Mother Jones

HOW THE GOP PULLED ME INTO ITS WAR ON THE FBI

Inside the conspiracy of dunces

IT WAS A GOOGLE ALERT that notified me I was part of the latest Republican conspiracy theory.

The message, in mid-January, pointed me to a column by Rep. Jim Jordan, a very conservative Republican from a very Republican district in Ohio, posted on the very conservative site Newsmax. Jordan, who was an assistant wrestling coach before entering politics, had drawn up a list of “18 top questions to be answered about Russia and the FBI.” I was Question No. 16.

In his introduction to this list, Jordan noted, “The American people deserve to know the extent of Russian interference into our free elections.” Yet for weeks, Jordan had been one of the leading Republicans decrying the investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal led by special counsel Robert Mueller. His 18 questions contained not

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