Follow-Up on the Republican-led U.S. House Censure of a Member for Telling the Truth about Trump-Russia Cooperation

A plurality of the Republican-led United States House of Representatives this evening shamefully censured a Democratic colleague for leading the House investigation into the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign’s cooperation with Russian interference and correctly characterizing their “collusion,” in the common parlance sense of the word. I had posted about a failed effort to censure him in my last post, in which 20 Republicans joined all Democrats opposing the measure, which would have included a $16 million fine. This time, only 6 GOP Representatives had the integrity to maintain their party’s tradition of standing for American security, instead of minimizing the interference in American politics by a hostile foreign tyrant who is an ex-Soviet intelligence officer trying to restore the Soviet Union. The Republican effort was based on Trump supporters’ misleading claim that the Trump campaign did not “collude” with Russia. The Republican special prosecutor tasked with prosecuting crimes explained that the word is not a criminal term, but as I have noted, he certainly found cooperation between Russia and the Trump campaign. He noted that Russia began to hack his opponents’ e-mails moments after Trump called for Russia to do so, after they had already hacked the Democratic National Committee and stole information, which they published through Wikileaks, a Russian cut-out. The special prosecutor’s report noted the Trump campaign coordinated its messaging with advanced knowledge of Wikileaks’ publication of the stolen information and there were over a hundred unreported contacts between Russians and the Trump campaign. The campaign manager even gave internal poling data to a Russian intelligence officer. The special prosecutor charged numerous Russians with interference on behalf of Trump’s candidacy, as all U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded Russia was doing in what he described as a “sweeping and systematic” interference operation, and also charged Trump campaign officials with various other crimes. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation validated his findings and found even more evidence. A review by the Inspector General also validated these findings. A Trump-appointed special prosecutor who was supposed to discredit the investigation of the Trump campaign, despite some minor criticisms, recently validated its premise. Trump-supporting “conservatives” and Republicans have focused only on the “collusion” aspect to ignore the massive and successful Russian effort, partly overt and partly covert, since 2014 to influence Americans’ views about Russia, divide Americans against each other, undermine confidence in the truth and in elections and to support Trump for the Republican presidential nomination and his general election. It is important to note that Trump lied during his campaign that he was no longer doing business with Russia while still a candidate, as he later was forced to admit. It is shocking and outrageous to many of us Cold War era conservative Republicans who were inspired by Reagan-Thatcher anti-Communist principles that the GOP has ceded its security credentials to the liberal Democrats, except for a few noteworthy exceptions, who at least denied the ignoble censure resolution, which was only symbolic anyway, the credibility of a majority vote. The Trumpist Republican caucus has failed to discredit investigations into Trump and to intimidate colleagues from investigating him, which are their true motivations.