Congressional Republicans Are Gearing Up for Battle Over Expected Trump Indictment
And Ron DeSantis gets the classic Trump treatment.
Good afternoon and welcome to Press Pass, your twice-weekly look into Congress, campaigns, and the way Washington works.
The looming indictment of former President Donald J. Trump—the alleged crime in this case arising from the six-figure reimbursement he made to his former fixer Michael Cohen, who on his orders paid porn star Stormy Daniels—has sent Capitol Hill into a tailspin, and no one is even in town yet. The Senate arrives this evening, and the House gets back to business tomorrow. The grand jury is slated to reconvene Wednesday morning.
If you haven’t already, make sure to upgrade to Bulwark+ to get a full account of my conversations with lawmakers about all of this. Thursday’s edition will be exclusively for paying subscribers.
Congressional Republicans Lash Out Over Expected Trump Indictment
“We’re not talking about this in our conference,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju. “You’re just asking about it. So it only dominates your asking.” This could not be further from the truth.
McCarthy himself suggested in a tweet Sunday that Republicans could potentially strip federal funding from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other district attorneys’ offices in retaliation.
“Republicans stopped the radical DC crime law, and we will investigate any use of federal funds that are used to facilitate the perversion of justice by Soros-backed DA’s across the country,” McCarthy tweeted.
In addition, three Republican House committee chairmen on Monday signed a four-page letter promising to investigate Bragg’s potential prosecution of Trump. Reps. Jim Jordan (Judiciary), James Comer (Oversight), and Bryan Steil (House Administration) impugn Bragg’s case against Trump and demand that he testify to Congress about his actions and provide documents and communications related to the ongoing case.
Since no indictment has been announced yet, the letter is couched as speculation about details that aren’t official: “You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority,” the trio wrote. The letter also attacks the credibility of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen and accuses Bragg of neglecting other crimes in Manhattan.
Other congressional Republicans also lashed out at the possibility of a Trump indictment.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made an allusion to the January 6th conspiracy theory that Trump supporter Ray Epps was an FBI plant who encouraged violence on the day of the insurrection. (As the New York Times has established, Epps actually tried to calm his fellow protesters and prevent clashes with the police during that day’s events.) Greene also unveiled new campaign swag with the inscription “Enemy of the State” printed over upside-down American flags, and she questioned why George Soros is “allowed to maintain his [U.S.] citizenship” (More on Soros in a moment.)
Matt Gaetz said the expected indictment is an “absurd abuse of the criminal process in our politics.” After describing Bragg’s potential decision to prosecute as “a disgusting abuse of power,” Senator Rand Paul called for Bragg to be “put in jail”—the irony apparently lost on Paul. The list goes on.
It is worth remembering that a hush money–related Trump indictment would likely be only the beginning of the former president’s travails with criminal prosecution. There are several other potential criminal cases against Trump being developed—including one you likely haven’t heard much about, which Kim Wehle covered in The Bulwark this week. In the coming months, Congress—particularly House Republicans—will be in constant action to undermine, discredit, and disrupt these investigations and prosecutions.
Ron DeSantis Gets the Trump Treatment—and It’s Just Gonna Get Worse
Pretty much the only Republican politician not to dance around the fact that underlying this investigation is the story of Trump’s alleged hush money payments to a porn star was Ron DeSantis. In a press conference on Monday morning, DeSantis repeatedly noted that this was about keeping a porn star quiet. But he was also talking to the GOP base who had been waiting impatiently for him to weigh in on the matter, so he made sure to add a garnish for them by noting that Bragg is a “Soros-funded” district attorney.
Liberal megadonor George Soros has indeed poured money into DA races around the country in recent years, but the invocation of his name often serves a specific purpose for right-wingers looking to insinuate that some nefarious shadow campaign is afoot (and the accusations often have more than just a whiff of antisemitism to them).
The mini-news-cycle following DeSantis’s response had all the hallmarks of a classic Trump loyalty spat.
Last week, even before news broke of the potential indictment, Make America Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, accused DeSantis of skirting campaign laws and embarking on a “shadow presidential campaign” in a 15-page ethics complaint.
Then, when DeSantis didn’t leap to Trump’s defense, Trump World was livid. Some examples:
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller railed against the “radio silence” from DeSantis.
Donald Trump Jr. urged his dad’s supporters to “pay attention to which Republicans spoke out against this corrupt BS immediately and who sat on their hands and waited to see which way the wind was blowing.”
PizzaGate conspiracy theorist–turned–right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec told the New York Times he’s “taking receipts on everyone,” adding, “For DeSantis to make that post yesterday, talking about the Hurricane Ian response and nothing from the personal account whatsoever about the arrest—it was a message that was received.”
Fast-forward to Monday morning when DeSantis finally weighed in on the issue. He took calculated shots at Trump’s character (cheating on his wife with a porn star) and his desire to suppress the truth (paying said porn star $130,000 to stay quiet) while simultaneously offering a sop to the base by discrediting Bragg. Naturally, Trump loyalists were less than pleased.
Trump himself responded on Truth Social, where he posted a homophobic suggestion that DeSantis could himself be “unfairly and illegally attacked” with accusations of an affair with a man; he also insinuated that the governor may have had relationships with “underage” people while a teacher in Georgia, an unsubstantiated allegation Trump has pushed repeatedly.
We’ve all watched this scenario play out over and over during the past decade. Unless DeSantis is willing to simply give up on his prospective 2024 presidential bid, there is literally nothing he can do to stop these kinds of attacks from Trump and his MAGA supporters. And those attacks will almost surely only get worse.
DeSantis has real issues to deal with? Hmm, like crime and infla.....oh yeah, like book banning and cancelling the LGBTQ+ community.
One thing's for sure, Republican pols sure do know their base. They know they're angry, hateful, conspiratorial, and bigoted, which is why this "Soros-backed" charge reliably tickles their erogenous zones.
You know what you don't see? Dems constantly running ads against their "Koch-backed" Republican opponents. Because Democratic voters don't respond to it. Even if the Kochs were Jewish, it just wouldn't be a thing with Democrats.