Trey Gowdy Gets Some Backup From Republican Leadership

South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy’s principled stand on the evidence presented by our intelligence community, and the status of the ongoing Russia probe didn’t earn him any friends from the Trumplican wing of the GOP, but he’s not exactly standing alone, either.

For background:

Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said on Fox News last week, “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.”

He was speaking of several highly sensitive meetings, demanded by Trump devotee, Rep. Devin Nunes and other Republicans, in regards to Stefan A. Halper, an FBI informant who had contacted three Trump campaign aides, after it had been discovered they had been in contact, on some level, with Russian officials.

Halper was never embedded with the campaign, nor did he ever get into the inner Trump circle of the campaign. That hasn’t stopped the president from pushing what he’s calling “Spygate,” a misleading narrative, meant to suggest he and his campaign had been spied on.

As Gowdy pointed out last week, “spying” refers to espionage, so it is not applicable in this scenario (not that Trump or his followers will let facts get in the way of their well-laid persecution fantasies).

Of course, it doesn’t matter that Gowdy pointed out that the information he viewed should encourage President Trump, since it pointed away from him.

That hasn’t stopped all the usual alt-right garbage sites from attacking the man’s credibility.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan stepped up to lend some support to what Representative Gowdy has been saying.

To paraphrase someone I saw comment on the matter on social media, earlier: It’s the first known case of someone regrowing a spine.

“I think Chairman Gowdy’s initial assessment is accurate,” Ryan said, adding that “we have some more digging to do,” and more interviews to conduct.

There are more documents Congress is hoping to see.

By “Congress” I mean the band of pro-Trump berserkers, led by Representative Devin Nunes, who want to go over ever last dot and tittle of what the Department of Justice has, until they can somehow find that “smoking gun” that proves President Trump is every inch the victim his Twitter feed claims him to be, every single day.

Thus far, they haven’t found what they’re looking for, leading them to claim the Department of Justice is somehow holding out on them.

Speaking of Nunes, you can tell Gowdy was on to something with his remarks last week, given that Nunes has been relatively silent.

No cameras and breathless Sean Hannity interviews when the evidence you hoped you would find is not there.

Still, Ryan agrees that if there’s more in the possession of the DOJ, they should probably just hand it over.

“It would be helpful if we got this information earlier,” Ryan said. “If we got all the information earlier we could wrap this up.

Ok. So one more thing, Speaker Ryan – Does President Trump have the authority to pardon himself?

“I don’t know the technical answer to that question but I think obviously the answer is he shouldn’t, and no one is above the law,” Ryan said.

No one.

House Speaker Ryan isn’t the only lawmaker to step up to defend Representative Gowdy’s position. We can only hope many more make that move.