Donald Trump hasn’t been able to tweet-harangue Jeff Sessions into resigning as attorney general (yet), but his constant stream of attacks on Sessions for not targeting Hillary Clinton is having an effect in the House of Representatives, where Republicans on the Judiciary Committee took the next step toward Trump’s goal of criminalizing dissent. When Democrats on the committee pushed for an investigation of Trump’s firing of James Comey—you know, the possible obstruction of justice a special counsel is investigating—committee Republicans decided they’d rather investigate Clinton’s emails again, targeting Comey’s investigation of the emails specifically.
"If it's in the public interest to investigate the Trump administration, it is most certainly in the public interest to investigate the real crimes by the real criminals," said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a committee member.
Sure, we could investigate the sitting president’s campaign’s ties to a foreign country’s interference in our democratic elections, and the president firing the FBI director in an effort to stop the investigation into that. But the real problem that needs House attention is a former secretary of state’s email server and that former FBI director’s concluded investigation into the server.
Republicans are just desperate to avoid doing anything like governing and even more desperate to avoid challenging Trump. So they’re recycling the things that have worked in the past to whip up their base and distract from their disaster of a president and their disaster of a healthcare bill. And they’re currying favor with Trump by going after the former political opponent he’s obsessed with because more people voted for her than for him. It would be pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous.
