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You can talk all you want about Russia, said President Trump at his press conference Thursday, which was all a fake news fabricated deal to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it.

In other words: nothing to see here, no investigation necessary. A few minutes later, he made the point again: Russia is fake news.

But do Republicans in Congress agree? After insisting for months that there was really nothing to see in the web of connections between Trump and the government of Russia, theyhave come around and are finally demanding an investigation.

Behold their righteous determination to get to the bottom of this matter:

House Republican leaders are pressing the Justice Departments inspector general to investigate whether officials mishandled classified information, including leaked communications between members of the Russian government and the Trump administration that brought about Michael T. Flynns resignation as national security adviser.

In a letter to the inspector general, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) demanded an immediate investigation into whether the leaks broke protocol.

Oh. So theyre not going to investigate the scandal itself, theyre going to investigate how the scandal came to light, I suppose because, as the president says, thats the real scandal.

In fairness, over in the Senate there is talk of something resembling an actual investigation. But its centered on the Intelligence Committee, the most opaque of Congresss committees, where the light of public scrutiny is almost always barred. Republicans are obviously trying to make it seem as though theyre serious about this while actually doing everything they can to keep the scandal as quiet as possible.

We all know that if this were happening under a Democratic president, Republicans in Congress wouldnt just be investigating, theyd shut down every other bit of congressional business to do nothing but investigate. After all, they conducted seven separate investigations of the Benghazi attacks, a tragic but fairly straightforward episode, in the hopes that it could be used to bring down Hillary Clinton. When Bill Clinton was president, they opened investigations into such weighty matters as whether Bill and Hillary murdered their friend Vince Foster, whether they had misused the White House Christmas card list on that one, they heard 140 hours of sworn testimony and, I kid you not, Socks the cat. Yes, Dan Burton, of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, once demanded to know whether taxpayer resources were being used to respond to childrens letters to the presidents cat.

That was an outrage worthy of serious scrutiny. Russia manipulating our political process? Whatevs.

So theres no more doubt: This Congress is utterly incapable of conducting the investigation this scandal deserves. Were talking about a hostile foreign government intervening in an American election on behalf of one candidate even that the candidates campaign advisers allegedly had secret contacts with that hostile government. This is potentially as significant a scandal as Iran-Contra, or even Watergate.

Now maybe all this will turn out to be next to nothing. But we cant know either way if congressional Republicans are in charge of the investigation. At worst, there will be no investigation at all or an investigation thats little more than a whitewash. At best, it will devolve into the kind of partisan infighting we saw with the Select Committee on Benghazi.

Thats why we need an independent commission, not a select committee of members of Congress but a commission of outsiders with expertise, subpoena power and the budget necessary to answer the critical questions that have been raised. Here are just some of those questions:

This is just a start; there will no doubt be many other questions that arise as the investigation proceeds. But no one can claim with a straight face that Republicans in Congress can be trusted to conduct an investigation that is thorough and objective.

The only choice is to impanel an independent commission and let it do its work. Otherwise well never know what really happened.

Go here to read the rest:
The Republican Congress cannot be trusted to investigate the Russia scandal - Washington Post (blog)