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In the wake of John Durham’s largely pointless special counsel investigation, some Republicans’ thoughts turned immediately to a familiar name from the recent past. “The Russian hoax was a figment of Hillary Clinton’s imagination,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn declared within hours of Durham’s report reaching the public.
In reality, of course, the far-right Tennessean’s comment was absurd: The Russia scandal obviously wasn’t a “hoax,” and Clinton wasn’t responsible for exposing it. In fact, as a Washington Post analysis explained last week, given all of the available evidence, there’s now “even less reason to blame Clinton“ for the investigation into the controversy.
But Blackburn’s comment was a timely reminder that the former secretary of State remains very much on Republicans’ minds. Indeed, just yesterday, Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo interviewed House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and the host asked the Ohio Republican whether he wants to see “another investigation” into Clinton. He didn’t say no.
“[W]e’re going to talk with our lawyers. We’re going to talk with Speaker McCarthy on where we proceed from here. In fact, are there people that were highlighted in the Durham investigation and the Durham report that we need to talk to on the Judiciary Committee? We’re going to give that a good, hard look. But nothing is off the table.”
In fairness, it was the host, not the guest, who brought up Clinton, but it would’ve been easy for Jordan to dismiss the idea of yet another investigation into the former Democratic presidential candidate. He didn’t. In fact, as a video from the on-air interview helped show, Jordan seemed quite animated about the prospect.
Time will tell, of course, whether the Ohioan bothers to pursue Clinton again, but one of the striking things about his reaction to the question was the familiarity of these circumstances.
As regular readers probably recall, in Donald Trump’s first year as president, the Republican and his party couldn’t shake their Clinton preoccupation. The then-president couldn’t stop talking and tweeting about his 2016 rival. His aides appeared fixated on Clinton. Congressional Republicans even launched investigations related to Clinton.
By October 2017, the former secretary of state joked, “It appears they don’t know I’m not president.”
The conditions persisted. In 2019, when Trump launched his re-election campaign, he excoriated Clinton seven times over the course of 30 minutes in his kickoff speech, apparently indifferent to the fact that she wasn’t running. As Election Day 2020 grew closer, the then-president called for Clinton’s incarceration, pushed then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to uncover and release Clinton emails, and lobbied then-Attorney General Barr to prosecute Clinton for reasons unknown.
She wasn’t on the ballot. Trump seemed desperate to run against her anyway.
Last year, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley suggested that Clinton should be incarcerated for reasons that weren’t altogether clear. Soon after, Trump filed a frivolous anti-Clinton lawsuit for reasons that defied comprehension, which was so dumb that it led to sanctions.
Months later, after the FBI executed a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, one of Trump’s initial responses was to accuse federal law enforcement of looking for Clinton emails at his glorified country club, which remains utterly bonkers.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but Clinton hasn’t held public office in over a decade. Durham uncovered literally no evidence that she did anything wrong. I realize some habits can be tough to break, but the GOP’s fixation on her is just creepy.
This post revises our related earlier coverage.