Trey Gowdy And Devin Nunes Really, (Really!) Want You To Focus More On Uranium And Hillary And Less On Trump

Ok, so obviously no one takes Trey Gowdy seriously.

You know that right? I certainly hope so. If there were a dictionary entry for “despicable dip-shit”, his picture would be next to it.

Same goes for Devin Nunes, who earlier this year compromised his integrity so badly that he’s become a standing joke to anyone who closely follows developments inside the Beltway.

But that’s just the thing. Trump’s base doesn’t follow developments closely and if they do, they get their information from Trump himself, who is of course behind each and every one of the various attempts to divert attention from the Russia probe.

So what you get is the same kind of self-referential dynamic that exists on Russia-linked blogs and fake news sites more generally. You get a surrogate saying something or doing something, then whatever that something is gets cited/championed by someone else with some loose claim to legitimacy, and then you get the same surrogates saying/doing it again, in a perpetual motion bullshit machine that exists solely to sow distrust and misinformation.

With the alt-Right it works like this. First, fake (or fake-ish) news is planted by an outlet with no claim to legitimacy whatsoever. Next, Breitbart, Sputnik, RT, or Fox picks up on the story and “legitimizes” it. In the final act, the original outlets who planted the story in the first place go back and point to Breitbart, Sputnik, RT, and/or Fox as “evidence” that their original “story” wasn’t fake. Need an example? No problem: see Seth Rich.

With Trump and Congress it works like this. Trump plants something spurious (like say “my wires were tapped!” or “look at that uranium!”). Next, folks like Devin Nunes pick up on it and run with it. Then, in the final act, Trump – who was behind it in the first place – points to what a Devin Nunes said as “evidence” that his original line of bullshit wasn’t in fact bullshit. Need an example? No problem…

Via Politico

Two more Republican-led congressional committees will probe the Obama administration’s decision to approve the sale of American uranium production capability to a Russian state-run energy conglomerate, a key GOP lawmaker announced Tuesday.

Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he’d be linking up with the House Oversight panel led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). The Senate Judiciary Committee has already said it would investigate the uranium deal.

Republicans have seized on the issue to try to deflect scrutiny over Russia’s actions after Democrats have spent months scouring for connections between Trump and the Kremlin. The election-meddling probes, including into whether Moscow had help from any Trump associates, have been a nonstop distraction for the White House and sent Trump into bouts of Twitter rage.

Nunes remains head of the intelligence panel even though he stepped aside from the Russia probe in April after he raised eyebrows by unexpectedly visiting the White House to brief the president on early findings of the investigation. Democrats claimed his actions compromised the probe at a sensitive juncture.

Reps. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), Gowdy and Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) took over the daily leadership of the Russia investigation. But Nunes has remained involved, tangling recently with Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned a salacious and disputed dossier about Trump’s connections to the Russian government. Nunes recently issued a subpoena to force Fusion to reveal who funded its research, though the company has fought to avoid handing over information.

And then this via The Hill:

The chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees announced on Tuesday a joint investigation into how the FBI handled last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s private email server.

“Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a joint statement.

The two Republican leaders said they have questions about the FBI’s decision to openly declare the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, while quietly investigating Trump campaign associates.

They are also interested to know why the FBI decided to formally notify Congress of the probe on two separate occasions; why the FBI – rather than the Justice Department – recommended that Clinton not be charged after the investigation concluded; and the reasoning behind their timeline for announcing such decisions.

“The Committees will review these decisions and others to better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn. Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions taken,” their statement continued.

Here’s what will happen next (if it hasn’t already): Trump will seize on this as “evidence” that his crazy ass tweets and rants about uranium and e-mail servers are legitimate and his base will believe him.

Needless to say – and look, irrespective of party affiliation, any sane Republican who isn’t acting at the behest of Trump would admit as much if they were being honest – these are absurdly transparent attempts to deflect and/or undermine the Trump-Russia probe.

That is so painfully obvious that you almost – almost – feel sorry for the lawmakers who are getting dragged into this because it is so unbelievably clear what’s going on that they’re forever giving up whatever credibility they had left by pushing this bullshit.

Important note: none of that is to say that the uranium deal or the handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation shouldn’t be investigated. Rather, we’re just stating the obvious, which is that the timing is laughably suspect and so clearly designed to distract from what is unquestionably a more important investigation that it’s an insult to the public to expect people to not see through it.

“House Republicans’ new probe of how the FBI managed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information is a massive diversion to distract from the lack of Republican oversight of the Trump Administration and the national security threat that Russia poses,” Democratic Reps. Elijah Cummings and John Conyers said this afternoon in a statement, adding that “ten months into the Trump Administration and House Republicans still have not held a single substantive oversight hearing on clear abuses by the President or his top aides.”

Finally, when it comes to perpetual bullshit machines like those described above, it’s important that you be able to differentiate between the way that machine has always worked and what’s going on right now. America has always been subjected to biased news coverage and lawmakers have always used their power to go after political opponents while dragging the media along for the ride.

That, unfortunately, is just business as usual in America: divisive partisan politics and slanted, biased media coverage. Stop us if that’s news to you.

On the other hand, using previous political scandals to undermine a probe into whether the President of the United States colluded with a hostile foreign power to subvert America’s democratic process is tantamount to treason to the extent that’s the sole purpose of these inquires.

End of story.