grassley was asked this question, a complete transcript of the text chat had been released to the public, and was certainly available to a US Senator.
Had Senator Grassley read the transcripts? No.
Did he plan to read the transcripts? Probably not.
How, then, did he know that that the lives of the pilots or the success of the mission had not been put in danger? Well, he had read somewhere - he didn’t say where - that people in Trump’s administration, including people in the White House, said so.
Oh.
Well, none of those folks would have any motive to lie about that, now would they?
Of course they would!
They were all in five-alarm “cover your a*s” mode, but Grassley, the once so-called “great investigator” apparently couldn’t - or wouldn’t - see that. He accepted the lie at face value and passed it on as talking points to Iowa reporters.
All without even bothering to read the transcripts readily available to a US Senator and which had been released to the public when the reporter who was included in the text chat got fed up hearing lies like Grassley’s and decided to let the American people see the evidence and draw their own conclusions.
The public’s decision was pretty much unanimous: H*ll yes! The chat discussed the most sensitive military information there is, the kind that easily could have gotten American flyers killed and cost the military the success of the mission.
If we are to believe that Grassley himself actually believed the lie he told Iowa reporters, there is only one conclusion: He was ignorant and uninformed on this because he didn’t do his homework. Chuck Grassley didn’t bother to do the very basic homework he needed to do as a United States Senator to fully understand a highly public national security matter. He didn’t bother to read the transcripts - and even more damningly - didn’t plan to read the transcripts.
If we don’t think Grassley himself believed the lie he told, well, again, there is only one conclusion: Grassley told a highly partisan, deliberate lie on a matter of national security that endangered American lives and could have caused a dangerous military mission to fail - when he should have been holding incompetent members of the executive branch accountable.
Take your pick.
Neither is worthy of a United States Senator, much less the longest serving member of the Senate, or a once fabled Senate investigator who was - long, long ago - famous for chasing down buyers and sellers of $500 hammers in the executive branch.
Another example: the current controversy over the $400 million jet Qatar wants to give Trump and that Trump badly wants to accept. Trump appears to be under the impression that it is a personal gift to him that he can use as Air Force One and then use it to ferry him around during his post-presidency.
Of course he does. Everything is always about him and for him. Everything.
The “gift” is awash in controversy, not the least of which is - here we go again - national security concerns: (1) listening devices that might be planted in the aircraft before delivery; (2) other threats to national security that could be built into the plane; and (3) the fact that Qatar is a nation that is known to harbor terrorists.
There is also the question of whether acceptance of the $400 million “gift” violates the emoluments clause of the constitution. Most observers beyond Fox News say there is no question that it does. Others, however, say if it were accepted on behalf of the government - not Trump personally - there’s a chance it could be legal. But that is not a unanimous opinion by far.
And it is also not at all clear that Trump would consider it anything other than his own personal jet aircraft, regardless of on whose behalf it was formally accepted.
When asked about this controversy in another routine call with reporters on May 14, Grassley was certain - and assured Iowans - that yes, of course, it was legal.
How did he know that? The president’s lawyers said so.
First of all, “the president’s lawyers” who said so, were not actually the president’s lawyers. They were from the US Department of Justice and included Attorney General Pam Bondi.
They are not the “president’s lawyers.” Department of Justice lawyers are supposed to be independent, acting on behalf of the people of the United States in pursuit of justice, not acting on behalf of the President of the United States. The fact that the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Grassley) wouldn’t know the difference and would repeat the assertion that they are the “president’s lawyers” is a frightening look at how deep and wide the corruption is with this crowd.
There is also the matter of the fact that Pam Bondi used to be be a highly paid lobbyist for Qatar.
A former highly paid Qatar lobbyist, for Chuck Grassley, is the person who ought to be the final authority on this matter. Really?
But here’s what really makes this astonishing: Grassley based his assertion on the “fact” that the “president’s lawyers” had written a paper that says it’s all legal to accept the jet - the $400 million bribe to the president - on behalf the federal government - but Grassley hadn’t even read that document!
Let me say that again: Chuck Grassley hadn’t even bothered to read the document on which he was basing his assertion that the president would not violate the law or the constitution if he accepted the $400 million bribe.
Yet, there was Chuck Grassley, assuring Iowa reporters there was nothing illegal about a $400 million gift to the president (which is what Qatar considers it, and is also clearly what Trump considers it) on the basis of a paper Grassley had heard about, but hadn’t bothered to actually read, written by an Attorney General engulfed in conflicts of interest on the subject.
This is how a competent United States Senator does his job?
The great investigator?
Chuck Grassley is the fellow who also chased a pack of lies about Hunter Biden, fed to him by a Putin plant, and continued to do so even after being informed by actual investigators from the Justice Department that there was no truth to any of them.
Ah, but pursuing them - keeping the lies in the news, and using a president’s only surviving son to pummel that president made for such great politics! Which appears to be the only reason Chuck Grassley was doing it.
Chuck Grassley is not who he used to be.
If, in fact, he ever was.
WEEKLY OVERDUE FARM BILL TICKER - 596 DAYS: The number of days that have passed since the 2018 Farm Bill expired on September 30, 2023, without Congress passing a new one. (Total days as of Sunday, 05/18/2025).
Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serves on the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture Committees: Grassley (R-IA) and Ernst (R-IA) in the Senate; Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Feenstra (R-4th IA) in the House.
There is little indication Congress will act any time soon to pass a new Farm Bill, or if it does - given the Trump wrecking ball and the eagerness of Republicans in Congress to appease him - that it will be helpful to farmers.
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He’s beyond too elderly to be in any position!!! He’s tired and has an aged body and brain. That’s not being mean, but rather just stating the obvious!! Who knows what some group may or may not have on him…….either way he isn’t doing his job and therefore none of us in Iowa are being represented in addition to the danger he puts us all in! Republicans don’t care……not about constituents and not about democracy.
Thank you. Good column.