It was so predictable. Speaker “MAGA Mike” Johnson arrives late did the right thing in April by allowing the House to approve aid to Ukraine despite the opposition of most Republicans. Even former chairman Nancy Pelosi called him ‘brave’. But he has since turned to fellow right-wing members of the House of Representatives, and Donald Trump, to make amends for his alleged heresy.
Two of Johnson’s recent actions show just how low he will go to the disgraced former president and his MAGA disciples in the House of Representatives, and how hypocritical they all are.
Friday Johnson announced that the House would go to federal court to file charges against Atty. Gene. Merrick Garland for contempt of Congress. Two days earlier, the House had voted along party lines to seek the Justice Department’s prosecution of his boss. The Department turned down and within hours Johnson said the House would move forward on its own.
At issue is Garland’s refusal to give Republicans an audio recording they subpoenaed of President Biden’s interview last fall in the investigation into his past handling of classified documents, which did not result in criminal charges. Garland did provide other material requested by the House, including a transcript of the interview, but Biden claimed he had executive privilege over the audio.
For all the Republicans’ cavalier statements about respect for Congress, you know their real reason for demanding the recording: They believe the audio should contain parts they can exploit to embarrass Biden. They’ve been coveting it ever since the Republican special counsel unnecessarily interviewed the president mentioned in his report to Biden’s old age, poor memory and ‘decreased faculties’.
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Johnson, in a message, condemned the refusal to prosecute Garland as “another example of the two-tiered justice system brought to us by the Biden administration.”
Only a shameless Trump toady would continue spouting that “two-layer” nonsense after the Justice Department’s statements. successful prosecution of Biden’s son, with a second federal trial looming in September. And House Republicans pushed another ridiculous lie: Hunter Biden’s conviction was a feint to distract us from the Real crimes committed by the father, crimes that House Republicans have been unable to identify despite more than a year of investigation.
The real double standard is that of Republicans: They want Garland prosecuted for only partially complying with a congressional subpoena, but their ranks also include members who ignored the Jan. 6 House committee subpoenas to testify about their efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. They even turned their resistance into… fundraising pitches: “I’ve been drafted” was the Trumpian headline above one email.
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That boast came from Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, now chairman of the Judiciary Committee that recommended Garland be held in contempt. Prominent among the others who ignored subpoenas was Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who begged Trump after the election to appoint an acting attorney general who would declare the election fraudulent. Perry’s phone, seized by FBI agents, was full of incriminating calls and messages (“11 days until 6/1… We gotta get moving!” texted the White House at one point). And none other than the highest-ranking official in the building that was attacked, then-Chairman Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield (“My Kevin” to Trump), also ignored his subpoena to tell what he knew.
The committee of January 6 has in its report, justified his extraordinary subpoenas to members of the House of Representatives by describing “the central role of their efforts” to help Trump illegally stay in power. For example, in December 2020, Trump singled out Jordan and Perry when he urged resistant Justice Department officials to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican members of Congress.”
The contempt for Congress is entirely their business, not Garland’s.
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Perry also plays a role in Johnson’s other recent Trump mushrooming. At the insistence of the former presidentthe speaker quietly mentioned Perry and Rep. Ronnie Jackson of Texas to the House Intelligence Committee, one of Congress’s most sensitive and least partisan panels, privy to classified information that most other lawmakers don’t see. It’s a post that neither Perry nor Jackson deserve, which is why their appointments have reportedly outraged the committee’s chairman, Michael R. Turner of Ohio, and other more moderate Republicans in the House of Representatives. Turner told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the speaker promised to intervene in the event of “inappropriate” behavior by the two.
Why the care? As former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney’s fellow Republican profile in courage in the Jan. 6 committee, put it in a recent podcast, Perry was the member of the House of Representatives the committee most wanted to force to testify, because he was considered “essentially the driving force behind January 6” among those in Congress.
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As for Jackson, he so flattered Trump when he was a White House doctor that Trump picked him to be secretary of Veterans Affairs, a nomination that imploded amid the crisis. accusations that Jackson drank, abused staff and inappropriately distributed drugs (nickname: “Candy Man”). Demoted to captain after a Pentagon investigationhe still called himself a rear admiral on his congressional website until the Washington Post revealed his deception in March.
A former Intelligence Committee counsel — a Republican — said Perry and Jackson “couldn’t get security clearance if they came through any other door.” But Johnson has put them in a position to know the country’s deepest secrets just to please Trump, who himself has been accused of taking and sharing classified documents.
That only makes sense as your motivation is not the interests of the country, but those of the once and perhaps future president. That pretty much describes the speaker of the House of Representatives.
@jackiekcalmes
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
