Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced a “three-pronged approach” Tuesday to go after the justice system following former President Trump’s conviction.
The plan, according to Johnson, includes using the appropriations process, legislation brought to the floor and Congress’s oversight authority to take on the Justice Department.
“All those things will be happening vigorously, because we have to do that, because the stakes are too high and because people are losing faith in our institutions,” Johnson said at a press conference. “And that, at the end of the day, is something that should concern every single one of us. And I think it does.”
The Speaker’s rollout comes less than a week after a 12-person jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The case centered on a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels.
Johnson and other Republicans have railed at the verdict, accusing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) of having campaigned on prosecuting Trump, and taking aim at Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, as untrustworthy.
House Republicans have already begun carrying out elements of their three-pronged strategy.
Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced he would “demand” that Bragg and Matthew Colangelo, another prosecutor on the hush money case, appear for testimony about “the unprecedented political prosecution” of Trump.
Jordan fired off a letter Monday to House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) asking that his panel include a number of “reforms” in the government funding process this year, such as nixing funding for the FBI “that is not essential for the agency to execute its mission,” eliminating federal funding for “state prosecutors or state attorneys general involved in lawfare” and getting rid of federal funding for federal prosecutors taking part “in such abuse.”
Johnson re-upped his argument Tuesday that the prosecution — and ultimate conviction — of Trump represented an attempt by Democrats to hurt the former president’s chances of winning another four years in the White House.
“They see this happening, and they’re so desperate to stop them that they are willing to use the judicial system to do so,” Johnson said, referencing polling that shows Trump leading Biden in key states. “It is a new low. And it’s a dangerous one.”
“They’re eroding the people’s faith in our system of justice itself. As [House Republican Leader Steve Scalise] said, people have to believe that justice is blind. You have to believe that there is equal justice under the law in order to maintain a constitutional republic,” he continued. “This goes to the very core of who we are. the foundation of who we are as a nation, and that’s why it’s bigger than just President Trump. It’s bigger than just these cases. It’s about our system itself. And because of that there is a backlash.”