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Yesterday was a rough one for Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan. Not only did he get his ass kicked in the House Speaker race by a guy who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” but he got read for filth by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Again.
From his position as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jordan has spent months trying to undermine the four pending criminal cases against Donald Trump. Indeed Trump asked him to do just that both privately and in multiple letters exhorting his GOP allies to force prosecutors to “stand down.”
Jordan fought Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to a draw, securing testimony from Bragg’s former deputy Mark Pomerantz, before wandering off to harass Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, from whom he’s gotten nothing but a public dragging.
“There is absolutely no support for Congress purporting to second guess or somehow supervise an ongoing Georgia criminal investigation and prosecution,” she wrote in response to an August letter demanding details of her ongoing investigation. “That violation of Georgia’s sovereignty is offensive and will not stand.”
In that letter, Willis went on to explain the Constitutional and statutory defects in Jordan’s claims to have oversight authority with respect to state prosecutions. This time she just called him an ignorant hick with a Napoleon complex.
“A charitable explanation of your correspondence is that you are ignorant of the United States and Georgia Constitutions and codes. A more troubling explanation is that you are abusing your authority as Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to attempt to obstruct and interfere with a Georgia criminal prosecution,” she wrote, adding, “While you may enjoy immunity under the United States Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, that does not make your behavior any less offensive to the rule of law.”
She did not note that Trump himself seems to think that his due process rights are perfectly safe in Georgia state court. On September 28, his lawyer Stephen Sadow informed Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee that his client did not intend to seek federal removal of the charges against him, “based on his well-founded confidence that this Honorable Court intends to fully and completely protect his constitutional right to a fair trial and guarantee him due process of law throughout the prosecution of his case in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia.”
Instead, DA Willis offered suggestions as to how the Congressman might more profitably deploy his authority over the federal purse:
My attached prior letter provided you with four noble suggested uses of your authority as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: (1) enhancing funding for victim-witness advocates; (2) expanding funding for testing all rape kits; (3) supporting the Credible Messengers program, which helps to turn around children in trouble with the criminal justice system; and (4) ensuring adequate funding to support state crime labs, which test for drugs like Fentanyl. I would encourage you to focus your attention on those issues, which would make life better for the American people.
“Yours in service,” she signed off. Which is perhaps less condescending than “bless your little heart,” but the sentiment is clear all the same.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.