More than a year after Republican leaders promised to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, two influential Republicans on Friday made the first known congressional criminal referral in connection with the meddling — against one of the people who sought to expose it.Also, the FBI, presumably at the president's behest, is investigating the Clinton Foundation, while the Justice Department is said to be taking yet another look at Hillary Clinton's email server.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier, and they urged the department to investigate....
The decision by Mr. Grassley and Mr. Graham to single out the former intelligence officer behind the dossier — and not anyone who may have taken part in the Russian interference — infuriated Democrats and raised the stakes in the growing partisan battle over the investigations into Mr. Trump, his campaign team and Russia.
Here's one response to the move by Graham and Grassley:
Donald Trump's ability to get otherwise respectable people to destroy their reputations on his behalf continues to astound me.
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) January 5, 2018
But this won't destroy their reputations. For now, it will make them heroes on the right -- and in the mainstream, they'll retain their reputations, as respectable-seeming Republicans always do, even after it's unmistakably clear to everyone that they were running interference for a gang of criminals in league with international thugs. They won't be regarded as dishonorable. They'll be treated with respect on Sunday chat shows. We'll purge a certain number of Trumpers, but the vast majority of those who aided and abetted them will be allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened.
The GOP is a party of limitless bad faith -- we see that in the way they legislate, the way they investigate, the way they bottle up Democratic appointees. We use the word "normalization" to attack efforts to minimize the baroque villainy of Trump -- but what about the media's normalization of the Benghazi inquisitions or the refusal to consider Merrick Garland's appointment?
The press has made some serious efforts not to normalize Trump, and bravo for that. But McConnell and Ryan, Graham and Grassley, Nunes and Gowdy have all been normalized for years. The press hasn't been willing to portray them as the scoundrels they are. After we're rid of Trump, that will continue to be the case with regard to his enablers.
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