It's not clear what Republican Rep. Jim Jordan would be doing with his life if Donald Trump had never existed. Jordan's devoted his career to shouting very loud defenses of Trump every time Trump appears to have committed a serious act of corruption or straight-up crime, and because Trump is Trump this means Jordan has been screeching nonstop for six years and counting now. What would Jordan even do, in a universe in which Donald Trump didn't run for office? Would he still be trying to cover up the sexual assault of student athletes he coached back in Ohio? Would he have devoted his life to redeeming the deceased Dennis Hastert? Opened a Richard Nixon theme park?
In this universe, Jim Jordan seems to exist solely to declare that whatever crookery Donald Trump was last caught in is no big deal or was a scheme by Trump's ever-devious enemies. It is what gives him sustenance. And Donald Trump being indicted for crimes related to the ex-president's campaign-trail hush money payments to a porn star (a real phrase and a real news event, in this dismal universe) has been sending Jim Jordan into fits.
His latest proposal to solve this problem: Well now, maybe we're just going to cut off money to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies until they decide to stop all these investigations of Dear Leader.
Wow. Listening to Jim Jordan talk for 22 seconds just doesn't get any easier, does it.
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In any event, Jordan's problem is that while he has at least some power to sabotage investigations of Trump crimes conducted by the House of Representatives, he and other sedition-backing House Republicans have considerably less power when it comes to shielding Dear Ridiculous Leader from state-level crimes. Jordan is currently demanding Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg turn over the entire case files relating to Bragg's investigation, another transparent ploy to turn that evidence directly over to Trump himself, but if Bragg and other state prosecutors resist Jordan there's a limit to how much Jordan can meddle.
Jordan's only real threat, then, is to tie the criminal investigations of Dear Leader to the appropriations process in an act of brazen crookery. What's this, law enforcement has gotten their hands on evidence of criminal acts by Donald Trump that House Republicans were not able to fully cover up? Then those law enforcement agencies had better un-find that evidence real quick, says Jordan, or we'll start cutting their budgets to the point where they can't prosecute anybody.
Republicanism!
While there is at least a little bit of humor to be had in the most pro-sedition wing of Republicanism jumping to "defund the police" as their go-to answer for defending Golf Boy, Ruler of Them All, it's probably more important to sit and stew on just how nakedly crooked House Republicans have become. Jordan's demand that Bragg turn over every detail of his case to House Republicans was crooked from the moment he proposed it; now Jordan is linking funding for law enforcement agencies explicitly to the outcomes of investigations into the coup-attempting former president.
It's very very crooked! It's about as crooked as you can get! Jordan's getting Very Damn Close to what would already count as obstruction of justice, which yet again raises questions on just what big-boy crimes members of Congress are allowed to commit while in office and which ones they aren't. Does the Constitution allow Jim Jordan to threaten state prosecutors who investigate Jim Jordan's political allies? Does it not?
This whole timeline would appear to have stemmed from a constitutional scholar getting their hands on a dried monkey's paw and muttering "I want to be on television more often." Or maybe this was inevitable; once House Republicans decided that whatever Donald Trump last said was more important than the rule of law itself, it was inevitable that it would devolve into this.
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