None of it makes sense.
The Tim Walz administration, on behalf of Tim Walz, hired the law firm K&L Gates, based in Pittsburgh, with offices in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and South America, to coach Walz for an appearance in Washington on June 12 before a subcommittee wishing to question a couple of governors believed to be dragging their feet on federal immigration laws.
Walz was a predictable candidate to be summoned as he stubbornly refers to ICE agents as a modern-day Gestapo; the left in this country fanboys itself into a lather when it comes to Germany.
The coaching sessions began April 10 and continued right up to June 12 when the K&L team, their fingers crossed, boxed Walz up and shipped him to Washington for the day.
Oh, the bill. The bill was $430,000 of our money, with the K&L people promising not to wink at each other until they cleared Minnesota air space.
None of it makes sense.
Let’s start with the fact that the state employs offices full of lawyers, including Attorney General Keith Ellison. They couldn’t do it. Either they think Walz is so incomprehensibly dense that only the nation’s top legal surgeons could prep him, or our lawyers were too busy running down the streets trying to scoop up spilled food fraud cash.
In comes K&L Gates with a reported fee of $516 per hour. Among the questions we’ll never get answered is why K&L Gates? A local firm couldn’t have been tossed this bone? How about a firm that bills at, say, $316 an hour? How is it that K&L Gates just popped up on somebody’s rolodex?
Here’s another reason it doesn’t make sense. From the moment Walz got the letter summoning him to Washington, he grumped and griped about how this was nothing but a grandstand play by Republicans. He had a spokesman, Teddy Tschann, claim that the Republicans were planning a political stunt on the taxpayer dime. Practiced in the art of deflection, like a good spokesman, Tschann meant the federal taxpayer dime, not the local soaking for the legal bill.
Tom Hauser of KSTP-TV asked Walz on camera if Walz thought the taxpayers were angry about the $430,000 bill. Walz, also practiced in the art of deflection, kicked that one aside with the toe of his skate and agreed that Minnesotans should be angry that Republicans even invited him in the first place.
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Well, Tim, if you really thought that way, then why were you worried at all? You’re the alpha male of your party. You could have swaggered into that hearing room and called it for what you thought it was, a big sham.
But here’s the best reason the $430,000 doesn’t make sense. Walz served in Congress from 2007 to 2019. He was on countless committees and commissions. He held congressional hearings. Walz could walk through the nation’s Capitol building blindfolded. He not only knows all the nooks and crannies, he knowns all the tricks, the deflections, the stunts, the BS, you name it. And we’re supposed to believe that Walz needed highly specialized and outrageously expensive coaching for two months so he could handle those evil attack dogs, of whom he once was one.
JB Pritzker of Illinois was also summoned to appear the same day as Walz. Pritzker isn’t much of a governor, either, but it should be noted that he personally paid for his legal prep.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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