Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is well aware how much he owes his current position to former President Donald Trump. “I do want to especially thank President Trump,” McCarthy told reporters in January, after finally gaining enough votes to win the speaker’s gavel. “I don’t think anyone should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning.”
That indebtedness — or at least perceived indebtedness — helps explain McCarthy’s cowardly response on Saturday to the looming threat of indictment that Trump faces in New York City. A few hours after Trump claimed he would be arrested on Tuesday, McCarthy called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump’s alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.”
His tweet is clearly a political threat in the guise of apolitical concern-trolling.
McCarthy’s wading into an ongoing criminal investigation is bad enough. But the California Republican added a bit of extra spice to try to keep up the façade that he’s just doing his job as speaker. “I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions,” McCarthy wrote. Arguably not his best work as far as fig leaves go.
His tweet is clearly a political threat in the guise of apolitical concern-trolling. Luckily for Bragg, it also happens to be a pretty empty threat. Because McCarthy is misconstruing — willfully or ignorantly — how those “federal funds” he’s referred to are actually spent. “State and federal funding make up a small portion” of district attorney funding and consist “mostly of various grants that support crime victims’ programs, efforts to prevent intoxicated driving, gender-based violence work, opioid programming and justice…
Read the full article here
