With Individual 1 sinking deeper and deeper
into impeachment territory, it's worth remembering that he didn't get
there without a lot of help from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
who's currently carrying his water by refusing to vote on reopening
government.
McConnell's willingness to jeopardize the nation by going along with
this manufactured crisis is one thing. But his efforts to keep the
nation in the dark about what the government knew—before the
election—about Russia's interference on behalf of Trump is
quite another. For if there's a whiff of illegality around Trump for his
Russia dealings and coverup efforts, then it has to surround McConnell,
too.
Remember that in 2016, when it became clear after Trump had secured
the nomination that Russia was interfering, and the nation's
intelligence agencies had that information and presented it to
congressional leadership, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell covered it up.
He and then Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid were told that Putin
was overseeing an operation to disrupt the election and to help Trump.
McConnell's reaction, in the words of Washington Post reporter
Greg Miller, who initially broke this story: "'McConnell is basically
telling [the CIA], 'you're telling us that Russia is trying to help
elect Trump. If you try to come forward with this, I'm not going to sign
onto any sort of public statement that would condemn Russian
interference. But I will condemn you and the Obama administration for
trying to mess up this election.'"
The briefing from the CIA had Reid so alarmed that he wrote, and made public,
a letter to then-FBI chief James Comey, saying "The evidence of a
direct connection between the Russian government and presidential
campaign continues to mount and has led Michael Morrell, the former
Acting Central Intelligence Director, to call Trump an ‘unwitting agent’
of Russia and the Kremlin. The prospect of a hostile government
actively seeking to undermine our free and fair elections represents one
of the greatest threats toward democracy since the Cold War ..."
The evidence presented to Reid that so alarmed him was also presented
to McConnell. He knew full well that the CIA was deeply concerned
before the election, and made the decision to cover it up. McConnell
also knew full well that Russia wanted to get involved in our elections,
because his own leadership PAC received a cool $2.5 million
filtered through Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen, from a web of
Putin's oligarchs. He started getting that money in 2015, and kept on
getting it through at least 2017. Among those business associates of
Blavatnik is none other than Oleg Deripaska, Paul Manafort's boss both
in Ukraine and while he was nominally working on the Trump campaign.
McConnell is deep into this, at least up to his third chin. He is by
no means an innocent bystander. Every action he takes—including his
refusal to do his constitutional job and stand up to Trump on the
government shutdown—has to be viewed through the filter of his
complicity with Trump's lawlessness.
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