In an effort to shield Donald Trump from prosecution, House Republican committee chairs say they are considering legislation to strip state and local prosecutors of the authority to prosecute former presidents, according to The Independent.
The unprecedented move comes in response to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s potential indictment of Trump, who is facing criminal charges over hush money payments he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016
In a letter to Mr. Bragg, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, and House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil rejected arguments the Manhattan prosecutor gave in response to the trio’s demand that he give evidence before their panels about the ongoing investigation into Trump, The Independent reported.
Bragg slammed the GOP demand for his testimony as “an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution” which only arose “after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged [Congress] to intervene”.
“Your letter treads into territory very clearly reserved to the states. It suggests that Congress’s investigation is being ‘conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to ‘punish’ those investigated,’ and is, therefore, ‘indefensible,’” the letter says.
Chairmen Jordan, Comer and Steil fired back, saying their inquiry is legitimate because “the potential criminal indictment of a former President of the United States by an elected local prosecutor of the opposing political party (and who will face the prospect of re-election) implicates substantial federal interests”.
They added that the Manhattan DA’s work falls under the jurisdiction of Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee because that panel has “a specific and manifestly important interest in preventing politically motivated prosecutions of current and former Presidents by elected state and local prosecutors, particularly those tried before elected state and local trial-level judges”.
“Therefore, the Committee on the Judiciary, as a part of its broad authority to develop criminal justice legislation, must now consider whether to draft legislation that would insulate current and former presidents from such improper state and local prosecutions,” they said.
“Because your impending indictment of a former President is an issue of first impression, the Committees require information from your office to inform our oversight,” they wrote.
The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, has condemned his GOP colleagues’ actions as “nonsensical interference” committed at the behest of Trump, who faces multiple criminal investigations into his conduct being overseen by Mr. Bragg, as well as Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, and a federal special counsel Jack Smith.
