During a CNN interview Wednesday morning, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) issued a threat — if Democrats don’t move on from the enlarging scandal surrounding the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia, Republicans will have no choice but to further investigate the Clintons.
“If this continues — this immobilization of the presidency over these kind of things — it’s gonna force Congress to do an investigation, a complete and thorough investigation, and that means go back all the way to the 650,000 emails of Anthony Weiner and look at [former FBI Director James] Comey and his activities,” the House Judiciary Committee members said.
Pushed on the point by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota, King said that Comey and the special counsel investigating Trump are the real colluders.
“What I’m saying is this, that the Comey investigation — now him picking the special counsel on top of it — on its face, appears to be collusion.”
King has his facts wrong. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was actually appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Republican members of Congress have repeatedly tried to distract from Trump’s scandals by trying to gin up new ones surrounding Hillary Clinton. During a bombshell Senate hearing in May featuring testimony from former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) killed time by asking Clapper about Clinton’s emails. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) did the same thing in June during Comey’s testimony before the Senate. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently told Fox News that now that Mueller’s on the case, Congress should abandon its own investigations and go back to investigating Clinton’s emails.
Republicans have gone to extreme lengths to help Trump. Acting on a request from the White House in February, the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees — Devin Nunes (CA) and Richard Burr (NC) — “made calls to news organizations… in attempts to challenge stories about alleged contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives,” the Washington Post reported.
Nunes and Burr’s actions look worse in light of Donald Trump Jr. release of incriminating campaign emails on Tuesday. The emails indicate the Trump campaign was at the very least willing to collude with Russian officials and aware of the Putin regime’s interest in meddling in the election on behalf of Trump.
During an interview with Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday morning, Trump Jr. confirmed he “probably met with other people from Russia” during the campaign. He didn’t delve into details.