Why this new GOP Senate report about the Trump-Russia election scandal is so crucial to what happens next

| 10:40 am EDT October 9, 2019
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Yesterday, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee decided to release its years-in-the-making report on the Trump-Russia 2016 election rigging scandal. You read whatever you want into the timing of releasing this report just two weeks after Donald Trump’s impeachment got underway, and one day after a bunch of GOP Senators spoke out against Trump’s deranged Syria pullout. But the details here are what may be most important to the Republican Senators.

This publicly available Senate Intel Committee report confirms a lot of what we already knew for certain: the Russian government spent the 2016 general election spreading fake news aimed at helping Donald Trump and harming Hillary Clinton. It’s notable in its own right that a Republican controlled committee is admitting that Clinton was harmed by lies, after the GOP spent the past twenty-five years pushing its own lies about Clinton. But there’s a more key part to this report.

Over the past two and a half years we’ve seen scattered reports that the Russians didn’t just help rig the 2016 general election for Donald Trump; they helped rig the 2016 Republican primary race for Trump as well. Sure enough, this Senate report confirms that during the primary contest, the Russians were spreading fake news to help Trump, while spreading fake news aimed at specifically harming Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.

In other words, the Republican Senate just announced that it’s found proof that the Russian government screwed three prominent Republicans – two of whom are currently in the Senate – out of their party’s 2016 presidential nomination. By ideological definition, the Republicans each only care about themselves. They’re making a point of announcing that the Trump-Russia scandal wasn’t just a plot against Hillary, it was also a plot against the Republican Party. You think they don’t want revenge?