Rep. Chris Stewart made a nice living writing novels, much of it involving conspiracies and political intrigue.
So why stop with the fiction now?
Stewart has been perhaps the most outspoken Republican — save President Donald Trump, himself — in opposition to the idea that Russia tampered with the 2016 election in an attempt to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign and, accordingly, help Trump.
The Russian meddling wasn’t the plot of one of Stewart’s stories. It was the consensus conclusion of the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, all of which agreed with “high confidence” in a declassified document last year that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to swing the election to Trump.
It’s a finding that has been reiterated in congressional testimony and echoed more recently in a detailed indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller that specified how Russian operatives orchestrated rallies backing Trump and sought to make it appear that Clinton had support from radical Islamic groups.
That doesn’t mean it swayed votes or changed the outcome of the election. We may never know that. But it does bolster the argument that Russia had a goal of messing with the election to help Trump, and took steps to accomplish those ends.
Stewart dismisses the whole narrative as a fraud, as fake news.
“The CIA just got it wrong,” Stewart told CNN this week. “The CIA just got it wrong, just like they did, by the way, in the Gulf War, when they said there were weapons of mass destruction.”
In his denials, however, Stewart accidentally touches on the real problem.
When we talk about classified intelligence, there are those who look inside the black box — like Stewart, who said he reviewed the agencies’ raw intelligence — and there are the rest of us who have to rely on their interpretation and conclusions.
“Intelligence” on its own is not inherently partisan, but we know it can be turned into a partisan weapon when it is twisted to fit a preconceived narrative or to achieve a goal. You can start with filet mignon and by the time it’s processed and reprocessed, you end up with dog food.
Stewart’s Gulf War example is a textbook demonstration, where bits of sketchy intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs were spun into a threat of global annihilation at the hands of Saddam Hussein — all to serve a political agenda.
When it comes to Russia’s support (or lack of support) for Trump, someone is manipulating the intelligence. And maybe it is all of the intelligence agencies and the special counsel and Democrats in Congress.
Or maybe it is Stewart, who has been clear of his bias all along, dismissing any Russian support for Trump starting in 2016 — long before there even was a House investigation.
“I don’t think [Russians] care who the next president is. I don’t think they view one person as easier to work with or against,” Stewart said in August 2016, after returning from a trip to Russia. “What they want to do is create uncertainty and instability and the idea among the American people that the elections were tampered with. And if they can do that, they can delegitimize the [incoming] president.”
And lo and behold, nearly two years later, Stewart says the facts neatly fit his concocted narrative.
Shocking, right?
Meanwhile, even some of Stewart’s fellow Republicans are marooning him on his Fantasy Island.
House Intelligence Committee member Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. — who spent 2 1/2 years and millions of dollars investigating Clinton over the Benghazi attack — said the evidence showed the Russians had disdain for Clinton and the elections operations were “motivated in whole or in part by a desire to harm her candidacy or undermine her presidency had she prevailed.”
John Brennan, director of the CIA for much of the Obama administration, also bashed House Republicans’ conclusions during a visit to Utah on Wednesday.
“It is a one-sided and partisan effort to short-circuit appropriate investigative measures,” Brennan said. “There will be a reckoning for those who protect the president. And that will be at the ballot box.”
And people like Stewart should have to answer to voters. Utahns, I believe, want a representative who puts the country first when it comes to important issues of national security and not, as Stewart appears to have done here, spin a yarn for the sake of protecting his political party.
