The whole thing sort of had the feel of a stunt from the beginning.
Not that you couldn’t make the case Rod Rosenstein deserved to be impeached after his repeated flouting of legal congressional subpoenas to produce documents concerning the Russia investigation – particularly the FISA application targeting Carter Page and the texts of Peter Strzok – but when a handful of congressman announce they’ve drafted a resolution without determining if they have widespread support, it sounds more like grandstanding than a serious effort to make something happen.
And apparently they hadn’t checked with the Speaker of the House to see if he was on board, which seems like kind of an important detail if you want the resolution to go anywhere.
He’s not, and it’s not:
House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he doesn’t support an effort by a small group of conservatives to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, likely dooming the endeavor and easing a months-long standoff between House Republicans and the Justice Department.
Ryan said the tussle over document requests between congressional Republicans and Rosenstein, who oversees the federal Trump-Russia investigation, doesn’t rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that could warrant impeachment under the Constitution.
“I don’t think we should be cavalier with this process or with this term,” Ryan said. He also said he is encouraged by progress on the document production.
Ryan made the comments a day after the group of 11 House Republicans sharply escalated the extended clash with the Justice Department by filing articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
What might happen instead is a contempt of Congress resolution if Rosenstein doesn’t stop stonewalling. Rep. Mark Meadows, who led the effort to bring forth the impeachment resolution, is talking with committee leaders about such a move. But even that seems like kind of an empty threat after all this time. It’s clear that both Ryan and the relevant committee chairs think it’s better to work with Rosenstein to get to compliance – however maddeningly slow the process is – rather than bring down a hammer like impeachment.
The media have painted Rosenstein as the protector of Robert Mueller, who is portrayed as sacrosanct. Rosenstein is the one who appointed Mueller, and could fire him, either on orders from President Trump or on his own. But everything Rosenstein is being asked to produce is not necessarily a threat to Mueller. There’s no reason Congress shouldn’t be able to see how the FBI conducted itself in kicking off the Russia investigation, and whether its actions were driven by a) bias; b) flimsy information; or c) both. Making any of this known wouldn’t impede Mueller in any way from completing his investigation, yet Rosenstein fights every attempt by Congress to get this information.
Ryan and Trey Gowdy both oppose the impeachment move, which basically renders it dead.
There’s also this: We finally got to see the full Carter Page FISA application over the weekend, and it proved everything we thought it would prove. Yet the media spin is still that the FBI did nothing wrong, because the media are invested in that narrative and they’re going to stick to it no matter what. If that’s what’s always going to happen, what will be the value of finally bringing these documents to light? No matter what they show, they’ll be portrayed as nothingburgers, and the public won’t really gain an understanding of what went wrong here and why.
You can chase all the information you want, and you can try to put it out there. I think you should. But I don’t know what you do about it when the truth is right there, plain as day, and the public is still convinced it doesn’t matter.
