Over the last week, Republicans have cranked up a three committee investigation of an eight-year-old business deal in an effort to create a scandal from nothing. At the same time, they’re letting investigations of the genuine, right in front of everyone’s face, connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government fade away.
Republican lawmakers say they’re approaching the end of their investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election even though the most politically explosive issue — whether associates of President Donald Trump colluded with the Kremlin — remains unresolved.
Donald Trump is happy to claim that “it’s commonly agreed” there was no collusion between his team and Russia, but what everyone should be able to agree on is that no one has actually said this. Even the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has done far more work than the other congressional investigations, has simply said that they’re not prepared to say whether collusion occurred. The House investigation was derailed for months by Devin Nunes’s antics, and the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation has barely started.
But Republicans seem to be in agreement they’ve made a show of being concerned about this long enough. After all, it’s not as if there were emails. And if there were, it’s not as if they’re Hillary’s emails. The idea that Congress would invest more than a token effort into this “investigation” was always something of a pipe dream.
Republican Senator Richard Burr intends to end the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation at the first of the year, no matter how many witnesses remain to be interviewed or what documents are still outstanding. Republican Representative Mike Conaway—who is heading up the House investigation since Nunes made his non-recusal recusal—is determined to put his investigation to sleep before the Senate, even though the House spent months with no action while Nunes chased around the White House grounds.
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Democrats, though, seem increasingly resigned to the fact that their probes may end without a conclusion on whether any Americans aided the Russian interference effort.
“It’s quite possible that six months from now, there will be unanswered questions that we can’t answer because the people we would need to answer those questions are in Russia,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). “The probability that we’re going to produce a report that buttons down every question is pretty low.”
The last Republicans willing to speak out against Trump have been beaten into silence. The last pretense of investigating Trump’s crimes is right behind. Even if Special Counsel Robert Mueller does produce evidence that Trump’s team worked with Russia to subvert the election, don’t expect this Congress to take any action.
After all, they have important things to do.
House Republicans are launching an investigation into Russia and an Obama-era uranium deal, the intelligence committee's chairman announced Tuesday.
Rep. Devin Nunes said at a news conference that his committee and the House oversight committee are starting the investigation, which will include whether there was an FBI investigation into the matter, and if so, why Congress was not informed. "That will be the start of the probe," Nunes said.
There was an FBI investigation. It was widely covered in the press. It went on for four years and its results were made public. None of that matters.
From now on, it’s going to be show trials all the way down. Take it away, Ms. Gessen.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
Reminder: It’s been nine months.