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Republicans collectively twisted themselves into knots Monday in order to ignore what was really happening in the hearings on Russian election hacking and tried to use it as an opportunity for another attack on the free press.

In case you missed it: FBI Director James Comey confirmed during the House Select Intelligence Committee hearing that the FBI is investigating connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian governments efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russias efforts, Comey said.

During the hearings Comey repeated the claim that Putin wanted to hurt our democracy, hurt her [Clinton], help him [Trump].

(Given Comeys own role in the electionshifting the momentum to Trump when he announced that Clinton was under investigation less than two weeks before the electionit was hard not to take that sentence at least slightly autobiographically.)

Comey also thoroughly discredited Trumps deceitful tweets claiming that he was wiretapped or otherwise surveilled by Barack Obama.

But the right was having none of that. Fox & Friends tweeted: If you missed yesterday's congressional hearing with FBI Dir. James Comey, you didn't miss much.

Remember, many of these are the same people that argued how bad it would be to have a president under FBI investigationwhen it seemed like that president would be Hillary Clinton.

Devin Nunes, who chaired the House committee, complained that with the investigation Comey put a "big gray cloud over" the Trump administration. He didnt mention that he served on Trumps transition team. Nunes and the rest of the Republican majority of the committee spent the entire day trying to make the hearing about the need to investigate the leaking of classified information to the press.

Among the most fervent of these is South Carolinas Trey Gowdy. Back when Trey Gowdy probably looked even more like the little boy from Deliverance, he had a paper route in Spartanburg, South Carolina. But some four or five decades later, the weird little guy has moved beyond throwing papers into the gutters and wants, instead, to throw reporters in the slammer.

Is there an exception in the law for reporters who want to break a story? Gowdy asked.

Thats a harder question as to whether a reporter incurs criminal liability by publishing classified information and one probably beyond my ken, Comey replied.

Hint, yall: there is an exception. Its called the First Amendment.

Gowdy, if you know him at all, is that weird little ultra-white guy with the weird white hair who ran the Benghazi hearings. He looks a little bit like Truman Capote, if Capote had a child with a salamander. GQ points out how bad Gowdys hair is. But its really his face that is the problemand whatever kind of consciousness lies behind it.

Gowdy was a tea partier who drove out far-right Bob Ingliss because he wanted to work with Democrats on climate change. Gowdys Benghazi hearings were ultimately a long political campaign against Hillary Clintoneven if Trump said he failed miserably.

In a press conference following the hearing, however, the press-hating Trump regime seemed to respond favorably to Gowdys ideas that the Obama administration is behind the leaks and that both they, and potentially the press, should be prosecuted.

We should expect to see, despite Comeys claims, the White House and Republicans push for a rehash of Benghazi when it comes to the leaks, while ignoring the subjects of the leaks altogether.

More:
Democracy in Crisis: Republicans Seek Leaks, Raise Possibility of Prosecuting the Press - The Independent Weekly