Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are having a little bit of a freakout today, as fallout from the Mueller report continues to annoy everyone on Capitol Hill.
During a committee hearing on Thursday morning, Republican Rep. Mike Conaway demanded that Democratic committee chair Adam Schiff step down from his leadership position over Schiff’s insistence that, actually, a lot of extremely shady stuff involving President Donald Trump and his allies went down during the 2016 election.
Conaway’s attack was echoed by fellow Republican and committee member Rep. Devin Nunes, who said that “we should not be used as a platform to spread false information and bizarre conspiracies.”
Nunes, who recently sued an internet cow, was caught on tape last year saying that Republican control of the House was key to protecting the president from Mueller’s investigation. He also reportedly never read the probe documents he himself had previously demanded.
At the same time Conaway and Nunes were having their freakout, the GOP released a letter—much of which was identical to Conaway’s little soliloquy—signed by all nine Republican members of the Intelligence Committee, demanding Schiff step down as chair.
For his part, Schiff—who on Thursday was singled out by Trump—brushed off the GOP revolt.
Attorney General William Barr, one of the few people outside of Mueller’s own team who has actually read the full Russia report, has meanwhile refused to commit to releasing all of Mueller’s findings publicly, and will likely even miss the April 2 deadline set by House Judiciary Democrats for providing an extended summary for lawmakers.
Which means, in the absence of any public information from Mueller, we’ll likely be stuck with these whiny GOP histrionics for a while.