Ever since Congressman Goodlatte and his fellow Republicans in Congress approved a massive tax cut that overwhelmingly helps corporations and the very rich, he has tried to tout the supposed benefits to ordinary working people by highlighting one-time bonuses (not actual wage increases) that some employers have provided.

But inconveniently for Goodlatte and other Congressional Republicans, their GOP colleague, Senator Marco Rubio, gave the game away in an interview with The Economist magazine.

“There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” [Rubio] says. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

Oops.

Despite the best efforts of Congressman Goodlatte and other House Republican leaders to suggest otherwise, the release of former FBI director James Comey’s memos of his conversations with President Trump does not come close to exonerating the president of obstructing justice or other misdeeds.

House Judiciary Committee chair Goodlatte, along with House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes and House Oversight Committee chair Trey Gowdy had pressed for the release of the memos in an effort to discredit Comey and support Trump. The memos, however, do neither. According to a joint statement from the three congressmen:

Former Director Comey’s memos show the President made clear he wanted allegations of collusion, coordination, and conspiracy between his campaign and Russia fully investigated. The memos also made clear the ‘cloud’ President Trump wanted lifted was not the Russian interference in the 2016 election cloud, rather it was the salacious, unsubstantiated allegations related to personal conduct leveled in the dossier.

The memos also show former Director Comey never wrote that he felt obstructed or threatened. While former Director Comey went to great lengths to set dining room scenes, discuss height requirements, describe the multiple times he felt complimented, and myriad other extraneous facts, he never once mentioned the most relevant fact of all, which was whether he felt obstructed in his investigation.

But as Greg Sargent writes at The Washington Post:

Comey’s failure to spell out explicitly that he “felt obstructed” has no bearing on the question of whether Trump actually did obstruct justice. “Comey’s feelings about this are not relevant,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told me this morning. “What matters, politically at least as much as legally, is Trump’s intent in doing what he did.”

For another, the obstruction question also turns on what happened after all of this, which is that Trump fired Comey. These memos, if anything, confirm more credibly than before what Trump’s frame of mind was in leading up to that firing — that is, the level of acquiescence that Trump wanted but did not get from Comey before firing him. These memos go further than before in supplying Trump’s likely motive for the firing.

Importantly, the Republican response shows not a scintilla of concern about the Trump conduct that was actually documented by Comey — zero concern about Trump’s demand for his FBI director’s loyalty or his effort to influence the probe. We don’t know what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will determine about Trump’s intent or about whether he obstructed justice. But what we do know is that these senior Republicans are not even slightly troubled by the misconduct that Comey has already documented, quite credibly.

And according to a Post editorial:

For his part, the president has said that Mr. Comey is a liar but also that Mr. Comey’s memos exonerate him. The claim is as credible as it is logical.

So the question arises: What were Goodlatte, Nunes and Gowdy trying to prove? Whatever it was, it appears they failed embarrassingly.

While doing his best to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign and administration, Congressman Goodlatte acknowledged in February that it should proceed.

But like most other Congressional Republicans, Goodlatte has shown no interest in passing legislation to protect Mueller from being fired by a clearly angry President Trump.

So we shouldn’t expect a response to a letter from three Democratic members of the Goodlatte-chaired House Judiciary Committee.

In a letter to Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) obtained by POLITICO, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the panel, joined Reps. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), in calling for urgent action on a pair of bills to protect Mueller against a unilateral ouster.

“[W]e have grown increasingly concerned that the President may either order the firing of Special Counsel Mueller, or take other action to disrupt his and other pending investigations, such as firing Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions or Deputy Attorney General [Rod] Rosenstein,” the Democrats wrote.

The bills, filed months ago, have drawn widespread support among Democrats but have gotten no traction among House Republicans, who have argued that Trump is unlikely to fire Mueller and therefore no action is necessary.

Of course Trump is “unlikely” to fire Mueller until he decides otherwise. Why wouldn’t Goodlatte want to pass a law to protect the special counsel– just in case? And what will he do if Trump concludes it’s time for Mueller to go?