Republican complicity

Aforeign power interfered in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. law enforcement is trying to get to the bottom of that story. Congress should be doing everything possible to make sure the investigation can take place. Instead, to protect the president of their party, who may or may not be complicit, Republican leaders in Congress are allowing and encouraging the baseless slander of the investigators.

It is a new low for the leadership, and one that could do lasting harm to the nation.

These men could, tomorrow, end this nonsense of secret societies, phony memos and missing text messages and let professionals such as special counsel Robert Mueller III do their jobs. Instead they are allowing Fox News personalities, the president and loose cannons such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of California and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to turn the United States into a country where law enforcement becomes another pawn in the partisan war.

Johnson irresponsibly recycles nonsense about corruption “at the highest levels of the FBI,” offering no evidence because of course there is none. Nunes abuses his access to classified information as Intelligence Committee chairman, a title Paul Ryan long ago should have revoked, to manufacture dark conspiracies.

“We learned today about information that in the immediate aftermath of his election, there may have been a ‘secret society’ of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI . . . working against [Trump],” Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) says.

Then he adds: “I’m not saying that actually happened.”

No matter; the purpose is achieved. Doubts are planted, and a share of the country will discount anything federal law enforcement says about Trump.