The “law and order party” is once again doing its best to thwart the efforts of the law and generate disorder. In a Saturday morning post on his failing Truth Social media platform, Donald Trump issued a claim that he would be “arrested on Tuesday” on charges related to the 2016 hush money case being investigated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
As part of an ALL CAPS message in which he screamed about George Soros and fairy tales, Trump put out the word for his supporters to gather around for another round of January 6-style “taking the nation back.” Since then, a member of Trump’s legal team has indicated they have no real reason to think that any arrest will be made on Tuesday. The Manhattan DA’s office has not confirmed any forthcoming indictment.
But in a 90-second rant put out on Friday, Trump claimed that “Republicans in Congress are watching closely,” and now barely speaker Kevin McCarthy is moving to see that this one statement, out of all the things Trump has said, is actually true.
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Exactly what McCarthy intends to do about this isn’t clear. This isn’t a federal investigation, it’s not under the control of the Department of Justice, and it won’t do much good to stand Merrick Garland up in front of a committee and yell at him.
Of course, McCarthy’s mention that he will investigate the use of “federal funds” immediately suggests that the he intends to withhold funds from New York City until he gets a promise that the leader of his party is above the law. Put it all together and:
The party of law and order and family values is threatening to blackmail a DA into dropping charges in a case that started with paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an extramarital affair.
Honestly, are their any remaining branches on the tawdry tree that haven’t been hit?
McCarthy is making these threats even though he has no idea what charge is being leveled or what evidence there is to support it. He’s making it before there has even been an indictment. The grand jury seated for this case has been hearing testimony from dozens of witnesses for weeks. (Though they didn’t hear from Trump, because he refused to appear.) It’s entirely possible, even likely, that the grand jury is aware of crimes that haven’t even been mentioned in previous public records.
That doesn’t matter to McCarthy. All that does matter is that Trump said hop. He hopped.
However, if McCarthy really does want to investigate the use of federal funds to subvert our democracy, there’s at least one place he could look. Find out who pays these guys: The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results
One of them is named Kevin McCarthy. He shouldn’t be too hard to find.
You know about the DSCC and DCCC, but have you heard of DASS? You'll want to! We're talking with Kim Rogers, the executive director of the not-especially-well-known but crucially important Democratic Association of Secretaries of State on this edition of The Downballot.
Rogers explains how her organization helps recruit candidates, deploy resources, and win races for secretary of state across the country—and why these elections operate so differently from many others. She also tells us about what Democratic secretaries are doing to fight disinformation and expand voting rights, and the most bonkers thing she heard come out of the mouth of a 2022 election denier.
