Like most of us, I depend on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team as the only fair witness to the Russian interference in the 2016 election. He’s a good man doing a difficult job and doing it well. And we don’t have many other groups doing the work. But almost everyone – including the media – are overlooking an essential fact: it is not Mueller’s job to show us the truth. He hasn’t been tasked to uncover wrongdoing, explain what’s happened, or tell us what bad things people did. He won’t tell us the full story. That’s not what we hired him to do.
Crimes. Mueller is investigating crimes. The Special Counsel’s office will indict and prosecute people for specific crimes, if that’s justified. Sometimes, they will refer crimes to other groups for prosecution. That’s all he’s required to do, and it’s all we tasked him to perform. Theoretically, Mueller could stand up tomorrow and say that they’re done, there will be no more indictments, and he’s closing the investigation. He doesn’t have to tell us anything else. The Special Counsel’s mandate starts and ends with criminality.
Most of us want to know much more than that. We want to know what our paid servants are doing with our money and our wealth. We pay for it all, so we deserve to know. And if our public servants lied to us, I think we deserve to see that part, too. Since the press releases and public testimony tell contradictory stories, we know someone here is lying to us. I want to hear the truth even when it doesn’t rise to the level of a crime. That’s not Mueller’s job.
So who is supposed to be looking into broader misconduct? Who is presumed to act in our interests and tell us the full story? Congress. Congress oversees the Executive branch. That’s not a question. And since the GOP holds majorities in both houses of Congress, it’s their duty to set up investigations and provide resources. They’ve acted vigorously and endlessly to investigate misconduct in past Democratic administrations, so they know how the job is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, the Republican majority decided not to do that part of their job. They refuse to investigate any aspect of the new Republican administration. They offer no justification for this change. We’re left to assume that the GOP as a whole is guilty and unwilling to expose their own corruption. Faced with that specific accusation, Republicans deny any dereliction but, again, offer no counterarguments. Instead, most Republican actions seem to affirm some combination of corruption, conspiracy, and intent to obstruct up to full obstruction of justice. Privately, individual Republicans describe their fear about election tactics and the conservative base they’ve spent decades building. Publicly, our Republican representatives deny any responsibility to address oversight outside of a very few, specific partisan issues.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence showed the most promise, especially in the beginning. Their investigation of the 2016 election has been notably bi-partisan, without the public backbiting and parochial nonsense that spun other Congressional committees. I still have hopes that they may decide to investigate the central actions.
Still, after a strong beginning around the edges, the Senate Intelligence Committee stalled. There’s no apparent corruption or malfeasance, but they haven’t taken any actions or held new hearings on the questions in quite a while. I suspect there’s a back-room deal to slow-walk their investigations. Maybe they’re waiting for the midterm elections, or perhaps they’re waiting for the Mueller probe to finish. Honestly, they could be waiting for Godot for all the progress they report.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, by comparison, remains a flaming disaster. Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Mar-A-Lago) did his infamous press conference that demonstrated he was Trump’s willing minion. His hearings were stilted and shallow, avoiding embarrassing facts by not asking people uncomfortable questions. They abruptly issued their GOP-only “report” over strong objections by the FBI, the Justice Department and their Democratic members. The half-report claimed the Committee found no collusion between Trump and Russia. That was both literally true (they never looked, after all) and an odd misreading of their original mandate to investigate Russian interference.
Rep. Nunes transitioned into persecuting the Justice Department for initially examining Russia’s election-tampering campaign. Despite extensive criticism, the Republican leadership seems untroubled by Nunes’ actions and explicitly condoned his mischief. Things only go downhill from there.
Mueller is doing as good a job as I could ask. His indictments have been descriptive and complete, laying out as much detail about the Russian actions as he reasonably could. But the Special Counsel’s office is prosecuting crimes. We cannot depend on his office to answer our questions and concerns about what happened. That’s not what he’s doing. And Mueller and the Special Counsel’s Office cannot protect us from the continuing influence campaigns by Russia, China, UAE, Qatar, and however else is trying to lean our elections their way.
We depend on Congress to represent our interests. Congress is not doing that, deliberately leaving us vulnerable to continuing attacks from foreign nations. It’s hard to see this as a nuanced issue.
I hate absolute positions. Politics should be a realm of gray choices that balance the subtleties of this addition against that reduction. There should be room for different opinions, and vigorous debate about the goals and strategies of government, and the best methods and tactics we should use. I prefer a stronger social safety net; other people are happier to see poor people ruined by bad luck. I think capitalism is a great system so long as we have adult supervision; many others are more comfortable with oligarchs and robber barons. (No bias for me!) If we had that system, I would still complain, but less violently. I want to see that system running again. But it isn’t what we have now.
Vote against every Republican candidate. Every. Single. One. The Republican party has become a criminal enterprise that can’t correct itself from any misstep, no matter how horrific. It’s not a question of whether they’re acting against American interests. The only issue is how badly they’re breaking our society, our government, our wealth, and our international standing, and whether we can recover ourselves once they’re out of power. I hate having to say that, but I can’t find a less extreme compromise that I expect would survive the ensuing Republican bad faith.
