No matter how many times Donald Trump tweets it or Rep. Devin Nunes says it or House Republicans put it in a report, the memos put together by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele had nothing to do with the FBI opening an investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. That investigation was already underway before Steele or anyone connected to him approached the FBI.
But appearances must be kept up and propaganda doesn’t prop itself. So Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is drafting a set of subpoenas for everyone with even a tangential connection to the famous “dossier.” As The Hill reports, the committee is calling in Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, his wife Nellie Ohr, and Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of political research firm Fusion GPS. And that’s not all: according to The Hill, Goodlatte also intends to drag in a hodgepodge of current and former FBI and DOJ officials. And anyone else they can think of.
During the “investigation” of the Russia connection by the House, every single subpoena put forward by House Democrats was denied. Not one person, or one document, that Democrats asked to see was produced. And then Republicans handily produced a report—also without involving Democrats—that gave Donald Trump the “no collusion” stamp of approval he wanted, one that he’s been waving around ever since.
Now that Trump has moved on from “no collusion” to the weirdly schizophrenic message that “collusion is not a crime” and also too “the real collusion was committed by Hillary,” House Republicans are once again scrambling to backfill for Trump. Because hiring a firm that hired a firm that employed a man who talked to some Russians is definitely worse than inviting representatives from the Russian government to come to your central office and chat with your top campaign staff about what policies they wanted changed in return for some “dirt” on an opponent,
Goodlatte’s fresh batch of subpoenas is being produced as part of the handy joint investigation between the Judiciary Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on “FBI and DOJ decision-making during the 2016 presidential election.” It’s a catch-all that allows the House to second-guess and speculate on any action taken or fact produced on anything from “her emails” to Trump inviting the Russians to hack those emails.
And it’s another absolute signal of why Trump and House Republicans are in a co-dependent relationship that enables the worst in both.
House Republicans are utterly aware that the only thing standing between Donald Trump and anything resembling justice is the sweet, comforting buffer of the lies and distortions they’re wiling to produce for him. That was the gist of the statement from Devin Nunes that became public earlier this week: Republicans see protecting Trump as their primary task.
But this is not a one-way relationship. Republicans like Nunes and Goodlatte have seen their Trump loyalty driving a huge increase in campaign contributions, even though it hasn’t particularly helped their popularity. But the most Trump-centric Republicans (which is rapidly becoming every Republican) have made a terrible bargain. They’re convinced that failing to go all in on Trump would both offend their Trump-supporting base and dry up the flow of funds from Trump-related PACs—even if supporting Trump means deeply offending another part of their base.
Trump is so integral to the Republican Party at this point that there may be no district in the country where showing any reluctance to support Trump on every point would not put a Republican incumbent in danger of losing a primary. But supporting Trump on every point means increasing the risk of losing the general election. In normal circumstances, politicians have a solution for this: campaign season moderation. Campaign hard right for the primary, then put forward a more moderate face in the fall.
But with Trump, the ax can fall at any time. Even the most frothing, demonstrably xenophobic, alt-Reich-hugging candidate could find themselves on the wrong side of a finance-ending tweet, or base-eroding rally, if they don’t keep their groveling turned up to 11. So they do.
And in the some cases—cases like Goodlatte, Nunes, and Mark Meadows—they’re going for a 12. Because they are so far out on the Trump branch, they have absolutely no other support. Life for them has become a series of Trump loyalty tests, and the one that required them to give up the constitutional role of Congress to act as a check on the executive was cleared months ago. It’s no longer even visible in their rear view.
Because there’s only one rear in their view, and they have no choice but to keep on kissing it.
So expect them to drag in everyone even loosely connected to Steele, and everyone else who also has nothing to do with the Russia investigation, to prove their Trump loyalty and support Trump’s ludicrous claims. Expect them to go hard at it between now and November.
Because even if they keep their own seats, they won’t keep their spots at the head of committees. And after this, all they’re going to be able to offer Trump is fond memories of groveling past.