Sit, Devin. Roll over. Play dead. Who’s a good dog? From CNN:

The committee's Republicans are also disagreeing with the intelligence community's assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to help the Trump campaign over Hillary Clinton, a notion that aligns with President Donald Trump's viewpoint on election meddling. The conclusions will be met with sharp disagreement from Democrats and are bound to inflame partisan tensions on a committee that's been beleaguered by partisanship throughout the course of its Russia probe. Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the Russia investigation, said Monday that the committee had concluded its interviews for the Russia investigation, and the Republican staff had prepared a 150-page draft report that they would give to Democrats to review on Tuesday morning. "We found no evidence of collusion, and so we found perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings," Conaway said. "We found no evidence of any collusion of anything people were actually doing, other than taking a meeting they shouldn't have taken or just inadvertently being in the same building."

It’s Mike Conaway’s name on this farce but, I guarantee you, every one of the 150 pages of that report will be redolent with the spirit of Devin (The Midnight Rambler) Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee’s actual chairman who allegedly recused himself from this investigation because he was too obvious a tool.

The committee's report will conclude that they agree with 98% of the intelligence community's January 2017 assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, according to a committee aide. But the panel's Republicans take issue with the key finding that Putin was trying get Trump elected. Conaway said it was clear the Russians were trying to sow discord in the 2016 US election, but Republicans did not establish the same conclusions as the CIA that they specifically were trying to help Trump.

Of course, in fairness, we should wait for the actual report, and do our best to ignore the symphony of triumphant crowing from the usual suspects in the media. (Sean Hannity has set the Orgasmatron to infinity and climbed inside.) But we already know enough to know that the purpose of the Republican majority on this committee was to act as a White House alibi factory.

And the idea that this announcement, by which we learn what the report will conclude without being told when the report actually will be released, is in any way coincidental in the context of everything else that’s swirling around the administration* is to ignore how Monday’s action is totally of a piece with the strategy employed by the Republican majority of the committee from the day the gavel first fell.

And, I suspect, the lights are still on in the Office of the Special Counsel, as Robert Mueller hears the news from across the room, and asks one of his lawyers to pass him another file.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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