Campaign Action
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the lead Republican good ol’ boy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is showing once again just how much power and control the minority Republican electorate has over our government and the rule of law. After Bill Barr disgraced himself yesterday before the committee with twisted facts, distortions, and downright lies, most of the Democratic members stated publicly that the committee needed to hear from special counsel Robert Mueller directly. Indeed, even Robert Mueller had taken the highly unusual step of “going to paper” and formally submitting a letter to Attorney General Barr, one that was created for historical context and expressed unhappiness with Barr’s characterization of both the investigation and the conclusions in the Mueller report.
In the full interest of the rule of law and the very foundations of this country—truth, justice, and the American way—you’d think it would be a no-brainer to have Mueller testify before the Senate in his own words to describe his two-year investigation. But Graham has no intention of letting that happen, and furthermore, he says he will not allow former White House attorney Don McGahn to testify either. McGahn is central to the investigation into whether or not Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice when he ordered McGahn to have Mueller fired and asked him to write a false letter for the record claiming that he’d never asked him to fire Mueller. McGahn nearly resigned over the episode, but decided against it, presumably so he could fulfill his goal of packing our courts with nearly all white, all male conservative judges.
But Graham, who reportedly pushed Trump to hire Bill Barr in the first place, precisely so he would bring the investigation to a close, told reporters in the hallway outside the Barr hearing that he has no intention whatsoever of letting the American people hear the truth. Take a listen:
It’s simply stunning to see Graham and the rest of the good ol’ boys shutting down yet another investigation. It should be noted that these very same men are demanding a fresh look at Hillary Clinton’s email server, seeking to reignite a nearly five-year-old investigation! And America is supposed to simply move on from an investigation that detailed 215 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. Americans are supposed to sit on our hands and do nothing as the Trump administration does nothing about the fact that Russia hacked a political opponent, stole information, and used it to upend an election. Worse, we now know that the Russians hacked into at least one Florida county voter database. What else have they hacked? We don’t know. Not only are Trump and his Republican enablers doing little or nothing to prevent future hacks, but White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney reportedly told now former Department of Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen not to even mention Russian election interference in front of Trump, because apparently the topic would send him into a rage.
Nevertheless, as they did at the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, the good ol’ boys appear to be successfully closing an investigation into one of their own … again. Democrats have got to recruit top-tier candidates to run for the U.S. Senate to knock a few of those men off the committee. They are doing just as much damage as Trump could ever do—if not more.