House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said at a press conference last week that there was “no adult in the Republican chamber” to stop members of the party from smearing the FBI and defending defeated former President Donald Trump because he left the Oval Office door with top secret documents. Well, there has to be someone, right? You wouldn’t find many on Sunday shows. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who has rightly criticized his fellow Republicans for rushing to Trump’s defense, strangely insisted on ABC’s “This Week” that the incident is a “victory” for Trump because he is being martyred. So the FBI is supposed to let him keep top secret documents? The instinct to treat this as a tactical victory rather than an unforgivable transgression only serves to normalize Trump’s behavior. Worse, Rep. Michael R. Turner (Ohio), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, played the whataboutism card on CNN. “Donald Trump is not above the law. And the Attorney General [Merrick] Garland is not above the law either,” he said. In what universe did Garland act like he was above the law? Turner, who has declined to indict Trump, said he has doubts about the need for a search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Based on what? And more importantly: Who cares, after a judge found probable cause to search? Follow Jennifer Rubin’s viewsFollow Add Luckily, CNN anchor Brianna Keilar followed along and asked Turner if he had ever taken home top secret documents. Well, no, he replied. He then added that he is demanding to see the documents taken from Trump’s resort — top secret items in an ongoing investigation. This is yet another attempt to throw a smoke screen. No one on the intelligence committee, let alone the minority-party ranking member, should engage in such misrepresentations. Meanwhile, on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Sen. Mike Rounds (RS.D.) falsely insisted that Trump could declassify those documents at will. Wrong. As NBC News’ Ken Dilanian explained in an earlier segment of the show, the search warrant cited three statutes that Trump may have violated in obtaining the documents, and none of them require the information to be thrown out. “THE [Justice Department’s] The position is that these are US government documents, property of the government, not Donald Trump,” Dilanian said. “It’s illegal to steal them. And it’s illegal to mutilate or hide them to hinder an investigation. And then you have the Espionage Act, which requires an intent to harm the United States, which suggests that the FBI has at least suspicions about the motives behind storing these documents.” In other words, Rounds makes things. A rare Republican voice of reason came from Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. On CNN, he warned: “Well, if the GOP is going to be the party that supports law enforcement, law enforcement includes the FBI.” Hutchinson added: “As United States attorney, I [worked] with the FBI, the [Drug Enforcement Administration], federal law enforcement agencies. These people on the ground are making extraordinarily heroic efforts to enforce our rule of law, which is fundamental to the Republican Party and our democracy.” This is a refreshing feeling. Still, it’s clear that the worst of the MAGA fans will jump into the fray with every bogus defense and non-subversion Trump throws up. So why should Hogan, Turner and Rounds join the scrum, further fanning the flames? The answer is that Pelosi is right. Aside from Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), there are no “adults” in the room among congressional Republicans. They remain mute, play dumb, or dumbly parrot Trump’s inane defenses. They flatly refuse to stand by the FBI, the rule of law, and the country’s national security, even when the country’s nuclear secrets are at stake. In doing so, the party not only harms our democracy, but also helps perpetuate an atmosphere of government suspicion, anger, and crazy conspiracy theories. They, like Trump, share responsibility for the consequences of their actions and rhetoric.
