Paul Ryan may think he’s being sly by not actively intruding in the Special Counsel investigation. He may actually have convinced himself that he’s being even-handed, with his chuckling dismissals of Trump’s behavior and his public disagreements with the rebranded Tea Party wing of the House that calls themselves the Freedom Caucus now.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and in fact, almost no one could end the shenanigans holding up the Congressional investigations faster than the Speaker of the House could.
Ryan’s real contribution to the ongoing probe has been to ostensibly do nothing about the obstruction that’s been happening elsewhere in Congress.
Out of one side of his mouth, the Speaker can say “I think he should be free to do his job,” referring to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But when he finishes his thought, he sends a signal to those in his own party who seek to end the Russia investigation prematurely: “But I would like to see it get wrapped up, of course.”
Of course, it’s who Paul Ryan actually refuses to silence that does the greatest disservice to American democracy. Devin Nunes has proven himself to be 100 percent in the pocket of Trump, acting at literally every opportunity to obstruct, stall, distract from, and lie about the investigation. Yet Nunes retains his position as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. When the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate called on him to remove Nunes from the position, he rebuffed them:
I think they’re just playing politics and I think they’re looking for a political distraction, is what I get out of that.”
That was immediately following Nunes’ release of the highly-edited, highly misleading memo that he claimed made conclusions about the origins of the investigation that were patently false.
And while he may have “disagreed” with Reps Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan on whether or not Rod Rosenstein should be impeached from his position at the Department of Justice, he wasted no time before reiterating their reasoning for the effort in the first place — a level of “compliance” that DOJ has reached many times over already in turning over documentation the House has asked for.
When the obstruction charges are handed down — and the GOP may get their wish for this to be wrapped up sooner than they think, following the bombshell revelations from Thursday of the Trump Tower meeting and who knew what and when — Robert Mueller will surely be looking at Paul Ryan just as hard as he might any other Trump sycophants.
Featured image via screen capture
