Opinion | Jim Jordan’s attack on Fani Willis won’t save Trump from facing a jury
Jordan’s game — using House investigations to protect Trump at all costs — is transparent. Yet if he really pursues this to a maximal extent, he will end up forcing many other Republicans to take difficult votes on future subpoenas — aligning them with Trump and putting their reelection at risk — without protecting Trump in any meaningful way.
It’s highly unlikely GOP leaders — despite their public bluster on Trump’s behalf — have any intention of letting things proceed that far. The whole project is almost surely a doomed charade at the outset.
To see why, consider this: In the spring, Jordan announced an investigation into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has indicted Trump over hush money payments to his mistress. Jordan demanded numerous internal communications from Bragg, who countered that he is legally constrained from divulging information involving ongoing criminal prosecutions.
Though Jordan secured initial cooperation from Bragg’s office that revealed little, his committee has not obtained any of the sensitive documents it demanded from Bragg, according to Daniel Rubin, a spokesperson for Judiciary Committee Democrats. What’s more, Rubin says, Jordan has still not issued a subpoena for them. (Jordan did get documents relating to federal funding of Bragg’s office, but those are less sensitive.)
All this illustrates the problem Jordan faces with Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Jordan is demanding internal communications between her and both the White House and special counsel Jack Smith, who has indicted Trump for charges related to his insurrection attempt and his harboring of classified documents.
To justify this, Jordan hints at nefarious coordination between Willis and Smith. But Erica Hashimoto, a professor at Georgetown Law, notes that federal and state prosecutors often confer on cases with violations of federal and state law. “It happens all the time,” Hashimoto told me.
It’s hard to imagine Willis will turn over any seriously sensitive information that compromises her case, which alleges a sweeping criminal conspiracy by Trump and numerous confederates to illegally corrupt the electoral process at many levels. Jordan may subpoena Willis, but she might well take that to court, says Hashimoto.
At that point the House might consider holding a full vote to enforce the subpoena. But vulnerable Republicans are already balking at voting for a symbolic measure expunging Trump’s impeachments. A vote aligning themselves with Trump and against law enforcement on a matter involving an ongoing criminal prosecution of him would be much worse.
“The more votes you take on this, the more you’re bonded as a marginal member to Trump,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told me. Swalwell thinks Republicans may opt not to do all it takes to get these documents, instead keeping everything in the realm of “innuendo and allegation.”
Besides, even if Republicans did get everything they want, it’s unlikely to reveal anything that would derail the prosecution of Trump in any case. Hashimoto told me: “There’s not much that Congress can do, because this is a state prosecution.”
To be sure, if Jordan can spread enough of a vague impression of wrongdoing related to the prosecutions, it might sow doubts in the minds of one juror on any given case. As Swalwell put it, the real goal of GOP efforts is to “tamper with the jury before they’re seated.”
For years now, a leading project of much of the GOP has been to treat Trump’s unprecedented corruption as beyond reproach and accountability in every conceivable way. That strong-arming of the Ukrainian president? It wasn’t extortion, just Trump setting foreign policy. That wide-ranging plot to corrupt the government in so many brazen ways to hijack a second term illegitimately? It was merely Trump exercising his legal options. That incitement of a mob to storm Congress? It was just a protest — or something akin to a tourist visit.
The idea that juries might eventually have their say on Trump’s misconduct is anathema to his GOP supporters. When Republicans claim President Biden secretly orchestrated these indictments, it’s a way of avoiding any acknowledgment that they were brought by grand juries made up of Trump’s fellow Americans.
Trump is of course entitled to the presumption of innocence, and he might be acquitted of some or even all the charges against him. But if that is to be, it will be a decision that jurors make. It’s something no amount of House GOP meddling can postpone forever.
“I don’t know of any mechanism for Congress to prevent Trump from having to face a jury,” Hashimoto told me. Even if that’s the one thing Trump seems to want to avoid above all.
