Americans are tired of Democrats’ politicized investigations against Trump

For over four years, Americans have seen partisan, out-of-control investigators abuse their authority by attacking President Trump and his family. After years of fruitless politicized investigations and wasted taxpayer dollars, the left still cannot quit. Now comes New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking a last-minute, pre-election stunt.

James is not shy about her partisan obsession with President Trump. During her campaign to be New York’s highest law-enforcement officer in 2018, she openly promised to focus the authority of her office on attacking the Trump family. In her own words, she pledged to use “every area of the law” to target President Trump, his family, and “anyone in his orbit.” James even promised to change state law to achieve her political objective.

Since taking office, James has launched an enormous taxpayer-funded fishing expedition against the Trump family. Despite this obvious political vendetta, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer and longtime tax attorney have already testified to James’s investigators. Unsatisfied, James now demands that Eric Trump, son of the President and Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization, sit for a deposition before the November election.

No doubt James hopes she can extract some information from Trump that Democrats could manufacture into some sort of fake scandal before the president’s reelection. To see her true intentions, look no further than her refusal to accept a proposal by Trump to postpone the interview until after the election. If James’s intentions are pure, there would be little practical difference between receiving this testimony in November instead of in October. But for a political actor, the timing makes all the difference.

Unfortunately, James’s misuse of her official authority to target President Trump has become a pattern among Democrats in positions of power. After taking the House of Representatives, Democrats launched scores of politically-motivated investigations against the president, his administration, and his family. One Democrat subpoena was so abusive that it sought the debit card transactions of President Trump’s minor son. And, of course, Americans can never forget the Democrats’ baseless impeachment charade, the first partisan impeachment in our nation’s history.

James’s partisan investigation echoes the Obama-Biden administration’s weaponization of law enforcement and the intelligence community to target President Trump in 2016. During that campaign, the Obama-Biden FBI used a Democrat-funded dossier full of information compiled by a man it knew to be a Russian agent as a basis to spy on a Trump campaign associate. Like James, high-ranking FBI officials openly discussed their hatred for candidate Trump, boasting of an “insurance plan” against his victory.

After President Trump’s victory, the Obama-Biden misconduct continued. Senior Obama-Biden administration officials unmasked incoming National Security Advisor LTG Michael Flynn’s name 50 times in intelligence products and leaked his foreign calls to Washington journalists. When line-level FBI agents cleared Flynn of any wrongdoing, FBI brass ordered them to keep the case open following a January 2017 Oval Office meeting with President Obama and Vice President Biden. FBI Director James Comey later circumvented protocol to send two agents to the White House to interview Flynn with the goal of, as one senior FBI official observed, “get[ting] him to lie, so we can prosecute or get him fired.” And we now know from another FBI agent that the special counsel’s investigation had an “agenda” to “get Trump.”

Americans must trust that their law-enforcement officers act in a fair and impartial manner. Like the Obama-Biden FBI and so many other partisan Democrats before her, James has violated this trust. As she promised in her campaign, James has abused the authority of her office to harass and punish a political opponent. One fellow state attorney general wrote that Ms. James’s conduct is so bad that it “disgraces all of us who are privileged to bear the title of attorney general.”

Our Constitution guarantees fundamental fairness and due process of law. Our justice system demands the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial for all Americans. James has denied these rights to President Trump and his family. Her course of conduct as it relates to President Trump and his family is a clear abuse of authority and just the latest in a long list of weaponized law enforcement attacks against President Trump.

Americans are fed up with Democrats’ politicized investigations and partisan lawsuits. But Democrats’ actions speak to their priorities. As many Democrat-run cities see surging violence and crime, Democrats such as New York Attorney General Letitia James would rather manufacture scandals to attack President Trump than begin restoring law and order. This will be the Democrat record that Americans remember in November.

Rep. Jim Jordan represents Ohio’s 4th District. He serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and is a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus.