Senator John McCain (R-AZ) issued a forceful statement today condemning the Republicans for attacking the FBI and Department of Justice by releasing the highly anticipated “Nunes memo” which he says “undermines our own rule of law” and does Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “job for him.”
McCain responded only minutes after the memo was made public even though he is away from Washington, D.C. receiving treatment for brain cancer.
Sen. John McCain calls for Mueller probe to continue "unimpeded": "Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows." https://t.co/YayvPq0RKJ pic.twitter.com/RmYOGcAOlG
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 2, 2018
Despite his illness, McCain showed that is one of the very few Republicans willing to speak out against some of the most dangerous elements of his own party.
“The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s,” McCain warned.
After stating that the Russian interference in the U.S. election, as well as those of elections, as he put it, “from France and Germany to Ukraine, Montenegro, and beyond,” was a very real and proven effort to “spread disinformation with the goal of sowing chaos and weakening faith in our institutions,” McCain said it is time to put our nation above politics.
“The American people deserve to know all the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy,” wrote McCain, “which is why Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded.”
“Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop look at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows,” added McCain.
“If we continue to undermine our own rule of law,” he concluded, “we are doing Putin’s job for him.”
Trump, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), and their Congressional Republican enablers do a disservice to all Americans by diverting attention from the real problem of a foreign country trying to subvert our democracy.
If Trump is innocent, as he claims, he would not need his “lap dog” (as Jimmy Kimmel has dubbed Nunes) to put out a distorted memo written from a partisan point of view that is designed to erode the public’s faith in our law enforcement institutions, which in the midst of the Congressional majority’s abdication of its responsibilities, stand as our only protections against Russian forces who wish to undermine the United States.
If the point was to get out the truth, Trump and Nunes would have allowed the FBI and DOJ to have input and simultaneously released the Democratic memo written with the supervision of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who comes out of this looking like a shining knight who has not been allowed to do what is right.
What McCain’s statement reminds us is that the war hero, for all his political faults, remains a real patriot, and Trump is not fit to shine his shoes.
You can read Sen. McCain’s full statement here.
