Rep. Lesko phonies up Mueller’s statement

I’d love to see the Republican members of the Arizona congressional delegation challenge Republican Rep. Justin Amash to a debate on whether President Donald Trump should be impeached.

Amash has laid out his case against Trump, and continues to lay out his case. Not only against Trump but against Attorney General William Barr, for serving more as the president’s personal attorney than the nation’s highest ranking law enforcement officer.

Republicans have trashed him. They’ve held press conferences to condemn him. But I’ve seen no one take him on, face to face, over the facts.

Our delegation is no better. The Republicans are simply shills for Trump.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone when Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko issued a tweet Wednesday, after the public statement by special counsel Robert Mueller saying:

“Special Counsel Mueller reaffirmed today what we knew from his report: No collusion and no obstruction charges. This case is closed. It is time for Democrats to move on and finally focus on the real issues facing the American people.”

That isn’t exactly what he said. Or even close.

I’m guessing that Lesko didn’t actually read the 400-plus page report by Mueller and his team.

Rep. Amash, who is from Michigan, doesn’t believe that many of his colleagues have done so and I’d guess he’s correct. Particularly those like Lesko and Arizona’s other Republican members of Congress, who don’t WANT to know what Mueller found.

Sadly, I don’t believe Lesko actually listened to what Mueller said Wednesday. His complete statement is available. Perhaps her staff can read it for her. But Mueller did not exonerate the president. He said very directly that he couldn’t indict Trump owing to Department of Justice policy. And he clearly condemned Russian interference.

Here are a few of the things he said: “Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system. The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities, and through the organization WikiLeaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.” And:

“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so.

“We did not, however, make a deter

mination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the Volume II of our report explains that decision. It explains that under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited.

“The Special Counsel’s Office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider.”

In other words, prosecution of a president is up to Congress, which is exactly what Rep. Amash is arguing.

I doubt that Lesko bothered to read Mueller’s letter to Barr a while back, taking the attorney general to task for misrepresenting Mueller’s report. That letter read in part, “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.”

At a town hall (where he received a standing ovation) Rep. Amash said of his belief that Trump is guilty of impeachable offenses, “I’m confident that if you read volume two (of the Mueller report), you will be appalled at much of the conduct. And I was appalled by it. And that’s why I stated what I stated. That’s why I came to that conclusion. We can’t let conduct like that go unchecked.”

What also shouldn’t go unchecked — by voters, anyway — are politicians who are unwilling or unable to perform their due diligence and who consistently put party over country.