OPINION:
On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced that it found no direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The president took a victory lap, but that hardly means the two-year-long attempt to undo his legitimate election is over.
Democrats on the Hill have far too much invested in the “Russia Job,” a political instrument pointed at the White House, to let it slip from their hands. They’re joined by Clinton operatives, Obama-era officials, as well as large parts of the press corps, all keen to prolong their coordinated efforts to hobble the presidency.
The state of play is still in flux. It’s unclear whether the special counsel will continue to enjoy free rein, or if Attorney General William Barr will put the brakes on Robert Mueller. Rep. Adam Schiff, California Democrat, now has the gavel as chair of the House Intelligence Committee and is urging Mr. Mueller to dig ever deeper into the president’s finances.
Perhaps most tellingly, the media are still running an offense against a Republican congressman who has not only ridiculed the collusion narrative but also exposed the corruption underlying it — Mr. Schiff’s counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, ranking member Devin Nunes, also of California.
A recent New Yorker piece tried to tie Mr. Nunes to a shady private Israeli spy firm operating in his home district, and two Daily Beast pieces alleged (without evidence) that he’s come under the special counsel’s scrutiny.
Why the latest round of attention? Because Mr. Nunes has promised that the Republican minority “will be making criminal referrals on many people who lied to Congress.”
Mr. Nunes intends to continue the work he started as chairman, looking into abuses and possible crimes committed during the FBI’s 2016 probe of the Trump campaign. For nearly two years, a media onslaught targeting Mr. Nunes was keyed to a political operation purposed to curtail his efforts.
It began with a March 2017 press appearance in which he announced that he’d found evidence the Trump team may have been spied on. Playing to block, left-wing activists pushed for the House Ethics Committee to investigate Mr. Nunes, sidelining him for eight months. The message was clear: There’s a price to be paid for going after the political establishment.
The anti-Nunes operation reached the high point of absurdity in the 2018 election cycle. I visited California’s 22nd Congression District during the campaign and marveled that Russiagate had migrated from Washington, D.C., to fill the warm Central Valley air. Billboards in Russian with Mr. Nunes’ picture portrayed him as an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“This recent election was just full of lies,” said Ray Appleton, Central California’s top-rated radio talk-show host, who frequently invites Mr. Nunes on the air. “The most dishonest campaign I’ve ever seen.”
Prior to the Russia Job, Mr. Nunes had strong support from independents and moderate Democrats in a heavily agricultural and ethnically diverse district, including immigrants of Mexican, Armenian and Portuguese stock, like the Nunes family. He was first elected in 2002, when he promised to take on environmentalists who wanted to divert water into the ocean and choke the land, some of the world’s most fertile.
During the latest election season, however, the district was flooded with outside activists who had only one thing on their mind — Russia. The Democrats spent more than $9 million against the incumbent and local political analysts estimate that another $2 million in so-called dark money poured into the safely Republican district. It appears that they were aiming not to unseat Mr. Nunes but to punish him.
Even his family came in the crosshairs. Activists filed a California Public Records Act request for the emails of his wife, a third-grade teacher. A camera crew stormed his uncle’s farm to forge a story out of his outrage. A journalist from Esquire was dispatched to report on a “secret” farm owned by his father.
The local press went as mad as the national media, giddy with collusion and the prospect of toppling Mr. Trump, and holding Mr. Nunes to blame for standing in the way. The Fresno Bee’s editorial staff, including a sports columnist, took turns going after the congressman. His opponent, however, Fresno County prosecutor Andrew Janz, was untouchable. For instance, neither the Bee nor any other outlet pushed Janz headquarters or the DA’s office for answers after reports showed that the Democratic candidate appears to have been campaigning on the taxpayers’ dime.
The purpose of the anti-Nunes campaign was to send a warning: Stop digging into what we did to frame Mr. Trump or we’ll come after you, at home, and your family. It appears that Democratic donors are willing to spend lavishly to protect their allies from scrutiny.
• Lee Smith is a columnist at Tablet Magazine.
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