Nearly three months after being targeted by a would-be assassin, Donald Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, over the weekend for a follow-up campaign rally. The event also served as a reminder that members of Congress are investigating the incident from July, hoping to come to terms with how the former president was nearly killed.
How’s that process going? Not especially well.
There is, of course, an official congressional task force, with bipartisan membership, though House GOP leaders stacked the panel with some very conservative conspiracy theorists. It was against this backdrop that the task force invited two other House Republican conspiracy theorists to testify as witnesses during an official hearing, prompting a Democratic boycott.
But if the official congressional investigation is struggling, the unofficial congressional investigation is vastly worse.
As we discussed in late August, two GOP members — Arizona’s Eli Crane and Florida’s Cory Mills — announced that they were overseeing a “parallel investigation” because they “don’t trust the federal government to actually do the job necessary.”
Crane added in an interview around the same time that he was concerned that government officials might’ve been involved in the shooting — a radical idea that even other Republicans have avoided.
But as The New York Times reported, the Arizonan is determined to pursue his rather off-the-wall theories — for which there is no evidence — including bizarre claims that there might be a secret mole within Trump’s Secret Service detail; the FBI might hide the truth; the would-be assassin might’ve had confederates; and the second would-be assassin might’ve been an “asset” of a foreign adversary who was being “handled.”
Literally everything we know about the incidents suggest Crane’s theories are baseless. He doesn’t appear to care.
At this point, some might be inclined to shrug. An odd congressman is wasting time pursuing odd ideas, which has a familiar ring to it. But consider this tidbit from the Times’ report: Crane … has been everywhere that will have him, promoting conspiracy theories about the assassination attempts against Mr. Trump, despite all evidence that such theories are false. And far from sidelining or attempting to silence him, Republican leaders have given him a prominent platform to air his outlandish claims at the highest levels, lending credence to the conspiracy theories spread by him and others on the far right.
And therein lies the rub: Key House GOP officials aren’t embarrassed by Crane and his weird conspiracy theories, they’re encouraging Crane and his bizarre pursuits. Indeed, when Democrats recently boycotted a task force hearing, it was in large part because the official investigation panel agreed to give Crane a platform. I won’t pretend to know what will become of the investigation, House Republicans aren’t exactly inspiring confidence.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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