Asha Rangappa, a former special F.B.I. agent who is now a dean at Yale’s law school fears that ham fisted attempts by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, which also now include Devin Nunes erstwhile replacement Trey Gowdy’s, issuing of subpoenas to the FBI and Justice regarding the Steele dossier, will harm National Security by aiding Russia’s continuing efforts to hide their participation in efforts to facilitate drumpf's election...
“If you really have people who are seeking to undermine the F.B.I’.s investigation, even if they’re doing it for their own political reasons, it will help the Russians,” says Asha Rangappa, a former special F.B.I. agent who is now a dean at Yale’s law school. “There might be parts of the dossier that the F.B.I. has corroborated independently, and if you have a leaky committee, the Russians can try to cover their tracks and fabricate things to say, ‘Hey, that’s not true.’ They are not above that.”
Yet Rangappa’s greater concern is long-term, and about national security. “There’s a misconception that this is something that happened and it’s done,” she says. “The Russian active measures are ongoing. Particular objectives may have been achieved, but to the extent they’ve had successes or recruited new sources, they’re going to use them for other purposes. You saw the story about the Russians trying to hack power plants, right? In a counterintelligence investigation like this, the adversary continues to operate. So you don’t want them to know what you know, because they’ll change tactics and dry up your sources.”
Given the nature of drumpf, who has shown himself capable of throwing Congressional allies a boat anchor by negotiating with the Democratic leadership to the detriment of their cherished agenda and electoral prospects, Republicans should really begin asking themselves how far they are willing to go to cover up for him.
If they are extremely lucky, some of them will still be in place after the wreckage of Hurricane Donald has passed and they are left trying to pick up the pieces of their windblown relationships with independent voters, the FBI and the Intelligence Community.
Continued efforts to save drumpf’s worthless ass will redound negatively to them if those efforts prove valuable to Russia’s continued efforts to sow discord in the American political process.