Republican lawmakers already on the defensive over Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “slush fund” and his controversial IRS deal approved by acting-Attorney General Todd Blanche have a new “headache,” reported The Hill Friday.
The report noted that the GOP faces a new crisis with prominent conservatives publicly condemning the Trump Justice Department’s investigation of E. Jean Carrollon possible perjury charges — calling it a politically motivated prosecution that demands immediate GOP intervention.
According to The Hill, the investigation has triggered alarm among constitutional conservatives who view it as the latest example of Trump weaponizing federal law enforcement against his critics and opponents.
Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law and a former Republican counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he hopes GOP senators will finally take a stand against what he described as systematic abuse of power.
“Ordinarily, I would hesitate to prejudge any DOJ criminal investigation, but this is now after a well-established pattern of the Justice Department launching specious criminal investigations and indictments against the president’s critics. I think one could only assume that this investigation fits within this pattern, that this investigation reflects a Justice Department eager to punish people who have had the temerity to criticize the president or in any other way challenge his authority,” Nunziata told The Hill’s Alexander Bolton.
He added: “The idea that a successful plaintiff in a civil suit against the president would be a target for criminal investigation is remarkable.”
Nunziata argued that GOP senators must reject the “whataboutism” defense used by Trump’s strongest allies — that the president is simply retaliating against what the Biden administration did to him.
“What the president is doing with the Justice Department in these prosecutions is completely indefensible, and his strongest defenders tend to say that the president is just doing to Democrats what Democrats did to him, which is, in other words, to implicitly say, ‘This is wrong, we’re just doing it, too,’” he elaborated.
The investigation has also triggered outrage from prominent conservative intellectuals who are publicly pressuring GOP senators to distance themselves from Trump’s Justice Department.
Ed Whelan, distinguished senior fellow and Antonin Scalia chair in constitutional studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, called the Carroll investigation an “outrageous abuse of power.”
The report noted that Jay Nordlinger, conservative commentator and former senior editor of National Review magazine, escalated the rhetoric, calling the criminal investigation of Carroll “another impeachable offense” and “another grotesque abuse of power.”
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