The Walls Are Closing In on Trump

The Fox News and Trump media enterprise Monday launched into a spasm of complete ecstasy as the House Intelligence Committee declared its investigation of Russian interference in our elections and their contacts with and collaboration with the Trump campaign over, done, solved. In its alternate reality, it’s declaring the CASE CLOSED.

They might not want to get too far over their skis on this one because both the Senate and Bob Mueller are still taking this question seriously, as opposed to the clownish covering of Donald Trump’s ample ass by the Republicans on the House Intel Committee. Its chairman, Devin Nunes, and the committee itself are both hopelessly compromised. Nunes has done everything in his power to cover for the president, his staff, and their Russian contacts, and to elide Vladimir Putin’s stated intent and obvious actions.

When secret agent man Devin Nunes raced to the White House to break a phony story of illegal and inappropriate surveillance from a mysterious “whistleblower,” it turned out the super-secret intel he set his ass on fire to reveal came from… wait for it… the White House itself. Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Michael Ellis, both employees of the White House, provided Nunes with top-secret material outside the approved channels to push one of many of the White House’s endless variations on the “no collusion—no puppet, you’re the puppet” defense.

Nunes released a memo last month that tried and failed to bring the grown-ups’ investigations to a halt, and to change the facts of why Carter Page and Trump campaign officials came under the baleful glare of the FISA court. Spoiler: It wasn’t the intelligence community helping Hillary Clinton. It was Trump’s allies and family ass-deep in contacts, connections, communications, and coordination with Putin’s information-warfare operation.  

To imagine for even one moment that every intelligence agency in this nation is wrong and that Nunes, super-staffer Derek Harvey, and the other partisans are right about Putin and Trump is beyond ludicrous. Harvey, a refugee from the Trump National Security Council purge executed by H.R. McMaster and John Kelly, is now the lead agent in the coverup by Republican members of the House. Nunes, while claiming to have recused himself, has remained deeply involved at all times in the coverup.

House Intelligence is now officially an oxymoron. Nunes’ “investigation” has been an example of Washington at its worst, a pure exercise in protecting Donald Trump, and a low point for the Republican Party’s reputation as the party of national security. The committee refused to interview key players in the drama, failed to seek campaign, government, intelligence-community, and corporate records that would have led to places that Team Trump doesn’t want them to go.  

In fact, this White House has refused to even recognize Putin’s global special warfare operations against us exist, much less to take a stand against them. Trump continues to behave toward Putin like a preacher caught in a whorehouse; cowed, compliant, and terrified of his prospective blackmailer. Putin’s ongoing attempts to divide and influence the American political system aren’t speculation, imagination, or some Soros-driven conspiracy. His anti-American propaganda campaign is still in full swing, and the only upside is he’s not murdering people here quite yet, though if I were Paul Manafort I’d cut the deal and get into witness protection now.

That members of Congress who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect this nation have engaged in a sham investigation about to produce a sham report to protect a sham president is an insult to the oath they swore and itself a clear and present danger to the security of our nation. Nunes, the Fredo of L’Affaire Russe, will have a sharply defined role in the history of this sad moment: The clownish and weak man who exposed his nation to danger and disruption by a hostile enemy nation merely for partisan benefit.

The reality is that Mueller has built a case slowly, carefully, and methodically as Trump continues to set his case on fire with obvious obstruction and manic tweets. The Senate inquiry, too, is serious, bipartisan, and delving into the places, people, and issues the House Intel Committee ignores.

As Fox News, talk radio, and Trump-centric clickservative media chant “case closed,” Trump is already tweeting IN CRAZY GRANDPA ALL CAPS his amplification of House Intel’s “report” to convince his credulous base that the story is over and to call for the dismissal of Mueller and the end of the Senate probe.

His audience will believe it. Bob Mueller, the Senate, and the intelligence community have other ideas.