The Manhattan District Attorney’s office says the House GOP inquiry was motivated by Trump creating a false expectation of imminent arrest
Sensitivity of the House to the Correspondence Between the Ex-President and the Judicial Circuit Court During a Chaotic 2016 Presidential Campaign
The House January 6 committee voted to subpoena him because of his depraved attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and his neglect of duty as his mob invaded the US Capitol.
The constant communication between Trump and the committees has become a crucial method of shaping Republican priorities in the House. It also underscores the extraordinary sway an ex-president still holds over his party’s lawmakers and the deference many still afford him.
But the developments that could hurt Trump the most happened off stage. The legal thicket surrounding the ex- President is extraordinary and the distance is still left to run for efforts to account for his chaotic exit from power and presidency that constantly tested the rule of law.
While Trump has frequently defied gathering investigative storms, and ever since launching his presidential campaign in 2015 has repeatedly confounded predictions of his imminent demise, there’s a sense that he’s sliding into an ever-deeper legal hole.
The Supreme Court was not interested in getting sucked into Trump’s bid to derail the Justice Department investigation into classified material he kept at Mar-a-Lago.
The court denied his request because it could have delayed the case. No dissents were noted, including from conservative justices Trump elevated to the bench and whom he often seems to believe owe him a debt of loyalty.
The Times of Mar-A-Lago: How an Ex-President Could be Exposed as a Criminal During the January 6 Investigation
The ex- President appears to have his most clear cut and immediate threat of being exposed as a criminal in sight, as he is at the center of the conflict over the classified documents that began on January 6.
Television stations covered the committee hearing, but there was still more news about the investigation which could land the ex-president in even more legal trouble. Unlike the House’s version, the DOJ’s criminal probe has the power to draw up indictments.
A person wearing a hat is leaving a Washington, DC, courthouse. According to a person familiar with the situation, Short was compelled to testify for the second time. Another Trump adviser, former national security aide Kash Patel, was also seen walking into an area where the grand jury meets. Patel would not tell reporters what he was doing.
CNN’s Brown had reported late on Wednesday that a Trump employee had told the FBI about being directed by the ex-President to move boxes out of a basement storage room at his Florida club after Trump’s legal team received a subpoena for any classified documents. A staffer is shown in the FBI video moving the boxes.
In a new letter to Republican lawmakers who earlier this week had sought information about the probe, Leslie Dubeck, the general counsel for the district attorney’s office, told the GOP House committee leaders that they lacked a “legitimate basis for congressional inquiry” and she noted that their requests for information “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene.”
Still, David Schoen, who was Trump’s defense lawyer in his second impeachment, told CNN’s “New Day” that though the details of what happened at Mar-a-Lago raised troubling questions, they did not necessarily amount to a case of obstructing justice.
He said that if President Trump knew they didn’t have the right to keep the documents, he hid them or disobeyed the subpoena.
On Thursday morning, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court to block the Trump Organization from moving assets and continuing to perpetrate what she has alleged in a civil lawsuit is a decades-long fraud.
James is seeking a preliminary injunction against Trump, his three oldest children and his company because she believes they will engage in fraudulent conduct again if the injunction is not granted.
During its Monday meeting, the committee laid out the case for both the public and the Justice Department that there’s evidence to pursue criminal charges against Trump on multiple criminal statutes, including obstructing an official proceeding, defrauding the United States, making false statements and assisting or aiding an insurrection.
As Trump’s direct involvement in efforts to block the certification of the 2020 election becomes clearer, so too do the hurdles investigators may face if they try to build a case against the former president.
The Case of the Unselect Committee: The Case for Reply to the Ex-President’s Bounds on Capitol Hill Correspondence
The vehemence of the rhetoric that Trump uses to respond can often be gauged from when he came out fighting on Thursday.
The unanimous vote to subpoena the former president for documents and testimony was mocked by the first Trump spokesman.
“Pres Trump will not be intimidate(d) by their meritless rhetoric or un-American actions. Trump-endorsed candidates will sweep the Midterms, and America First leadership & solutions will be restored,” Budowich wrote on Twitter.
The former President stirred up a political reaction from his followers when he posted on his Truth Social network with a post that failed to answer the accusations against him.
Why didn’t the Unselect Committee summon me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the end of the meeting? Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST,’” Trump wrote.
Given the ex-President’s history of obstructing efforts to examine his tumultuous presidency, it would be a surprise if he does not fight the subpoena, although there might be part of him that would relish a primetime spot in a live hearing.
The subpoena could also give the bipartisan committee some cover from pro-Trump Republicans who claim that it is a politicized attempt to impugn Trump that has not allowed cross-examination of witnesses. If it wished to enforce a subpoena, the committee would have to seek a contempt of Congress referral to the Justice Department from the full House. It took such a step with Trump’s political guru, Steve Bannon, who was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress and soon faces a sentencing hearing.
If Trump doesn’t testify, any attempt to follow a similar path will take months and involve lengthy legal battles. The advanced state of its own January 6 investigation makes it unclear if the Justice Department would consider this a good investment. With the Republicans favored to take over the majority in the Congress, there is a good chance that the committee will be swept into history.
The vote to target the ex- President will be viewed by many observers as yet another theatrical flourish in a set of slickly produced hearings that often resembled a television courtroom drama given the slim chance of Trump complying with a congressional subpoena.
But the committee’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, said the investigation was no longer just about what happened on January 6, but about the future.
The Wyoming lawmaker who lost her primary to a Trump-backed challenger said that the former President should be ashamed of his conduct and that the foundation of the Republic was at stake.
The Select Committee on Investigations into the Insurrection: Summary of a High-Precision Report on the Mueller Investigation and the investigation of alleged misdemeanors
Lofgren told CNN on Monday that the committee would make the transcripts public on Wednesday.
One of the sources told CNN that Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Garland to oversee parts of the DOJ investigation into the insurrection, sent a letter requesting all of the information from the panel’s investigation.
A big week for the committee. The panel on Monday held its final public meeting, during which committee members voted to refer former President Donald Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges. The full final report is scheduled to be released on Wednesday.
The panel has also started to share transcripts of witness interviews pertaining to the false slates of electors and the pressure campaign by Trump and his allies on certain states to overturn the 2020 election results.
Garland, who will make the final decision on charging decisions, has said that the facts and the evidence support a prosecution will play a role in whether the department brings charges.
The committee has assembled evidence that a group of Trump legal advisers – and namely, ex-Wisconsin state Judge Jim Troupis and lawyer Kenneth Chesebro – were looking at Congress’s certification as they put the fake electors plan in motion.
According to CNN, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide, told the committee that she had been contacted by someone trying to influence her testimony.
“The Select Committee also has concerns regarding certain other witnesses, including those who still rely for their income or employment by organizations linked to President Trump, such as the America First Policy Institute,” the panel wrote in Monday’s summary.
“Certain witnesses and lawyers were unnecessarily combative, answered hundreds of questions with variants of ‘I do not recall’ in circumstances where that answer seemed unbelievable, appeared to testify from lawyer-written talking points rather than their own recollections, provided highly questionable rationalizations or otherwise resisted telling the truth,” the panel added.
The public can assess the issues by reading the transcripts and comparing the accounts of different witnesses and the conduct of counsel according to the summary.
The Committee on Investigating the 2016-2017 US Capitol Security Breaking Briefing and Response to the Ornato Bombshell Moment: A Final Report
The summary details that the panel was ultimately unable to get former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato to corroborate a bombshell moment during the public hearings, in which Hutchinson recalled Ornato describing Trump’s altercation with the head of his security detail when he was told he would not be taken to the Capitol following his speech on the Ellipse.
In terms of financing after the 2020 presidential election and through the January 6 rallies, the committee says it gathered evidence indicating that Trump “raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising efforts between the election and January 6th.”
Trump pushed alternate slate of electors, attempted to replace the acting AG with someone who would embrace election fraud claims, laid the groundwork early on to call for a recount, and pressed battleground state officials to overturn the election results.
The panel never went as far as Lofgren says it has that members of the Trump family and inner circle benefited from the false campaign promises made by the former president.
DOJ initially asked the panel for all of its transcripts back in May, but committee members, particularly Thompson, felt strongly the depositions were the property of the committee.
But interview transcripts released by the committee also reveal gaps that could stymy federal investigators, witnesses with faltering memories and testimony about Trump’s tech-avoidance.
Aides and advisers to the former president are also hoping the release of the panel’s transcripts will provide new information about the DOJ criminal investigation into January 6.
The committee’s final report and its corresponding transcripts will inform how Republicans, particularly in the House, will seek to make good on their promise of investigating Biden and his administration on a variety of fronts, which includes in part relitigating January 6, when they take control of the House next month.
Republicans have sought to undermine the work of the select committee, claiming that it did not address the security failures that led to the US Capitol breach. Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader, was subpoenaed by the committee, but he did not cooperate with the investigation. The four returning Congress members were referred to the ethics committee by the panel.
McCarthy wants to preserve the records and transcripts of the select committee, which will hold hearings on the Capitol security failures next year.
The February 6, 2020 riot: Special Counsel Jack Smith versus the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial and the outcome of the case against Donald Trump
The criminal investigation into the attempt to stop the peaceful transition of power enters a new phase as the special counsel adds two right-hand prosecutors to an experienced team that will ultimately decide if former President Donald Trump or his allies should be indicted.
He is adding two longtime associates who have specialized in public corruption cases, according to a person familiar with the matter: Raymond Hulser, the former chief of the DOJ’s public integrity section, and David Harbach, who conducted cases against former Sen. John Edwards and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Smith and his new team are in charge of the January 6 probe at a crucial time as the public has a better idea of the lengths the former president and his allies went to try and keep Trump in the Oval Office.
Setting up Smith’s office is going to take a long time despite Attorney General Garland assurances that it won’t slow down the probes. Smith’s team is still working to find a permanent physical office location but has begun changing over email addresses for staffers who had previously been using their usual Justice Department accounts.
Harbach was seen by CNN getting his bearings in the federal courthouse in DC on Thursday, speaking to another special counsel prosecutor about extremist group cases and briefly sitting in on an ongoing Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial.
Over 960 people have been arrested for their alleged participation in the January 6, 2021 riot according to the Justice Department. A rioter who was shot by a Capitol police officer, two people in the crowd who had heart attacks, and one who died of an overdose were some of the people who died in the attack. DOJ says 140 officers were injured that day and five officers died in the months after the riot – one of strokes and four by suicide.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/january-6-justice-department-jack-smith-trump-investigation/index.html
DoJ Special Counsel Michael Smith and the Mueller Investigative Investigation of the 2016 National Referendum Attack on the Detroit Electoral Commission: The Case of Mark Meadows
And where the House select committee hit brick walls in its probe – including with recalcitrant witnesses who claimed privileges, or, like Mark Meadows, bailed on cooperating with congressional investigators midway through – DOJ prosecutors now working under Smith will have certain tools to dismantle those barriers. They include ongoing legal proceedings about piercing the shield of confidentially that normally surrounds a president.
They also may consider a measure overhauling the authorities of special counsels and better delineating their relationships with other prosecuting entities, they said, arguing that the circumstances of the Trump investigation “stem, in part, from Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.”
Smith himself sent subpoenas to election officials in seven battleground states and received a trove of material. The email that the Michigan secretary of state sent was about two voicemails the county received in December from people trying to get access to voting equipment. The clerk said that someone claimed to be on Trump’s legal team.
In the days before the attack on the Capitol, a rally leader wrote that there should be something intimate at the ellipse and that everyone march to the capitol.
Donald Trump Jr. told congressional investigators that his father does not use email or text messaging. As for other messaging apps, “I’m not sure he’d even know what they were,” Trump Jr. said.
Trump’s style of making ambiguous asks rather than direct demands was also on display as he pressed state officials to upend the election results. Mike Shirkey, the former Senate Majority Leader of Michigan, said he remembers that he never made a specific ask. “It was always just general topics.”
“It was pretty obvious that the ex-president was the center of this conspiracy, but he was certainly assisted by many others, including … Mark Meadows and the like,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who served on the committee.
The evidence collected by the committee showed that a lot of the state-based operatives were in the dark about what happened in the election. In case of a legal challenge that would change the outcome of their state, several of them testified that they believed alternate electors were being assembled as a contingency plan.
Meanwhile, top Trump campaign officials distanced themselves from the effort after the last prominent election challenge – a far-fetched petition at the Supreme Court – petered out on December 11, 2020.
Jack Smith, Mark Meadows, and the House Judiciary Committee on Investigative Investigations During Trump’s Decay to Reverse the Election
A New York University school of Law professor and former Department of Defense general counsel said that it would be easier for the DOJ to prove their case if they continued to work on the scheme.
A memo outlining the plan on December 9 suggests those advisers saw the alternate electors crucial not only in the event of a court ruling that reversed Trump’s electoral loss, but if a “state legislature” or “Congress” deemed the Trump electors as the valid ones.
The committee referred Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution and named many of his associates as potential co-conspirators in its final report. One of them was former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
In the committee’s investigative probe, there is evidence that shows his involvement in every effort to overturn the election. The most enlightening evidence came from Meadows, who turned over thousands of text messages to the committee before he ceased his cooperation with the investigation.
The texts show that beginning on Election Day, Meadows was connecting activists pushing conspiracy theories and strategizing with GOP lawmakers and rally organizers preparing for January 6. Two days after the election, Trump Jr. was texting Meadows with ideas for keeping his father in power that he thought were “the most sophisticated” and “sounded plausible.”
According to testimony given to the committee by a former White House aide, both Meadows and Giuliani had been involved in conversations about putting forward fake slates of electors.
According to the transcripts, Hutchinson testified that in December 2020 and January 2021 Meadows would burn documents in his fireplace about once or twice a week.
After producing the texts to congressional investigators, Meadows changed gears and did not show up for subpoenaed testimony before the House. A lawsuit he filed challenging the subpoena was unsuccessful, but the Justice Department opted not to bring criminal charges for his lack of cooperation.
The committee pointed out in their report that the criminal prosecutors may have access to materials that the lawmakers didn’t have.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/january-6-justice-department-jack-smith-trump-investigation/index.html
Observational Tests of the Prosecutional Authority of the Grand Unified Theory of Crime: The Case of Donald D. Bragg
The Parlatore said that Trump and his team were not looking to overturn the will of the people, only to ensure that the will of the people was accurately counted.
But Bragg’s spokesperson insisted: “We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law.” The spokeperson stated that Bragg ignored violent crime in New York in order to prosecute Trump in order to fulfill a political vendetta.
After Trump said he was going to arrest them two days later, the chair of the House Administration Committee, James Jordan, sent a letter to Bragg calling for him to sit down for a transcribed interview.
The three chairmen called a possible indictment “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” and said it was based on “a novel legal theory untested anywhere in the country and one that federal authorities declined to pursue.”
They added that if Bragg does indict Trump, Bragg’s actions “will erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the course of the 2024 presidential election.”
They said they expect him to appear as soon possible before Congress but did not set a date for a hearing. They gave Bragg a deadline of Thursday to respond to them to set up a possible appearance.
Trump claimed over the weekend in a post on social media that he would be arrested on Tuesday and urged his supporters to protest. There is no official announcement of a criminal indictment.
Reply to Lambda’ by the Ex-President at the House of Representatives in Florida” by Kevin McCarthy
The former president is dominating the discussion at the annual retreat of House Republicans in Florida where he is running for the GOP nomination in 2041.
“It’s a political play,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose job may depend on Trump’s continued political patronage, said on Monday, insisting that it was perfectly acceptable for the ex-president’s allies to publicly lambast a prosecutor as he conducts his work. The Californian Republican said that House committees have the right to ask questions.
McCarthy said that one of the reasons they won New York races was because the district attorney was not protecting the people of New York. “And the statute of limitations are gone.” He added about an indictment: “This will not hold up in court, if this is what he wants to do.”
McCarthy said to reporters, “I don’t think people should protest, no.” McCarthy did break with the former president on his calls for protests around an indictment. He said that they want calm out there. Nobody hurt, violence or harm to anything else.”
Donald Trump continues to wield enormous power on Capitol Hill, as House Republicans seek to curry favor with the former president by pursuing his fixations through their investigations, and frequently updating them on their progress.
Bragg’s probe, his charges against the ex-president, and the conduct of his personal and political ends: How much will we learn when we’re here?
At a bilingual press conference with Hispanic Republicans Monday morning, the first question was about Bragg’s probe. “It certainly smells like it’s political,” said Gimenez, a Republican lawmaker from Florida.
The former president taught the Republicans to use government power to try to keep his legal threats at bay.
Bragg had not denied that his office is being pressured by left-wing activists and former prosecutors, as claimed in the letter from the chairmen.
Trump’s calls for protests, meanwhile, have authorities on edge in New York, where security cameras and barricades have been erected, and in Washington amid painful flashbacks to his incitement of violence to further his personal and political ends on January 6, 2021.
On Monday, for instance, there was intense scrutiny around a courthouse in New York where one witness delivered testimony that might have been potentially helpful to Trump. There was a fight between Trump and Ron DeSantis in the race for the GOP nomination. The Florida governor took a jab at his one-time mentor by suggesting he didn’t know anything about “paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” while also condemning what he said were political prosecutions. Trump responded with a vicious counter-attack full of unsubstantiated innuendo about his rival’s private life, which previewed a potentially nasty GOP primary campaign and hinted at the ex-president’s fury over what he sees as disloyalty from DeSantis.
Hanging over everything is the mind-bending possibility that, for the first time ever, a former president could be indicted. And because he’s running for the White House again, any indictment almost certainly means yet another US election will be tarnished by his claims of plots against him and his followers.
One of the key principles that could be at play in any indictment is the idea that everyone, even a former president, is equal under the law. They would need to refute the idea that Trump was being targeted simply because of who he is. McCarthy tried to move the debate over the case onto this side of the story in an exchange with CNN.
“I do get concerned when I look out there, and I see justice not being equal to others, especially in the history of where we are,” he said. “And the tough part is with a local DA playing in presidential politics, if that starts right there, don’t you think it’ll happen across the country?”
Investigating a New Yorker’s case of election stealing by Trump and the Republicans’ role in the story of the Daniels affair
But the use of government power to advance political ends appears to mirror exactly the behavior Republicans, in their new subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, are accusing the FBI, the Justice Department and other government agencies of.
Another potential question about the credibility of a possible prosecution is the extent to which it would rely on Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who was a central player in the Daniels matter but has a long record of falsehoods.
CNN reported on Monday that prosecutors in Atlanta are looking into the issue of election stealing by Trump, based on a source who knows the investigation.
The GOP’s assault on trying to hold Trump accountable was reminiscent of the broken rules and broken conventions that surrounded Trump when he was in office.
What has changed in the New York case? CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero told Wolf Blitzer on the “Situation Room” on Monday. “The facts of this case, going on almost seven years now, are really stale. I have a question about New York, what has changed more recently in the past year or so that has gotten it to this point?
This is a complicated legal narrative that might convince a jury but could also be a tricky sell in the wider fight for public opinion in such a highly political case.
Cohen said that he paid $130,000 to Daniels to keep her from going public with her story about an alleged affair with the former president. Trump has denied the affair.
The idea that a case would only be made on Cohen’s word is not likely. The rest of the country does not know much about this grave matter.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/politics/republicans-trump-playbook/index.html
Reply to the ‘Circumstantial and Unstable Actions’ of the Manhattan District Attorney, Bragg and New York’s Attorney
That is not, however, quelling the storm that has accompanied Trump’s return to political center stage, which could reach hurricane strength in the days ahead.
The proper forum for such a challenge is the Courts of New York, which are ready to consider and review such objections.
She requested that the committees meet and talk to Bragg’s office to see if the House has a legitimate legislative purpose for what it is seeking and whether those records can be turned over without affecting New York’s interests.
The request came after Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina sent a letter to Jordan last month asking him to investigate Bragg’s “egregious abuse of power,” The New York Times first reported and CNN confirmed.
The judicial committee is the one taking the lead on this, when asked about the Manhattan District Attorney office’s response to Congress.
Dubeck’s response consisted of testimony from Bragg and documents related to the investigation, which the Republicans requested as a result of an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.
She argued that Congress is not an executive branch entity with law enforcement powers due to the 10th amendment.
She claimed that the House Republicans were looking for confidential information regarding a pending criminal investigation and as a result, they would interfere with law enforcement.
The Republicans claim that they need testimony from Bragg as part of a congressional review of federal public safety funds.
The letter doesn’t propose any way in which the District Attorney’s testimony about his prosecutorial decisions or the documents and communications of former assistant district attorneys on a pending criminal investigation would illuminate that review.
She said that they would submit a letter to Congress describing how the office has used federal funds.
The letter from the chairmen of the Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees to the Manhattan District Attorney pushes back on his case against appearing for a transcribed interview with their panels and argue that they should consider taking legislative action to protect former and current issues.
They argued that the potential criminal indictment of a former president and 2024 presidential candidate “implicates substantial federal interests, particularly in a jurisdiction where trial-level judges also are popularly elected.”
Going further than they have before — Jordan, Comer and Steil wrote that they may choose to consider three areas of legislation, including broadening “the preemption provision in the Federal Election Campaign Act,” adding that such a measure could “have the effect of better delineating the prosecutorial authorities of federal and local officials in this area and blocking the selective or politicized enforcement by state and local prosecutors of campaign finance restrictions pertaining to federal elections.”
They may consider tying federal funds to improved metrics for public safety funds, which would be in response to allegations that the Manhattan District Attorney is using public safety funds for his investigation into Trump.
Keeping the Hill Up: Communication with the House Judiciary Committee on House Appropriations and the Report from Speaker Jack Epshteyn
CNN reports that when Trump is not communicating with House Republicans himself, he uses a few top advisers, including those on his payroll and former aides who are still loyal to him.
The House GOP Conference Chair has become a key point person for the president on Hill investigations. The New York Republican talks to Trump roughly once a week, and tends to keep him updated on the work of the House committees, three sources tell CNN. Trump often calls her as well, the sources said.
He is kept up on all the things we are doing. At all times, he seems very plugged in. Sometimes I’m shocked at how he knows all these things. I was wondering how you know all this stuff.
Multiple sources tell CNN that Trump and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan speak regularly but declined to divulge whether those conversations included Jordan’s investigative efforts.
“Conversations among concerned parties about issues facing the country are not news and regular order in Congress,” Jordan’s spokesperson Russell Dye said in a statement to CNN.
“I haven’t talked to Trump since he was President” Comer told CNN. “Now, I talk to former people that used to work for Trump every now and then. But not about Trump.”
A source who is close to Comer said he talks to outside groups about the Oversight Committee.
Four people with knowledge of the talks tell CNN that Boris has been the center of communications and that he is coordinating the former president’s legal team.
Epshteyn frequently interacts with committee staff, counsel to the chairmen, members of the committee and aides to House leadership, sources said. Epshteyn’s role in the discussions range from being briefed on their work to the pace of the investigations.
Jack isn’t involved with communications with the committees, but he is often the go-to for advice on how to help the Hill and the Trump team.
The weaponization subpanel has heard from outside groups a fair amount about ideas, according to GOP Rep. Dan Bishop.
The Heritage Foundation president said in a statement to CNN that the very fabric of our society was at stake and that conservatives had high expectations for the committees to begin de- weaponizing the federal government.
“We can’t have two years of hearings and then a report,” President of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton told CNN, referring to the pressure his group has placed on Congress to act immediately on the abuses of power that he sees happening, including “censoring Americans and trying to jail those who are perceived as political opponents.”
Fitton said that House Republicans update the public on a constant basis and that if they don’t seem to be going in the right direction, there will be some backlash.
A number of other Trump-affiliated groups have urged GOP-led committees to move more aggressively against Biden. The Center for Renewing America is run by Russ Vought, Trump’s former budget director, and the Conservative Partnership Institute is run by Jim DeMint, a former GOP senator.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/28/politics/trump-gop-investigations-backchannel/index.html
Grassley & the Article III Project: Inside the Jordan-Radical Committee on State-Dependent Investigative Scales
Staffers close to Jordan are in regular communication with outside groups, and to assuage the tensions that have arisen at times, they have explained that investigations take time to build, according to multiple sources familiar with the communications.
“I’ve been raising holy hell because this weaponization committee has been structured to fail from Day One,” said Mike Davis, a former top aide to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and founder of the Article III Project, which advocates for “constitutionalist judges.”
Davis added that he has spoken at length with many of the outside groups about their concerns – though he has recently praised Jordan for calling on Bragg to testify, calling it “a step in the right direction” and even tweeted a number of times in support of Jordan.