WWhen Merrick Garland was nominated by Barack Obama to the United States Supreme Court, Republicans refused to grant him a hearing. Now that Garland is America’s top law enforcement official, the party seems ready to give him one after all: an impeachment hearing.
Capitol Hill Republicans are advancing a sweeping assault on the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that would have been unthinkable before the rise of Donald Trump. The party that claimed the mantle of law and order for half a century has become, critics say, a personality cult intent on discrediting and dismantling institutions that stand in Trump’s way .
“I often think, what would Richard Nixon say?” observed larry saturday, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “He was the original president of law and order, with that slogan. What would you think now that the party is going after the primary institutions of law and order, at least at the federal level? The party of law and order has become the paranoid party.”
The trend, evident for years, has become palpable since Republicans gained narrow control of the House of Representatives in January. Within a month they had created a panel, chaired by Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, to investigate “the weaponization of the federal government” and examine what they allege is the politicization of the Justice Department and the FBI against conservatives.
Their frustrations intensified last month when Trump became the first former president to face federal criminal charges over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Far from condemning a potential lawbreaker in their own ranks, nearly all of Trump’s rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination accused the FBI of political bias, some even called for its abolition and promised to pardon – him if he was elected.
Many Republicans then spoke of a “two-tiered” justice system when Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors on tax evasion and gun charges that will keep him out of court. prison A former employee of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has alleged political interference in the investigation and accused Garland of not telling the truth to Congress, a claim Garland denies.
Some Republicans, especially on the far right, are now calling for Garland’s impeachment, a punishment no cabinet official has faced since 1876. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy he told the conservative Fox News recently: “Someone has lied here. If we find that Garland has lied to Congress, we will open an impeachment inquiry.”
Meanwhile, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, discovers that his status as a Trump appointee offers no immunity from Republican attack.
In May, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a key Trump ally, introduced articles of impeachment against him, alleging that “the FBI has intimidated, harassed and entrapped American citizens who have been considered enemies of the Biden regime” and that it “has turned the FBI into the personal police force of Joe Biden and Merrick Garland ” with “soviet style”. tactics”.
Last month was the control committee of the Chamber ready to despise Wray until it agreed to have all of its members review a 2020 document containing bribery allegations against Biden, allegations that Democrats say were examined and dismissed by the Justice Department during Trump’s presidency.
Wray is now due to declare at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, chaired by Jordan, on Wednesday, with topics likely to include Trump’s impeachment, Hunter’s plea deal and special counsel John Durham’s criticism of the FBI’s investigation into Russia
Greene has also introduced articles of impeachment against Biden and other cabinet members and has indicated he intends to force floor votes on their resolutions. This would certainly create a show for conservative TV channels and satisfy the desire of the “Make America great again” (Maga) base of avenge trump after years of hearings in which he was the accused.
However, any impeachment would be dead on reaching the Democratic-controlled Senate and could backfire among the general electorate, with many voters feeling a desperate attempt to distract themselves from political debates.
Sabato commented, “It would excite his activists, but most Americans would be repulsed and shake their heads and say, these people need to get their house in order, then we’ll consider voting for them. I’m sure that Biden, in in a way, he hopes that he will be dismissed, and so will the others.
“It is a waste of time: there is no possibility of conviction in the Senate. They simply stick the knife in their own chest. They are killing themselves. It’s okay, go ahead, have fun!”
A woman celebrates Donald Trump’s impeachment at the White House last month. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congress Integrity Project watchdog, ok. He said: “Maga’s party is following the leader, Donald Trump, who is currently in serious legal trouble across the country. The party seems willing to try to deflect from these legal problems by interfering with the investigations they are doing in Congress . What they are doing is playing 30% of their base without realizing that you need another 20% to win the election.”
Some establishment Republicans are aware of these dangers and are reluctant to abandon the party’s law-and-order credentials, particularly as they see crime as a major talking point in next year’s election. It’s a particularly uncomfortable issue for the 18 Republican members of the House from districts Biden won in 2020, all of whom have good reasons to avoid voting with extremists like Greene. Internal strife threatens a political headache by McCarthy.
Larry Jacobsdirector of the Center for the Study of Policy and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There are definitely people in the Republican Party and in Congress who would like to proceed with removing the head of the Department of Justice, Garland, to go – there. after the head of the FBI and even to go after Joe Biden.
“But there are cooler heads who appreciate that Trump’s kind of paranoia-infected contagion is wrong and could be a real setback for the 2024 election.
“Independent voters, who tend to swing US elections that have become so close, don’t buy the Trump line. You don’t see support for this deranged view that the Justice Department and the FBI are somehow corrupt way. There is no support for this except in the fringe of the Republican party. The question, however, is whether the fringe of the Republican party has enough influence, especially in the House of Representatives, to force impeachment votes and other measures ?
Acrimony threatens to dominate the rest of the year in an already unproductive Congress. Republicans could target law enforcement budgets and already have withheld further funding for a new FBI headquarters.
His position represents a stunning reversal for a party with a long tradition of presenting itself as pro-police and crime-resistant, from Nixon’s talk of cities “shrouded in smoke and flames” to Ronald Reagan’s embrace of mass incarceration. It has its roots in Trump’s years of political attacks on an alleged “deep state” that is out to get him and, by extension, his supporters.
His grudge against the FBI began in earnest when the bureau looked into alleged ties between his 2016 election campaign and Russia while deciding not to prosecute Democrat Hillary Clinton for using an email server private when she was secretary of state. FBI Director James Comey then rebuked Clinton, calling her careless handling of classified information, but said there was no clear evidence that she or her aides intentionally broke the laws.
Trump’s relentless hounding through campaign rallies and social media had an effect: A February 2018 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that three in four Republicans thought the FBI and Justice Department were actively looking undermine Trump through politically motivated investigations.
The seeding of mistrust came to a head with a baseless conspiracy theory that the January 6, 2021 uprising at the US Capitol was a hoax orchestrated by the Bureau. Seen through this prism, every FBI investigation of those involved and every Justice Department prosecution is a violation, not an assertion, of law enforcement.
Kurt Bardellawho was the spokesman and top adviser to Republicans on the House Oversight Committee from 2009 to 2013, said, “It’s really something to see the political party that spent the 2022 legislature screaming to be pro-enforcement the law and against the police when they are now using all their resources and their very narrow majority in the House to do just that: take down law enforcement and defund the police.”
Bardella, now a Democratic strategist, added: “Republicans seem to like the idea of enforcing the law except when it comes to white-collar crime and when it comes to their own people. It’s interesting that they want two sets of justice systems : one that looks the other way and realizes the multitude of crimes its leader, Donald Trump, has been accused of, and another justice system for almost everyone else.”
