A House committee on Friday subpoenaed Arlington’s top prosecutor as part of a larger clash over protests outside the home of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a chief architect of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
The demand comes four months after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, opened an inquiry into Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a second-term Democrat who serves as Arlington County’s lead prosecutor, requesting a trove of records from her office and accusing her of ignoring the Millers’ safety out of “political bias.”
Dehghani-Tafti previously declined to provide documents, citing an ongoing investigation into a retired peace studies professor who last year distributed leaflets disclosing Miller’s home address. The prosecutor also said Congress lacked the ability to intervene in a state law enforcement matter.
“I can assure you that this investigation has been, and continues to be, handled consistently with the Commonwealth Attorney’s oath,” she wrote to Jordan in November.
“Every decision made in my office rests on two things, and two things only — the facts and the law. That standard applies whether a matter involves a President’s aide, a local business owner, or a neighbor down the street,” Dehghani-Tafti said in a statement. “Chairman Jordan’s subpoena is an overreach, a trespass on state and local sovereignty with no legitimate federal interest.”
The leaflet incident and ensuing fallout, chronicled by The Post earlier this year, ignited debate over the tension between free speech and public safety, pitting the Miller family’s concerns for their security against the First Amendment claims of a local activist criticizing the Trump administration.
“We never intended to threaten his children, threaten his family or have him flee Arlington,” the activist, Barbara Wien, said previously of her and her husband’s intentions. She has not been charged.
In a letter to Dehghani-Tafti on Friday, Jordan accused the prosecutor of “refusing to cooperate with oversight requests related to concerns about your politically-motivated actions in a case involving a far-left agitator’s disturbing campaign to threaten, harass, and dox” the Miller family.
Jordan’s demand comes during a second Trump administration in which the president and his allies have been increasingly aggressive in using the tools of the federal government — including pressuring law enforcement agencies — to seek retribution against perceived foes.
In September, Wien and her husband drove to the Millers’ North Arlington neighborhood and dropped manila envelopes stuffed with printouts near people’s front doors. Among the news articles and pamphlets was a flier with a photo of Stephen Miller’s face circled in red with a line through it. (Wien has said she doesn’t know who made the flier and didn’t realize it included his address.)
“Wanted for crimes against humanity,” the flier stated, listing his home address. “No Nazis in NOVA,” meaning Northern Virginia.
Walking through one cul-de-sac that morning, Wien spotted Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, standing on her porch.
She pointed her fingers at her own eyes, then at Miller, as if to say, “I’m watching you.”
To Katie Miller, it appeared to be a threat — part of a campaign of doxing and “terroristic threats” leveled against her family that pushed well beyond the boundaries of free speech, as she described on Fox News, leaving her concerned for the safety of her children. In August, she called local police to a nearby park, having found yet another poster denigrating her husband and publicizing their home address. Later that fall, members of Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity, a group Wien helped co-found to publicize ways some residents believed the Millers’ work chafed against the values of their community, scrawled messages on sidewalks near the Millers’ home. (Wien said she didn’t participate in the chalking or post fliers in parks.)
The day before Katie Miller saw Wien on her street that September morning, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead in Utah.
Three weeks later, members of the FBI, Secret Service and Virginia State Police arrived at Wien’s home with a search warrant to seize her phone, signed by a judge after police accused her of a “coordinated plan to intimidate and harass Stephen Miller.”
Both Dehghani-Tafti and Wien’s attorney have raised concerns over the conduct of the investigation, including the involvement of federal law enforcement in executing the search warrant even though it was based on evidence that she might have committed a local misdemeanor.
“It has just been crystal clear to me that the goal of this investigation and others like it is to build federal RICO or conspiracy cases against peaceful activists as a means of suppressing political dissent,” Bradley R. Haywood, Wien’s attorney, said in an interview Friday.
“It’s frightening,” Haywood said. “I still don’t think in Arlington anything is going to come of this because there is literally nothing for them to find out. This was all above board.”
But Katie Miller argued in a Fox News interview that protesters coming to her home were inciting the kind of violence that killed Kirk. “If we don’t step up and start putting people in cuffs for these actions, what comes next?” she said.
After the incidents, the Millers listed their home for sale and moved to military housing.
The subpoena does not seek Dehghani-Tafti’s testimony before the committee but requests reams of records including communication relating to her office’s use of federal funds, communications between employees referring to the Millers and communications between her office and Wien’s attorney. Their deadline is April 7.
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