With a potential indictment of former President Donald Trump looming, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pledged over the weekend that House Republicans would “immediately investigate” the situation. True to his word, on Monday three GOP committee chairs sent a letter to New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg accusing him of “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.”
The letter from Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Bryan Steil of Wisconsin and James Comer of Kentucky — the heads of the Judiciary, House Administration and Oversight committees, respectively — calls upon Bragg to provide documents and testimony about his investigation into Trump. A close read of the letter shows how flimsy the rationale for the GOP’s latest round of “investigate the investigator” really is.
A close read of the letter shows how flimsy the rationale for the GOP’s latest round of ‘investigate the investigator’ really is.
First, let’s acknowledge that, based on what little we’ve been able to glean so far, any indictment this New York City grand jury hands up is likely to be a weird one. Even legal experts who’ve often criticized Trump have doubts about the wisdom of Bragg’s pursuing this case. The panel has reportedly been hearing evidence related to a 2016 payment Trump authorized to be made to adult film star Stormy Daniels just ahead of the presidential election to keep her from publicizing what she said was an affair she had with Trump. (Trump has denied there was an affair.)
The payment itself wasn’t a crime, but if the Trump Organization cooked the books to conceal it, that most certainly would be. MSNBC columnist Jessica Levinson brilliantly laid out why such a charge may be a tricky one to prove under New York state law. The House GOP chairs, on the other hand, base their argument in large part on the analysis of George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who, following the same steps Levinson does, concludes in an op-ed in The…
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