“Useful Idiots” or Willing Co-Conspirators in Russian Disinformation?
Donald Trump was impeached (the first time) for attempting to bribe Ukrainian President Zelensky. His pitch was “start an investigation into my likely opponent’s non-existent corruption in Ukraine if you want weapons to defend against Russia.”
Zelensky wouldn’t do it, thus earning Trump’s –- and perhaps the GOP’s (?) — everlasting enmity.
Years later the GOP is again running a totally unsubstantiated investigation of the same Trump opponent, who is now the President of the US, by way of committees headed by useful idiots1 Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY).
Just how corrupt that “investigation” is was revealed last week: the star witness, Alexander Smirnov, has been indicted – and jailed as a flight risk – for lying in an attempt to affect the 2024 election. According to Fox “News”:
“In court filings, prosecutors said Alexander Smirnov admitted during an interview before his arrest last week that ‘officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story’ about the president’s son…[that] Smirnov's contacts with Russian officials were recent and extensive, and said Smirnov had planned to meet with one official during an upcoming overseas trip.
[Prosecutors] said Smirnov has had numerous contacts with a person he described as the ‘son of a former high-ranking government official’ and ‘someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service’ [and that] there is a serious risk that Smirnov could flee overseas to avoid facing trial…Smirnov…is charged with falsely reporting to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016….Special Counsel David Weiss [a Trump appointee to the DOJ] said Smirnov’s lies were aimed at affecting the 2024 presidential election.” - FOX News
Were Jordan and Comer duped, or willing participants in this disinformation campaign? One of their Republican colleagues, Ken Buck (R-CO) seems to think they were willing protagonists.
Writing in the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin quotes Buck:
“We were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness’s testimony. We were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known.”
Asked if Comer and Jordan knowingly proceeded allegations that were shaky at best, Buck replied,
“That’s what it appears. I certainly didn’t have any evidence outside the statement itself that it was credible…“ [as] a prosecutor for 25 years ... I never went to the public until I could prove the reliability of a statement.”
BUT OF COURSE THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING!
Using Congressional committees to smear their opposition when they control the chair is a time-tested tactic the GOP has used with great success at least as far back as Newt Gingrich’s turn as Speaker.
More recently, in 2015, while John Boehner was Speaker and Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, no fewer than SIX different committees investigated the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, seeking to find a cover-up (or…something?)…in addition to an FBI probe. In the end, the Associated Press summarized their findings:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.
Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria…
However, Kevin McCarthy, widely expected at the time to succeed Boehner as Speaker, let the cat out of the bag in an interview with Sean Hannity:2
McCarthy: “What you’re going to see is a conservative speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”
Hannity: "I give you credit for that, I'll give you credit where credit is due." https://www.vox.com/2015/9/30/9423339/kevin-mccarthy-benghazi
Think about that whenever this generation of Republicans holds “investigations.”
(Useful Idiot: a person who is easy to persuade to do, say, or believe things that help a particular group or another person politically https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/useful-idiot)
This gaffe cost him the Speakership then, and Boehner was succeeded by Paul Ryan, who didn’t want the job of trying to herd a GOP pack that was almost as dysfunctional then as it is now.