GOP Senators Hand Trump Defenders Some Talking Points

(Bloomberg View) -- How do you undermine the credibility of a multifaceted federal investigation led by a squeaky-clean law-enforcement official that targets your party's president?

You feed the scandal machine.

Republicans aiming to protect President Donald Trump, retain the hearts and minds of the Trump base, and secure the attention of the Sean-Hannity-will-prove-that-everything-is-a-partisan-conspiracy-and-so-you-can't-believe-anything media universe launched a pair of interesting salvos on Friday.

QuickTake Q&A: Guide to the Russia Probe

The first involved Republican Senators Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham, who asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Christopher Steele, author of the infamous "Steele dossier" about Trump's Russia connections, committed a crime by possibly lying to federal investigators about "the distribution of claims contained in the dossier" to news reporters.

Steele, you may remember, is a former British intelligence operative whose firm was retained by a Washington research outfit — Fusion GPS — during the 2016 presidential campaign to dig up dirt on Trump's business and political ties to Russia. Steele's work was funded by Democrats, and Fusion added it to its file of Trump opposition research that had first been funded by Republicans.

Steele was concerned enough by what he learned to make Senator John McCain, among others, aware of his findings. Eventually, Steele's research landed in the lap of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well — because law-enforcement agencies always like to collect these kinds of leads in the interest of being thorough.

Although Trump's supporters in the media and on Capitol Hill have spent months insinuating that Steele's report was what spurred the FBI to begin investigating Trump and his campaign, that was never the case. As we now know, thanks to reporting by the New York Times, the FBI began looking earlier after a Trump campaign operative was loose-lipped about some embarrassing political information his team was getting about Hillary Clinton from Russian sources.

Even so, treating the Steele dossier as the foundational force in the FBI investigation made for good sport among Trump's defenders — and provided grist for the Hannity scandal mill and its Fox News offshoots. Grassley and Graham are now continuing that tradition by asking the DOJ to go after Steele.

Republicans have been conducting their own investigations of possible problems related to the Kremlin's effort to tilt the 2016 presidential campaign. They've also promised to hold Trump's campaign to account should anything untoward surface in their probes. Yet after more than a year of machinations, and four indictments of Trump associates by the much-admired Justice Department special counsel on the case, Robert Mueller, the first person they publicly saddle with a criminal referral is Steele — one of the guys who brought attention to the very problem they say concerns them.

It's not clear whether there's any actual evidence of wrongdoing by Steele. What is clear is that the senators have given Trump partisans a new talking point: An investigator who turned up unflattering things about Trump is now "under investigation" himself!

Round Two in this effort on Friday also involved the Justice Department. It reportedly has launched a new investigation of payments to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for political favors during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. The Clintons have been endlessly scrutinized by the media and law enforcement about their foundation, and the FBI closed its investigation of the matter in 2016 after finding no wrongdoing.

But here we are again. And we're here because the Clintons fuel the pro-Trump scandal machine. Alleged misdeeds at the Clinton Foundation are also useful foils for casting the Justice Department's investigation of Trump and his campaign in a negative light. Why should there be so much attention focused on Trump when Clinton got away with worse? That's the argument, at least.

That's also an argument that Trump partisans are making because they aren't authentically interested in the rule of law or even in holding Clinton accountable. It's an argument they're making so the media apparatus designed to defend Trump has more to chew on.

All of this should be well beneath the law-and-order folks atop the GOP and in the Justice Department. But it isn't. Expect more of it.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Timothy L. O'Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Gadfly and Bloomberg View. He has been an editor and writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, HuffPost and Talk magazine. His books include "TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald."

To contact the author of this story: Timothy L. O'Brien at tobrien46@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net.

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