Back before he enfeebled the House speakership so that President Donald Trump could run a historically corrupt administration without facing pesky oversight inquiries from Congress, Paul Ryan pretended to feel so strongly about the integrity of U.S. government secrets that he would intervene in executive branch affairs to protect it.

“Today I am writing to formally request that you refrain from providing any classified information to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the duration of her candidacy for president,” Ryan wrote last July to James Clapper, who was then the director of national intelligence, after then-FBI Director James Comey described Clinton’s handling of classified information as “extremely careless.”

“I firmly believe,” Ryan added, that “this is necessary to reassure the public that our nation’s secrets are secure.”

BREAKING: I formally asked the Director of National Intelligence to deny Sec. Clinton access to classified info. pic.twitter.com/Kk8t00cdJn — Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) July 7, 2016

At the time, intelligence professionals professed far more alarm at the thought of Trump—erratic, impulsive, lacking any government experience—receiving classified briefings than Clinton. But Ryan inveighed against her rather than him.



Those concerns about Trump have been vindicated by recent events, and Ryan’s bad faith laid completely bare by his sudden indifference to massive security breaches at the highest levels of government. His hypocrisy is a perfect symbol of the broader, corrupt bargain the Republican Party has made with Trump, but the implications of that hypocrisy go far beyond the way they reflect on partisan politics in America. Ryan and other GOP leaders may be the key actors assuring that the global crisis of the Trump presidency will far outlast his term in office.