A group of Republican congressmen intend to bring the DOJ to heel on Friday. And if the price of making Trump happy is the last hope for the rule of law … they made that decision long ago. Within the Republican Party, there’s no longer any such thing as a moderate, or even a conservative. There are only those who silently bow to Trump and those who do his bidding with Renfield-like eagerness. In that later group, there’s a cluster of Republican congressmen who think of themselves as “Trump’s warriors.” But they might more accurately be described as the four horseshits of the apocalypse: Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Matt Gaetz, and Ron DeSantis.
These four exceed even Devin Nunes in their willingness to do or say anything that might help Trump. As Politico reports, they’ve emerged as a force to be reckoned with, even though all the traditions of Congress suggest they should be the deepest of back benchers.
None of the four holds a powerful committee chairmanship, but they have something just as important: regular airtime on Fox News. And their pressure campaign against the Justice Department and FBI has put Mueller’s boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on the defensive.
There’s a cycle here that’s difficult to interrupt. The more outrageous things that Meadows or Gaetz say to support Trump, the most willing Fox is to have them on the air. The more they’re on the air praising Trump, the more Trump backs them. And round it goes. Because of the support they enjoy from Trump and Fox, the more the four horseshits are allowed to bypass the normal rules of the House. And senior legislators who would not normally pause to wipe this quartet off their heels, find themselves instead pitching over policy, common sense and decades of experience to treat this quartet as the new masters of the House. Conservative, ultra conservative, libertarian with a side order of Nazi … it doesn’t matter. All that counts now is staying in the good favor of Trump’s favorite minions. These four—with occasional guest sets from Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy—have become the thing that replaces Paul Ryan’s spine.
And for this Friday, the horseshits have arranged a very special showdown at the This-Is-Not-Okay Corral. They’ve demanded the release of still more documents from Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This is after Rosenstein has produced documents behind Nunes “release the memo” memo. After Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray released documents that included giving the name of an FBI source and details of an active investigation. After the long-awaited inspector general report has confirmed yet again that the FBI did not operate with political bias.
They’ve set a “there is no way to satisfy our demands” trap for Rosenstein, and they’re not hiding the fact that they plan to snap it closed.
It’s not immediately clear what documents the Republicans are after this time. But the demand to produce now before Congress has to search up the rules for actually following through on the contempt charges they refused to bring against the multiple Trump associates who refused to answer questions before the House or Senate, was apparently delivered during a meeting last Friday evening.
According to CNN, Nunes left that meeting declaring that documents had better start flowing on Saturday, or else. But the fact that Republicans are still complaining on Tuesday means … of course they were going to complain. If the DOJ gave them a hundred documents, they’d just ask for five hundred more by lunch. There’s no actual point to these demands except to use as a means of demeaning Robert Mueller’s investigation and justifying the dismissal of Rosenstein or others.
Devin Nunes, who is now demanding the Justice Department turn over an unending string of documents, went through the whole of the House “investigation” into foreign intervention in the 2016 election and turned down every subpoena request for documents. Every single one.
Meanwhile, the four horseshits are riding high. Sometimes literally.
… Gaetz, a 35-year-old freshman from Florida, routinely gets calls from the president, including critiques of his Fox News appearances, and has flown at least twice on Air Force One. In a November House floor speech, Gaetz called on Mueller to resign, warning of the “risk of a coup d'état in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly-elected president of the United States.”
Meadows and Jordan, who share the leadership of what is laughingly called the “Freedom Caucus,” talk to Donald Trump almost as often as Sean Hannity. And the subject of those calls is simple enough—how to get Rosenstein and how to sabotage the Mueller investigation.
Look for another try at shooting down democracy this week—and if the family separation issue lets them make their attack in stealth … they’re probably going to be disappointed. Because getting on Fox is a required part of the cycle.