House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) on Tuesday announced a “three-pronged approach” to pursuing the justice system in the wake of former President Trump’s conviction.
Johnson said the plan involves using the spending process, bills introduced in Congress and Congress’ oversight powers to take on the Justice Department.
“All of this will be done vigorously because we have to, because the risks are too great, and because people have lost faith in our institutions,” Johnson said at a news conference. “And at the end of the day, it should be a concern to every single one of us. And I think it is.”
The speaker’s announcement came less than a week after a 12-person jury convicted President Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Johnson and other Republicans slammed the sentence, accusing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, of campaigning on Trump’s prosecution and attacking the prosecution’s central witness, Michael Cohen, as unreliable.
House Republicans have already begun implementing elements of their three-pronged strategy.
Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced he would “demand” that Bragg and Matthew Colangelo, the other prosecutor in the hush-payment case, appear in court to testify in the “unprecedented political prosecution” of Trump.
Jordan sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) on Monday asking the committee to include several “reforms” to this year’s government funding process, including ending funding to the FBI that is “not essential to the performance of its mission,” eliminating federal funding for “state prosecutors or state attorneys general who engage in law enforcement misconduct,” and eliminating federal funding for federal prosecutors who engage in “such misconduct.”
Johnson argued Tuesday that Trump’s prosecution and ultimate conviction was an attempt by Democrats to undermine the former president’s chances of winning the White House for another four years.
“They see this happening and they’re so desperate to stop it that they’re willing to use the justice system,” Johnson said, referring to polls showing Trump leading Biden in key states. “This is a new low. And it’s a dangerous low.”
“They are undermining public confidence in the justice system itself. [House Republican Leader Steve Scalise] “People have to believe that justice is blind. They have to believe that there is equal justice under the law to maintain a constitutional republic,” he continued. “This is an issue that goes to our very core, it’s the foundation of who we are as a nation, and that’s why this isn’t just about President Trump. It’s not just about these cases. It’s about our system. And that’s why there’s a backlash.”
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