The Russia conspiracy theory
By Aaron Blake
May 11 at 9:25 AM
... When one of the most conspiratorial GOP members of Congress, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), spun an elaborate theory about how the Democrats might have been working with federal law enforcement to get a FISA warrant to “spy” on the Trump campaign, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions — a very conservative former senator — shut him down.
Those days are long gone. Now that the Mueller report has alleged no conspiracy with Russia (and Mueller punted on obstruction, citing DOJ policy), Republicans have largely echoed Trump’s talking points — or at least raised suggestive questions — that the surveillance of Page might have been symptomatic of an effort to take Trump down. And unlike in Sessions’s day, Attorney General William P. Barr is hearing them out.
Contrary to Ryan and Gowdy’s cautions and the talking points passed around at the time, the Nunes memo has now formed the centerpiece of an argument that the Mueller probe began as an anti-Trump political effort. Gowdy’s assurances that there would have been a Russia investigation regardless have been swept aside in favor of an argument that nothing about this was based upon legitimate inquiries or what the Trump team actually did.
Today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has called for investigating the origins of the probe. Barr has suggested the matter is worth of an inquiry, even adopting Trump’s controversial talking point that the FBI was “spying” on Page (a word that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray took issue with this week). And Republicans have consistently exaggerated the Mueller report’s supposed “exoneration” of Trump (a word Mueller explicitly said did not apply to his obstruction conclusions) in an effort to argue that the investigation was bogus from the beginning ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/11/gops-increasing-embrace-trumps-russia-conspiracy-theory/?utm_term=.e2313751a14b
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