Blame it on the “MAGA persecution complex” — the vast array of outlets in the right-wing media ecosystem that incentivizes GOP lawmakers to pander to conservative victimization and grievance. It’s feasting on so many claims of persecution that it’s essentially eating itself to death.

At last week’s hearing, Republicans alleged that the FBI investigated conservative parents at school board meetings. (That’s entirely baseless.) They insisted FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, a registered Republican, personally sicced the FBI on conservatives. (Wray called this “insane.”) They claimed the FBI has eagerly persecuted Trump. (The FBI has actually been rule-bound and cautious.) They railed that FBI plants incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. (The central evidence of this has collapsed.)

Republicans even insisted the FBI is riddled with anti-Catholic bias based on a field-level memo about radical right-wing Catholics that is indeed problematic. But Wray admitted to a serious error, declaring it subject to internal review. Presenting one example of abuse at a huge agency as proof of another vast conspiracy is silly.

The barrage of these allegations and others — the FBI is covering up President Biden’s bribery, it’s investigating would-be GOP informants, it’s colluding with social media giants to censor conservatives — is dizzying. Storylines eclipse each other before any can gel into something coherent.

“Good oversight may start with a theory, but it gathers facts before reaching conclusions,” Brendan Buck, a former senior House GOP leadership aide, told me. “These committees are starting with conclusions and then trying — and mostly failing — to find facts to support them.”