Former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who’s currently the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital, authorized prosecutors this week to go to a grand jury to try to secure indictments against Democratic members of Congress. The lawmakers had, months earlier, made a video reminding service members not to follow unlawful orders, and as such the U.S. attorney’s office wanted them charged — with seditious conspiracy.
That didn’t go well: Regular citizens on the grand jury rejected the ridiculous gambit on Tuesday.
This marked the latest in a series of embarrassments for Pirro and Donald Trump’s unraveling Justice Department, but the “no bill” failure, overseen by prosecutors with unfortunate backgrounds, did not close the book on the fiasco.
On the contrary, some of the targets of this ridiculous gambit appear eager to turn the tables on those who went after them. Politico reported:
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) on Wednesday demanded U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro preserve all evidence related to her unsuccessful effort to bring charges against him and five other Democratic lawmakers. […]
In a letter sent Wednesday to Pirro’s office, Abbe Lowell, Crow’s attorney, called the effort to indict Crow and the other Democrats involved in the video ‘a breathtaking and unprecedented level of prosecutorial overreach and misuse of power.’
A week earlier, after Sen. Elissa Slotkin told the Justice Department that she wouldn’t cooperate with its baseless investigation, the Michigan Democrat’s lawyers also requested that Pirro preserve all documents related to the matter for “anticipated litigation.”
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of this, but it’s also worth pausing to appreciate the larger context. After the grand jury dismissed the case as nonsensical, it was easy to mock Pirro and her assigned prosecutors over their humiliating failure, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Federal prosecutors wanted to bring serious felony charges against sitting members of Congress who’d done nothing wrong. If successful, the charges would have sent lawmakers to prison for many years.
That’s more than just bonkers. It’s also a dangerous step down an authoritarian path.
What would the political conversation look like right now if Joe Biden had declared publicly that he believed Republican members of Congress had engaged in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” and soon after, Biden’s DOJ tried to charge those GOP members with felonies, despite no evidence of wrongdoing?
I have a hunch this would not be well received.
“I say to my Republican colleagues, if the executive branch can merely attempt to prosecute members of the legislative branch for simply exercising free speech, that is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem, it is a constitutional crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday.
The New York Democrat urged GOP members to speak up and recognize the seriousness of the circumstances. So far, however, Republicans have largely kept their heads down in the wake of the failed indictment effort.
