History Will Judge The GOP Harshly

Rex Tillerson is probably one of the worst Secretaries of State this country has ever had so it shows just how bad a place we are in that many are actually sorry and concerned about his firing. It also defies credulity that, despite his strained relationship with Trump and a Friday warning from the White House, Tillerson's firing was not related to his full-throated condemnation of Russia's assassination of a spy on UK soil as well as his openness to actually deploying Article V of the NATO charter in response. As has been reported, Tillerson was Putin's preferred candidate for Secretary of State, so his going off the reservation on Russia was a fireable offense.

As we saw from Sarah Sanders yesterday and Trump himself today, the White House is simply incapable of blaming Russia and Putin. Just now we learned that another Russian, an ally of Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky, has also been found dead in Britain. Berezovsky himself was found hanged at his UK home in 2013. These last two deaths add to over a dozen of other Putin opponents who have been murdered or died under mysterious circumstances over the last few years in Britain.

Today's news overshadows last night's news that Paul Ryan has allowed the House Intelligence Committee to shut down its investigation of Russian collusion and interference in our election. The Republican majority issued a statement not only clearing the President of any collusion but actually disagreeing with the intelligence community's assessment that Russian intervened in the election on behalf of Donald Trump. As Adam Schiff wrote last night, "By ending its oversight role in the only authorized investigation in the House, the Majority ahs place the interests of protecting the President over protecting the country, and history will judge its actions harshly".

Remarkably, within hours of the Republicans unilateral announcement that the committee was shutting down, reports emerged that at least two sources have confirmed what has long been supposed, that Trump confidant Roger Stone was aware that WikiLeaks had obtained hacked emails from the Clinton campaign well before that information became public. It again defies credulity that Stone did not share this information with Trump directly.

The evidence that the Trump campaign and the Republican party leadership, specifically McConnell and Ryan, were complicit in promoting what was known to be material stolen for political purposes is overwhelming and undeniable. That Republican leadership refused and continues to refuse to defend this country from attacks on our electoral system and is actively sabotaging any investigation about those attacks. In addition, the Trump administration refuses to come to the defense of our staunchest ally when Russia assassinates opponents and poisons innocent British citizens in a brazen attack on the UK's sovereignty. The Republican leadership, too, remains remarkably silent on the issue. The idea that the Republican party is the party of a strong defense has been made laughable over the last two years. As Schiff says, history will judge them harshly. And history can't come soon enough for this crew.