When historians sit down to write the record of our time, our bet is that whatever wrongs were committed by President Trump will be rivaled by the constitutional outrages perpetrated by the January 6 committee. This mission creep represents a tragedy for the Congress and for the people it represents. Concerns proliferate with every press release and leak that the committee intends to not only review the past, but commandeer the future.  

That is what we take from reports that the committee is now fermenting on the idea of abolishing the Electoral College. That “reform” has been a leftist dream for decades. It’s now being spearheaded by Congressman Jamie Raskin, though the Electoral College is not some jerry-rigged newcomer. It is grounded in the Constitution, and would require an amendment to be scrapped. Mr. Raskin’s goal is best read as partisan advantage.

One tell that Democrats seek to permanently alter the electoral playing field rather than merely address the wounds of 2020 is their hostility towards bipartisan efforts to amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to tighten the vulnerable underbelly of vote tabulation. This initiative, spearheaded by Senator Collins, has been met with derision from majority leader Schumer, who labeled it “unacceptably insufficient and even offensive.” 

Our own constitutional hackles were raised long before this latest development. The Constitution bars Congress from passing Bills of Attainder, legislative actions that target an individual or group for punishment without the benefit of trial. That holds for the president and his inner circle just as firmly as for the average citizen. Synergies between a committee overwhelmingly peopled by Democrats and the Department of Justice threaten this ban.

In United States v. Brown, the Supreme Court explained why this prohibition beats at the heart of our constitutional order. Chief Justice Warren wrote “the Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function, or, more simply, trial by legislature.” 

Just as the Congress, created in Article I, grasps for prosecutorial powers granted in Article II, it also seems intent on landing a knockout punch on the apex of the branch formulated by Article III, the Supreme Court. Leaks have disclosed text messages from the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, Virginia, to chief of staff Mark Meadows. This in turn has precipitated congressional murmurings of impeaching the court’s most senior jurist. 

The ultimate target of the committee’s work is likely neither the hordes who stormed the Capitol nor Justice Thomas, but Mr. Trump. He has already been tried, in his second impeachment, for the events surrounding January 6. The prosecution, which was led by none other than Mr. Raskin, fell far short of enough votes for a conviction. Mr. Trump was determined to be “not guilty” on all counts. Now the House is seeking double jeopardy. 

What is most egregious about the efforts of the Democrats is that they are violating a principle most famously articulated by FDR’s attorney general, Robert Jackson. In his speech to federal prosecutors, he described as the “most dangerous” power of the prosecutor that “he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted” — i.e., that he’ll pick the culprit before deciding which accusation to hand up. 

Jackson was sage then and is timely now: “The citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.” It looks to us like these representatives flirting with partisan prosecution under television klieg lights will exhibit none such humility, bent instead on violating every principle Jackson marked.