At the height of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon was running low on friends. When the U.S. House voted to begin impeachment hearings, for example, the vote was 410 to 4. One of the four was an Indiana Republican named Earl Landgrebe.

Months later, as the disgraced president prepared to leave the White House, Landgrebe delivered a line that helped define his political career. “Don’t confuse me with the facts,” the congressman saidthe day before Nixon’s resignation. “I’ve got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I’m going to stick with my president even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.”

Republicans today

In recent weeks, for example, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) has, more than once, echoed Kremlin propaganda and suggested Ukraine may have interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections. When a controversy ensued over his willingness to peddle false disinformation designed to advance Russian interests, the Louisiana Republican declared, “I believe what I believe.”

Kennedy didn’t literally say, “Don’t confuse me with the facts,” but it seemed like the subtext.

It’s against this backdrop that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz was on Capitol Hill yesterday, participating in a Senate hearing exploring his report on the investigation into the Russia scandal. Reading Dana Milbank’s report on the hearing, it seems several Republicans didn’t want to be confused with the facts, either.

“They were on a mission not to protect Trump but to … protect all of us smelly people from Donald Trump,” [Sen. Lindsey Graham] alleged. “That’s what this is about.” Never mind that the inspectors found no such evidence in more than 1 million documents and more than 100 interviews over 19 months. “Whether you believe it or not, I believe it!” Graham announced.

[Sen. Ted Cruz], too, wasn’t about to let the findings get in his way. “You did not find evidence of political bias. That is a judgment that you have and I disagree with that,” Cruz told the inspector general.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) topped them all, arguing that the failure to find political bias proved there was political bias. “Is not the lack of evidence that you’re talking about itself evidence of bias?” he asked Horowitz.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/45-years-later-republicans-borrow-page-earl-landgrebe

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.