The Republican National Committee did the job of a scandal war room targeting former FBI Director James Comey Thursday, defending President Trump against his testimony.
During Comey’s dramatic testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the RNC unleashed the kind of blistering attack on his professional credibility and personal integrity that is usually reserved for high-profile Democrats and liberal initiatives.
Similar to its role during a campaign, the RNC peppered reporters with counter-messaging and opposition research via email, all aimed at taking down a major figure in a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election that could implicate Trump.
“Today’s testimony proved what we have known all along: President Trump is not under investigation, there’s still no evidence of collusion, and he did not hinder the investigations in any way,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. “Nobody thinks more of James Comey than James Comey, and his testimony today was simply a last ditch attempt to save face with the American people.”
It’s unusual in the recent history of the Republican Party’s national campaign organization to defend a president or other top leader in personal feuds and against threats emanating from beyond the traditional political and legislative arenas.
Yet the RNC, which by practice is overseen by the president when he is a Republican —Trump appointed McDaniel, a loyalist) — has slowly shifted in the direction of functioning as an arm of Trump’s personal attack machine.
The RNC has recently targeted Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida who hosts MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and has been critical of Trump. Comey also has fallen in the RNC’s crosshairs in the month since Trump unceremoniously fired him.
The president’s decision and his handling of it, in particular, caused a media firestorm and political backlash from lawmakers of both parties. A steady stream of bombshell news stories has popped suggesting Trump acted improperly if not illegally.
The RNC has stepped into the breach to defend him, just as it has on typical political debates, ranging from the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, the effort to repeal Obamacare, and the decision to exit the Paris climate agreement.
“The RNC’s role is to develop and execute a rapid response effort (nationally and in the states) to either echo the issues and priorities of the White House or to defend the White House,” RNC spokesman Rick Gorka said in an email exchange with the Washington Examiner. “Our efforts this week are the latest example of what we do.”
During three hours of testimony on Capitol Hill, Comey took Trump head on.
He said that the president acted improperly in communicating with him directly rather than going through the Justice Department chain of command. Comey said Trump essentially ordered him to drop the FBI investigation into Mike Flynn, a confidant, and his former national security adviser, and he specifically accused the president of lying.
The RNC responded with a blitzkrieg of missives to undermine Comey’s credibility.
“Comey was against leaks before he was for them,” read one press release. “James Politi-Comey,” read another. “James ‘I don’t know’ Comey,” read yet another. “James Comey plays fast and loose with the truth,” said another. Those are just some examples of the RNC hits delivered during his testimony.
The attacks might not stick given that Comey backed up Trump’s claims that before he was fired he had assured the president that he was not under investigation and that he cast aspersions on Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, all of which Republicans are highlighting.
RNC veterans under President George W. Bush, the last GOP president, don’t recall the committee being used to fight personal political battles, and the move by the committee to become Trump’s scandal war room has unnerved some party insiders.
But one GOP insider who served at RNC during that period said it could simply be a case of Bush not engaging with adversaries the way Trump does, and therefore the national party was never called on to bolster the White House in the way it has with Trump. So the RNC’s aggressive defense of Trump on matters more personal in nature, though unusual, is consistent with the committee’s mission.
“What they asked for they typically got, because you’re an extension of the political arm of the White House, so not uncommon to do the White House’s bidding,” this insider said.
Don Fowler was chairman of the Democratic National Committee in the mid-1990s, during the first couple of years of the special counsel-run Whitewater investigation into President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton.
He said the DNC during that time, and later as the probe expanded to include Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, remained focused on typical party business, leaving what was a very robust Democratic counterattack machine to the president’s team inside the White House.
“We in the DNC — there was none of that in a vindictive, get back at them” action,” Fowler said, by telephone from South Carolina. Trump’s White House communications team has been overwhelmed, in part because of the president’s undisciplined tweeting habit, which could explain why the RNC has joined the fray.
