UPDATED: 20 MAR 2023 06:16 PM EST
ORLANDO, Fla. — House Republicans are embracing a familiar role: Acting as a defensive line against former President Trump’s perceived political enemies.
As a New York defense attorney reportedly prepares for the possibility that the ex-president will be indicted on charges related to alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, Republicans are trying an extraordinary punch: Calling on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to testify amid an ongoing investigation.
It's hardly the first time Republicans have shadowboxed with Trump’s foes — even while acknowledging they are basically in the dark about the evidence collected against him. Except now it comes amid a roaring debate over where the party wants to head next and who should get its presidential nod in 2024, not to mention smack in the middle of a House GOP confab meant to focus on their policy agenda.
But Republicans are quickly tuning into their political muscle memory to carry out a block-and-tackle play on Trump’s behalf. Three GOP chairs — Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), James Comer (Ky.) and Bryan Steil (Wis.), who oversee the Judiciary, Oversight and Administration panels, respectively — sent a letter Monday to Bragg demanding he sit down with committee staff, as well as hand over a broad swath of documents including any related to federal funding or communications with the Justice Department and other federal law enforcement.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Jordan spoke on Sunday to start laying the groundwork for the requests to Bragg, the Ohioan told POLITICO in a brief interview, predicting that the conference would back their effort.
“The conference, I think, all supports it because they all see this for what it is,” Jordan said.
In their letter, the House GOP chairs warn that a potential Trump indictment would “erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the course of the 2024 presidential election."
"In light of the serious consequences of your actions, we expect that you will testify about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision," they told Bragg.
In a response to the letter, which POLITICO first reported on Monday morning that House Republicans would be sending, Bragg's office sent a statement noting that "New York remains one of the safest big cities in the U.S. with a far lower murder rate than the most populous cities where the Committee Chairmen hail from — Ohio, Wisconsin, and Kentucky."
"In every prosecution, we follow the law without fear or favor to uncover the truth. Our skilled, honest and dedicated lawyers remain hard at work," Bragg's office responded, adding: "In every prosecution, we follow the law without fear or favor to uncover the truth."
House Republicans are well aware they'll have to defend several purple and Biden-won districts in 2024 where voters have rejected Trump, adding some political risk to their open support of the former president.
Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, one of those swing-district Republicans, said that he wouldn’t criticize his GOP colleagues for wanting to investigate the New York district attorney, but noted that he wants to get the details.
“I want to hear the facts, so I’m going to be slow on the trigger on this stuff,” Bacon said. “I am suspicious about the DA … [but] I think Trump can defend himself pretty well on this stuff. He doesn’t need everybody defending him, he can defend himself.”
But Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who chairs the House GOP campaign arm, predicted that a Republican investigation wouldn’t blow back on his vulnerable members.
A potential indictment of Trump is "so outrageous,” Hudson said in a brief interview.
That response underscores that the GOP use of their favorite I-word — investigations, that is, not impeachment — was blessed and telegraphed in advance by leadership.
McCarthy pledged over the weekend that relevant committees would launch probes and teased that Jordan would have a Monday announcement.
“This is a DA that has watched crime and prides himself on not prosecuting felonies, actually lowering them down to misdemeanors, which has caused a lot of the crime and why people have risen up,” McCarthy told reporters on Sunday.
“Lawyer after lawyer after lawyer will tell you this is the weakest case out there,” he added.
McCarthy has worked hard to cultivate his own relationship with the former president, even as he’s held off on a presidential endorsement. McCarthy spent months recovering with the conservative base after he said Trump bore some responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack, but he worked quickly and aggressively to restore himself with the ex-president. And Trump ended up personally lobbying members to help McCarthy as his bid for the speakership stalled amid conservative opposition.
In addition to McCarthy, Jordan has also spoken to some of Trump’s biggest defenders within the House GOP, who quickly threw their support behind his pro-Trump effort. Some warned that if Republicans don’t defend the former president now, they could face backlash in 2024.
“If you want to back away from President Trump and not support him … then that’s not the Republican Party that any of your voters will have anything to do with,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
But the potential indictment is also the latest reminder for Republicans of the baggage Trump will bring into 2024, and one that comes as they huddle in Trump’s adopted home state — not to mention the backyard of his biggest potential primary challenger: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Most of the conference has tried to strike a delicate balance in the 2024 split by avoiding a Trump bear-hug with an early endorsement, despite the years they've spent cultivating a man with both a loud megaphone and an infamously long memory. At the same time, they’ve showered praise on DeSantis, a one-time House loner who shot up through the party’s ranks due to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
But House Republicans have also been slow to endorse their former colleague, though many are expected to if and when he officially jumps into the race.
The threat of a potential Trump indictment has even earned blistering criticism from DeSantis backers and Florida Republicans, who are facing an awkward choice of who to back in a potential endorsement tug of war.
"All of that is very suspect," said Florida GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez, pointing to the statute of limitations and what he argues was a state prosecutor trying to get Trump on a federal matter. "I think Speaker McCarthy and the entire Republican Conference is very disturbed by this, and we do think that it's political and we need to do something about it."
And while Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) argued that McCarthy, not Trump, was the head of the party, he also embraced his colleagues' cries to rally around the former president: “I hope that this rogue left-wing prosecutor does not go forward with something that we are used to seeing in places like Putin's Russia."
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who recently endorsed DeSantis even though the governor hasn’t actually jumped in the race, also used an interview with Glenn Beck on Monday to lash out at the New York district attorney, noting that he backs the Florida governor but “it’s clearly a politicized effort to target the former president.”
House Republicans haven't made a concerted effort to drown out voices within the party, including some in their own ranks, who have pushed for a 2024 alternative with less headaches. But unable to totally escape the long shadow of the former president — not to mention the swarm of reporters who traveled south for their event — Republicans are still echoing Trump’s rallying cry, even as they remain in the dark about what evidence has been collected against him.
And it's been difficult to avoid the former president's gravitational pull. House Republicans fielded constant Trump questions the first two days of their retreat. Monday afternoon, when Jordan conducted a border discussion with Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who chairs the Homeland Security panel, the first question they got focused on the chairs' Trump letter.
“Why did I think you would do that,” Jordan quipped in response.
