Some May Call It Treason

Brian Beutler at The New Republic:

At his regular, end-of-session Capitol briefing on Friday, just before the Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell took a victory lap for himself. “As I look back on my career,” he said, “I think the most consequential decision I’ve ever been involved in was the decision to let the president being elected last year pick the Supreme Court nominee.”

That was indeed a masterstroke of power politics. But for my money, the most consequential decision of McConnell’s career (and, since this is McConnell we’re talking about, the most diabolical decision as well) came last summer—amid intense, classified, bipartisan discussions about how to respond to Russian election interference—and remained undisclosed until December.

We learned earlier this week that on August 25, 2016 the CIA had warned Harry Reid (the Democratic Senate Majority Leader at the time) that the Russians were attempting to help Trump win, and that some of Trump’s advisers were possibly working with the Russians to do so. But McConnell threatened the Democrats in Congress and the Obama White House that he’d raise a stink if that information was made public during the Presidential campaign.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Beutler may thnk that’s a master stroke. I call it damned close to treason. Aiding a foreign nation in its attempts to suborn this country’s election? What else might it be called?