By now you might have heard that former Lafayette area congressman Charles Boustany, put to pasture in Louisiana politics when he was beaten pretty badly by John Kennedy in 2016, has endorsed Kamala Harris instead of Donald Trump. He did so by joining a group of “Republican” officials who signed a letter backing the Democrats’ puppet nominee.
Boustany was the first Republican to represent Louisiana’s 3rd congressional district, a seat now held by Clay Higgins. It’s remarkable how much politics has changed in a decade or so.
What’s also remarkable is how hard a turn away from the Republican Party Boustany has made.
In their letter of endorsement, the Republican leaders praised Harris as the kind of “principled, serious,” and “steady leader” our country needs, saying, “Vice President Harris has demonstrated a commitment to upholding the ideals that define our nation — freedom, democracy, and rule of law” and that she has “demonstrated that she can engage in orderly national security decision-making, without the constant drama and Cabinet turnover of the Trump Administration.” In sharp contrast, the letter offered a warning to the American people about former President Donald Trump and the dangers a second Trump administration would bring, and spoke directly to Republicans, saying “Any potential concerns [about supporting the Democratic Party] pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance.” The list of individuals signing the letter includes President Reagan’s and George H.W. Bush’s CIA and FBI Director William Webster, George W. Bush’s Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, and former CIA and NSA director, General Michael Hayden. Former Republican members of Congress with backgrounds in national security and foreign affairs issues on the list include Charles Boustany of Louisiana, Dan Miller of Florida, and Bill Paxon of New York. Today’s mass endorsement marks just the latest in a fast-growing list of such statements from Republicans and former national security officials. Last week, Reuters reported that a group of 10 former top U.S. military officials had endorsed Harris, while describing Trump as “a danger to our national security and democracy.”
Anybody willing to join forces with Michael Hayden, an abject psychopath who helped to weaponize the Patriot Act against U.S. citizens and then was one of the leading signers of that letter by 51 intelligence community spooks lying about the Hunter Biden laptop reporting as “Russian disinformation,” a deception which post-2020 election polling shows had a material effect on that election’s outcome, should rightly be considered as highly suspect.
But Boustany signing on to this letter isn’t all that surprising.
From his bio at APCO Worldwide, an international PR firm he’s affiliated with, you get to see some of the connections he built while in Congress…
He served as co-chair of the U.S.-China Working Group, co-chair of the U.S.-Japan Congressional Caucus, founder and co-chair of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Caucus. He is currently a counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, president of the Association of U.S. Former Members of Congress, executive in residence at the Brookings Institution, and co-chair of a task force on the Future of Work in the Developing World for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Boustany is also a partner at Capitol Counsel, LLC, a DC lobbying firm which does work – as a lot of DC lobbying firms do – with foreign governments.
Does that include Charles Boustany? Why, yes, it does. Boustany was a lobbyist for Turkey until 2021 when Capitol Counsel cut ties with the Erdogan government. Apparently he and his partners weren’t aware before then that Erdogan was a bad guy.
He was written up as the most pro-Palestinian member of Congress a bit more than a decade ago. Of course, that was before people like Rashida Tlaib and Ilan Omar made it into the House, so the standards have changed.
But the whole time he was in Congress Boustany represented DC to southwestern Louisiana rather than the opposite. He was part of the John Boehner swamp before Boehner’s ouster.
And swampy shadiness was part and parcel of Boustany’s time in Congress. Let’s not forget the sinister implications of the Murder on the Bayou scandal which dropped in 2016 when Boustany ran and lost to Kennedy for the Senate. A Boustany aide was revealed to be involved in running a prostitution ring in the corrupt town of Jennings (specifically, he owned a whorehouse in town) where eight prostitutes had been murdered by unknown assailants, and there was some alleged direct connection between the ring and Boustany, including perhaps his client relationship with one or more of the slain prostitutes. Kennedy’s camp was happy to make use of that buzz, and it seemed to deflate whatever momentum Boustany had in that race. Boustany sued the author of a book examining the murders, but dropped the suit after the election.
He’s always been suspect. Post-elective office he immediately cashed in as a lobbyist, which is about as swampy a thing as a politician can do, and he took on some awfully sleazy clients while engaging in advocacy for the same kinds of trade policies which helped gut America’s industrial base.
And now he’s throwing in with the likes of Michael Hayden to push a cipher of a political candidate, a clear puppet of the DC ruling elite, on the American people.
You really wouldn’t expect anything less from a swamp rat like Boustany. And you are very free to utterly disregard his representations. In fact, you absolutely should. Charles Boustany doesn’t give a damn about you and never did.