Not Exactly Russian To Judgment

As Tim Mak at The Daily Beast reminds us, the Senate investigation into Trump's Russia ties simply doesn't exist, because there's nobody actually doing any investigation.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russia’s election interference is supposedly the best hope for getting the public credible answers about whether there was any coordination between the Kremlin and Trump Tower.

But there are serious reasons to doubt that it can accomplish this task, as currently configured.

More than three months after the committee announced that it had agreed on the scope of the investigation, the panel has not begun substantially investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, three individuals with ties to the committee told The Daily Beast.

The investigation does not have a single staffer dedicated to it full-time, and those staff members working on it part-time do not have significant investigative experience. The probe currently appears to be moving at a pace slower than prior Senate Intelligence Committee investigations, such as the CIA torture inquiry, which took years to accomplish.

No interviews have been conducted with key individuals suspected of being in the Trump-Russia orbit: not Michael Flynn, not Roger Stone, not Carter Page, not Paul Manafort, and not Jared Kushner, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s procedures.

“It’s either a real investigation or not,” said one individual with knowledge of the committee’s activities. “You have to have an approved investigative guide. You have to make it formal. Can you have a credible investigation with only seven part-time staffers, doing everything in secret?”

No full-time staff has been hired, no witnesses have been called or even interviewed, no actual investigation has even been started in three months, nothing has happened at all.  And since it's being run by the GOP, nothing will happen from it either.

So no, don't expect a Senate investigation to reveal the truth about the Trump regime being compromised by a foreign power any more than the House panel's work.  The fix is in and always has been.

And most of all, America simply does not give a damn enough to do a single thing about it.