With scant weeks remaining before the midterm elections, Devin Nunes has a gift for America. On Friday, he’ll lead the House Intelligence Committee in a vote to release transcripts related to the aborted House investigation into Russian interference. All of them. Between now and the elections.
The release is intended to fuel the parallel tracks Republicans are counting on not to produce a traditional “October surprise,” but to feed the “deep state” mythology and provide material for a fresh round of conspiracy theories. Not only are they hoping that the materials released help raise doubts about the FBI and DOJ, they’re also intending to … throw out more testimony from members of the Obama administration at the same time that the House is bringing many of these same past officials in for a fresh grilling. As Politico reports, that means testimony of Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, and James Clapper will be dumped into public view—making them handy for Republicans who want to take selected snippets, present them as if they’re part of some grand conspiracy, and hound the former staffers when they come to the Hill.
Even before House Republicans abruptly shut down the sporadic investigation last March, Democrats had called on Republicans to release many of the transcripts made at closed-door sessions. So at first glance, the vote to dump the lot into public space in October may seem like Republicans are acquiescing to those demands. But the reason that Democrats were anxious for some transcripts to be released was because Republicans were selectively leaking or quoting from them, including in the all-Republican “final report” from the committee which released to provide Trump with a stack of “no collusion” paper to wave around in all circumstances.
Instead of releasing the transcripts from which those soundbites had been extracted, Republicans intend to dump a big selection—including transcripts that set up the grilling of former Obama officials and those that contain information that could be damaging to the ongoing operation.
The “dump ‘em all” plan that Nunes is bringing up for a vote on Friday is an extension of the scheme between Trump and House Republicans to dump a stack of documents into the final days before the election—including texts from James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, along with select segments of the Carter Page FISA warrant. All of this is being done in hopes of generating further confusion, conspiracy theories, and material that can be used to attack the DOJ and FBI.
Take back the House—and finally bring a halt to the Nunes, Gowdy, Goodlatte endless rehash of the Obama administration. Can you send $3 to help put the House back on track?
Here’s what October is going to look like in Washington, D.C.
1) Trump has ordered the inspector general to produce a fast response on the release of unredacted texts and documents—and warned that if the IG should decide the documents are still too sensitive or damaging to active investigations, Trump might just release them anyway.
2) Nunes will call a vote on Friday for the release of transcripts. That vote is very likely to go along partisan lines. It’s not clear that all transcripts will be released right away, you can bet that the transcripts for Obama administration members and DOJ officials will be out in plenty of time to comb for segments that can be used out-of-context or inverted to paint the picture of an FBI that went soft on Hillary Clinton and hard after Donald Trump.
3) Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy have issued “invitations” to a broad set of former Obama (and Trump) officials including Lynch, McCabe, Comey, and Yates. All of whom will be grilled with the fresh material from the Nunes-released transcripts—and quite likely the texts provided by Trump—in hand.
Republicans have talked about wrapping this up before the midterms, but honestly … they don’t care if it ever wraps up. Once the levers are pulled, Gowdy is going home and the purpose of this bit of theater is over. Trump will be watching to see what statements from the House hearings he can pick up for future tweets … but there won’t be much ongoing action in the House.
Earlier requests from Democrats had sought to release testimony from Trump campaign members Donald Trump Jr., Brad Parscale and Hope Hicks, Politico reports that the vote put forward by Nunes may include these transcripts, since the whole excuse is “transparency.” But don’t expect them to appear to provide testimony next month. Jefferson Sessions is also on the list, and since the attorney general already has an agreed-on end date following the election, House Republicans may feel they get some benefit from running him up the Trump flagpole and complaining that he hasn’t saluted hard enough.
It’s going to be a show. The problem for Republicans is … it’s an old, dull show that even their biggest supporters may not tune in to see.