WHAT'S THE POINT OF LINDSEY GRAHAM'S "WEIRD THREAT"? I'LL EXPLAIN -- AGAIN.

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake seems puzzled by what he calls a "weird threat" from Lindsey Graham.

Former president Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is set to begin in a week’s time. And judging by a couple of interviews Monday, his side is focused on delivering a not-so-veiled threat: You might want to be careful about calling witnesses.

But the threat, as enunciated, is rather strange and illogical....

[On Fox News Monday night, Senator Lindsey Graham] suggested that holding a lengthy trial including witnesses could open up “Pandora’s box,” in Graham’s words, because Trump’s team could then call its own. But the types of witnesses they floated don’t seem to pose much of a threat....

“There’s mounting evidence that the people came to Washington preplanned the attack before the president ever spoke,” Graham said. He added: “If you open up that can of worms, we’ll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people preplanned this attack and what happened with the security footprint of the Capitol. You open up Pandora’s box if you call one witness.”

Why would Republicans want to go down this road? I explained this a couple of weeks ago -- in fact, Lindsey Graham explained it a couple of weeks ago.

They want to blame the riot on Nancy Pelosi.

On January 17, I told you that Daniel Greenfield at David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine was blaming Pelosi for the riot.

The Capitol Hill Riot Was Pelosi’s Fault, Not Trump’s

... it wasn’t the White House’s job to protect Congress. That’s why Congress has a force of 2,300 people and a $460 million budget with just one job to do.

... The Capitol riot is Pelosi’s disaster and she’s making the most of it by blaming it on everyone else. Her private police force had the resources and the people to keep out the Visigoths, never mind a few hundred people, and instead turned what should have been a riot into a disaster.

Prior to that, Ukraine disinformationist John Solomon wrote (italics his):

What did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the other leaders in Congress know — and when did they know it — about the possibility for violence and the Pentagon's pre-attack offer to send National Guardsmen to reinforce the Capitol Police?

Then Graham took the idea mainstream on Fox:

Lindsey Graham blames Nancy Pelosi for the security failure at the Capitol pic.twitter.com/SBJebqHTlM

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) January 17, 2021

GRAHAM: To see people come and take over the Capitol, the House and the Senate, beat officers, defile the seat of government, how in the hell could that happen? Where was Nancy Pelosi? It's her job to provide Capitol security.

But as I wrote at the time:

No, it's not her job. The Capitol Police force isn't Nancy Pelosi's personal fiefdom. The force is overseen by both houses of Congress.

The U.S. Capitol Police is an odd entity: Unlike other federal law enforcement agencies, which are part of the executive branch, it is overseen directly by Congress.... The department is overseen by a small executive board made up of the Senate and House sergeants at arms and the architect of the Capitol, and it receives broad instructions and funding from the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, the Committee on House Administration, and the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees that deal with the legislative branch.

Which means that if Congress is at fault for the force's failings on January 6, then the blame lies as much with Mitch McConnell as much as it does with Pelosi.

Shortly after that, as I also noted, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy went on Greta Van Susteren's TV show and also blamed Pelosi.

So that's what Graham is threatening: that Republicans will take advantage of the fact that average Americans don't know who's responsible for the Capitol Police by deceitfully arguing that the Capitol Police are Nancy Pelosi's personal Praetorian guard, and therefore the riot was exclusively her responsibility.

Are they scummy enough to stoop that low? Do you even have to ask?