In March of 2023, Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan. His congressional allies immediately swung into action, demanding every detail of the ongoing investigation
“Your decision to pursue such a politically motivated prosecution — while adopting progressive criminal justice policies that allow career ‘criminals [to] run[ ] the streets of Manhattan’ — requires congressional scrutiny about how public safety funds appropriated by Congress are implemented by local law-enforcement agencies,” they huffed in a nastygram ordering Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to turn over every scrap of work product and grand jury information pertaining to Trump. (The internal quote is from the respected statisticians at the Daily Mail’s opinion page.)
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan did succeed in extracting information on federal funding for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and forcing Bragg’s former deputy Mark Pomerantz to testify. But Bragg told him to pound sand with respect to the demand for documents about the ongoing investigation, so the derp squad wandered off to look at Hunter Biden’s dick pics in between Newsmax hits.
Now it is August, and Donald Trump has been indicted again, this time by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Can you guess what happened next?
Well, of course you can:
On August 14, 2023, you brought a 41-count indictment against 19 defendants— including a former President of the United States and current declared candidate for that office, his attorneys, a former White House Chief of Staff, and a former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official—related to the 2020 election for President of the United States. Among other things, you have alleged that these 19 individuals, 30 unindicted co-conspirators, and others were part of a “criminal enterprise.” And you have identified a number of acts that you claim were committed in furtherance of this purported criminal enterprise, including: (1) the then-White House Chief of Staff asking a Member of Congress for the phone number of the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives; (2) the then-President tweeting that hearings in the Georgia legislature were being aired on a news channel and commenting on those hearings; and (3) numerous acts taking place in other states not involving the conduct of the 2020 election in Georgia or the counting of the votes cast in Georgia. Your indictment and prosecution implicate substantial federal interests, and the circumstances surrounding your actions raise serious concerns about whether they are politically motivated.
Third verse, same as the first. Jordan is back to harass a local prosecutor with the same bogus justification that Congress has a duty to oversee how federal funds are being spent, gesturing feebly toward the possibility that the committee will enact laws to make it illegal for former presidents to be prosecuted in local courts.
The letter is long on nefarious implications and short on facts. Trump’s pals are mad that the special purpose grand jury foreperson gave that bizarre media interview where she said it would have been cool to interview Donald Trump. They’re mad that DA Willis got disqualified from prosecuting Lt. Gov. Burt Jones because she gave a fundraiser for his political opponent. They’re mad that the investigation commenced in February of 2021, and no charges were brought until August of 2023. Blah blah blah.
They omit to mention that the special purpose grand jury didn’t interview Trump, that Trump tried and failed to disqualify Willis from prosecuting him because of purported bias, and that Trump’s allies caused substantial delay by refusing to come in and testify. There are also vagaries of Georgia’s criminal statute, which necessitated first a special purpose grand jury to investigate, then a regular grand jury to indict — both of which sat on schedules which appear to be dictated by the phases of Jupiter’s moons. (Seriously, Georgia, why are you like this?)
Back in March, DA Bragg came out swinging, reminding Jordan that it violates multiple Supreme Court rulings as well as the Tenth Amendment for Congress to intervene in state law enforcement activity. Five months later, after getting whacked on the nose by Bragg, Jordan seems to have trimmed his sails a bit. This go round, he’s not demanding internal prosecutorial information which he is unequivocally not entitled to get. Instead he’s harping on supposed cahootsing between the Justice Department and Willis, echoing Trump’s constant refrain that President Joe Biden is both senile and a criminal mastermind controlling all four pending cases against him.
“These bogus Indictments are done by one man, my Political Opponent (Crooked Joe Biden), who is telling everyone to Indict Trump, take him off the campaign trail, and let him spend his money on legal fees rather than ads saying that Biden is the WORST and MOST CORRUPT President in the history of the United States,” he rants.
Alluding to “questions about whether and how your office coordinated with DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith during the course of this investigation,” Jordan demands that Willis disclose any communications between her office and any executive branch entity, including the Justice Department and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office, regarding the case, as well as all federal funds flowing into the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.
Willis will refuse to disclose work product, but will admit that her office gets funding for gang prosecutions or some such, after which Jordan will spend a week on rightwing news outlets screaming about COVER UP and WITCH HUNT and SOFT ON CRIME. It’s all so very tired, and, quite frankly, no match for the way these four prosecutions will dominate every single news cycle for the next two years when and if the Republicans can’t make something stick to Joe Biden and his screw up son to take the heat off.
Even Jim Jordan knows he’s not going to get any traction with this bullshit. But … you tried, sweetie.
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