Yesterday saw a couple dozen House Republicans, including their second in command, follow Matt Gaetz (and yes, that’s his mug shot) into the secure SCIF room in violation of all sorts of security protocols.
We can joke around about it, and normally there would be funny things to say, but this is a new low, even for the GOP. SCIFs exist to protect highly classified information, and in general, Republicans know this. But they are so desperate to disrupt the Impeachment Inquiry, that they seemed to have no other choice.
Let’s review: Matt and friends met with the Orange Menace on Monday and he approved this childish prank (albeit with potentially dire results once they brought their potentially compromised cell phones into the SCIF and started filming) because not one of them can answer to the actual facts in the case.
A shout out to John Thune, who did say that if the charges leveled by Bill Taylor are true “it’s bad”. But so far, he’s the only one to comment on Monday’s testimony by Taylor. It IS damning, and if you haven’t read it, here’s your chance. Basically, it is the proof that not just the Russian Embed, but his whole cabal, withheld necessary allocated Congressional funds from an ally, made sure they knew about it, and told them that to get the money, they’d need to do a political favor relative to the 2020 election.
The real question is whether or not this will stand. Will they be sanctioned or at least censured by Congress for this action? Will the courts uphold the laws on the books? Will the Senate actually consider the evidence in deciding whether or not to convict? If the answer to all three of these questions is “no”, then we live in a totalitarian banana republic.
I ordered the bumper sticker “Impeachment: Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore.” Fingers crossed that sanity and the US Constitution hold.
Other than it being much worse, this “protest” reminded me a lot of the Republican operatives’ actions in Miami-Dade in 2000 to prevent the electoral board there from completing the count for the 2000 election so that there was no chance for Gore to catch up to Bush.