Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee in this Congress, joined those speaking out this week after leading Republicans in that legislative chamber, including Oversight chair Rep. James Comer (Ky.), issued a demanding letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
The letter mirrors other broad attempts at an investigation from Republicans peddling their capitalized outrage about what’s been done to Trump and what, in some alternate universe, the Bidens have perpetrated. Comer, for instance, has also sought information from an art dealer who has partnered with Hunter Biden, a son of the current president. Hunter is not seeking elected office and has not recently done so, and the prices sought for some of his art pieces, while high, aren’t incomprehensible. A lot of the originals for sale in such a context will be priced at high levels!
Anyway, with Bragg, the Republicans including Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) on the Judiciary Committee, joined by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) of the House Administration Committee, sought caches of records like all correspondence — and related documents — involving two formerly top investigators on the district attorney’s team and relating to Trump. The materials, if provided, could expose inner workings of the grand jury investigation Bragg and his predecessor have led to punitive scrutiny, jeopardizing methods, rhetorical ground already covered, or avenues for investigations in the future.
“The Republicans’ letter to the Manhattan District Attorney represents an astonishing and unprecedented abuse of power as they attempt to use Congressional resources to interfere in an ongoing criminal investigation at another level of government and obstruct a possible criminal indictment,” Raskin said in prepared remarks. “Former President Donald Trump demanded this nonsensical interference over the weekend, and these Committee chairs have acted totally outside their proper powers to try to influence a pending criminal investigation at the state level.”
Besides the demands for various documents and a push for Bragg himself to testify, the letter from Jordan and the other Republicans also threateningly asserts various conjectural accusations about the district attorney’s work, crediting his moves to illusory political motivations. In reality, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) noted in a recent television interview how it’s not even Bragg, an elected official, who is responsible for the final decision of whether to issue charges against Trump. Rather, that choice falls to the grand jury that has been active in the probe, which deals — as far as what’s relevant here — with hush money illegally provided before the 2016 presidential election to Stormy Daniels, funds that were given amid concern about hiding an affair she purportedly had with the ex-president.
