Despite criticism from leading Republicans over their attacks on a notable senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a group of House Republicans conducting a witch hunt on government officials supposedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood are doubling down on their accusations.

The group, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), has yet to provide actual evidence of the “infiltration” they say is occurring, and the attacks on Huma Abedin, a long-time and well-known Clinton aide, drew ridicule from across Washington and highlighted the shoddiness of the entire report. But the lawmakers aren’t giving up, The Hill reports:

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) told The Hill that the media’s focus on Abedin was a “deliberate effort to change the subject.”

“The focus in the media has been on one sentence in one of those letters, and … they have the right to do that,” Franks said. “But it certainly doesn’t serve the American people when they overlook the central focus of the letters to try to take out of context one element of it that seems to be the only thing the left can aim at.”

Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) all made similar points in refusing to apologize for their comments, and Bachmann went a step farther Thursday, launching a new attack on Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has led the fight against the group of lawmakers’ ridiculous report.

While Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have dismissed Bachmann’s absurd attacks on Abedin and others as the witchhunt it is, others, like Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) have backed the group as being “concern[ed] about the security of the country.”

Tell Speaker Boehner to remove Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee before her reckless politics damage our national security.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, a top foreign policy advier to Mitt Romney said the GOP presidential nominee would support an Israeli decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program. The right-wing adviser Dan Senor said Iran should not be able to attain a nuclear “capability” — a significant break in language from state U.S. policy.

Senor told reporters:

If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing the capability, the governor would respect that decision.

In a follow-up statement, Senor said, “We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is his fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so,” but that an American attack should remain an option.

While Obama has said an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable,” declaring a nuclear “capability” an American “red line” that would trigger war sets a lower threshold for U.S. military involvement. The CIA has laid out a specific definition, but the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Senate’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.” Hawks in Congress pushed a bill this year to shift the official U.S. “red line” to a nuclear “capability.”

During an appearance with Romney in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu said he agreed with Romney’s approach, falsely claiming that “all the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota.” U.N. sanctions have delayed Iran’s nuclear progress. A U.N. ban on selling Iran weapons technologies appears to have set back their ballistic missile programs as well.

President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis. Obama has also reaffirmed Israel’s “sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”

Romney has long supported military involvement in the Middle East and still defends President Bush’s preventative invasion in Iraq. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Romney said, “President Bush took action which he believed, based upon the information that was available to him, both from British intelligence and intelligence in our country and around the world, that Saddam Hussein presented a very serious threat to the world, including the potential of weapons of mass destruction.”