When it comes to the culpability for the dismal state of American politics and the accelerating erosion of our governing institutions, failure has a thousand fathers. At the top of the list of the usual suspects is Donald Trump, whose presidency of staggering incompetence, unsurpassed corruption, and lying at the speed of light has already been rated the worst in the history of the Republic. And that history will doubtless conclude that Trump’s path was made possible by Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, a one-man wrecking ball whose record-setting filibusters, unprecedented obstruction of judicial and executive branch nominees, unheard of debt-ceiling hostage-taking, outright Supreme Court theft, and complicity in Russian election interference will live in infamy.
But with the looming retirement of House Speaker and snake oil salesman Paul Ryan, a new marcher has goose-stepped into third place in the Republican parade of horribles. Texan John Cornyn, the Senate Majority Whip and Mitch McConnell’s right-hand man, is the perfect embodiment of Republican hyper-partisanship now putting America’s democratic norms and the truth itself at risk. A torture enthusiast and defender of warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, Sen. Cornyn baselessly charged President Obama with compiling an “enemies list” and then spying on candidate Donald Trump. In the cause of advancing conservative political power, the former Texas Supreme Court justice has attacked Congress’ own budget scorekeepers and even threatened state and federal judges. And with Donald Trump’s presidency in jeopardy from the continuing revelations surrounding the Mueller investigation, John Cornyn is leading the counter-attack against the special prosecutor and the FBI.
Cornyn’s water-carrying was on display in support of Trump’s bogus “Spygate” charge this week. Team Trump and its allies in Congress including Rep. Devin Nunes of California had demanded an unprecedented briefing by the Justice Department on the FBI’s use of an informant to investigate Russian outreach to Trump campaign officials during the spring and summer of 2016. Among those briefed was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who declared he saw "no evidence" to support President Trump's claims. Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who led the two-year House probe into the Benghazi tragedy, went much further in debunking Trump’s mythology:
"Think back to what the president himself told James Comey," Gowdy said. "He said, 'I didn't collude with Russia, but if anyone connected with my campaign did, I want you to investigate it.' It strikes me that that's exactly what the FBI was doing."
But that’s not all Gowdy, himself a former prosecutor, said:
"That is not a term I've ever used in the criminal justice system. I've never heard the term 'spy' used. Undercover informant, confidential informant, those are all words I'm familiar with. I've never heard the term 'spy' used."
But former Judge Cornyn begged to differ.
Cornyn, who in December demanded “Mueller needs to clean house of partisans,” tweeted a National Review article titled “Spy Name Games.” In it, Andrew McCarthy wrote, “The Obama administration blatantly politicized the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus.” Appearing on right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show, Cornyn rejected the conclusion shared by Rubio, Gowdy and Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff of California:
Cornyn said that there is no difference between a “confidential informant” and a spy.
“The FBI was involved in a counterintelligence investigation, I presume, and used somebody who had contacted various subjects of their investigation to communicate back to the FBI what they found out,” Cornyn, who is the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said. “I guess for all practical purposes, for most people, it wouldn’t be any different.”
Of course, for John Cornyn what constitutes “spying” or even “legal” depends on which party happens to control the White House. In December 2005, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times broke the bombshell story (“Bush Let U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts”) about illegal warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency (NSA). But when asked about the threat to Americans’ civil liberties posed by the Bush administration’s clear violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Sen. Cornyn introduced a soon-familiar Republican talking point:
"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."
(The story of President Bush’s program of illicit domestic surveillance by the NSA is filled with irony. The New York Times had the story before the 2004 election, but sat on it for 13 months at the request of the White House. And as it turned out, then FBI director Robert Mueller and acting Attorney General James Comey threatened to resign in March 2004 over the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” they considered to be illegal.)
John Cornyn’s conception of “spying” changed the moment Democrat Barack Obama took the oath of office. Years before falsely accusing the FBI of spying on Republican candidate Trump during the 2016 election, Sen. Cornyn accused the Obama administration of compiling an “enemies list” during the debate over health care reform. As the torrent of Republican lies about “death panels” and “a government takeover of health care” began to overwhelm Americans in August 2009, the White House web site offered readers real-time fact-checking. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy,” the blog asked, “send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.” But to Cornyn, this effort to debunk the myths he and his colleagues were peddling was something very sinister:
"By requesting citizens send 'fishy' emails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, email, addresses, IP addresses and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House," Cornyn wrote in a letter to Obama. "You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program."
Cornyn asked Obama to cease the program immediately, or at the very least explain what the White House would do with the information it collects.
"I am not aware of any precedent for a President asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure speech that is deemed 'fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests," Cornyn said.
Within days, President Obama was forced to address the controversy Cornyn had manufactured. At an August 2009 town hall event in New Hampshire, Obama set the record straight:
Can I just say this is another example of how the media just ends up completely distorting what’s taking place. What we’ve said is that if somebody has — if you get an email from somebody that says for example ObamaCare is creating a death panel, forward us the email and we will answer the question that is being raised in the email. Suddenly, on some of these news outlets, this is being portrayed as Obama collecting an enemies list. Now, come on guys, here I am trying to be responsive to questions that are being raised out there — and I just want to be clear that all we’re trying to do is answer questions.
If Cornyn’s posture then was a joke, his obstruction of Obama’s judicial nominees was no laughing matter. During George W. Bush’s presidency, Sen. Cornyn decried “this unconstitutional use of the filibuster to deny the president his judicial nominations.” In 2008, Cornyn explained further:
“An up-or-down vote is a matter of fundamental fairness, and it is the Senate's constitutional duty to act on each nomination,” Cornyn wrote in a press release. “Senators have a right to vote for or against any nominee, but blocking votes on nominations is unacceptable.”
Unacceptable, that is, if a Republican is in the Oval Office. But when Barack Obama became its occupant, John Cornyn changed his tune. He led the way in filibustering Obama nominees including Goodwin Liu and John McConnell Jr. By 2013, Mitch McConnell’s hatchet man had a new rule:
“There is a 60-vote threshold for every nomination.”
Ultimately, Obama’s choice to replace the late Antonin Scalia didn’t get a Judiciary Committee hearing, let alone a vote of the full Senate. But when Donald Trump won the election of 2016, Sen. John Cornyn performed another U-turn. Along with his Republican colleagues, Cornyn went nuclear and blew up his 60-vote requirement in order to let Neil Gorsuch occupy the SCOTUS seat that should have been filled by Merrick Garland. And as Cornyn recently explained to Hugh Hewitt, he’ll do whatever it takes to get all of Donald Trump’s judicial nominees on the federal bench in the face of what he called “unprecedented foot-dragging and obstruction” from Democrats:
Host Hugh Hewitt then asked, “If they don’t, will you stay all summer long, if need be, to get those 20 more Appeals Court judges nominated, confirmed, and put on the bench, Senator Cornyn, even if it’s all through the long, hot days of August here inside the Beltway?”
Cornyn answered, “Well, we will stay as long as it takes, including the month of August.”
When it comes to judges, Majority Whip Cornyn had no issues with throwing up roadblocks to those with whom he disagreed. (As he put it on February 23, 2016, “There should not be a hearing in the Judiciary Committee for anyone that the president nominates” to replace the dear, departed Antonin Scalia). But John Cornyn isn’t above throwing punches—rhetorical or otherwise—with judges he hates. On March 8, 2016, Cornyn promised to ruin the career of anyone with the temerity to accept President Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
"I think they will bear some resemblance to a piñata," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.
"What I don't understand is how someone who actually wants to be confirmed to the Supreme Court would actually allow themselves to be used by the administration in a political fight that's going to last from now until the end of the year," Cornyn told a small group of reporters in the Capitol.
He added: "Because there is no guarantee, certainly, after that time they're going to look as good as they did going in."
That threat was hardly Cornyn’s first instance of judicial intimidation. As you may recall, Cornyn was one of the GOP standard bearers in the conservative fight against so-called "judicial activism" in the wake of the Republicans' disastrous intervention in the Terri Schiavo affair. On April 4, 2005, Cornyn took to the Senate floor to issue a dark warning to judges opposing his reactionary agenda. Just days after the murders of judge in Atlanta and another's family members in Chicago, Cornyn offered his endorsement of judicial intimidation. Just days after then-House Majority Leader Tom Delay warned, “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior,” Cornyn issued a threat of his own:
"It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. Sometimes, he said, "the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people."
Cornyn continued: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country…And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
Facing criticism for his remarks seemingly endorsing right-wing retribution against judges, Cornyn stood his ground. "I didn't make the link," he said on Fox News Sunday, adding with a note of sarcasm:
"It was taken out of context. I regret it was taken out of context and misinterpreted."
Sadly for Judge Cornyn, Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor made no mistake about his context or his meaning. In March 2006, RBG revealed that she and Justice O'Connor were the targets of death threats. On February 28, 2005, the marshal of the Court informed O'Connor and Ginsburg of an Internet posting citing their references to international law in Court decisions (a frequent whipping boy of the right) as requiring their assassination:
"This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom...If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."
Neither O'Connor nor Ginsburg were shy about making the connection between Republican rhetoric of judicial intimidation and the upswing in threats and actual violence against judges. While Ginsburg noted that they "fuel the irrational fringe," O'Connor blamed Cornyn and his fellow travelers for "creating a culture" in which violence towards judges is merely another political tactic:
"It gets worse. It doesn't help when a high-profile senator suggests a 'cause-and-effect connection' [between controversial rulings and subsequent acts of violence]."
(Among the judges who subsequently were threatened was Reggie Walton. Ironically later a FISA judge whose role was to approve federal requests for electronic surveillance of American citizens, Walton presided over the 2007 conviction of Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby. For that, Walton revealed, he was the target of right-wing rage. "I received a number of angry, harassing mean-spirited phone calls and letters,” Walton explained, “Some of those were wishing bad things on me and my family.")
If John Cornyn was willing to threaten judges with “bad things,” he was quite comfortable in promising them to terrorism detainees. That was clear during his pathetic—and comical—questioning of Obama Attorney General nominee Eric Holder in January 2009. Cornyn's enthusiasm for the waterboarding was clear throughout as he demanded Holder answer a hypothetical question about a ticking time bombs and torture:
CORNYN: You would still refuse to condone aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding to get that information, which would, under my hypothetical, save perhaps tens of thousands of lives...
HOLDER: ...I think your hypothetical assumes a premise that I'm not willing to concede.
CORNYN: I know you don't like my hypothetical.
HOLDER: No, the hypothetical's fine; the premise that underlies it I'm not willing to accept, and that is that waterboarding is the only way that I could get that information from those people.
CORNYN: Assume that it was.
HOLDER: [Laughs] Given the knowledge that I have about other techniques and what I've heard from retired admirals and generals and FBI agents, there are other ways in a timely fashion that you can get information out of people that is accurate and will produce useable intelligence. And so it's hard for me to accept or to answer your hypothetical without accepting your premise. And in fact, I don't think I can do that.
(As the “Torture Report” by the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence subsequently confirmed, Holder was right.)
As it turned out, Eric Holder wasn’t the only one refusing to accept John Cornyn’s preposterous hypotheticals. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been a frequent recipient of his ire. When the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) forecast that the GOP’s 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” would drain at least $1 trillion from the United States Treasury over its first 10 years, Senator Cornyn complained, “I think it’s pretty clear they’re wrong.” On this point at least, Cornyn has been consistent—consistently wrong, that is. In 2010, the Texas senator refused to acknowledge that extending the expiring Bush tax cuts would lead to larger deficits at all:
“I don’t agree that extending current tax policy, which has been the law for ten years, exacerbates the deficit, unless you assume that all of this is the government’s money and they just let ‘we the people’ have some of it back.”
Of course, John Cornyn was just echoing the tried and untrue talking point being regurgitated by then-Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl and his boss, Mitch McConnell. After Kyl similarly defended the extension of the Bush tax cuts by claiming, “You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans," McConnell rushed to Kyl’s defense, announcing that his fiscal fraud was in fact now Republican orthodoxy:
"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."
Every Republican, that is, including Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. In 2017, McConnell went even further than John Cornyn, proclaiming of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, “I think it's going to be a revenue producer.” As his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin explained a year ago, Donald Trump certainly agreed that “This will pay for itself with growth.”
The CBO, led by Republican director Keith Hall, couldn’t disagree more. “No, the evidence is that tax cuts do not pay for themselves,” Director Hall warned in 2015, “And our models that we're doing, our macroeconomic effects, show that." By now it should come as no surprise that John Cornyn, like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, refuses to accept that empirical truth. After all, that’s just the kind of blatant dishonesty you’d expect from the third worst person in Washington.