The August recess is almost over and Congress has roughly 50 legislative days to get tax reform done, raise the debt ceiling, and pass another budget resolution to keep the government funded. Tax reform should be completed by December. We’ll just see about that. Given how things have gone up on the Hill, it’s highly likely that this deadline will be torpedoed. Yet, as both parties will hash out measures that will be added to the appropriations bills, one Republican congressman is aiming to add an amendment to kill the Russia probe headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller within the next six months (via Politico):
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) is pushing an amendment to severely curtail special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
DeSantis has put forward a provision that would halt funding for Mueller’s probe six months after the amendment’s passage. It also would prohibit Mueller from investigating matters that occurred before June 2015, when Trump launched his presidential campaign.
The amendment is one of hundreds filed to a government spending package the House is expected to consider when it returns next week from the August recess. The provision is not guaranteed a vote on the House floor; the House Rules Committee has wide leeway to discard amendments it considers out of order.
In a statement, DeSantis said the order appointing Mueller as special counsel "didn't identify a crime to be investigated and practically invites a fishing expedition."
So far, there’s still zero hard evidence of so-called Russian collusion. As Guy noted, there were multiple attempts by the Russians to meet with Trump campaign officials, but they all turned them down. There was the rather unfortunate meeting Don, Jr. took with a Russian lawyer, but all it proves is that the president’s son failed miserably in the judgment department, and never should have taken that meeting in the first place. It was juicy because the person who arranged it, a publicist for a Russian pop star who apparently can only get gigs at his father’s shopping mall near Moscow, said the source of the information is good and part of the Russian government’s effort to help elect Trump. In the end, it was a colossal waste of time, with the 2016 election never even being mentioned. The way you know it’s not a story is that we don’t hear about it anymore from the anti-Trump media. They’ve pummeled this issue to death. No one cares about it, not even voters in deep blue states. Most updates are either unverified, vague, or we don’t know if the actors involved even acted upon any of the discussions that might point to so-called collusion. It’s a clown show. So far, there is zero evidence that any crime had taken place.