Lawless Republicans Again Threaten To Defund Law Enforcement

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Republicans only care about law enforcement when it targets their political enemies. REMINDER: Every Single Republican Voted Against Funding for Law Enforcement (July 2022):

Let’s remember that every single congressional Republican voted against the American Rescue Plan, which has provided critical funding to many of their local police departments. MAGA Republicans opposed every penny of this funding — despite claiming that they “Back the Blue.”

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NBC News: “House Republicans who opposed Covid aid still see funds flow to local police departments”

Many of these same Republicans supported Trump’s budget plan that would have cut funding to the COPS Program — a program that provides funding to state and local law enforcement agencies. 

Wall Street Journal: “The [Trump] administration’s 2021 budget, like all its previous budgets, recommended eliminating the Community Relations Services and Community Oriented Policing Services and placing their functions under other parts of the department to ‘improve efficiency.’”

As if that weren’t enough, GOP lawmakers are attempting to rewrite history after the January 6 Capitol riot — where U.S. Capitol Police were attacked by a violent mob incited by the “Big Lie” embraced by many MAGA Republicans. 

CNN: “A Republican House member… described January 6 as a ‘normal tourist visit’”

The Washington Post: “Twenty-one House Republicans… voted against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to all police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 violent attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.”

Let’s be clear: While President Biden is taking critical steps to support our law enforcement and fight violent crime across America, MAGA Republicans have attempted to block funding for police at every turn. The GOP must answer to the American people for their hypocrisy.

Lawless MAGA Republicans, in defending former President Donald Trump, have taken a not so surprising twist: now they’re threatening to defund local prosecutors. GOP threatens to defund the prosecutor as Trump indictment looms:

For years, Trump and fellow GOP candidates have pilloried progressive Democrats for promoting a “defund the police” movement that seeks to shift funds away from traditional law enforcement and toward community services aimed at reducing crime.

But now, as Trump anticipates being indicted over allegations that he illegally paid hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels in furtherance of his successful 2016 bid for the presidency, House Republicans are threatening federal funding for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. More broadly, the GOP is looking to weaken prosecutors whose campaigns were supported by the liberal billionaire George Soros. [An anti-Semitic trope from White Christian Nationalists.]

“Your decision to pursue such a politically motivated prosecution—while adopting progressive criminal justice policies that allow career ‘criminals [to] run[ ] the streets’ of Manhattan — requires congressional scrutiny about how public safety funds appropriated by Congress are implemented by local law-enforcement agencies,” Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, James Comer, R-Ky., and Bryan Steil, R-Wis., wrote to Bragg on Monday.

The three lawmakers, the chairs of the Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees, respectively, invited Bragg to testify before them and demanded that he turn over “all communications” between his office and other local and federal law enforcement agencies. They also asked for all communications from his office pertaining to the use of federal money.

Their letter follows Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s weekend tweet vowing to “investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.”

The Justice Department provides money to state and local prosecutors’ offices through a variety of grant programs — including those designed to combat violent crime, hate crimes and sexual assaults — but they account for a small portion of the Manhattan district attorney’s budget.

Still, Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who has become a vocal critic of his party, said GOP lawmakers would be outraged if Democrats wanted to investigate federal funding for a local prosecutor based on an ongoing case.

“Now you’ve got Republicans talking about ‘We want to take your money from you,'” he said. “If any Democrat behaved this way, these very same people would be losing their s—. It’s that simple.”

In an interview on Fox News on Monday, Jordan sidestepped a question about what Congress would do with regard to federal funding for the prosecutor’s office.

“That’s a concern for us,” he said, pivoting to his interest in obtaining records of any of Bragg’s communications with other law enforcement agencies.

Dumbass.

But in another twist, it’s political money — not federal cash — that has dominated much of the GOP’s discussion of the possible indictment.

Since Trump announced Saturday — without apparent evidence — that he was likely to be indicted Tuesday, he and other Republicans have targeted the support Soros-backed entities have given to progressive candidates for elected prosecutor jobs.

“I have no interest in getting involved in some manufactured circus by some Soros-DA,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is Trump’s leading rival for the GOP presidential nomination, said in his first public remarks since Trump posited that he would be indicted this week.

[T]he parroting of Trump’s own attacks on Soros and Bragg momentarily — and oddly — put the two leading GOP presidential candidates in the position of sharing a common declared enemy.

The comfortable political ground for all Republicans is to attack liberals, Democrats and the big-city prosecutors they elect. That helps explain the House GOP’s insistence on investigating federal funds that flow to the Manhattan district attorney. The other obvious reason is that it gives them an entry point into seeking testimony and records from a local prosecutor, since Congress oversees federal money. Perhaps of note, House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger, R-Texas, whose panel is in charge of spending, did not sign the letter.

DeSantis and other Republicans have long targeted Soros for backing prosecutors who promote policies of non-enforcement of certain crimes — in part because the same philosophy is at the heart of the “defund the police” movement. The billionaire’s name appears eight times in DeSantis’ recent book.

In one passage, he contrasts the non-enforcement desires of some Soros-backed officials in Florida with “the duty of a prosecutor to prosecute.”

Note: “A federal judge dismissed former State Attorney Andrew Warren’s lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis, ruling that the former Hillsborough prosecutor did nothing wrong but that the court didn’t have the power to restore him to office.” ‘Not a hint of misconduct’: DeSantis broke law, judge says, but tosses ousted prosecutor’s suit:

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said that DeSantis violated the Florida Constitution and Warren’s First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. However, because the suspension didn’t hinge on the federal constitutional violation, the court lacked the authority to grant the relief Warren was looking for, mainly to reinstate him as Hillsborough’s top prosecutor.

“The record includes not a hint of misconduct by Mr. Warren,” Hinkle wrote in a 59-page order explaining his reasoning. “So far as this record reflects, he was diligently and competently performing the job he was elected to perform, very much in the way he told voters he would perform it. He had no blanket nonprosecution policies. Any minimally competent inquiry would have confirmed this.”

An aide to McCarthy provided a copy of House Republicans’ 2022 “Commitment to America” agenda in response to a question about the difference between defunding the police and defunding a prosecutor. In it, Republicans promise to “oppose all efforts to defund the police” and “crack down on prosecutors who refuse to prosecute crime.”

But, turning the argument on its head, Republicans are now applying pressure to get a prosecutor to avoid indicting Trump.

Steele said the party has become wrapped around an axle in trying to defend its former and possible future leader.

“Here’s the kicker,” he said. “Donald Trump wouldn’t have had to pay $130,000 to a porn star if he wasn’t having an affair with her while his wife was giving birth to his son. So, chew on that GOP.”





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