Josh Hawley is mad about presidential election interference? That’s his whole career | Opinion

Josh Hawley never fails to show us who he is.

John Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed by then-President Donald Trump to investigate the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s Russia connections, concluded his inquiry this week after four years. Despite Trump’s promise Durham would uncover the “crime of the century,” the prosecutor came up with a whole lot of nothing, legally speaking: One guilty plea to a minor crime by a former FBI lawyer, and two prosecutions that ended in acquittals. That’s it.

The FBI had a “predisposition to open an investigation into Trump,” Durham wrote in his concluding report. But he recommended no new charges, nor even any “wholesale changes” to the agency’s policies.

Were there flaws in the investigation? Absolutely. Americans should demand both rigor and respect for the law from the nation’s top law enforcement agency. That’s particularly true where politically sensitive investigations are concerned. Even — especially — when Donald Trump is involved.

But a deep-state conspiracy? Nope. Durham’s investigation was kind of an embarrassment, really, yet another case of real-world facts falling far short of the Trumpian hype.

Hawley, the Republican Missouri senator, naturally ran straight to Fox News to proclaim victory.

What Durham really demonstrated, Hawley told host Jesse Watters on Monday, is that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee tried to use the FBI against Trump in order to swing the 2016 presidential election.

“That’s what this report shows,” the senator said. “That one political party, the Democrats, tried to use the FBI to rig a presidential election and just about got away with it.”

That’s conspiratorial nonsense, of course.

But one particular Hawley statement stood out for its breathtaking audacity.

“You can’t interfere in a presidential election,” he said, “without consequences.”

Josh Hawley said that.

Josh Hawley.

The same Josh Hawley who on Jan. 6, 2021, led Senate Republican efforts to block the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory, based on little more than Trump’s empty and baseless lies about the election.

The same Josh Hawley who that morning gave a raised-fist salute to the Trumpist crowds who would later that day violently attack the U.S. Capitol.

The same Josh Hawley who, long after the attack, is still selling coffee mugs and beer koozies emblazoned with the image of that same raised fist (in ongoing violation of U.S. copyright law).

The same Josh Hawley caught on video scurrying away from the insurrectionist attack.

That Josh Hawley.

If the fate of American democracy weren’t at stake, I might be amused at the senator’s brazen nerve, and maybe use a word like “chutzpah” to describe it.

Instead, let’s just be appalled at the utter gall.

Let’s take stock of Josh Hawley’s post-Jan. 6 career. He has published two books since the insurrection, including his tome “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs” out this week. He is a regular on Fox News programming, and regularly pens columns for other conservative outlets. His profile is higher than it’s ever been.

The man clearly has ambitions, and the insurrection — far from rendering them futile, or discrediting him once and for all — has somehow brought them to fulfillment. The man who went on TV this week and said “you can’t interfere in a presidential election without consequences” has spent the last few years offering America a master class in the art of interfering in a presidential election without consequences

Indeed, he’s made it look like a savvy career move.

Hawley wasn’t the only insurrection-friendly senator from this region, of course. Kansas’ Roger Marshall also cast a vote, one of his very first in the Senate, against certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory. That will forever define him, as it does Hawley, but — and this is the barest minimum of praise possible — at least he doesn’t continue to dine out on that particular public sin the way that Hawley still does.

Instead, Missouri’s senior senator struts upon the national stage crying out for accountability while facing none, proclaiming so-called “masculine” virtues while barely practicing them in his public service.

What a joke.