Vestal: Let’s hope Idaho’s Sen. Jim Risch and other Republicans can stop playing for Team Trump

Talk about the audacity of hope.

Last week, as millions of Americans tuned in to hear former FBI chief Jim Comey testify, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch took the lead in the weakest defense of presidential misbehavior since Bill Clinton parsed what the “meaning of is is.”

On Tuesday, Risch again played point for Team Trump, lobbing big, fat softballs to make Attorney General Jeff Sessions look like a home-run hitter. But it was in the Comey hearing that Risch really stood out, with his semantic fancy-dancing.

Risch pressed home the idea that President Donald Trump wasn’t trying to give Comey an order when he told him, regarding the investigation into former National Security Council head Michael Flynn: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

In Risch’s formulation, this was, I guess, merely an expression of what Trump might hope for.

Innocent yearning. Simple desire.

“Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice, or for that matter any other criminal offense, where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?” Risch asked Comey, later adding, “You don’t know of anyone who’s ever been charged for hoping something. Is that a fair statement?”

This supposed distinction has been picked up and bounced around the echo chamber with admirable consistency. The president’s son went on TV to reiterate it. The head of the Republican National Committee said the comment was akin to a parent hoping a child did her homework. Everywhere you looked, in the mouth of every presidential excuser, Risch’s idea took shape: It’s not a crime to hope, and not a crime is good enough.

Here’s the thing, though. The answer to Risch’s question – whether anyone has ever been charged for a crime for saying they hoped for an outcome – is yes. The New York Times dug up three such cases, where people “hoped” their way into an obstruction-of-justice conviction.

A dirty cop in Dallas was convicted of obstructing justice, in part because he told a prostitute he’d been sleeping with that he hoped she wasn’t talking to the FBI. An appeals court upheld the conviction last year. “I[’m] just hoping you haven’t told anyone anything … Like, ya know, talking or anything like that,” he said, according to court records.

In another example from 2008, an Iowa bank robber was given a sentence “enhancement” for obstruction of justice for telling an alleged conspirator, “I hope and pray to God you did not say anything about a weapon when you were in Iowa. Because it will make it worse on me and you even if they promised not to prosecute you.”

Samuel Buell, a former Enron prosecutor and Duke law professor, told the Times, “We have examples all the time in criminal law of people saying things only slightly subtly, where everyone understands what is meant – ‘Nice pair of legs you got there; shame if something happened to them.’ ”

This kind of suggestive, but crystal clear, phrasing is such a familiar part of criminal lore that it’s a cliché. In Risch’s studiedly naïve framing, though, making someone “an offer he can’t refuse” would probably just mean making a very good offer.

Of course, whether the president obstructed justice or held hands with the Russians is an open question. Wide open. The importance of Risch’s line of questioning is not that it did, or did not, settle the matter. The importance is that it is a marker for how thin a limb Risch and company will climb onto in defending a disastrous presidency, how vigorously they will try to ignore the clouds of smoke engulfing them, and how low their public standards will sink.

In the annals of sycophancy, entire volumes will be devoted to the current majorities in Congress, scurrying around in secret to craft major bills while excusing anything and everything that emerges from the White House. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers showed up on MSNBC this week to offer another representative sample.

Asked about the Trump-Comey affair, she lasered in on the real problem: media brainwashing.

“You know, I think the media just continues their drum beat and really trying to brainwash America against some really good people rather than focusing on the job we’re doing to really meet the needs of the American people,” she said.

Presumably the president is one of these really good people, which tells you all you need to know. But it is McMorris Rodgers, Risch and the amen chorus in Congress who are behaving as if they’re brainwashed, sleepwalking through the ever-escalating absurdities.

Will they awaken and rediscover their moral compasses?

It’s not a crime to hope.