House Republicans have vowed to use their majority power to hold the Department of Justice (DOJ) accountable for former President Donald Trump’s indictment, but they are up against the department’s longstanding position that it withholds non-public information about ongoing criminal prosecutions.
The most recent communication from DOJ to House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), sent Friday and obtained by Breitbart News, underscores the challenge Republicans will face in the coming months.
Citing its “duty to safeguard the integrity” of its work, the department pointed Jordan to special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment and other public court filings after the chairman said he needed certain records to perform congressional oversight.
“Protecting the confidentiality of non-public information regarding investigations and prosecutions preserves the American people’s confidence in the evenhanded administration of justice by guarding against the appearance of political pressure,” the department wrote.
DOJ also warned that providing Congress with such information could violate court orders, “reveal roadmaps” of the department’s investigations, or violate any involved individuals’ privacy or legal rights.
The remarks from DOJ came as expected, but signal that for all of the fury Republicans have expressed over “two tiers of justice” and government “weaponization,” taking tangible responsive actions against DOJ aside from strongly worded letters is going to be a long and uncertain process.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) showcased Jordan’s demands, which the DOJ declined to fulfill, as the conference’s first move in response to the unprecedented and messy matter of the Biden administration prosecuting the president’s leading 2024 challenger.
Many officials, from Secretary Hillary Clinton to then-Senator Joe Biden, handled classified info after their time in office & were never charged. Now Biden’s leading political opponent is indicted—a double standard that must be investigated. @Jim_Jordan & House Republicans will… https://t.co/QxzHtq7wUr
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) June 9, 2023
McCarthy said Republicans would conduct oversight of the “double standard” the indictment presented, though DOJ has already put up its aforementioned roadblock to this.
The speaker also noted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton storing classified information on her personal email server and Biden keeping documents with classified markings in both an office space and his home from when he was vice president and senator.
The latter case remains under a separate special counsel investigation of its own and in the former case, the FBI recommended against an indictment in 2016, finding that Clinton was careless but not intentionally negligent with classified information.
Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is conducting a parallel probe into Biden related to the president’s family’s business dealings and allegations Biden accepted a bribe while serving as vice president, but Comer has also been met with some resistance from the FBI.
“Unfortunately, the premier agency that is supposed to investigate crimes appears to have run defense for the Bidens,” Comer wrote last week in an op-ed, vowing to persist in records gathering to “ensure accountability.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland (L) and FBI Director Christopher Wray hold a press conference at the Department of Justice on October 24, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Some GOP hardliners who, unlike committee chairs, lack direct subpoena authority have lashed out at the executive branch, including Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Boebert introduced articles of impeachment against Biden, but impeachment would only become a serious pursuit once an investigative committee initiates hearings to examine articles of impeachment, a move that would require but currently does not have the support of GOP leadership.
Gaetz demanded information from Attorney General Merrick Garland about Smith and another controversial official assigned to the case, Karen Gilbert, saying that “it should be obvious that doing due diligence in vetting an office that has apparently done no vetting of its own personnel … is an entirely appropriate purpose.”
Garland is unlikely to provide substantive responses to Gaetz’s letters however because he is not a committee chair.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) proposed an appropriations rider to “DEFUND Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and entire investigation.” The House Judiciary Committee will have a share of the jurisdiction over DOJ funding and Greene, a spokesperson confirmed, has been coordinating with Jordan and leadership ahead of the government funding fights anticipated in the fall.
In the Democrat-controlled Senate, Republicans have limited power, but Sen. J.D. Vance has promised to put a hold on DOJ judicial nominees in an effort to “grind [DOJ] to a halt until Merrick Garland promises to do his job and stop going after his political opponents.”
The move would have little immediate impact but could create a backlog of nominees in the long term since Vance has suggested he is poised to continue requesting holds while DOJ continues its prosecution of Trump.
As for the lower chamber, Jordan, Comer, and others in leadership roles have kept all options to move forward with House investigations on the table. Those options at this stage include issuing new demands or subpoenas and threatening to hold officials in contempt of Congress, actions that have at times produced results.
Democrats, in the meantime, have seized on the difficulty of the probes, at one point sharing a “must read” tweet thread saying that while Jordan’s “defense of Trump” is “comically unhinged,” House Republicans still have “real ways to use the committee process to sabotage Trump’s prosecution.”
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.
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