The Washington Post's Jackie Alemany on the Capitol Hill beat is at least dispensing with the pretense and is rightfully calling out the GOP efforts to derail the prosecutors trying to bring Trump to justice as the darkness that democracy is dying in.
Investigate the investigator.
That has been the operating thesis of the GOP’s playbook to counter the myriad criminal investigations into Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Interrogating investigators’ methods and scruples is a strategy that has been utilized by both parties during tumultuous moments, and is a well-worn tool for lawmakers seeking to appease constituents hungry for the appearance of oversight on polarizing issues.
The strategy has been effective in shaping public opinion of the investigations after years of sustained broadsides against the judicial system by Trump and his top allies. A Washington Post-FiveThirtyEight-Ipsos poll last month showed 75 percent of potential Republican primary voters said charges against the former president across various investigations were politically motivated.
But in the wake of 91 criminal charges against Trump, the party’s blitz of attacks on prosecutors threatens to degrade an important precedent that protects prosecutorial independence and the ability to fairly root out wrongdoing without partisan influence or gain, according to legal experts.
“Big picture, this does seem incredibly troubling,” said Caren Morrison, a former federal prosecutor who is an associate professor at Georgia State University College of Law. “For years I’ve told my students that one principle we can always rely on is the principle of prosecutorial discretion — it is unassailable and that is the essence of their power: They can choose which cases to pursue and which cases not to pursue. … We are kind of at a point where nobody agrees on what the rules are.”
So far, congressional investigations have been launched against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, special counsel Jack Smith, and most recently, Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis — all of whom have charged Trump with crimes. And state lawmakers have begun discussions to remove Willis from her seat through a disciplinary commission in Georgia — one of several states that have recently adopted laws aimed at reining in the power of locally elected prosecutors.
Republican House committee chairmen initiated an investigation into Bragg earlier this year seeking communications, documents and testimony related to his investigation of a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump was indicted in the case by a Manhattan grand jury for allegedly falsifying business records in New York.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio), one of the three GOP chairmen who targeted Bragg, announced an investigation into Willis after an Atlanta-area grand jury indicted Trump and 18 of his associates on charges related to attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Jordan requested information regarding any federal funding the office receives, along with any correspondence between Willis’s office and the Justice Department. Republican lawmakers have also gone after David Weiss, the newly appointed special counsel tasked with prosecuting President Biden’s son Hunter after his plea deal collapsed in July. Weiss filed court papers on Wednesday saying he intends to seek an indictment against Hunter Biden by the end of this month.
Jordan and others have drawn sharp criticism from Democrats for what they view as attempts to undermine active and ongoing criminal investigations. In a nine-page letter to Jordan sent on Thursday, Willis blasted the chairman for what she called an unconstitutional attempt “to interfere with a state criminal matter” and transgression of the separation of powers. She also warned Jordan that if House Republicans followed through on threats to deny federal funding to Willis’s office, that “such vengeful, uncalled-for legislative action would impose serious harm on the citizens we serve, including the fact that it will make them less safe.”
Few officials have voluntarily cooperated with the investigations so far, but House Republicans scored a win in the courts after a federal judge declined to block a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee. That ruling forced a former prosecutor who investigated Trump in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Mark Pomerantz, to appear before the committee for a deposition.
“It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection,” U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil wrote in her opinion. She added that Jordan had identified other valid legislative purposes in deposing Pomerantz, including scrutinizing the use of federal funds in the investigation. The judge also questioned how Bragg could claim that information that had already been published in a tell-all about the investigation into Trump written by Pomerantz could be considered privileged information. Jordan’s office declined a request for comment.
It remains to be seen whether House Republicans will ultimately issue subpoenas to any of the current prosecutors overseeing investigations into Trump, but legal experts and former U.S. government officials say the action would mark a significant escalation that would cross the line separating politics and the criminal justice system.
“Whomever is the accused deserves an adjudication which is, as much as possible, the application of law to facts, and you do everything you can to shield that inquiry from the rough-and-tumble of constituent politics,” said Robert Raben, the former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs under President Bill Clinton. “There are important lines of division that should not be penetrated — and we can squabble about where those lines are — but hauling up an investigator while something is pending to influence something to which you are not a party is inappropriate,” he added.
Amazingly enough, the Post's Alemany seems to agree that the GOP is wildly overstepping its bounds and that the next step in the war will be subpoenas of those directing ongoing investigations and prosecutions of Dnald Trump by House Republicans.
But of course we've gotten to this point precisely because Republicans don't care about destroying the norms of democracy, and they will continue to ignore these norms until they have to pay a price that they can no longer afford.
America, it seems, has little to no appetite for that.
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