GOP is still using 'shoddy' lies about Russia probe to justify Trump’s coup attempts: columnist
The Senate Judiciary Committee released its over 300-page report Thursday that sheds light on efforts between President Donald Trump's administration and Justice Department staffers to overturn the 2020 election. In response to the report, Republicans have published their own statement, attempting to justify Trump's subterfuge by saying that he didn't trust the DOJ and that's why he tried to intervene.
Columnist Philip Bump in the Washington Post claimed that the excerpt, buried in the GOP's assessment, is absurdly false and mischaracterizes poor decisions to justify more poor decisions.
"Based on past experiences, President Trump's skepticism of the DOJ's and FBI's handling of election fraud allegations does not appear unreasonable. During the 2016 election, the FBI used an unsubstantiated research dossier, funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and which was known by the FBI to be filled with Russian disinformation, to file a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application and to obtain FISA warrants against a Trump campaign volunteer," the GOP claimed.
He explained that even if someone didn't know anything about the Russia findings, anyone reading that is supposed to believe that Trump was concerned about the election because he didn't think he could trust the FBI, not because he wanted to win the 2020 election.
"There are a few factually incorrect or misleading aspects of the paragraph as written. The target of the FISA warrants, Carter Page, was not simply a "volunteer"; he was a foreign policy adviser announced as part of Trump's team in March 2016 as the then-candidate sought to bolster his credibility on the subject," Bump explained. "The target was also someone who had already been on the radar of law enforcement after a suspected Russian spy was recorded speaking about potentially recruiting Page as an agent. He also traveled to Moscow in July 2016, in the middle of the campaign, where he spoke briefly with a Russian official."
Basically, the idea that Carter Page was some kind of target for no reason is flawed. He also had resigned once the time warrants were issued. Also, the Steele dossier wasn't used to get the warrant targeting Page.
Finally, Bump explained that the FBI was actually looking into the claims about the 2020 election and there is evidence to prove it.
Somehow, however, the conspiracy theory made its way into the official GOP statement that had nothing to do with that conspiracy. Then-acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue explained it in an email that was turned over. Former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen also told Republicans he'd be "amenable" to considering the questions Trump had when testifying before the committee in August. Then there's the matter for former Attorney General Bill Barr, one of Trump's most dedicated loyalists, who made it clear before he left in December that there was no fraud, indicating that they'd looked.
Bump explained that it's only in the minority "report's" fine print because it's the GOP's nod to conservative media that the Russia probe was a scam all along. Claiming that he was paranoid about the Justice Department after four years of appointing and staffing it is correct to draw skepticism, he explained.
"The pattern is the same, over and over," he concluded. "Trump says something without any evidence. His allies scramble to create something with the outward appearance of evidence for his claim and then amplify one another's creations. Trump and the rest of them then declare that the evidence exists and Trump was right all along. And now, in this example, we see an effort to rationalize Trump's behavior on Jan. 3 using as evidence cobbled-together claims from a prior rationalization effort."
Read the full column at the Washington Post.
In other news, a bombshell Senate report released today identified the pro-Trump lawmaker who help install "coup" advocates at the Justice Department. WATCH:
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