Yeah. They are all reading from scripts. "This is something that we take looks down at script very seriously." Also, it appears that they were all privy to what each other was going to say before the hearing. "looks down at script As you said ..." Does that disturb anyone else?
It is already known that the NSA chief received the questions Sen. Wyden planned to ask him in advance, to give him time to prepare a response, a few months ago. This is said as if it is business as usual (and used to paint him in a worse light, since he lied before Congress after being given time to plan his answers), and I have no reason to think it is not.
Maybe so, but the fact that nobody even seemed surprised that someone would be sent questions in advance of their appearance before Congress is what concerns me. This seems to be a normal, expected thing that happens when powerful people are questioned by Congress -- the whole thing is just for show. If you are going to email your questions to the person in advance, you might as well just have them email their responses.
I don't know what I find more disturbing: the complete and utter disregard for the rule of law by our elected and appointed officials, or the fact that some people find no fault with that.
It's not always the case. But sending a witness questions in advance: a) increases the odds you can nail them for perjury and b) takes away the opportunity to say "I haven't been briefed on this and I'll get back to you later."
This came up about 10 minutes ago with FBI director Mueller's Judiciary appearance as well. Chaffetz wanted to nail him on geolocation surveillance and sent questions in advance, and Mueller said he ignored his aides and didn't read the briefing. Bad form.
If you notice, many of the papers were passed to him as he read, so it's possible one of his advisers had many prepared answers or simply wrote them down as the senator asked him questions.
