Jordan Launches Sweeping Investigation Into Fani Willis’s Prosecution of Trump

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan, is using his position to investigate the Fulton County district attorney’s prosecution of President Trump — questioning her motives, timing, and alleged attempts to “criminalize” speech. Mr. Jordan sent a sweeping letter to the district attorney, Fani Willis, demanding her records related to the prosecution. In a statement announcing the letter, Mr. Jordan said his committee wants to know more about local prosecutors’ attempts to “regulate the conduct of federal officers.” Mr. Jordan also wants to know if the district attorney’s office coordinated with federal officials, including Special Counsel Jack Smith.“Your indictment and prosecution implicate substantial federal interests, and the circumstances surrounding your actions raise serious concerns about whether they are politically motivated,” Mr. Jordan wrote to Ms. Willis, who is leading the prosecution of Mr. Trump and his 18 co-defendants for allegedly concocting a “criminal enterprise” to steal the 2020 Electoral College votes in Georgia. Arguing that Ms. Willis was “politically motivated” in bringing these charges, Mr. Jordan noted that just four days before the indictment was handed up from the grand jury at Atlanta, the district attorney launched a fundraising campaign in which she highlighted her investigation of the former president. She also attempted to investigate the lieutenant governor of Georgia, Burt Jones, for his alleged involvement in the so-called fake elector scheme but was blocked from doing so by a local court because Ms. Willis last year hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic nominee for the lieutenant governorship, Charlie Bailey. Mr. Jordan’s justification for a federal legislative body’s investigation into a local district attorney rests on the fact that Ms. Willis’s indictment and prosecution “implicate several significant federal interests,” including using state law to criminalize actions of federal officials.“The indictment seeks to criminalize under Georgia law internal deliberations within the DOJ, including a meeting where a former DOJ official requested formal authorization from his superiors to take an official act,” Mr. Jordan writes. “And in Count 1, the indictment seeks to criminalize under Georgia law the White House Chief of Staff arranging meetings and phone calls for the President.”Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been indicted alongside his former boss for arranging the infamous phone call between Mr. Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which the former president asked the Peach State’s top elections official to “find” the requisite number of votes for him to win.Mr. Meadows is seeking to dismiss the charges on the grounds that he was simply acting in his official capacity as chief of staff in discussing “public issues” with an elected official.“Your office is seeking to criminalize under Georgia law certain speech of federal officers, including the President, that is protected by the First Amendment,” Mr. Jordan writes. “Especially given the potential for states to target certain federal officials, 8 such indictments implicate core federal interests.”Mr. Jordan also says his oversight jurisdiction includes seeking information about Ms. Willis’s communications with Mr. Smith’s office. “Congress has an interest in any such activity that involves federal law enforcement agencies and officials that fall under its oversight,” Mr. Jordan states. He asked for a breakdown of all federal funding Ms. Willis’s office receives, as well as all communications she has had with federal officials at the DOJ, Mr. Smith’s office, and any other executive branch officer by September 7. This is not the first time Mr. Jordan has used his perch atop the Judiciary Committee to investigate local prosecutors who have charged the former president. In April, shortly after Mr. Trump was indicted by a grand jury at Manhattan for allegedly paying hush money to a porn star during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Jordan sought to compel the testimony of a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Mark Pomerantz, who was dissatisfied that the prosecution of the former president had not come sooner. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, then sued Mr. Jordan to stop the subpoena, which a Trump-appointed federal district court judge, Mary Kay Vyskocil, refused to do. Judge Vyskocil ordered Mr. Pomerantz to comply with the subpoena, writing in her opinion that “no one is above the law,” though that opinion was later stayed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Jordan, one of the most recognizable conservatives in the House, has used his position as chairman of both the Judiciary Committee and the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government to win major press coverage for his wide-ranging investigations.On September 20, he and his colleagues will interrogate Attorney General Garland on a wide range of subjects, including the two federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith, the collapse of Hunter Biden’s plea deal, and the ensuing appointment of the United States attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, as the special counsel investigating the first son.

Jordan Launches Sweeping Investigation Into Fani Willis’s Prosecution of Trump

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