I try to follow governmental/political news in the US and often write about it here, but, there has been such an avalanche of stories lately that I have been too overwhelmed to write about it. Yesterday, though, was such an odd conglomeration of things that I thought I’d try to post about it.
Speaker McCarthy and his slim majority in the House of Representatives seem incapable of actual governance, even after resolving the debt ceiling crisis. Instead of working on budget bills that put that legislation into practice, the majority-Republican committees are drafting proposals that make cuts in human needs programs that were slated to stay flat. They are also having a lot of investigations, even when they can’t produce evidence to support their allegations. They don’t seem interested in actually governing for the good of the people.
For example, yesterday they held a hearing with John Durham, who led a four-year investigation centered on the origin of the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ inquiry into possible ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. You may recall that the investigation headed by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election resulted in multiple indictments and plea deals, including Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Konstantin Kilimnik, and over two dozen Russians, including military intelligence officers and companies and employees related to a Russian troll farm that hacked into the campaign- and election-related computers in the US. While not charging him as a sitting president, the Mueller report also detailed instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump. By contrast, the Durham investigation only resulted in one minor plea deal and two acquittals at trial, hardly the revelation of a “deep-state conspiracy” that some Republicans had suspected.
Curiously, during the hearing, Durham seemed ignorant of much of the Mueller report and contemporaneous news accounts from the 2016 election cycle. He did, however, praise Mueller as “a patriot” and state unequivocally that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. A number of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, which has invited Durham to testify, seemed frustrated that he wasn’t engaging in their more conspiratorial ideas.
Then, in a bizarre counterpoint, the House Republicans voted to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) because of his work on investigating Trump, including the issue of Russian election interference. (A similar measure which had included a possible $16 million fine in addition to censure had failed last week.) Six Republicans, including five on the House Ethics Committee voted present; all other Republicans voted for censure while all Democrats voted against. Rep. Schiff, who was then chair of the Intelligence Committee and became one of the impeachment managers in the first Trump impeachment, appears to have been censured for fulfilling his Congressional duties. It’s expected that this is a first salvo in what may be a long siege of Republican efforts to impeach members of the Biden administration, including the President himself. It doesn’t seem, though, that the Republicans have evidence of actual wrongdoing that would warrant impeachments. They have been doing a lot of investigating of allegations but don’t have the actual evidence needed to prove their case.
Meanwhile, last night, Special Counsel Jack Smith turned over mounds of evidence, including grand jury testimony, to Donald Trump’s lawyers in the documents case that is being litigated in the Southern District of Florida. This is part of a process called discovery, in which the prosecutors give the defendant’s lawyers the information underlying their case, including any possibly exculpatory evidence. The indictment in the case is quite detailed but it seems that many Congressional Republicans have yet to read it. It’s sad that they seem convinced by conspiracy theories while ignoring actual evidence and that they spread this malady to voters.
It makes me very nervous for the future of our democracy, both short-term and long-term.
Joanne Corey 