House Republicans Want to Sink Jack Smith's Indictment—By Flooding the Zone With Sh-t | Vanity Fair
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene have threatened to put the special counsel before committee—and even defund the FBI. But the congressional math is hardly in their favor.
By Eric Lutz
June 14, 2023
As Donald Trump wades into increasingly treacherous legal waters, his GOP allies are looking to use their House majority to torpedo the probe he's been put under by special counsel Jack Smith , who handed down a 37-count indictment last week in the classified documents probe. From Speaker Kevin McCarthy on down, Republicans in the lower chamber intend to retaliate against those charges—which they, like the former president, claim are politically-motivated—and obstruct Smith's other inquiry into the January 6 insurrection.
"We're going to use all the tools available to us," Elise Stefanik , the number three House Republican, told CNN, "and we are going to continue asserting our constitutional responsibility for the American people when it comes to oversight."
The gambit—a renewed right-wing push to defund portions of the FBI and CIA—is unlikely to succeed legislatively. It's not clear that there is sufficient support for such an extreme move even in the House, and there certainly isn't in the Democratically-controlled Senate. Still, it could further poison the whole situation with political overtones—and, as the GOP has done time and time again, "flood the zone with shit," per the Steve Bannon playbook.
It's exactly what they did as Alvin Bragg 's charges hung over Trump earlier in the spring; House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan , who also oversees a panel on the so-called "weaponization of the federal government," accused the Manhattan DA of an "unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority" before he'd even filed charges, and helped lead a smear campaign against him after Trump's eventual indictment in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case. "Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election," McCarthy tweeted at the time, picking up Jordan's baton. "As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Trump."
Now, in the wake of Trump's arraignment in Miami on federal charges, the same crowd of sycophants is training their sights on Smith: "We're gonna have to assert ourselves to prevent the wholesale destruction of neutral and independent justice," Representative Dan Bishop , of the Freedom Caucus, told CNN. "This is the most amazing misuse of prosecutorial power I've ever seen."
Jordan is threatening to subpoena the special counsel to appear before his committee, which could give him and other Republicans an opportunity to yell at him on television for a few hours. And McCarthy, for his part, seems to have given that plan his blessing. "Why did [Smith] think President Trump should be treated differently than anybody else?" McCarthy said. "I think the American public deserves to know." But some Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene , are pushing for something even more radical: to use spending bills to defund the special counsel's office, or perhaps even federal law enforcement more broadly. "Appropriations is our tool to hold the weaponized government accountable," Greene told reporters after Matt Gaetz led a field hearing he said would "expose the TRUTH" about the January 6 Capitol attack Tuesday. "This is the most important battle we have."
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It's not clear they will; some in the House, like Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers , have already expressed skepticism. And many Senate Republicans—with the exception of those like JD Vance , who said he'd try to block Justice Department nominees in protest of Trump's federal indictment—seem to be distancing themselves and the former president's legal woes, at least for the sake of the party's political prospects. "These are serious charges," as Senator Shelley Moore Capito told Politico. "And as these things unfold, they tend to get bigger because there's additive information."
"I think it'll be difficult for him politically," Capito added.
House Republicans may not be able to make Trump's path any easier, from a legal perspective. But by tarring Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland as Joe Biden 's political operatives, they can help the former president muddy the waters and cast himself as a martyr, as he did in his defiant remarks after returning to Bedminster from his arraignment Tuesday evening. "I did everything right," Trump said in a speech peppered with lies and distortions, "and they indicted me."
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Hopefully Trump will pick one of them for a running mate.
The so called freedom caucus is anything but.
This lying POS is what I get for a representative.
Sorry! That really sucks...
Stefanik is a real waste of space.
What's worse is she didn't start out that badly, but then she did the full Trump dive
If Trump were actually innocent of the crimes for which he's been indicted, top level defense attorneys would be parachuting into Mar-a-Lago. The opportunity to defend a former president and win would be their MVP Award. Trump's attorneys really appear to be the dregs and even those keep quitting.
Trump changed the crime of mishandling classified docs from a misdemeanor to a felony to 'get' Hillary. Did none of his attorneys realize the ex post facto is specifically prohibited by the Constitution? Trump did something that could not be used against Hillary, but can, and likely will, be used against him.