Republicans are ramping up their efforts to attack the FBI and prosecutors such as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) in the wake of former President Trump’s conviction in the hush money case.
GOP lawmakers are calling for slashing funding for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, even though relatively few federal dollars go to the local offices run by Willis and Bragg.
They’re also seeking to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, though they appear to lack the votes to do so.
It’s all part of a broader attack on a justice system the GOP blames for the guilty verdict by a New York jury against Trump and his other legal cases, which may not be decided until after the election.
“It’s all about stopping lawfare,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters Monday, shortly after a letter from Jordan to the chair of the Appropriations Committee went public. The letter outlined proposed guardrails for FBI funding in the annual Justice Department spending bill.
Jordan called for yanking back funds for a new FBI headquarters and recommended tying spending for the agency to policy changes aimed at promoting “transparency,” like requiring the FBI to record interviews.
He also pushed for “defunding” what Republicans say are politicized prosecutions from prosecutors engaged in “lawfare.” Jordan said this included Willis, Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James, as well as federal special counsel Jack Smith’s office.
While the FBI receives significant federal funding, prosecutors such as Bragg and Willis, whose offices are primarily run through state and local funds, do not.
The Justice Department does offer various grants to local law enforcement agencies, often directed at efforts to stem violence or beef up other community efforts.
Jordan’s comments came not long after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also pointed to funding while discussing GOP efforts to combat what they see as a weaponization of the justice system by Democrats.
In a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Johnson railed against the “political retribution in the court system to go after political opponents of federal officials like Donald Trump,” vowing the party will use “oversight responsibility” with the “tools that we have in Congress.”
“We have the funding streams, we have mechanisms to try to get control of that,” Johnson said.
On Tuesday, Johnson rolled out a three-pronged plan for taking on the Justice Department, something that would include going after its funding.
He did not say whether that plan would include bringing to the floor a resolution passed by two committees that would hold Garland in contempt of Congress.
As Garland appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, ranking member Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) criticized Republicans for using the meeting to “create an outlet to spew more ridiculous conspiracies.”
“That’s why they held a hearing on what they’ve termed ‘lawfare’ — the ridiculous assertion that the department is somehow orchestrating state prosecutions of the former president for criminal activity that has been well documented.”
Garland himself spelled out that the Justice Department simply has no control over any state-level prosecutor.
“I do not control the Manhattan district attorney. The Manhattan district attorney does not report to us. The Manhattan district attorney makes his own decisions about cases he wants to bring under state law,” Garland said.
Nadler said efforts to strip funding from offices like Willis’s amounted to harassment.
“They are trying to intimidate her out of going after Trump, or at least to proactively discredit any conviction that comes out of the election interference prosecution,” Nadler added.
Republicans in both chambers have come out strongly against the New York jury’s verdict, which found Trump guilty on all 34 counts related to his falsification of business records to conceal his hush money payments to an adult film star.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he thinks the outrage “could have a very significant impact” when both chambers sit down to negotiate the final version of the annual DOJ funding bill for fiscal 2025, adding he supports using “every lever point we have to try to rein in the abuse of power we’re seeing from rabid Democrats blinded by their partisan hatred.”
Congress has until late September to pass its 12 annual funding bills, though many expect lawmakers will have to agree to a short-term measure to prevent a shutdown.
There is an appetite on both sides to kick the next deadline beyond the November elections, though nothing is certain.
Conservatives confident in Trump’s chances for reelection are pushing for a stopgap into early next year, which they argue could give the next presidency more influence over the annual funding bills — and potentially a better shot at securing GOP-backed changes in the DOJ funding bill.
“We ought to do the funding in 2025,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said Tuesday. “Let the new president have input, and I think it’ll be Trump.”
Scott is among a group of conservatives who vowed to oppose non-security-related funding boosts for the DOJ and other agencies in a letter that blamed the White House for making a “mockery of the rule of law.” They also vowed not to “allow expedited consideration and passage of Democrat legislation or authorities that are not directly relevant to the safety of the American people.”
However, despite the anger over the verdict, some Republicans have expressed caution about targeting FBI funding and prosecutors.
“I haven’t seen the specific proposals, but I would hope that any proposals that are presented are serious and are made in contemplation of long-term good policy and not just a short-term, knee-jerk reaction to a hasty prosecution, trial and conviction of President Trump,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) similarly suggested some downsides to the onslaught.
“I haven’t looked at any specific proposals, but I think at the end of the day, we need to be very careful leading up to [an] election that we can almost certainly sweep Washington and just be smart about focus on policies to produce that end,” Tillis told The Hill on Tuesday.
“People can convince me this is one that does, I’m in,” he said. “If it doesn’t, I’m out.”
While Republicans have grown louder in their criticisms of the justice system, efforts targeting the FBI emerged as a sore point for the party in the previous fiscal year’s appropriations process — underscoring the potential hurdles GOP leadership faces as it tries to keep the party unified in passing its partisan funding bills over the summer with a narrow majority.
“We’re having discussions in the conference,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), head of the House Appropriations Committee, told The Hill on Tuesday when pressed about frustration around the recent verdict and its impact.
“Obviously, that verdict had a huge impact on public opinion, pro and con, and so, again, we’re being deluged with recommendations,” Cole said. “We got to sit down and listen to our members and our leadership.”
Cole added that lawmakers “always want to be cautious when you’re spending money,” but he noted Congress has “the power of the purse, and people aren’t automatically entitled to federal dollars to use however they want.”
“Congress has a say in that.”
