Pretend one of the targets in the ongoing corruption investigation into our state Legislature had the power to release selected portions of investigators' records.
Any records showing how one FBI agent in the case wiped a laptop used to gather evidence, for instance, would probably make the cut. Yet I doubt the release would include much of what the judge in one of these cases called a mountain of evidence, microscopic in its detail, of the suspect's crimes.
People do not drill peepholes in places they do not want anyone to look.
Monday night, the president ordered the release of selected portions of the record of the federal investigation into Russian influence upon the 2016 campaign.
By Thursday night, the president was crawfishing. He said allies who still trust us had provided some of the information he wants to release. Those allies are worried about their sources. That make sense. Burned sources in investigations of Russian influence, after all, do tend to get poisoned by radioactive isotopes.
The drama got murkier Friday afternoon when the New York Times reported the deputy attorney general overseeing the Russia investigation, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump and discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president. Rosenstein quickly denied the claims, made by anonymous sources to the newspaper. We'll have to wait to see what shakes out from those revelations.
The president's defenders say the investigation has wandered far from looking at Russian interference. Well, ethically and legally the investigation cannot ignore other crimes it finds. This is very similar to, for instance, feds investigating misuse of state General Improvement Fund grants in Arkansas but not ignoring massive Medicaid fraud and bribery when that turns up.
To recap, the investigation of the president has caught and convicted the president's former campaign chairman; his former deputy campaign chairman; his former personal lawyer and fixer; his former National Security Advisor; and some dude who was in the campaign who has been described as either a foreign policy adviser or a coffee boy. Oh, and a Dutch banker who lied and concealed evidence. Meanwhile, the chief financial officer of the president's private businesses obtained immunity, along with a newspaper publisher who has a safe where he keeps dirt on the president.
Somehow, I do not think the documents in the publisher's safe were to be among the records released.
In all seriousness, the president's backtracking will spare him from serious embarrassment. The president's friends wanted to find choice bits and nasty quotes in the records to spoon-feed to people who can be relied upon to go "Aha!" The president's enemies would then have point out that the president did in fact spoon-feed selected bits to people who can be relied on to go "Aha!" Everybody else would then have to admit, however reluctantly, that the president's enemies have a point.
This would have repeated on a grander scale the "Release the memo!" debacle of February. There was a very similar but less extensive release of records then. By any objective measure -- polls, effect on the investigation, getting the heat put on the FBI instead of the White House -- "Release the memo!" was a fiasco. This was largely because the people doing the selecting and releasing were clearly, flagrantly and shamelessly more biased than the FBI on its worst day.
The "memo's" chief cheerleader was Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. He heads the House Select Committee on Intelligence. He now pushed "Release the Memo: the Sequel." His efforts to defend the president are tireless, ceaseless and unfailingly boneheaded. He has thereby achieved something remarkable. He is the worst possible choice for that chairmanship either for or against the president. I do not know if there is a "blue wave" coming in November or not, but anything that would wash Nunes out of that chairmanship would have advantages for everyone concerned -- even Nunes. He would have fewer chances to trip over his own feet.
So why did the president even consider "Memo II?" Because it has been a really, really bad spell when your lawyer-fixer gets charged, your former campaign chairman gets convicted, your former National Security Advisor is about to get sentenced and two people who between them know your finances and your dirt get immunity deals.
The records release would have happened just before the mid-term elections. The release would have shown bias. Bias is bad -- but taking people into your campaign who launder money, sell out to the corrupt in other countries, evade taxes and lie to investigators is worse. The records release would not have changed any of that. Instead, it would have dragged the whole matter all in front of the voters again -- not that it ever leaves any more. This is not something GOP congressmen running for re-election need.
Commentary on 09/22/2018