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Republican hysteria over the ongoing investigation into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia reached a new high on Wednesday, with a new report showing that the GOP is going directly after the FBI and Justice Department as Robert Mueller’s investigation gets closer to Donald Trump.

According to Politico, “A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly — and perhaps criminally — mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans.”

More from the stunning report:

A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee’s high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven’t informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House’s general counsel. The people familiar with Nunes’ plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence. That final product could ultimately be used by Republicans to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether any Trump aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign — or possibly even to justify his dismissal, as some rank-and-file Republicans and Trump allies have demanded.

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Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, lambasted Republicans for their secret committee, calling it an “attack” on our institutions.

“I think what we are seeing in our committee … is an effort to attack the Department of Justice, an effort to attack the FBI, to attack Bob Mueller, is an effort to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what they’ll find and try to discredit them in advance,” Schiff said, according to the same Politico report. “It’s a pernicious thing to do that will ultimately inflict long-term damage on these institutions.”

As Robert Mueller’s investigation continues to close in Trump, Republicans have made the short-sighted decision to put politics ahead of the country by going after credible U.S. institutions instead of supporting efforts to hold the president and Russia accountable for potentially working together to undermine American democracy.

The question is no longer whether the behavior of these Republicans is going to cause long-lasting damage to U.S. democracy – it’s how much damage will it cause.