Rosendale talks appropriations, indictments and investigations

Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., was in Havre Thursday touring Big Equipment and meeting with owner Ron Harmon before sitting down with Havre Daily News for a brief interview, where he talked about congressional priorities and the legal woes of former President Donald Trump and Hunter Biden.

Rosendale said his top priority, as well as that of his colleagues, upon their return to Congress will be the passage of 11 funding bills that will make sure the government keeps functioning without the need for a continuing resolution or a government shutdown.

He said he hopes to get these bills passed so there is no need for anything like that, but congressional leadership has not yet provided those bills.

When asked if there were any provisions that constituted a line in the sand for him within these bills, he said there are so many and they are so expansive that it's hard to point to specific aspects that he considers non-negotiable at this time.

As for longer-term goals, Rosendale said, he's continuing to work with his fellow representatives on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, which he said is very bipartisan compared to other committees he's served on, and has been able to do good things.

He said they've been able to provide $5 million in funding for a new building at the Southwest Montana Veterans Home in Butte and extend the deadline for veterans to apply for retroactive benefits through the PACT Act.

He said he and his colleagues are also working on investigating possible cases of PCB exposures at Malmstrom Air Force Base, as well as addressing possible problems at Fort Harrison VA Medical Center.

Rosendale said he's been looking at a report from whistleblowers at the center who have alleged serious problems with the conduct of surgeons, scope of practice and hiring practices as well as possibly compromised safety and health conditions.

He said that the report hasn't been cleared for public release yet but he's hoping to address these concerns upon his return to Congress.

Rosendale also talked about the four ongoing criminal indictments being faced by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is expected to be the frontrunner in the Republican Presidential Primary in 2024.

Trump is being indicted for alleged hush-money payments including to adult film actress Stormy Daniels; withholding classified documents without authorization; and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and the U.S. at large, which he lost to President Joe Biden, collectively resulting in 91 charges at the state and federal level, many of them felonies.

Rosendale said he can't comment as much about the most recent indictment in Georgia, but he said he finds it interesting that a county prosecutor is being used to raise felony charges against a former U.S. president in a venue that has "a clear bias against that president."

"I'm still waiting to actually get some accurate information about what they really mean," he said.

In Georgia earlier this month Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has accused Trump and several of his associates, including Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyers John Eastman and Sidney Powell, and many others, of a wide-ranging racketeering conspiracy related to their efforts to overturn Biden's win in the state.

Unlike the federal case, which accuses Trump of engaging in conspiracies to defraud the United States, obstruct official proceedings, and to deprive people of their human rights, in this case the right to vote, he would have no ability to disrupt the prosecution if he wins the presidency in 2024 since it would be being handled by the state.

Overall, Rosendale said, these proceedings have neither the appearance or reality of impartiality and the federal prosecutors have generated these charges from their own biases.

As for the recent appointment of a special counsel David Weiss to investigate Hunter Biden's taxes, the receipt of money from overseas businesses and his alleged actions on their behalf, and whether these alleged actions had any connection to his father, he said it is a ploy to obfuscate the investigation.

Last year 90 congressional Republicans wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting the appointment of a special counsel, citing their belief that the department had a conflict of interest in investigating the president's son.

Five months later, more than 30 Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent another letter to the department citing existing federal investigations of Hunter Biden by Weiss, a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware, and asked for him specifically to be made special counsel.

Two weeks ago Weiss was named special counsel, but many Republicans, including Rosendale - who did not ask last year for Weiss to be appointed - are now calling this appointment an attempted coverup.

Many cite a now defunct plea deal between Hunter Biden and Weiss's office on tax and gun charges earlier this year as evidence of this, alleging that the deal was inappropriately friendly to Biden.

Thursday, Rosendale echoed many of his Republican colleagues, saying Weiss' appointment is an attempt to cover up where the funding for the ongoing investigation is coming from and keep the Biden family from having to answer questions about their financial ties to countries like China, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

As for future political ambitions, Rosendale did not directly answer yes or no when asked if he was planning to run against Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., in the upcoming election as many have predicted, but he did say that Washington D.C. is not going to dictate who ends up running for that seat.

"Jon Tester does not represent the people of Montana and I am absolutely certain he will be replaced in 2024," he said. " ... But I will tell you this, the people of Montana are going to be the ones to make the decision about who replaces him, not Mitch McConnell or the D.C. cartel."