WASHINGTON – New legislation from House Republicans aims to prevent local prosecutors from filing lawsuits against former presidents.
The bill is another show of support for Donald Trump, who faces the possibility of criminal charges in Georgia and was sued last week in Manhattan for allegedly violating the state’s false business registration law.
Republicans subpoenaed a former prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, denounced the charges as entirely politically motivated, and scheduled a hearing for Monday to accuse Bragg of failing to prosecute the actual crimes.
Now comes a proposal that Rep. Russell Fry (R-C) says would “prevent political prosecutions” by moving cases against former presidents from state jurisdiction to federal court, where judges are confirmed by the Senate, a body securely influenced by elected Republicans. .
“Politically motivated prosecutors should not be able to wield undue power and target our nation’s top leaders for their own personal gain,” Fry said in a statement. statement on its website.
State and local prosecutors are normally responsible for prosecuting state crimes in state courts, while federal prosecutors, known as US Attorneys, prosecute federal charges in federal courts. Fry said his bill, which he didn’t actually write, would allow presidents and vice presidents to send state cases to federal courts.
Representative. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday night that his committee would quickly grade the bill.
“One of the pieces of legislation that we expect to bring very quickly from our committee is the legislation [that says] if you’re going to do something like that, you at least need to take that case to federal court,” Jordan said on Fox News. “Don’t try it in a local court.”
The bill has little chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled Senate, but it represents an escalation of pro-Trump messaging from House Republicans, who have created an entirely new committee to dismantle the “weapons of government” against Trump, “former president and his supporters”. especially from the US Department of Justice, that is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his refusal to turn over official documents after his term ends.
The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney is also about to complete an investigation into Trump’s efforts to get state officials to “find” enough votes to overturn his presidential defeat.
A New York grand jury indicted Trump last month for falsifying corporate documents related to a 2016 cut of money from a former adult film star who threatened just before the election to disclose an alleged meeting with Trump. Trump funneled the money through his lawyer, Michael Cohen, who reimbursed him through a series of checks that Bragg said were mislabeled as legal expenses rather than campaign expenses. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign violations in 2018.
The charge is a first for a former president, even if Trump is an unusual case. Before winning the Republican nomination in 2016, Trump made a name for himself as a New York real estate mogul, parlaying his reputation into a number of other ventures, sometimes involving questionable business practices. The Trump Organization was convicted of tax crimes earlier this year, the now-defunct Trump University caught up with a $25 million settlement with defrauded former students in 2016, and Trump’s casino business was fined $10 million in 2015 for various financial misconduct such as failure to report suspicious transactions.
Republicans have argued that Bragg went out of his way to frame Trump to make a name for himself, but felony charges for falsifying corporate documents are not uncommon in New York, according to a analysis of recent cases from the online publication Just Security.
Jordan he said on Twitter This week, Trump was accused of “no crime” and complained about Bragg’s lawsuit trying to block Jordan’s subpoena to answer questions from House Republicans.
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