Mr. "Benghazi probe" himself sounds like the voice of reason in the Republican Party these days.
This is no new thing. U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., started his steady undercurrent of caution in early February. Gowdy announced he would not run again, citing partisanship gone amok. He did this while his own party was back in power and on the very day fellow Republicans released some flattering piece of fantasy about the president and called it a report.
When the chief tracker in the hunt of Hillary Clinton says partisanship has gone too far, one should pay attention.
All that was subtle compared to Sunday: "If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it," Gowdy famously said. He referred to the president's lawyer, John Dowd, who later resigned. Dowd had called for pulling the plug on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Then the president tweeted there never was cause for Mueller's look into Russian interference into the election. There was "NO COLLUSION," the president typed. All caps are in the original.
Gowdy told Chris Wallace of Fox News: "Chris, if you look at the jurisdiction for Robert Mueller, first and foremost, what did Russia do to this country in 2016? That is supremely important and it has nothing to do with collusion.
"So to suggest that Mueller should shut down and all he is looking at is collusion -- if you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it. Russia attacked our country. Let special counsel Mueller figure that out and if you believe, like we found, that there is no evidence of collusion you should want special counsel Mueller to take all the time and have all the independence he needs to do his job." The "we" he refers to is the Republican majority on the House Intelligence Committee.
Note that Gowdy is one of the very few people in either party who has read most of the available evidence. He has the clearance allowing that.
Many defenders of the president argue the investigation is biased. How ironic. No one got called biased more often in this decade than Gowdy. I do not recall any Republicans complaining then. Childhood taunts about dishing it out but not being able to take it come to mind. So do ones about taking your own medicine.
Gowdy, of course, led the investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya. No one can credibly accuse him of being part of some vast, deep-state, pro-Clinton conspiracy. Yet he bluntly says the Mueller investigation should not only continue, but that it should have all the time and resources it needs.
The clear warnings Gowdy has given for eight weeks running should get more attention than they do. Republican loyalists often disregard the press -- to their peril, it often turns out. They cannot rationally be as dismissive of Gowdy. His warnings against pretending everything is all right should be heeded. Poachers make the best gamekeepers, as the saying goes.
Gowdy makes a good rebuttal to Mueller critics in another, less intentional way. He led the Benghazi probe for two years and seven months. Mueller's investigation, by comparison, is just getting started at 10 months. Yet critics complain that it drags on with nothing to show -- which is self-evident nonsense.
The investigation has indicted the president's former campaign manager. It got a guilty plea from the president's former National Security Advisor. It got another guilty plea from the deputy campaign manager. It got another from another member of the campaign staff. In all, the Mueller probe has charged 19 people, including 13 Russians. Five of the six non-Russians have pleaded guilty.
The only way to rationalize the clearly false claim that this investigation has accomplished nothing is to believe that collusion is the only crime that counts, or the only thing Mueller was appointed to investigate. This is absurd. As Gowdy states, Mueller was appointed to look into interference. Mueller is also authorized -- and ethically bound -- to not ignore other illegal acts the investigation uncovers.
Mueller's investigation has not gone "off the reservation," so to speak. Gowdy says so.
Laundering money stolen from the Ukraine is not "nothing." Lying to the FBI is not "nothing." Violating election law in a shadow campaign costing millions that was never reported it to the Federal Election Commission is not "nothing."
This investigation is probably going to take years -- and should.
Commentary on 03/24/2018