David Corn at Mother Jones writes—How the Republicans Are Trying to Gaslight America With Their Impeachment Report:
This just in: House Republicans are not being honest.
In a slapdash fashion, staffers for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who has been implicated himself in the Trump-Ukraine scandal, and two other Republican ranking members—Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Michael McCaul of Texas—have cobbled together a report on the impeachment inquiry that unshockingly proclaims Donald Trump innocent of…everything. This document was released on Monday ahead of the committee’s 300-page, highly detailed summary of its investigation and hearings that was unveiled on Tuesday and forwarded to the judiciary committee for that panel’s impeachment deliberations.
The Republican staff report is as predictable as a typical Trump tweet—and as mendacious. It assails and belittles the Democrats’ effort to investigate whether Trump muscled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate investigations that would dig up dirt on Joe Biden and produce information to back up a nutty conspiracy theory that holds that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the 2016 election. And the GOP report proclaims the Democratic-led probe is “not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system.”
Even after Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who Trump used as a lieutenant in this caper, testified that there was a quid pro quo—White House action backing Zelensky in return for the Ukrainian government pursuing these investigations—the Republicans claim in this report there was “no quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, or abuse of power.” The report also asserts there was “nothing wrong” with Trump asking Zelensky to investigate Biden’s activities regarding Ukraine and his son Hunter’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma. It’s the product of Deep Spin.
The report echoes many of the rants of distraction and deflection issued by Nunes and Jordan during the intelligence committee’s hearings. And it is chock-full of attempts at gaslighting that are easily challenged or debunked. [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“[Fictional demagogue Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip’s backers] realized that this country has gone so flabby that any gang daring enough and unscrupulous enough, and smart enough not to seem illegal, can grab hold of the entire government and have all the power and applause and salutes, all the money and palaces and willin’ women they want.”
~~Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here, (1935)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—EPA Declares Open Season on Mountains:
As threatened, the Bush Environmental Positively-useless Administration has repealed key parts of the Stream Buffer Act. Previously, the EPA had been cooperating with companies to subvert the act, but judges in some districts were still slowing down approval of mountaintop removal operations. Now even that token obstacle has been removed.
Approval by EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget paved the way for Interior Department officials to finalize industry-backed changes in the 25-year-old stream "buffer zone" rule.
Environmental groups had fought the change, because they hoped that either court actions or moves by the incoming Obama administration might use the buffer zone as a tool to more strictly regulate mountaintop removal.
]Despite the destruction of more than 400 mountains, and the routine violation of the existing rules, the Bush administration still hustled through this gift to the worst operators in the coal industry. In doing so, they fulfilled one of the dreams Bush has held since coming into office.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: It's a Political Science Tuesday! (Something we just made up.) Republicans are falling back to a "Who cares about Ukraine, anyway?" defense. That's wrong, on its face. But it doesn't even touch the real reason why what Trump did was impeachable.
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