1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas. Why is it when an actual valid issue arises, half our Congress goes from screeching to mute in a nanosecond? I’m talking about the recent rearrest of the GOP whistleblower du jour, the guy who supposedly had all the beans on the Biden evil empire. Turns out he may have just been a regular ol Russian mole. So where is the concern now? Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado told CNN last week that House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan were warned in advance to be skeptical of the whistleblower [Smirnov] claims, but they ran with it anyway. It led CNN’s Kaitlin Collins to ask Buck, “So, James Comer and Jim Jordan, they knew that this was not corroborated information, yet they still went public with it, talked about it, on television, used it to fuel these investigations, regardless?” The GOP congressman replied, “That’s what it appears.” The NYT reported that what congressional Republicans who amplified the claims neglected to say in all their breathless gotcha statements was that F.B.I. officials had warned them repeatedly to be cautious about the accusation, because it was uncorroborated and its credibility unknown. And now federal prosecutors say the claim was made up. So the question now isn’t so much whether Smirnov’s bogus claims have been discredited, which they have. Even Jordan conceded late last week that the informant’s allegations no longer appear credible. Rather, the focus at this point is what Buck emphasized: Comer and Jordan received explicit warnings to be more responsible, and they and their allies apparently chose to ignore those warnings. Repeatedly. These GOP lawmakers weren’t just told that the anti-Biden claims were unverified. The NYT report also added that Comer, in particular, was told by a leading FBI official that “revealing the unsubstantiated claims would endanger other confidential sources and have a ‘chilling effect’ on recruiting others.” Dem Rep. Dan Goldman of New York has called for a Justice Department investigation into the Republican lawmakers who pushed Smirnov’s claims, to determine whether or not the GOP lawmakers knew the informant “was spreading Russian disinformation.” I think we should all be curious as to when exactly Republicans came to realize they were relying on false claims from an informant who peddled bogus allegations after interacting with foreign intelligence services. Shouldn’t we? Frank Figliuzzi, who had served as the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, wrote last week, “We need to know whether the so-called whistleblowers were well-meaning dupes or if they were deliberately carrying out Russia’s bidding.” Yes, we do. Y’all need to muster as much passion for finding the truth as you do running after shiny fiction. Or is ‘Loose lips sink ships’ just a quaint sentiment these days?