With scant weeks remaining before the midterm elections, Devin Nunes has a gift for America. On Friday, he’ll lead the House Intelligence Committee in a vote to release transcripts related to the aborted House investigation into Russian interference. All of them. Between now and the elections.
The release is intended to fuel the parallel tracks Republicans are counting on not to produce a traditional “October surprise,” but to feed the “deep state” mythology and provide material for a fresh round of conspiracy theories. Not only are they hoping that the materials released help raise doubts about the FBI and DOJ, they’re also intending to … throw out more testimony from members of the Obama administration at the same time that the House is bringing many of these same past officials in for a fresh grilling. As Politico reports, that means testimony of Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, and James Clapper will be dumped into public view—making them handy for Republicans who want to take selected snippets, present them as if they’re part of some grand conspiracy, and hound the former staffers when they come to the Hill.
Even before House Republicans abruptly shut down the sporadic investigation last March, Democrats had called on Republicans to release many of the transcripts made at closed-door sessions. So at first glance, the vote to dump the lot into public space in October may seem like Republicans are acquiescing to those demands. But the reason that Democrats were anxious for some transcripts to be released was because Republicans were selectively leaking or quoting from them, including in the all-Republican “final report” from the committee which released to provide Trump with a stack of “no collusion” paper to wave around in all circumstances.
Instead of releasing the transcripts from which those soundbites had been extracted, Republicans intend to dump a big selection—including transcripts that set up the grilling of former Obama officials and those that contain information that could be damaging to the ongoing operation.
The “dump ‘em all” plan that Nunes is bringing up for a vote on Friday is an extension of the scheme between Trump and House Republicans to dump a stack of documents into the final days before the election—including texts from James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, along with select segments of the Carter Page FISA warrant. All of this is being done in hopes of generating further confusion, conspiracy theories, and material that can be used to attack the DOJ and FBI.
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