May 07, 2019 09:37 AM UTC

McConnell Declares "Case Closed" on Trump Investigations

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• by: Colorado Pols

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”50%”]“It’s sort of like Richard Nixon saying, ‘Let’s move on,’ at the height of the investigation of his wrongdoing. Of course he wants to move on. He wants to cover up. He wants to silence.”

— Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, responding to McConnell’s speech on Tuesday[/mantra-pullquote]

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor today to declare that there is nothing to see regarding investigations into President Trump and that we should all just move along thank you very much. As the Washington Post reports:

McConnell on Tuesday laid out his case to move on from investigations into President Trump and his 2016 campaign, calling the matter “case closed” even as Democrats intensify their probes into Trump’s conduct.

McConnell (R-Ky.), who faces reelection next year, argued that Democrats are continuing to re-litigate an election result that is now more than two years old — deriding it as a “Groundhog Day spectacle” — and insisted in a floor speech Tuesday morning that the matter was finished and that lawmakers should now focus on legislation.

“Remember, Russia set out to sow discord, to create chaos in American politics, and undermine confidence in our democracy,” McConnell said. “But on that front, given the left’s total fixation on delegitimizing the president — the president Americans chose and shooting any messenger who tells them inconvenient truths, I’m afraid the Russians hardly needed to lift a finger.”

Declaring “case closed,” McConnell added: “This ought to be good news for everyone but my Democratic colleagues seem to be publicly working through the five stages of grief.”

It is more than a little ridiculous for McConnell to be pretending to be worried now about Russian interference in American politics:

Mitch McConnell, who told the Obama administration it should not go more public with warnings that Russia was trying to tilt the 2016 election, is now saying that focus on Mueller is distracting from where the real focus should be: Russia’s interference in elections.

— Sam Stein (@samstein) May 7, 2019

So…yeah. McConnell’s speech signals a new attempt by Republicans to pretend that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump just doesn’t matter, even as Congressional Democrats seek out more information about the redacted Mueller report and related whitewashing from Attorney General William Barr.

Last weekend, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) even suggested that Trump’s refusal to comply with Congressional subpoenas and other information requests is really just a “negotiating position,” as though it is totally normal for the White House to stonewall Congress at every turn. This is, of course, not at all acceptable, and past comments from Gardner show his shift on the issue as he continues his full-throated defense of President Trump. Gardner was all about subpoenas for solar company Solyndra in 2011, and here he is during a tele-town hall event in March 2017:

I think that we have to have testimony from anybody who is engaged proper. The committee has, I believe, subpoena power if that needs to be used. They ought to use it if somebody’s refusing testimony. [Pols emphasis] I would hope that people would come in of their own volition and free will to testify and provide a comment during the investigation.

Despite this blustering from Republicans, Democrats are still moving ahead with what is very much an ongoing investigation. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee — which includes Colorado Reps. Joe Neguse (D-Lafayette) and Ken Buck (R-Greeley) —  will vote to hold Barr in contempt for ignoring a House subpoena to turn over the unredacted Mueller report (Barr also refused to testify in front of a House committee last week).

Separately, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnunchin is defying requests from House Democrats to turn over copies of President Trump’s long-hidden tax returns. And in its latest public display of total innocence, the White House today invoked executive privilege in resisting a House subpoena requesting written records from former White House counsel Donald McGahn related to the Mueller investigation.

But there’s nothing to see here. Nothing at all.