Donald Trump’s relationship to the truth is apparently having its effect throughout the ranks of the Republican Party. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went on Fox News to do some lying worthy of the orange one himself.
“You read this IG report by Horowitz,” McCarthy said, before going on to lie about what the report said. “Here’s the FBI, they broke into President Trump—at the time candidate Trump’s—campaign, spied on him, and then they covered it up. It is a modern-day Watergate.”
That is not what Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found at all. And since we know McCarthy knows what Horowitz did say, this is not merely falsehood or a false claim: It is a lie, told on national television, and repeated on Twitter.
Horowitz concluded that the FBI properly opened an investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties and stated that it “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision.” Neither did the FBI place informants or undercover agents in the campaign. There were problems with FISA warrants, but, said Horowitz, “We do not speculate whether the correction of any particular misstatement or omission, or some combination thereof, would have resulted in a different outcome.”
If McCarthy wanted to dismiss Horowitz and point to the latest great white Republican hope—that U.S. Attorney John Durham will do what Attorney General William Barr assigned him to do and find that the FBI investigation was improper—that would be one thing. It would be nakedly partisan and dishonest, since that whole investigation is dishonest, but it wouldn’t be on the level of straight-up claiming that the Horowitz report said things it absolutely did not say.
But when your party is united around a president who cannot tell the truth, I guess it becomes harder and harder for anyone to do anything but lie.