{"id":33087,"date":"2018-07-13T13:06:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T20:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=33087"},"modified":"2018-07-13T13:06:57","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T20:06:57","slug":"the-piata-hit-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/13\/the-piata-hit-back\/","title":{"rendered":"The Piñata Hit Back!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Conspiracy Theorist Trey Gowdy [R-SC] and his Republican mob of Benghazi bullshitters in the House of planned a massacre of Peter Strzok, former Chief of Counterespionage at the FBI.  They expected an easy time.  They would bust him up like a pi\u00f1ata to discredit the Mueller investigation and protect their Fuhrer, Putin’s Pervert, from his criminal conspiracy to steal the 2016 Presidential election with Russian help.  The pi\u00f1ata hit back.  Not only did Peter Strzok hold his own, he also left Gowdy and his lackeys looking like the fools they are.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0713PeterStrzok\"<\/p>\n

TEMPERS BOILED over on Capitol Hill Thursday as Peter Strzok, the FBI official at the center of President Trump\u2019s attempts to discredit special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, testified<\/a> before a joint meeting of two House oversight committees. With all its yelling and interruptions, the hearing was a fitting coda to the hyperpartisan farce of an investigation that House Republicans have conducted into the FBI and Mr. Mueller\u2019s Russia probe<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Republicans spent hours parsing text messages and waving documents in the air. But all of it, just like most of the broader House investigation, was a distraction from this central point about the conspiracy narratives the president and his defenders have been cooking up about the FBI: If the agency had been trying to harm Mr. Trump\u2019s campaign, agents could have released damaging information on pro-Trump Russian interference before Election Day \u2014 and they did not<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The investigators certainly had a lot they could have spilled. \u201cIn the summer of 2016, I was one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the Trump campaign,\u201d Mr. Strzok said<\/a>. \u201cThis information had the potential to derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether you believe Mr. Strzok\u2019s account of what he was thinking, the fact is that the FBI said little about Russian meddling before Election Day 2016. There simply was no effectuated plot to harm Mr. Trump\u2019s electoral chances.<\/p>\n

For his part, Mr. Strzok could not argue his way out of responsibility for his now-famous 2015 and 2016 text messages<\/a> expressing strong anti-Trump views, as well as criticisms of other 2016 presidential candidates. Yet the messages are not proof of anything other than Mr. Strzok\u2019s personal feelings \u2014 and, in committing them to writing on company equipment, his poor judgment. Republican arguments presumed that Mr. Strzok\u2019s opinions were tantamount to corrupt behavior<\/strong>. As Lawfare\u2019s Susan Hennessey<\/a>, a former National Security Agency lawyer, put it, \u201cWhat is actually on display here is House GOP members demonstrating that they cannot even conceive of the possibility someone could place duty and institutional integrity over base political and personal interests<\/strong>.\u201d… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

The story would not be complete without the extremely thorough coverage Rachel Maddow<\/a> provided.  It’s almost 19 minutes long and worth every second.<\/font><\/p>\n