A Quick Morning After Wrap-Up

To all those dancing little jigs (like "Fox News") that yesterday's House hearing revealed nothing at all about "Russian collusion," there are two very important things to keep in mind --

1) The hearing wasn't actually about Russia. In fact, even more to the point, it specifically and very publicly made clear they were avoiding it, at the request of Robert Mueller so that there wouldn't be a conflict.  Indeed, if  you were paying even semi-attention, the Republicans on the committee spent much of the opening complaining that there wasn't enough "transparency" because there were areas (like Russia) that were off-topic.  (As if any Republican on the committee would have wanted to spend much time talking at length about Russia...)

2) Even in some imaginary fantasy world where there is no "Russian collusion" -- where Russia didn't even exist as a subject of investigation or even as a country -- fraud, obstruction of justice, felonies, and other crimes are still actually crimes. Indeed, they are significant crimes that would set most people's hair on fire were it any other normal president in the history of the U.S. And they are all likely highly impeachable.

"Okay, sure, you convicted me on embezzlement, blackmail and witness tampering, but you didn't get me on bank fraud!!  Ha, ha, ha!!!" is small comfort on those long, cold, empty nights in prison.

And while I'm sure that Al Capone is thrilled that the feds never were able to touch him on murder, but just the paltry crime of tax evasion, he did end up spending the rest of his life in jail for it.

And again, this is the imaginary fantasy world where there is no "Russian collusion."  And the very real world were there are already six guilty pleas and convictions and 36 indictments -- and we haven't even seen the Special Counsel's report yet.  Or the results of the even more wide-open investigation by the Justice Department's Southern District of New York.  Or all the individual lawsuits against Trump and the Trump Organization. 

But sure, dance.  Dance away.  Because a hearing that intentionally avoided the subject of Russia didn't come up with anything about Russia.

​Dance...

Which leads to one summary observation:

What leaped out most to me from yesterday's hearing is that Republicans members of the House Oversight Committee spent their time almost-exclusively trying to discredit a witness about one aspect of his past and movie deals, rather than try to find out if in fact he had any viable information about whether the U.S. president committed crimes.

This is no longer about Trump.  It is about the elected officials of the Republican Party who enable him.