The long-awaited report from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz on potential FISA abuse may arrive at just the right time for Republicans fighting impeachment.
The report, which deals with alleged spying on the Trump campaign, will be released on Dec. 9, smack dab in the middle of impeachment proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee, and two days later, Horowitz will testify about his findings. President Trump and his Republican allies could use the report’s findings to attack the impeachment as the latest stage of a political “witch hunt” targeting him, according to an op-ed from Washington Examiner‘s Kaylee McGhee.
Brooke Singman of Fox News reports that Republicans are indeed already planning to do just that.
Timely release
After two months of hype that culminated in two weeks of dramatic public hearings, the impeachment push already seems to have fallen flat. Many have begun to wonder whether Democrats drastically misplayed their hand amid reports that a majority of Americans have not had their views on impeachment changed by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), leaving an electorate bitterly divided on the topic.
Things may get worse for Democrats as the process continues to drag through the holidays — and Republicans won’t have to wait until they take control in the Senate to flip the tables, either. Horowitz’s report is expected on Dec. 9, only days after Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) takes up the gavel in the Judiciary Committee.
Republicans have long hoped and expected that the FISA report would contain damning revelations leading to the imprisonment of top players in the Russia hoax, such as James Comey and John Brennan. But as the past three years have shown, accountability for the “Deep State” is a rare thing indeed, and these projections might be overblown, as McGhee cautions.
Still, Republicans can use the FISA report to argue that the Trump-Russia probe was tainted by pervasive prejudice against Trump within the intelligence community — and that the Ukraine controversy is simply the latest iteration of that. Early leaks of the report indicate that Horowitz made a criminal referral to Attorney General Bill Barr for an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, who allegedly altered documents in the FISA application to spy on Carter Page, an ex-Trump campaign associate.
Republicans have long doubted that the FBI and DOJ’s spying of Page was on the level, saying that their applications relied heavily on the salacious Christopher Steele dossier paid for in part by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. Clinesmith is said to have lied when he said he had “documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis” of the FISA warrants, even though his alterations did not discredit the basis of the warrant application, according to the Washington Post.
Shifting momentum
There are already signs that Republicans plan to bring the FISA report into their offensive strategy. As Fox News notes, Republicans are eager to fold the FISA report, and Horowitz’s testimony, into a counter-narrative attacking the impeachment as a sham.
“It will be damning evidence that government officials really were trying to sabotage Trump, which is what he’s been saying all along, including during the impeachment debate,” a House Republican told Fox News. “It’ll make it easy for Trump to portray impeachment as yet another political hit job by the Resistance meant to undermine him and oust him—which of course it is.”
Having concluded his public hearings, Schiff is preparing a report for Nadler to take up as his committee assumes control of the proceedings. But impeachment is likely to die in the Republican-led Senate anyway, barring some earth-shaking news between now and the trial — and looking beyond FISA abuse, Republicans in the Senate will have an opportunity to refocus the narrative on the Bidens and their alleged corruption in Ukraine.
With Americans already tuning out from impeachment, the last thing Democrats need is fresh ammunition for Republicans to launch a salvo against impeachment during the lull. But that scenario is looking more plausible with every passing day.
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