The Congressional investigation into conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian Federation will go nowhere as long as the Republicans retain their House Majority. Either because some of them may be personally implicated in the treachery (likely) or they are simply loathe to have the true nature of the Trump Administration revealed to the American people, Republicans in Congress have deliberately obstructed what should have been a wholly bipartisan effort to get to the bottom of what all our intelligence agencies now concede was (and continues to be) an unprecedented assault on our Democracy by a hostile foreign power.
Some Democrats serving on the Committee charged with that investigation have decided that when the History books are written about this distasteful period in the life of the Republic, Americans should have the benefit of knowing just whose side the Republicans were on:
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee may publish a report detailing ways panel Republicans attempted to hinder the Russia probe, according to a senior Democrat on the committee.
In an interview published Tuesday, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) told Greg Sargent, a liberal columnist for The Washington Post, that Democrats are considering releasing such a minority report. One such example of Republican attempts to hurt the investigation, according to Himes, includes refusing to call certain witnesses.
The “Minority report” has a proud Democratic tradition in the face of Republican obstruction or refusal to investigate crimes being committed by a Republican Executive. In 2004, for example, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a devastating indictment of the Bush Administration’s process of lying us into the Iraq War as a “Minority report,” in which he carefully laid out all of the steps Bush/Cheney, Rice and Powell sought to actively deceive Americans by hyping the non-existent “danger” of “weapons of mass destruction” as a prelude to that destructive and pointless war. It seems historically that such minority reports are always the most necessary when a Republican President has committed some grave crime that his fellow Republicans in Congress refuse to properly investigate for political or other reasons.
In this case the Republicans are blocking access to the only worthwhile witnesses able to shed light on the Trump campaign’s dealings with the Russian government, the extent of the conspiracy, if any, between Russian officials and the Trump campaign, and the existence of any quid pro quo promised to Russia for manipulating the American electorate in certain states through various types of social media in favor of Donald Trump and against the popular vote winner in 2016, Hillary Clinton.
Himes’ remarks come after Democrats on the committee voiced concerns that Republicans are trying to prematurely cut off the panel's investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia's meddle in the presidential election.
In a report by The Washington Post on Sunday, source familiar with the matter say Democrats are frustrated that committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who solely holds the power to subpoena witnesses, refused to seek dozens of interviews and records that the minority repeatedly requested.
As more and more statements of Administration officials prove to be outright lies, it becomes absolutely necessary to re-interview those witnesses in light of those lies—otherwise the process simply becomes a farce:
Democrats are interested in talking to Donald Trump Jr. and Attorney General Jeff Sessions again, both of whom appeared before the committee earlier this year.
Democrats hope to find out a number of things from such testimonies, including whether foreign policy campaign aide George Papadopoulos talked to top campaign officials about having implicating information on Hillary Clinton's campaign, The New York Times reported Saturday...[.]
Republicans have given every indication they are going to try to “wind down” the investigation as soon as possible before the 2018 midterm elections, even though dozens of witnesses remain to be interviewed.
Those efforts to block Democrats’ access to crucial witnesses, as well as the overall effort of the Republicans towards deflecting and channeling an inquiry that goes to the very core of our Democracy instead towards pointless and substanceless inquiries into the past actions of Hillary Clinton, appear almost certain to require an accounting, if only to allow the American people to understand who the real traitors were in this sorry episode.