It is 2:17 pm ET and I have watched Robert Mueller testify for many hours before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees up to this moment. I now despair of any single Republican pulling the pin on the anti-Trump conspiracy. That is, no Republican has been willing to ask the basic, elemental Russia-gate question: Why should We, the People rely on a redacted, draft report by Crowdstrike, a DNC contractor with a spotty record, co-founded by a Mueller protege named Shawn Henry, for the sensational finding that Russia hacked the DNC? Such a finding has serious political and national security implications, as we all well and wearily know. Acording to Crowdstrike -- but not according to FBI investigators or any other government or independent investigators -- Russia "hacked" the DNC, and, the story goes, gave the "stolen" emails to Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, thus "interfering" with the 2016 election of Donald Trump.

I would argue this, more than any other, is the Edenic act in the whole "Russian collusion" narrative, and thus well deserving of oversight attention.

It wouldn't even take five minutes to ask: Why didn't the FBI investigate the DNC server? How is that not a stinking hole in the case against the Trump team mounted by government investigators? Why didn't the Special Counsel rectify this obvious breach of governmental responsiblity?

I have written repetitiously on this subject for at least two years, so I won't belabor it here. However, there are a chain of key questions that still cry out for answers. 

Why didn't the US government verify the DNC claim that a foreign power breached the DNC computer system?

Why didn't the Special Counsel interview former NSA tech director William Binney, whose team of intelligence professionals, VIPS, has assembled forensics evidence demonstrating that there was no such Russian "hack"? (Had there been such a hack, the NSA would possess all the relevant data -- none of which has been presented.)

Why didn't the Special Counsel interview the most important witness to this alleged assault on our presidential campaign by a foreign power, Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange? Why didn't the Special Counsel investigate the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC official whom Assange has strongly and publicly implied was a Wikileaks source? Investigative journalist Seymour Hersch said he learned the same thing but we can bet he wasn't interviewed either. Nor was former British ambassador Craig Murray, who has discussed meeting a Wikileaks source in Washington, DC.

Why haven't Republicans asked about any of these things so far?

This is one blog entry I'll be absolutely thrilled to amend if the news changes.