Invite President Trump to Testify, Too
The image of Nunes scurrying around town on his own inspired fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to quip, "The problem that he's created is he's gone off on a lark by himself, sort of an Inspector Clouseau investigation here."
That sounds about right. Nunes had become a distraction while offering Trump more reasons to make more unsupported accusations. The most notorious was to claim that President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice may have committed a crime by seeking the identities of Trump associates who had been incidentally swept up in the surveillance of foreign officials.
Actually there was no evidence that Rice had done anything wrong, although she didn't help her case much when she told PBS that she knew nothing about the Trump "unmasking" allegations. Later, on MSNBC, she acknowledged her requests for the unmasking but denied any political motives.
Careful, Ms. Rice, before you, too, get snared by the oddball ways of President Donald "The Tweeter" Trump and Washington's scandal culture
Rice has long been a target of the right, especially after she, speaking from talking points provided by intelligence services, famously and incorrectly blamed the Benghazi terrorist attack on a video. In Washington's scandal culture, even if you didn't do wrong, political partisans will make it sound like you did.
The big question with Rice is whether she requested the names of "masked" Trump associates in her professional capacity, which is expected, or with political motives, which would be illegal. That question may only be resolved by her testifying before Congress, which already has had a parade of Benghazi investigations without turning up the smoking gun that Republicans have been seeking.
I don't expect an investigation of Rice to turn up anything, either, but I don't oppose asking her to testify -- as long as Congress asks President Trump to testify, too. He'd probably decline, of course, and once again let the troubles that he has stirred up fall on the shoulders of other people.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
