President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is on the verge of setting what one legal expert described as an “especially dangerous” precedent.
Earlier this month, the DOJ executed a search warrant on the Washington, D.C., residence of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has been a frequent critic of the Trump administration. In return, Trump and his allies have sought to paint Omar as a boogeyman who illustrates the illegal immigration that the administration is seeking to curtail, and have revived an investigation into whether she committed immigration fraud.
Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in a new essay for the “Stay Tuned” Substack that the DOJ’s investigation itself was “disturbing” because Omar is a sitting member of Congress who is up for re-election in just over two weeks. He pointed out that the DOJ has a longstanding tradition of not discussing a new investigation within a 60-day window of an election, which Attorney General Todd Blanche seemed all too happy to do away with.
“The best explanation here is that the Justice Department under Trump and [Attorney General Todd] Blanche simply doesn’t care about the 60-day rule,” Honig wrote. “That’s their imperative; the attorney general absolutely has the power to ignore a long-standing, internal prudential practice, and Blanche has risen to the top of the law enforcement world by trampling on tradition and trashing DoJ’s political independence.”
“But it’s an especially dangerous principle to abandon, as Comey and Smith have shown us before when their pre-election prosecutorial actions could have influenced the outcome of razor-thin presidential contests,” he added.
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