It’s been two days since Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his aides, with no real proof, accused a variety of perceived enemies of bugging the senator’s campaign office. NBC’s Chuck Todd reported yesterday that McConnell’s team “hired a security firm to sweep” the office, looking for recording devices, but “found nothing.”
So, the wild-eyed accusations, made to distract attention from a potentially embarrassing story, are already looking a little shaky.
But putting that aside, McConnell’s demands for an investigation are being taken seriously, and FBI agents met with several of the senator’s aides yesterday. Campaign manager Jesse Benton described the matter yesterday as “an ongoing criminal investigation.” Benton then equated his perceived foes as the “Gestapo,” demonstrating the kind of class and dignity the political world has come to expect from Team McConnell.
But reader C.G. flagged a related story that included an interesting angle I hadn’t thought of.
Meanwhile, Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Daniel Logsdon urged the McConnell campaign Wednesday to make public results of any FBI investigation “in light of Sen. McConnell’s various conspiracy theories.”
In response, Benton said any release of results from the investigation “would be left up to the FBI.”
Hold on a sec. This week, McConnell and his aides have made serious accusations against “the Left,” Mother Jones magazine, a local liberal group called ProgressKY, and “the liberal media.” The senator’s team has not only been careless in alleging criminal misdeeds, they’ve even made Nazi comparisons.
But there will very likely come a point in the near future at which the FBI completes its investigation, and determines whether nefarious liberals committed a crime, as Team McConnell has alleged. There will, in other words, be answers to the questions the senator and his aides have raised.
And now McConnell’s staff isn’t sure whether those answers should be shared with the public?
Look, I have no idea how David Corn obtained these recordings. It seems unlikely liberals broke into the campaign office and secretly installed recording devises, but who knows, maybe McConnell’s hysterical reaction is rooted in fact. I doubt it, but can’t definitively rule out the possibility. But given the severity of the accusations, why wouldn’t McConnell and his staff want to make public the results of an FBI investigation? Why leave this up to the FBI? At a certain point, the FBI will prepare some kind of report, explaining what investigators found. Perhaps it’ll be incriminating for McConnell’s enemies, perhaps not. Maybe it will point to evidence of a liberal scheme, maybe not. But since the findings almost certainly won’t be classified — al Qaeda probably didn’t bug the senator’s campaign HQ — there’s no reason to keep them from public view. Team McConnell didn’t hesitate to share their questions with the public; why should they be any less eager to share their answers with the public? Let the chips fall where they may.
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